American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin
Author(s): Craig Cravens Source: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter, 2002), pp. 683-709 Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3219907 . Accessed: 12/10/2013 07:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavic and East European Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions LYRIC AND NARRATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS IN EUGENE ONEGIN Craig Cravens, The University of Texas at Austin In his comments on Eugene Onegin, Bakhtin considers Pushkin's novel in verse a typical novel (1981, 43-49). This article is not an attempt to refute Bakhtin's conclusions, but rather to demonstrate that the situation is more interesting and complex than Bakhtin assumes. It is Pushkin's mastery of the forms of consciousness characteristic of the lyric, I will argue, which allows him to create full and complete literary characters. One must keep in mind that Pushkin was writing at a time before the great literary develop- ments in psychological Realism. Pushkin's own creation and presentation of consciousness is distinctly pre-Realistic and, I will argue, more lyrically- based than Bakhtin allows. By negotiating among the essentially "lyric" realms of author, narrator, and characters, Pushkin develops his characters psychologically as far as possible within the limits of his literary method, creating characters that appear to exist independently from the author- narrator's consciousness, but which do not constitute fully-embodied "pro- saic" consciousnesses. Eugene Onegin is indeed a "poet's novel," but not in terms of formal markers alone. By employing the lyric in a narrative situation, Pushkin exploits the capacity of lyric poetry to express a state of mind and combines it with a fictionally created character and world. Although writing in an era that did not yet have fully rounded psychological prose characters, Pushkin's mas- tery of the different genres of lyric poetry allows him to create different authorial images or lyric personae which, when incorporated into the con- text of his novel in verse, create psychologically convincing characters distinct from the overarching consciousness of the author-narrator. In short, by mixing the genres of lyric and novel, Pushkin creates an unprece- dented type of psychological narration. The narrator of Onegin is, to say the least, an idiosyncratic figure. Push- kin at times (and most insistently in chapter 8) invites the reader to view the narrator as an image of the author himself by attributing to him certain autobiographical facts. At other times, he mitigates this view by pointing to SEEJ, Vol. 46, No. 4 (2002): p. 683-p. 709 683 This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 684 Slavic and East European Journal the borders of the fictional world and stressing the artificiality of his literary construct, so that the image of the narrator emerges as a vague and stylized portrait of the author, comprising elements from the worlds-of both fiction and reality. In both guises, however, the narrator of Eugene Onegin is an authorita- tive presence both omniscient and omnipresent. His temporal point of narration is some years after the event he narrates; spatially and psychologi- cally, however, he does not seek complete independence from his fictional world. That is, he is in no sense a detached, objective observer of the type we find in so many of the novels of later Realist writers. He is physically present in parts of the story as Onegin's friend, and he does not hide his psychological and emotional engagement with the characters whose lives he relates - especially Tatiana's. This duality - the narrator's authoritative presence above and beyond events, both spatially and temporally, com- bined with his occasional physical participation in the events themselves and his emotional engagement with the characters--is typical of first- person narration. In first-person narration, the reader's attention is usually divided be- tween two spatio-temporal realms, that of the narrator and that of the narrated events, and the narrational center of gravity oscillates between them. In some first-person works, the narrative process itself dominates, while in others it all but disappears so that characters and events of the story absorb the reader's attention almost exclusively. In both cases, the author combines two modes of experience in the single persona of the narrator. As a character in the story, he is a fictional being within the fictional world. This is the narrator's experiencing self. At the other end of the spectrum we have the narrating self: the fictional present tense be- comes past, and the narrator reflects on events with the benefit of temporal distance and hindsight. Usually the narrator of a first-person novel oscil- lates between these two perspectival modes depending on the effect the author wishes to produce on the reader. The narrating self is of course still fictional, but only from a point of view outside the text. Within the text, the first-person narrator is "real." For this reason the German narrative theo- rist Kate Hamburger (313) refers to first-person narration as a "feigned reality statement [fingierte Wirklichkeitsaussage]." This description of a first-person novel is appropriate to Eugene Onegin only with some qualification. First of all, Pushkin's narrator directly partici- pates in the fictional world in the first chapter only.1 For the rest of the novel he functions as an omniscient third-person narrator located beyond the fictional world. He often digresses from the fabulaic sequence of events2 to relate information from his own biography, but after the first chapter, these biographical allusions seem beyond the fictional pale of the novel because the narrator is no longer embodied in the text. This points to This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin 685 another feature of Onegin, which distinguishes it from conventional first- person novels: the inclusion of elements of the real-life biography of the author, which would have been immediately recognizable to his readers. Later in the Realist period of the nineteenth century, authors often create narrative personae, which are manifestly not identical with the author. Pushkin, on the other hand, brazenly bares his biography in his work to create a dynamic in the construction of character unlike that which we find in most instances of later Realist fiction. In the first-person novel of the Realist period- Dostoevsky's Demons is a good example- when the narrator shifts from retrospective to immediate narration, that is, when he participates in events, he tends to acquire char- acter traits from the fictional realm he is narrating. The fictional mode of existence is transferred to him, and he "becomes" a fictional character. He enters the fictional realm and exists on the same plane as the other charac- ters. In part, as a reaction to this altered center of gravity, the reader's attention shifts to the fictional present tense, the time of events. At other points, the narrator reflects on events from the retrospective pole, and readers are compelled to view events likewise retrospectively. This shifting of narrative modes within first-person narration is character- istic of Eugene Onegin. Most of the story is told retrospectively from a seemingly third-person viewpoint, but at times the narrator enters his fic- tional world to become a character therein. Unlike the narrator of Demons, however, Pushkin's narrator does not become fictionalized in his own narra- tive. Conversely, I suggest, the fictional realm of the literary heroes be- comes what we might call "biographized" by the real-life author. This biographization is one of the elements Pushkin employs to create fictional characters that seem to free themselves from their dependence on the author. In the Realist period of the mid-1800s, authors come to invent new methods of creating apparently autonomous consciousnesses, of vivifying characters. In Dostoevsky's works, for example, the author effaces himself behind limited and delimited narrators, and characters appear to emerge as beings independent of either author or narrator. Tolstoy, on the other hand, employs a vocal authoritative narrator who is sometimes assumed to be the author himself; his characters, however, likewise emerge as autono- mous beings. Despite chunks of "event material" (Dostoevsky's mock exe- cution, Tolstoy's marriage proposal), neither author's biography enters the respective novels overtly. To be sure, Pushkin's own narrative persona in Onegin possesses analogous elements; he is not coextensive with the au- thor. The narrator at times appears to be confused by