Eugene Onegin

“Eugene Onegin” in verse is perhaps the most famous work of Russian literature. And maybe it became such because Alexander kept his promise to write “a novel in the old style”:

No secret torments of villainy
I will depict with grim severity,
But simply retell to you
The legends of a Russian family,
The captivating dreams of love,
And the manners of our olden days.

And how he wrote! But then who, after all, is Onegin? What answer did Tatyana find for him in his lonely study? “Has the riddle been solved? Has the word been found? What word?” There is no direct answer even now; Pushkin did not provide one. And he was right. He knew very well—this writer, praised and persecuted at the same time—that there is no definition of a person except “a person.” The rest is the work of deceit.