124
See also: Tristram Shandy 104 – 05 ■ A Hero of Our Time 151L
ike the main protagonist in
Eugene Onegin, Alexander
Pushkin (1799–1837) was
killed in a duel. In spite of this early
end to his career, he is considered
to be Russia’s greatest poet. His
work was extremely influential,
particularly his masterpiece
Eugene Onegin, whose eponymous
hero established the concept and
character of “the superfluous man.”
A disillusioned individual, often
born into wealth and privilege,
the superfluous man regards the
society around him with boredom,
cynicism, and lack of interest, at
the same time feeling himself to be
morally and intellectually superior.A life unfulfilled
Set in imperial Russia during the
1820s, Eugene Onegin is written
in the form of “a novel in verse,”
as Pushkin called it. It follows the
life and destiny of Eugene Onegin,
a bored landowning man about
town; his friend Vladimir Lensky,
a young, romantic dreamer; and
the beautiful and intelligent
Tatyana Larina and her vainand flirtatious sister, Olga. Tatyana
falls in love with Onegin, but is
rejected by him because he does
not want “life restricted to living in
domestic bliss.” Unable or unwilling
to prevent tragedy, he fights a duel
with Lensky, leaves his estate for
some years, and returns to find that
Tatyana has married someone else.Lonely destiny
Writing in a lively and often ironic
tone, Pushkin not only describes
the lives of his main characters,
but also introduces a large cast of
other individuals. He realistically
depicts scenes from Russian life
and there are numerous wide-
ranging literary references and
philosophical observations, some
satirizing the society of the time.
At the end, Eugene Onegin,
who has spent most of his life
distancing himself from those
around him, is left regretting
his lonely destiny. Pushkin’s
superfluous man was adopted by
other writers and embedded as a
recurring motif in much Russian
literature of the 1840s and 1850s. ■BUT HAPPINESS I
NEVER AIMED FOR,
IT IS A STRANGER
TO MY SOUL
EUGENE ONEGIN (1833), ALEXANDER PUSHKIN
IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
The superfluous manBEFORE
1812–24 English poet Lord
Byron’s characters Childe
Harold and Don Juan are the
precursors of the superfluous
man in Russian literature.AFTER
1840 Mikhail Lermontov’s
only novel, A Hero of Our Time,
builds on the superfluous man
theme with its hero Grigory
Pechorin, a Byronic figure
desperate for activity that will
stave off his world weariness.1850 In the figure of the
Hamlet-like Tchulkaturin,
Ivan Turgenev’s novella The
Diary of a Superfluous Man
further develops the idea of
the idealistic, inactive man.
1859 Idle dreamer Oblamov,
in Ivan Goncharov’s novel
of the same name, epitomizes
the laziness and inertia of the
superfluous man’s character.US_124-125_Onegin_Leaves.indd 124 08/10/2015 13:05