events, or to lose track of his characters. At other times he is an omnipotent and omnipres- ent being commenting on events or on the novel itself. Pushkin's method of character construction, however, is in essence different from that of later This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 686 Slavic and East European Journal Realist authors. For example, while it would be unthinkable for a critic not to distinguish the narrator from the author in Tolstoy's or Dostoevsky's works, the term "author-narrator" with reference to Eugene Onegin is quite common. Pushkin employs his own persona and biography in a way later authors would find unacceptable. Let us look at some examples. i. Autobiography In general, Formalist and Structuralist criticism tends to stabilize the relationship between author and narrator: the author is presumed to keep his narrator at an ironic arm's length. In Onegin, however, Pushkin keeps this distance in constant flux, now approaching, now receding from his narrative persona. By packing his text with autobiographical references, Pushkin envelops his novel in the larger extra-textual, real world of author and reader, so that the worlds of fiction and reality are forced to intersect. Already in the second stanza, Onegin is introduced as the hero of the novel and simultaneously as the friend of the author-narrator who teases the reader with the possibility he is Pushkin himself (or a simulacrum thereof) at the end of the stanza by commenting on his own real-life exile to the Crimea: "No vreden sever dlia menia [But the north is harmful for me]." Later in the chapter, the narrator himself appears as a character in a remi- niscential section of the text as the friend of Onegin. He in fact becomes a fictional character. The reader, too, is mapped onto the fictional plane of the novel through the author-narrator's constant apostrophizing. For exam- ple, the author-narrator suggests in the second stanza that the reader and the novel's hero may have been born in the same place, "Gde mozhet byt' rodilis' vy [Where perhaps you were born]." More subtly in the same stanza, he rhymes moi priiatel' [my friend], meaning of course Onegin, with chitatel' [the reader], and thereby introduces a covert semantic consan- guinity between protagonist and reader. Thereby, three different worlds - the worlds of the character, author, and reader-come to exist intermit- tently on the same plane; at the same time, however, they exist separately in their own spheres. The "I" of the novel as a friend of Onegin (and perhaps acquaintance of the reader as well) is not identical to the biographi- cal author. However, he is presented as such, and therein lies the contradic- tion. Dynamically and irregularly the author-narrator mixes the worlds of reader, author, and character. Fixed borders collapse, and life overflows into and animates art and vice versa. This almost mechanical mixing and intersecting of levels is one way Pushkin brings his world to life. It is not, however, unique to Pushkin. As is often remarked, the principle of authorial interference was quite com- mon in the tradition of Enlightenment Realism (El'sberg 257). We may also look to European Sentimental and Romantic literature for closer sources of influence. Constant, Richardson, and especially Byron likewise created characters by projecting their own personalities onto the page. For This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin 687 these authors, the dominant mode of literary creation was not mimetic narration whereby an author creates a world similar to, yet distinct from, the real one. Nor did they create third-person, seemingly autonomous beings distinct from themselves. Rather, authors produced stylized self- portraits. Authorial subjectivity projected onto third-person narration, the emotional engagement of the narrating voice, and the ambiguous bound- aries between life and art are all characteristic of European Romantic literature. The Romantic hero emerged when the reader postulated the existence of the literary hero's alter ego, that is, the author, in real life (Zhirmunskii, Greenleaf). When these writers projected themselves into the fiction, they discovered a whole range of psychological complexity and narrative possibilities. This reveals a significant preoccupation of pre-Realist literature: the problem of creating characters who appear to exist and think on their own, independently of the narrator or author. In the aforementioned works, the author or narrator is the only excogitating consciousness upon which other characters appear to feed. Direct inside views are restricted to first-person forms--the epistolary novel, the confession--while third-person works concentrate on external behavior - action rather than attitude. Pushkin also employs the Byronic interpretation of life and art as well as a vocal, authoritative narrator: in the main, he uses external descriptions that rely heavily on the use of cultural conventions and stereotypes. Yet he succeeds in creating characters who seem to free themselves from the subjective element, from the authorial or narratorial "I." One key to Push- kin's achievement, I suggest, is the lyrical essence of his work, which, in ways I will try to demonstrate below, frees the characters from the author- narrator's control. ii. Lyric and Narrative From a narrative perspective, the device Pushkin employs to portray his characters psychologically is free-indirect discourse. Pushkin describes a character's cognitive and emotional life by having his author-narrator speak in the words and intonations of the character while the narrator technically remains outside, speaking grammatically in his own voice. A brief example from James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist [1916] demon- strates how this type of narration traditionally functions in prose: He halted suddenly and heard his heart in the silence. How far had he walked? What hour was it? (189) The first sentence is a standard narrational description, whereas the two following incorporate the character's emotional and interrogative diction - they seem to issue from the character's mind--but they retain the third- person reference to the character and the standard past tense of narration. While grammatically belonging to the narrator, emotionally they belong to This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 688 Slavic and East European Journal the character. Roy Pascal calls this mode of narration a "dual voice, which, through vocabulary, sentence structure, and intonation subtly fuses the two voices of the character and the narrator" (26). Bakhtin's concept of voice zones elaborates the dualistic nature of free-indirect discourse. According to Bakhtin, each character has his own voice zone [rechevaia zona], "his own sphere of influence on the authorial context surrounding him, a sphere that extends--and often quite far--beyond the boundaries of the direct discourse allotted to him" (1981, 320). Within these zones, a given char- acter's speech patterns and modes of expression dominate. At different times, the narrator, author, or other characters may enter a character's zone and speak from within it, that is, employ that character's mode of speaking, thinking, and expression without erasing the boundary between the two speech centers. This rich and flexible "quoting without quotation marks" [bez kavychek] is, according to Bakhtin, among the most common means of transmitting inner speech in the novel (1981, 319). It allows the author's voice to merge with the character's while at the same time preserv- ing its own expressive contours; that is, one still recognizes the presence of two voices. For the general reader, free-indirect discourse is barely discern- ible; in fact, its effect depends on its being almost unconsciously appre- hended as a distinct type of narration. In the history of fiction, free-indirect discourse occurs occasionally in eighteenth-century novels, where it is often difficult to distinguish from mere narrative commentary. It is when the novel begins to turn inward, during the Realist period of the nineteenth century, that this discourse type becomes common and requires more rigorous delineation. Pushkin's narrator in Onegin is not the dimmed personality of later Realist fiction, who silently enters a character's psyche and portrays it from within. He is as vociferous and intrusive as Fielding and Sterne who only sporadically resort to free-indirect discourse. It is Pushkin's mastery of the lyric and poetic form that allows him his distinctly accurate and well- focused access to - and creation of- a character's psyche. iii. The Lyric3 Toward a definition of the lyric, it will be helpful to begin convention- ally--by contrasting it to narrative. The contrast between lyric and narra- tive is of long-standing derivation. It is commonly held that narrative fore- grounds sequence and metonymy, and lyric foregrounds simultaneity and metaphor (Jakobson). Narrative concentrates on story, lyric on a state of mind or cluster of feelings. The lyric presents a speaker's subjective experi- ence and asks the reader to adopt the speaker's perspective. The speaker is present in the lyric not only as the author, not only as the subject of representation, but also as its object, included in the aesthetic structure; the speaker's own feelings are the subject matter of the lyric utterance. The This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin 689 conception of poetry in general as non-mimetic became widespread during the Romantic period in Europe when the presentation of the more visceral life of the poet displaced the rationalist, Neoclassical poetics of mimesis and genre hierarchies. Poets sought expressions of emotion rather than reproductions of surroundings (Abrams 50). Lyric expression was per- ceived as authorial self-projection, and most Romantic critics agreed that the origin of lyric poetry was in passionate utterance rather than, as Aris- totle had assumed, an instinct for imitation (Abrams 101). In the lyric, the poet is at the center, and by the late eighteenth century, it had become the epitome of the purest poetry in English and German aesthetic theories, thereby challenging Aristotle's mimetic theory of art (Abrams 88-89). This widespread shift in aesthetic theory had its effect on the development of theories of cognition as well. The revolution in epistemology made famous in philosophy by Kant (that the mind imposes the forms of space and time on the external world - or, expressed more generally, that the perceiving mind discovers what it has itself partly made) occurred among Romantic poets before it became wide- spread in academic philosophy (Abrams 58). What was "real" for a Euro- pean Romantic was a subjective attitude toward the world rather than a mimetic reflection of it. Reality was created in the mind of the subjective consciousness. The subject matter of a lyric is a subjective attitude toward reality, which for Kant and the Romantics is closer to actual epistemologi- cal functioning than narrative mimesis. Besides subjective expression, another widely-acknowledged aspect of the lyric is its universality, for even though it is the most subjective form of literature, it always strives for the general, to depict spiritual life as universal (Levin). The lyric encourages the reader to identify with a single point of view, but the point of view is presumably to be nearly universally accessible. Lyric poetry is by no means always the direct speech of the poet about himself and his feelings, but it is always an exposed point of view; it displays the relation of a lyric subject to its surroundings. The reader is invited to identify with the speaker's viewpoint and emotionally engage reality as does the speaker. In narrative, on the other hand, the word is used denotatively to create a fictional reality that pre-exists the utterance. The mimetic function of narrative is replaced by the expressive function of lyric. And thus we arrive at the paradoxical conclusion that readers apprehend the lyric utter- ance as they would a real utterance and not a fictional one, a paradox because the lyric "owes less" to reality and is less constrained by it.4 iv. Lyric in the Novel Onegin is a work both narrative and lyric. In the main, it foregrounds plot or narrative to create a fictional reality of characters and events. At numerous points, however, the lyric impulse comes to the fore, and the This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 690 Slavic and East European Journal speaker expresses a lyrical, subjective attitude. Most Russians, for exam- ple, recognize the lyric lament of spring in 7.ii. as Pushkin's poetry, but many are hard put to name the work it comes from. This is because it stands on its own when excerpted from the novel. The narrator often digresses into lyrical passages such as this one where the continuity of action, or narrative, is suspended. Here, utterances become more self- referential and less directly descriptive or communicative. The speaker's attitude toward "reality," whether it be fictional or non-fictional, is fore- grounded. Furthermore, the lyric and narrative modes are of different temporal orders: the narrative sections tell a story and move forward in time, while the lyric sections seem to exist beyond this chronological realm as static entities. These interludes are detachable from the main action of the story and mark no passing of time.5 As the narrative function changes, so do the reader's reactions. The desire for narrative mimesis is suspended, and the lyric portions are apprehended as if they were lyric poetry. The reader perceives the lyric and novelistic sections of Onegin on two different levels - the lyric interludes as subjective expressions of a real con- sciousness, and the novelistic sections as the creation of a fictional reality. The two levels of the work, however, do not always remain separate. Often the subjective, lyric impulse is ascribed to a created fictional character, and a paradox arises. If we apprehend the lyric statements as subjective expres- sions of a real consciousness - as one does in the lyric outside of the novel - then, in a sense, we have a case of a fictional character uttering non-fictional, subjective lyric statements. As in the lyric on spring, these statements can be removed from the work and read as lyric expressions on their own, yet in the novel they are uttered by a fictional character. This is one way Pushkin creates the illusion of cognitive function - what might be called the autono- mous intelligence - of his characters. Often during the lyric sections of Eugene Onegin, the lyric "I" is sup- planted by a fictional one which assumes a life of its own. Through free- indirect discourse, the lyric "I" attaches itself to a character and poses as a subjective attitude toward the fictional reality. Here, to take one outra- geously famous example from chapter 1, the narrator appears to digress from his fabula to relate a maxim concerning what at first appears to be his own world-weariness: KTO XKH H MbICJIHJI, TOT He MOKCeT B yiyme He npe3HpaTb niioeii; KTO HyBCTBOBaJI, TOrO TPeBO)KHT IpH3paK HeB03BpaTHMbIX RHeH: ToMy ysK HeT oqapOBaHHH, Toro 3MHWS BOCIIOMHHaHHA, Toro pacKasHbe rpbI3eT. Bce 3TO MaCTO nipHgaeT This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin Boaibmyro npenecrb pa3roBopy. CnepBa OHerHHa SI3bIK MeHI cMyula.: HO A npHBbIK K ero 3sBHreaJIHoMy cnopy. (1.xlvi) He who has lived as thinking being Within his soul must hold men small; He who can feel is always fleeing The ghost of days beyond recall; For him enchantment's deep infection Is gone; the snake of recollection And grim repentance gnaws his heart. All this, of course, can help impart Great charm to private conversation; And though the language of my friend At first disturbed me, in the end I liked his caustic disputation.6 We take this to be the lyric "I" of the narrator until the lines, "Sperva Onegina iazyk / Menia smushchal; no ia privyk / K ego iazvitel'nomu sporu [And though the language of my friend / At first disturbed me, in the end / I liked his caustic disputation]," which reveal the preceding to be the subjec- tive expression of Onegin's lyric "I." The lyric portion portrays and thematizes a character's engagement with reality, his own subjective experi- ence, through free-indirect discourse. None of the stanza is presented in quotation marks to signal Onegin's voice, but the last two lines betray the vocal origin. This brief lyrical section creates for the reader Onegin's im- age, his internal life, in a way not possible through a direct presentation of a character's thoughts in the author's own "objective" voice. The passage does not merely describe thoughts; it rather illustrates and thematizes a way of cognizing the world, of engaging reality. The view is subjective as well as general, and the passage invites the reader to enter and share this point of view. The personality, however, is a constructed one with a forward-moving biography of its own. First of all, the universality of these lyric passages invites the reader to participate in the speaker's emotion and identify with the point of view expressed. Instinctively, the reader internalizes the lyric. In this way, Push- kin allows the reader access to a subjective mind. Subsequently, the author attaches the lyrics to a fictional character to create the illusion of an autono- mously acting and thinking being. Precisely crossing this boundary between codes is characteristic of Pushkin's highly sophisticated manipulation of the genre conditions of Romanticism. The depersonalization and decontextualization characteristic of the lyric is impossible in the traditional novel, since one of its defining characteris- tics is specificity of place and time. The Realist novel conventionally oper- ates by developing a recognizable fictional world distinct from the reader's 691 This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 692 Slavic and East European Journal own. The novelistic world comes to life outside the reader's soul--it is grounded in a specific time and place. The universality of the lyric allows Pushkin to attach it to a certain character in a certain situation. A curious aspect of Pushkin's lyrics in general is that, although they create a definite authorial image, this image shifts with each genre of poem. Lidia Ginzburg notes an absence of a single, central image, the absence of a lyrical hero in Pushkin's poetry as a whole. No such unity, according to her, can emerge from Pushkin's multi- faceted and multi-thematic verse. Rather, it contains an internal unity of the author's point of view, an intensely developing unity, in which Pushkin projects various embodiments of his authorial "I" (182). According to Ginzburg, Pushkin passed through many stages of poetic development and in each stage created a distinct authorial "I." Pushkin's easy mastery of each genre and style of poetry contributed to his reputation for proteanism. In Onegin, Pushkin uses the shifting authorial image of each genre by attaching it to a different character. For example, Pushkin initially endows Tatiana with the Sentimental image and Onegin with the Byronic, but these poetic authorial images, as we shall see, evolve through- out the novel. Pushkin's poetic narration thereby creates not only distinc- tive, recognizable characters independent from the author, but also types associated through genre. Let us examine another example. In the following passage from chapter 2, Lensky visits the grave of Olga's father and meditates on death. Here, rather than a character assuming the narrator's lyric "I," the narrator displaces the character's, with all the requisite shifts and redefinitions of authority. "Poor Yorick! MOJIBHI OH yHbIJIO, OH Ha pyKax MeHSI epxcai. KaK qaCTO B geTCTBe AI rpan Ero OqaKOBCKOA MenaibIO!" (2.xxxvii) "Poor Yorick!" then he murmured, shaking, "How oft within his arms I lay, How oft in childhood days I'd play With his Ochakov decoration." Lensky's direct discourse is, of course, signaled by the quotation marks. In the subsequent stanza, the narrator continues Lensky's thought grammati- cally in his own (the narrator's) voice: H TaM Ke HanIIHCblO neqaJnbHoi OTUa H MaTepH, B cJIe3ax, rIOqTHJI OH npax naTpHapxanbHbIl ... YBbI! Ha XaH3HeHHbIX 6pa3Aax MrHOBeHHOI )KaTBOfi nOKOJIeHbSI, This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin lo TafgHOfi BoJe npOBHgeHb6, BocxoAr.T, 3peIOT H nalayT; XpyrHe HM BocJieg HAyr ... TaK Hame BeTpeHoe niieMa PacreT, BOJIHyeTCa, KHnHT H K rpo6y npaAeosB TecHHT. ripHieT, npHAeT H Hame BpeMS, H HamILI BHyKH B 1o6pbift qac H3 MHpa BbITeCHiT H Hac! (2.xxxviii) And then with verse of quickened sadness He honored too, in tears and pain, His parents' dust ... their memory's gladness .... Alas! Upon life's furrowed plain- A harvest brief, each generation, By fate's mysterious dispensation, Arises, ripens, and must fall; Then others too must heed the call. For thus our giddy race gains power: It waxes, stirs, turns seething wave, Then crowds its forebears toward the grave. And we as well shall face that hour When one fine day our grandsons true Straight out of life will crowd us too! The stanza continues the lament of the passing of generations begun by Lensky. Grammatically, the narrator seems to speak, but Lensky's elegiac tone, his voice zone, dominates. The next stanza moves closer yet to the author-narrator's "I." rIOKaMecTb ynHBaftTecb elo, Cefi nerKofi )KH3HHIO, Apy3ba! Ee HHITO)KHOCTb pa3yMeIo, H MaJIo K Heft nIpHB3aH i; Jl, npiH3paKOB 3aKpbIJIa BexcbI; Ho OTanJieHHbie HaAeieKbI TpeBoxaT cepJuie HHorla: Be3 HenpHMeTHoro cniega MHe 6bIo 6 rpycTHO MHp ocTaBHTb. )KHBy, nHrmy He Rni noxsan; Ho A 6bi KaxeTCs xKenan Ile,aanbHbl x)Kpe6Hi CBOHI npocJIaBHTb, XTo6 o60 MHe, KaK BepHbhfi gpyr, HanoMHHJI XOTb eAHHbIlt 3ByK. (2.xxxix) So meanwhile, friends, enjoy your blessing: This fragile life that hurries so! Its worthlessness needs no professing, And I'm not loathe to let it go; I've closed my eyes to phantoms gleaming, Yet distant hopes within me dreaming 693 This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 694 Slavic and East European Journal Still stir my heart at times to flight: I'd grieve to quit this world's dim light And leave no trace, however slender. I live, I write - not seeking fame; And yet, I think, I'd wish to claim For my sad lot its share of splendor - At least one note to linger long, Recalling, like some friend, my song. The lyric "I" is now the narrator's (and, by stylized extension, Pushkin's), who expatiates on the elegiac theme begun by Lensky. He augments Lensky's slightly comic lament with his own more serious philosophical lyricism,7 and ends by referring to his own creation to remove any doubts the reader may have had as to the identity of the speaker: H ibe-HH6y/6b OH cepxge TpOHeT; H coxpaHeHHaAs cyYb60t, BbITb MOKeT B JIeTe He HOTOHeT CTpo4a cjaraeMaa MHOA; BbITb MOweT (jiecTHaS HaARewa!) YKaxKeT 6yxyumkH Hesewcga Ha MOA npocjaaBeHHbIA nopTpeT, H MOJIBHT: TO-TO 6bIJI Io0T! (2.xl) And may it touch some heart with fire; And thus preserved by fate's decree, The stanza fashioned by my lyre May yet not drown in Lethe's sea; Perhaps (a flattering hope's illusion!) Some future dunce with warm effusion Will point my portrait out and plead: "This was a poet, yes indeed!" The "I" of the stanza belongs clearly to the narrator who broadens, modi- fies, and brings down to earth Lensky's image by transferring it into the realm of his own poetic "I" and supplementing it with his own lyric world view and presumed life experiences. The scene is originally set in a narra- tive, fictive situation, but it gradually moves into the realm of lyric and the "I" of the narrator, whereby Lensky's image acquires more facets and complexity. Onegin, Tatiana, and Lensky are all subject to similar lyric narration where the narrator's voice displaces or, depending on the char- acter, mixes with the character's voice. In the case of Onegin and Lensky, the narrator describes and creates his narrative, fictional world, and at moments he shifts to a lyric "I," employ- ing the fictional world in the same way any lyric "I" would employ non- fictional reality, that is, as a pretext for his self-referential lyric dilations. When the identity of the lyric "I" shifts to that of a character, the reader This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin 695 initially apprehends this "I" as he does the poetic "I" of a real person, but he subsequently realizes that the "I" is a character created by Pushkin. The reader participates in a character's emotions expressed lyrically, but soon realizes that the poet is speaking through a created self. Through the cre- ated character, the poet finds an emotion corresponding to a private emo- tion of his own. He is able to express a sentiment he otherwise could not, or did not choose to, express in his own voice, since the mediation of a created consciousness dissociates him from the emotion.8 What makes this shifting of speakers' identities possible in Eugene Onegin is an inherent feature of the lyric--the difficulty of determining definitively and exclusively who is speaking, whether it be the author, narrator, character, and when, where, and to whom he is speaking. As Sharon Cameron notes, generalizing on this phenomenon, "In lyric, the speaker's origin remains deliberately unspecified, unlike characters in nar- ratives, whose first task is to particularize themselves" (208). Lyric speak- ers are non-specified and generalized--they seek epochal and trans- historical expression and characterization. (Compare this chronotope to that of the novel, where the significant features are particularity of descrip- tion, characterization, and placement in a concrete time and space (Watt 17-18)). In short, the lyric voice is a shifter--all depends on the point of view from which the lyric is uttered. But it is a shifter that can literally bond to anything and start to speak (unlike novel voices). The speaker of a lyric has no background. Hence, the shift from one lyric "I" to another in Onegin does not cause the dissonance one would sense were the speaker's identity in a novel to change. The non-specificity of speaker and addressee in lyric reveals a significant difference between the functioning of free-indirect discourse in prose and lyric, and can help us see how lyric characterization differs from character- ization in a novel. Let us view the thesis from a Bakhtinian perspective. Since the identity of the speaker of a lyric is unspecified, one cannot distinguish the two distinct voices of the "dual voice" of free-indirect dis- course as one can in narrative. Free-indirect discourse in prose relies on the presence of two voices, or more accurately, voice zones. In contrast, the instances of quasi free-indirect discourse just described in Onegin express only one voice. Due to the non-specificity of the lyric voice, irony or sympathy from the narrator emerges only after or before a character's lyric passage, never within. Such a reading helps us see why Bakhtin would characterize poetry as single-voiced (1981, 286). If the lyric speaker is unspecified and undifferentiated, a second voice within or along- side would likewise have to be unspecified. For this, surely, is a corollary to the dialogic principle: that two voices cannot coexist as autonomous voices expected to interact, if neither is distinguished. The narrator enters the voice zone of his character (a lyric voice zone) and expresses himself from This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 696 Slavic and East European Journal within that zone as if he were the character. Two voices, however, are not heard within a single utterance. Only one resounds, the identity of which is later revealed to be that of author-narrator or character. Pushkin, through his narration, employs this psychological method to characterize chiefly Onegin and Lensky. The world views of these two characters are best expressed by the universalizing and isolating genre of the lyric. Tatiana's psyche and structured role in the work is more complex, and here we encounter a different method of psychological portrayal. v. Tatiana The narrator's attitude toward Onegin and Lensky is one of almost locker-room camaraderie. He speaks of them from the point of view of a boon companion, of one who has experienced similar stages of life. He knows Lensky's Romantic sentiment, Onegin's splenetic Byronism, and although all three characters seem to be at different points in their develop- ment, their progression is along the same trajectory and through the same life experiences. The narrator's attitude toward Tatiana, by contrast, is protective, and he appears hesitant, even reluctant, to narrate her. As has often been pointed out in the literature, Tatiana is initially characterized chiefly by her dissimi- larity to her sister: HH KpacoToA ceCTpbI CBOel, HH cBexecrboK ee pyMaHOlA He npHBjeeKia 6 oHa oqei. [...] OHa JnacKaTTbcS He yMeJia K OTRy, HH K MaTepH CBoeif. (2.xxv) Neither with her sister's beauty Nor with her rosy freshness Would she attract one's eyes [. ..] She never learned to show affection, To hug her parents -neither one.9 Such negative physical characterization suggests qualities of Tatiana that elude direct and precise description. Moreover, it anticipates the narrator's psychological depiction of her. Unlike his lyric portrayal of Onegin's psyche and despite her superficially more "lyrical" nature, the narrator will not or cannot speak directly for Tatiana: he will not express her thoughts or attitude through lyric free- indirect discourse or any other type of narration that creates the impression that he knows her. This does not imply, of course, that she has no discern- ible psychic life or that she is not a psychologically convincing or complex This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin 697 character. She has, in fact, the most complex, developed, and dynamic mental life and world view of any of the characters, which requires differ- ent and more subtle narrative means. Similar to the vocal dynamic we saw in the example from Joyce, Push- kin's presentation of Tatiana's inner life relies on the subtle intertwining of the voices of narrator and character. In Onegin, however, this character's voice emerges from and begins to define the narrative texture of the work, so that the reader senses more strongly her presence than that of any other character. Here we move closer to Bakhtin's reading of Eugene Onegin. Although one does not sense the presence of two voices in the lyric passages Bakhtin cites as double-voiced (1981, 43-50), other passages do in fact contain two vocal origins, and most of these passages pertain to the heroine. Tatiana's voice becomes the object of representation, but at the same time it repre- sents her in her own characteristic style. Often in the narrative passages of the novel, the narrator speaks as if from the point of view of the character he is describing. He does not express a general world view-as he does with Onegin and Lensky-but describes a specific situation inseparable from the fictional world. In the following passage, the tense of the verbs is the standard past tense of narration, whereas Onegin's lyrics fall out of the action in part due to the verbal present tense. Here Tatiana has written and sent the fateful letter to Eugene and awaits his reply: 14 Me)Iy TeM gymua B Heft HbIJIa, H cJIe3 6bI nOJIOH TOMHbIii B30p. B,pyr TonoT! . . KpoBb ee 3acTbIJIa. BOT 6iiiKe! cKayr ... H Ha aBOp EsreHHfi! <Ax!> -H j ner'e TeHH TaTbHHa npbIr sB pyrHe ceHH, C KpbiJIbn a Ha RBOP, H npSMO B cag, JIeTHT, JIeTHT; B3IrIHyTb Hasaa He cMeeT; MHrOM o6excaIa KypTHHbI, MOCTHKH, JI)KoK, Anjieio K o3epy, JecoK, KycrbI CHpeH nepeJIoMaJia, Io uBeTHHKaM JIeTI K py'bIO, HI, 3aabixaacb, Ha CKaMbIO (3.XXXViii) And all the while her soul was aching, Her brimming eyes could hardly see. Then sudden hoof beats! . . Now she's quaking. They're closer! coming here . . . it's he! Onegin! "Oh!" -And light as air, She's out the backway, down the stair From porch to yard, to garden straight; She runs, she flies; she dare not wait This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 698 Slavic and East European Journal To glance behind her; on she pushes - Past garden plots, small bridges, lawn, The lakeway path, the wood; and on She flies and breaks through lilac bushes, Past seedbeds to the brook - so fast That, panting, on a bench at last. Notice how the two exclamations grammatically voiced by the narrator "Vdrug topot! [. . .] Vot blizhe! [Then sudden hoof beats! [.. .] They're closer!]" reflect Tatiana's anxiety. Not only do the exclamations seem to be generated from Tatiana's perspective, but the rushed cadence of the whole stanza (characterized by frequent enjambments that, significantly, run on to the next stanza with the fateful and Biblically-laden verb Upala [She fell]) reflects her physical and emotional situation and its whole liminal vulnerability. Here we see the narrator's fundamental method of character- izing Tatiana psychologically: in many of the narrative passages relating to Tatiana, the narrator speaks from her viewpoint using her words and man- ner of speaking, yet the narrator's own voice is always present alongside. He sees her and can contextualize her fate. This insinuates her voice and presence into the fabric of the narrative world. In the early descriptions of Tatiana, the narrator uses this method with a shade of irony; he predicts and presumes knowledge. In the following passage from chapter 3, the narrator apostrophizes Tatiana in her own Romantic/Sentimental language (emphasis added): TaTbSHa, MHias TaTbaHa! C To601 Tenepb S cje3bi j.bIo; TbI B pyKH MOXHOrO THpaHa YK oTTaJIa cyab6y CBOIo. HorH6HemE, MHJIaI; HO npegAe TbI 6 ocAenumenbHOUi naaeexc)e EBaaxeHcmoo meMHoe 30BeIIIb, TbI nezy XH3HH y3Haemub, TbI nbemb 60oJue6Hbl1u a iceAlauui. (3.xv) Tatiana, O my dear Tatiana! I shed with you sweet tears too late; Relying on a tyrant's honor, You've now resigned to him your fate. My dear one, you are doomed to perish; But first in dazzling hope you nourish And summon forth a somber bliss, You learn life's sweetness ... feel its kiss, And drink the draught of love's temptations. It should be pointed out that the task of determining from a single passage of free-indirect discourse (such as I have just quoted) whether a narrator is This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin 699 expressing irony or sympathy regarding his character is notoriously diffi- cult. Moreover, the structure of the Onegin stanza builds in routine ironic reversals in the concluding couplet. Such judgment calls are less risk-laden, however, when measured against the narrator's tone overall. The above passage is preceded by a digression on the soporific qualities of Sentimental and Romantic literature in general- the same literature according to which Tatiana patterns her relationship with Onegin. Hence in this passage, the Sentimental vocabulary in the narrator's voice is sensed as ironic. The most significant aspect of Tatiana's psychological presentation in the first part of the novel is of course her letter. Although stylized and translated, it is the first extended self-expression of a character's thoughts, which will be repeated by Eugene in chapter 8. In general, Tatiana is an extremely literate and literary character. After the narrator's apophatic description of her, she is defined by the eighteenth-century Sentimentalism whose heroines become models of behavior. She enters this well-established epistolary role, and declares her literarily inspired ardor in a billet-doux to Eugene.10 Let us consider in more detail the genre of the letter both as communica- tion act and as self-expression. First of all, the genre of the epistolary novel as practiced by Richardson, Rousseau, and countless others in the eigh- teenth century was not only wildly popular but also a landmark in literary psychological description. Through self-analysis and self-presentation, these authors discovered a new form of character portrayal, anticipating later Realistic psychological character presentation. The drawbacks of the episto- lary form are obvious and many - the implausibility of such incessant writ- ing, its prolixity and repetition- but although the genre, as Walter Raleigh writes, "inaugurated a century and a half of hyperasthesia" (161), it moti- vated the revelation of a character's subjective inner life. The epistolary novel revealed and succeeded in tracking the minute movements of con- sciousness with heretofore incomparable detail. What differentiates this method from later Realistic psychological descriptions is Realism's individu- ation of character. In Sentimentalism, all characters are perceived as emanat- ing from a single consciousness, the author's, which is the only one truly present. One senses Richardson's own sensibility in all of the correspondents of Pamela [1740], Clarissa [1748], and Sir Charles Grandison [1753], and in Mme. de La Fayette's La Princesse de Cloves [1678] the author's psyche is in all three characters of the love triangle." In Onegin, Pushkin employs the letter as a vehicle for Tatiana's psycho- logical presentation, and she becomes the first character of the novel al- lowed direct, unmediated self-expression. The letter presents a truthful and detailed picture of the inner life of a young woman in love. In 1824 Pushkin wrote to Prince Vyazemsky about Tatiana's letter, "But even if the meaning is not clear, that makes the letter all the more truthful; it is a letter written by a woman in love, and what is more she is seventeen" (PSS 13: 403). At This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 700 Slavic and East European Journal least one of Pushkin's contemporary reviewers thought Pushkin had al- ready mastered the epistolary genre in this, his first attempt. In one of the first published reviews of chapter 3, P. I. Shalikov wrote about Tatiana's letter (emphasis in original): The poet is a moral Promethean who without the slightest effort takes into his heart feelings that do not belong to him and who appropriates the other [chuzhoe] as if there were no other for him in the whole world. (Vatsuro and Fomichev 329)12 Shalikov points to the method of Sentimental character portrayal in gen- eral: the author/narrator presents a character's inner life as if it were his own. But while this is true of Onegin and Lensky, Tatiana manages to elude the grasp of the overarching narrative voice. Besides its first-person form, another significant aspect of the letter is its deviation from the form of the rest of the novel. Departing from the Onegin stanza at first tentatively and then wholeheartedly, the letter is cast in seventy-nine lines of freely rhyming iambic tetrameter verse. The non- observance of the Onegin stanza strikes the reader forcefully whenever it occurs (three times). As Tynianov notes in his Formalist study of Onegin: as long as the constructive factor of a work remains constant (here, the Onegin stanza), narrative digressions from the fabula will not be sensed as digressive. In Tatiana's letter, we do have a departure from the form; whatever its "original" language and ultimate truth value, we sense its content as differently voiced, paced, and mediated. The letter individuates Tatiana's consciousness and distinguishes it from the others. Through a combination of first-person self-expression and constructive deviation, Pushkin creates a consciousness that is meant to appear different in form and depth from the other consciousnesses of the novels. As Tatiana matures and emerges from her youthful Sentimental world view, the narrator's attitude toward her alters as well. In the later parts of Onegin, the narrator's voice approaches Tatiana's - he becomes more sym- pathetic and less ironic, and begins to narrate from her viewpoint and reflect her mood. In the following passage from chapter 7, Tatiana has been re- jected by Eugene, her future brother-in-law has been killed, and her sister has all too blithely decamped with another suitor. Note how the narrative style reflects Tatiana's mood - at first passionate, then sad and sober - as she makes her way through the woods to Onegin's former lodgings: H B OAHHOqeCTBe >KeCTOKOM CuibHee crpacrb ee ropHrT, H 06 OHerHHe gaJIeKoM EA cepAue rpoMqe roBopHT. OHa ero He 6ygeT BHseTb; OHa OJiDKHa B HeM HeHaBHReTb This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin 701 Y6Hitly 6paTa cBoero; Ho3T norH6 ... HO y)K ero HHKTO He IOMHHT, yK JlpyroMy Ero Heaecra oT?anJacb KaK JbIM no He6y rony6oMy, O HeM lsa cepgla, MOKeT 6bITb, Erue rpycTT ... Ha qTO rpyTrHTb?. . EBbi seBep. He6o MepmIo. BogbI CTpyHUIHcb THXO. )KyK yacxKan. Yx pacxoAHncb xopoBoEbI; YXK 3a peKOfi, gbIMacb, nbrian OroHb pbl6aIHA. B none qHCTOM, JIyHbI npH cBeTe cepe6pHcroM, B CBOH Me'TbI norpyxKeHa, TaTba Ha jonro tuna onHa. IIIja, IIia. IH BApyr nepeq co6oio C XOnMa rocnoacKHfi BHAHT AOM, CeieHbe, poiiy nog XOnMOM H cag Ha; cBeTJnoIO peKoIo. OHa rjIsiHT - cepgiIe B Heft 3a6Haocb iuaie H cHJlaHekt. (7.xiv, xv) And in the solitude her passion Burns even stronger than before, Her heart speaks out in urgent fashion Of faraway Eugene the more. She'll never see him ... and be grateful, She finds her brother's slayer hateful And loathes the awful thing he's done. The poet's gone ... and hardly one Remembers him; his bride's devotion Has flown to someone else instead; His very memory now has fled Like smoke across an azure ocean. Two hearts, perhaps, remain forlorn And mourn him yet.. . . But wherefore mourn? . 'Twas evening and the heavens darkled. A beetle hummed. The peasant choirs Were bound for home. Still waters sparkled. Across the river, smoky fires Of fishermen were dimly gleaming. Tatiana walked, alone and dreaming, Beneath the moonbeams' silver light And climbed a gentle hill by night. She walked and walked ... till with a shiver She spied a distant hamlet's glow, A manor house and grove below, A garden by the glinting river. And as she gazed upon that place Her pounding heart began to race. This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 702 Slavic and East European Journal In the last three words of the first stanza, "Na chto grustit'? . . [But where- fore mourn? . .]," the reader senses Tatiana's voice. The free-indirect dis- course here is similar to the example cited previously from Joyce, but in the Onegin passage, all the surrounding words, the whole of these two stanzas, in fact, seem to express Tatiana's world view. The narrator has modulated his style- tone, syntax, and vocabulary -to Tatiana's.13 Nowhere does she speak directly nor does the narrator explain or analyze her inner life, but by adjusting his style to the character, the narrator describes Tatiana as if she were speaking, yet more eloquently and powerfully than she could ever do herself. This is free-indirect discourse - the words are grammatically the narrator's, yet emotionally the character's. Were they voiced by either the narrator or Tatiana alone, the powerful effect would be lost. Unlike the lyric free-indirect discourse we examined concerning Eugene, two voices resound at the same time. This is a truly double-voiced passage.14 Thomas Shaw (34) points to three phases in the narrator's development - youthful perceptiveness, disenchantment, and, in the present tense of the novel, mature re-enchantment. The narrator is able to understand and nar- rate Eugene's character which is, in Shaw's words, "arrested at the stage of disenchantment," because he too experienced his own stage of disenchant- ment, of world-weary Byronism. Tatiana's development, I would argue, follows a similar, but not identical, pattern. In her stage of youthful enchant- ment, she idealizes (or completely fantasizes) Onegin by projecting upon him her Sentimental heroes. At this point, the narrator ironizes Tatiana (albeit tenderly), as we saw in the passage from chapter 3. In the passage quoted from chapter 7, Tatiana is in the midst of her disenchantment-- reality has not lived up to her ideals--yet it does not take the form of Onegin's cynicism, which, as Tatiana soon sees in her visit to Onegin's library, is likewise literarily inspired. Tatiana's disenchantment with the world is much more reflective, sober, and educative. The narrator's presentations of the cognitive lives of Onegin and Tatiana differ accordingly. The mental lives of both characters emerge through free-indirect discourse, but only in Tatiana's section do we sense the voice of both character and narrator simultaneously. Eugene's character, we re- call, emerged from the single-voiced lyric and a confusion of vocal origins. Tatiana's psychic life is different in kind from Onegin's. His cynical By- ronism is an aphoristic view of life best expressed by aphoristic, sententious language. Tatiana's psychology, being more complex, requires different expression. Her early enchantment was also a kind of "lyricism": a Sentimental world view ironized by the narrator early on. Toward the end of the novel, how- ever, we encounter a heroine with a view on the world tempered by the "reality" of everyday life, the "prose" of life that often (in Onegin at least) exposes the lyric world view as unable to perceive and adequately engage the This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin 703 intricacies that complicate life.15 Whereas Onegin's character and psychic life are best expressed by single-voiced, aphoristic "lyrical" language, Tatiana's character emerges from a multi-voiced, more narratively-oriented language which endows her with a more complex character, one more at- tuned to fictional, narrated reality.16 In chapter 7 and 8, the narrator time and again enters Tatiana's voice zone and narrates from her viewpoint. Not only do Tatiana's mood and character emerge from the combination of voices, but they come to dominate and shape the texture of the narrative itself, and the narrator's sympathy toward Tatiana becomes clear from the overall tone of the final part of Onegin. Let us now return to Eugene and his fate at the end of the novel. In the final chapter, we encounter a new, love-struck and pensive Onegin and, correspondingly, a new presentation of his inner life. Indeed, in the final chapter, the narrator endows Eugene not with a single lyric voice, but with a multi-faceted narrative one. Onegin too, finally, has outgrown his own youthful (that is, prematurely aged) and naive world view. He is no longer a lyric personality projected onto the surface of prose, blind to the world's multifaceted nature. Now his previous universally valid, aphoristic lyrics cannot narrate his new experience of complex, prosaic life. In chapter 8 almost every bit of narration describing Eugene is double-voiced: OH OCTaBJIqeT payT TecHbIi, gOMOi 3aAyMMHB ejeT OH; Me'Tofi TO rpycTHOf, TO npejiecTHof Ero BCTpeBOeKH nO3IHHfi COH. rIpocHyJIc OH eMy npHHOCRT rlHcbMo: KHI3b H nOKOPHO npOCHT Ero Ha Benep. <Boxe! K Hef! .. O 6y 6yy6yny!> H cKopefi MapaeT OH OTBeT yITHBbIi. TITO C HHM? B KaKOM OH CTpaHHOM CHe! TITO IeBeJIbHynOCb B rIy6HHe ymIIH XOJIOJHOf H neHHBOA? J)ocaaa? cyeTHocTb? HJIb BHOBb 3a6oTa IKHOCTH- JIo6oBb? (8.xxi) He left the rout in all its splendor And drove back home, immersed in thought; A swarm of dreams, both sad and tender, Disturbed the slumber that he sought. He woke to find, with some elation, Prince N. had sent an invitation. "Oh God! I'll see her ... and today! Oh yes, I'll go!" -and straight away He scrawled a note: he'd be delighted. What's wrong with him? . . . He's in a daze. What's stirring in that idle gaze, What's made that frigid soul excited? This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 704 Slavic and East European Journal Vexation? Pride? Or youth's old yen For all the cares of love again?17 The narrator gives expression to Eugene's inner turmoil by speaking with the latter's emotional diction. The interrogatives and exclamations are from Onegin's voice zone, but unlike his previous internal voice, this one is grounded in the world of the novel. Such sympathetic passages where the narrator narrates from the character's point of view are so numerous in chap- ter 8 that they create a new forward-pressing, psychological image of One- gin. He is now a character no longer able to express himself lyrically, which was for him a facile genre. In short, he has entered the realm of Tatiana. Finally, let us look at the evolution of the narrator. By the end of the novel, he too has evolved. No longer is he the vociferous, dominating, and quasi-manic presence from chapter 1, continually thrusting himself to the fore. Like Tatiana and Eugene, he has become more subdued and reflec- tive. We can explain this change, on the one hand, from a strictly narrative standpoint: to present a sober, unironized image of Tatiana by mixing his voice with hers, the narrator's own voice in the surrounding text must to a certain degree come to resemble the character's. Were the narrator to maintain his tone and style from chapter 1, we would, of course, have a totally different image of Tatiana. This narrative modulation endows Tati- ana's image with tremendous power and presence. Everyone seems to have entered Tatiana's voice zone. When the narrator modulates his voice to resemble Tatiana's, we sense that it is he who enters her voice zone rather than vice-versa. The narra- tor's voice no longer creates the impression of a dominating external con- sciousness that we had sensed in chapter 1. At the end of Onegin, the narrator loses his protective, gently ironic attitude toward Tatiana. He approaches Tatiana's manner of speaking, and this change in tone creates the impression that it is Tatiana's voice that has invaded and modified the narrator's. Eugene, Tatiana, and the narrator are all somehow different by the end of the novel, but the paradox of Tatiana is that it is she who maintains the most continuity throughout and yet who experiences real change. Hence, she appears to subsume all the other voices which arrange themselves beneath her authority. Her voice zone and, consequently, her image have attained the most prominent position in the novel. But in what does this authority and strength consist? At the beginning of the final chapter, Tatiana is most overtly identified with Pushkin's muse: H BOT OHa B cagy MOeM BIsHnacb 6apbImHek ye3AHoA, C neqnajbHoft jyMOI) B oqax, C 4paHmy3cKOA KHEKKOIO B pyKax. This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin H HbIHe My3y I BnepBble Ha cseTCKHi payr npHBoXay. (8.v-vi) And in my garden she appeared - A country miss - infatuated, With mournful air and brooding glance, And in her hands a French romance. And now I seize the first occasion To show my muse a grand soir6e. At the end of the novel, Tatiana is revealed as the spirit of Pushkin's poetic inspiration, but she is a poetic spirit qualitatively different from the kind of poetry associated with Onegin, Lensky, and the narrator, that is, the lyric. These three male characters inhabit the same voice zone, and through an interchange of vocal origins, the narrator creates the psychic life of Lensky and Onegin. With Tatiana, the narrator shares no zone and no voice; hence, he cannot narrate her thoughts directly. However, by interweaving his own voice with hers, he penetrates her zone, her poetic aura. Shaw (35) suggests that the novel stresses the importance of being po- etic, and Caryl Emerson (1995) along the same lines sees Tatiana as repre- senting a balanced poetic principle, a verse presence. I would add that Tatiana's poetic nature is one that has experienced and taken leave of the lyric view of life, a view in which nothing changes, in which characters and their utterances are self-sufficient and whole, universal and unchanging. She is lyric depth that learns to adjust to the arbitrariness and uncertainty of narrative (life) and to find her own grace within it. When Eugene passes through life, events do not accumulate and do not change him. He passes from role to role with no qualitative evolution of character. See 8.viii, for example, in which Pushkin enumerates Onegin's roles. Onegin does not mature; he merely changes roles and voices, all of which are unitary and literary, and when he sees Tatiana's evolution from a poor, lovesick country girl into the "indifferent princess" and "unapproach- able goddess" of the Moscow salon, he views her as if she too were playing a role: "Kak izmenialasia Tat'iana! / Kak tverdo v rol' svoiu voshla! [How Tatiana has changed! / How firmly she has entered into her own role!]" (xxvii). But Onegin is wrong. Tatiana is playing no role, but rather living real "life." This motivates her pragmatic refusal of Onegin at the end. The ending of the novel disappointed many of Pushkin's contemporary readers since the hero was neither married nor dead, two conventional fates. Onegin does not conclude conventionally because Tatiana will not permit it. She knows and outlines to Eugene the "real-life" toll such marital infidelity inflicts, and rather than play conventionally, she rejects him. The roles are reversed at the end, but as the narrator points out, these roles are not interchangeable: 705 This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 706 Slavic and East European Journal JII6BH Bce B03paCTbI nOKOpHbI; Ho IOHbIM, geBCTBeHHbIM cepgiaM Ee nopbIsbI 6JIaroTBopHbI, KaK 6ypH BeriHHMe noJnM: B gowKe cTpacTef OHH cBe)KeiOT, H 06HOBsJIOTCH, H 3peIOT - H )XH3Hb MoryLmaaI gaeT H IIbIImHbIfti BeT H cinaKHfi rimo. Ho B Bo3pacT no3HHHft H 6ecnnogHbIfi, Ha noBOpoTe Haminx neT, IleqaneH cTpacrTH MepTBOf cineg: TaK 6ypH oceHH xoJInoHoI B 6onoJOT o6pawiaKIT nyr H o6HaxaIoT nec BOKpyr. (8.xxix) To love all ages yield surrender; But to the young its raptures bring A blessing bountiful and tender- As storms refresh the fields of spring. Neath passion's rains they green and thicken, Renew themselves with joy, and quicken; And vibrant life in taking root Sends forth rich blooms and gives sweet fruit. But when the years have made us older, And barren age has shown its face, How sad is faded passion's trace! Thus storms in autumn, blowing colder, Turn meadows into marshy ground And strip the forest bare all round. Eugene wants to return to his previous Tatiana, and his lyric view tells him that he can. The lyric is static; within it, what is past is not really past, but somehow always freshly accessible. However, the narrative world is now Tatiana's. She has control, and for such a narratively oriented character, things past are things gone. What Tatiana learns and what brings the narrator into her zone is the value of leaving -of taking leave of a role, giving in to external pressures, and surrendering to fate: "No sud'ba moia I Uzh reshena [But my fate / Is already decided]" (8.xlvii). By accepting her immediate circumstances, Tatiana becomes a real part of somebody's world. On the one hand, she is identified with a narrative view of the world, one that has forward move- ment and leaves behind permanent change. On the other hand, she knows when to leave the literary. We can view her as a balance of life and art, of fabula and siuzhet. This is what the narrator wants to learn from Tatiana: how to take leave of the literary. At the end of the novel, the narrator recasts himself in Tatiana's zone; she is a continuously created character, but her creator has more to gain by being inside her rather than outside her. She teaches him: This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin BJiaxeH, KTO Inpa3AHHK IKH3HH paHo OCTaBHJI, He OIIHB RO RHa BoKaja, noJIHoro BHHa, KTO He ARoenj ee poMaHa H1 BApyr yMeJi pacCTaTbCa c HHM, KaK X c OHerHHbIM MOHM. (8.1i) But blest is he who rightly gauges The time to quit the feast and fly, Who never drained life's chalice dry, Nor read its novel's final pages; But all at once for good withdrew- As I from my Onegin do. To conclude, let us summarize Pushkin's method of creating apparently psychologically autonomous beings. In the two basic types of psychological narration employed in Eugene Onegin--lyric and narrative free-indirect discourse - the author-narrator overtly employs his own persona and con- sciousness to endow characters with a psychic life. The narrator modulates his voice, a poetic voice, among different styles and genres, which at differ- ent points in the novel both corresponds to and helps create a character's personality and world view. Through the first-person form, Pushkin is able to project different facets of his poetic personality onto narrated characters to create psychologically persuasive characters, each with its own dynamics and internal logic, but which are ultimately based on what Ginzburg referred to as the "intensely developing unity" of Pushkin's own poetic persona. The author-narrator is not fundamentally separate from his characters nor is he fundamentally separate from the real-life Pushkin and extra-textual reality. Hence, the voices with which he endows his characters resonate beyond the fictional world. I have outlined two kinds of cognitive privilege in Eugene Onegin - lyric and narrative. The former is ostensibly unproblematic direct psychological expression or access. The latter, by contrast, is somehow mediated by another consciousness--the narrator's-and, as in the case of Tatiana, creates the most complex character in the work. NOTES 1 And perhaps, as Lotman points out, in chapter 5 as a witness to Tatiana's fortune-telling (1980, 268-69). 2 I use the term fabula as distinct from siuzhet as defined by Tomashevskii (136-46). 3 My account of lyric draws on Ginzburg, Olson, Phelan, Cameron, Abrams, Levin, and Hamburger. 4 The comparativist Earl Miner points out that the mimetic basis of Western poetics as expounded by Aristotle is the exception rather than the rule when compared to other cultural poetics: "All other examples of poetics are founded not on drama, but on lyric. 707 This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 708 Slavic and East European Journal Western literature with its many familiar suppositions is a minority of one, the odd one out. It has no claim to be normative" (8). 5 This chronological dualism finds an exact parallel in the more overtly performative arts such as operatic time: recitative tells the story and therefore has narrative integrity and forward movement, while aria, as Caryl Emerson writes, "almost begs to be set free from the plot" (1986, 153, 165). 6 All translations of Onegin are from Falen. 7 In Bakhtin's terminology, this is stylization rather than parody: the author or narrator introduces an intention "to make use of someone else's discourse in the direction of its own particular aspirations" (1984, 193). 8 This dynamic proceeds along the lines of T. S. Eliot's third voice of poetry, the voice of the dramatic character, when the poet "is saying not what he would say in his own person, but only what he can say within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another imaginary character" (96). 9 Falen's translation slightly modified. 10 In her monograph on Tatiana, Olga Peters Hasty claims that Tatiana's behavior is "never convention driven but always individual, motivated from within." This is difficult to accept, however, in view of the author-narrator's gentle ironizing of Tatiana in the afore- mentioned clich6d Sentimental diction used to describe Tatiana's inner life. It seems that it is not until the end of Onegin that Tatiana assimilates and modifies these preexisting modes of behavior and emerges as, in Hasty's words, "the principle character of Eugene Onegin" (32). 11 Pushkin's own attitude toward Sentimentalism was mixed. In an article entitled "Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg" written between 1833 and 1834, Pushkin writes of Richardson's Clarissa, "Many readers will agree with me that Clarissa is very wearisome and dull; nevertheless, Richardson's novel is of exceptional merit" (PSS 11: 244). 12 Pushkin began his own epistolary novel in 1829, Roman vpis'makh [Novel in Letters], but never completed it. 13 As Pushkin's contemporary, the poet Kiukhelbeker noted "in his eighth chapter the poet himself resembles Tatiana" (Lotman 1960, 161). 14 See 7.1iii for another example of such narration. 15 Lotman (1966) sees the uncovering of literary conventions by the "prose of reality," especially regarding Lensky, as a characteristic feature of Eugene Onegin and an example of Pushkin's development toward "realism." 16 Tynianov (86) hints at a similar reading of Onegin. By using colloquial intonations, claims Tynianov, Pushkin creates a thin intonational layer, which makes the narrative itself a kind of indirect speech. 17 Lotman (1980, 349-57) analyzes the various viewpoints and voices in the first part of chapter 8. REFERENCES Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. New York: Oxford UP, 1953. Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: U of Texas P, 1981. . Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minneapolis P, 1984. Cameron, Sharon. Lyric Time: Dickinson and the Limits of Genre. Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979. This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Lyric and Narrative Consciousness in Eugene Onegin 709 Eliot, T. S. On Poetry and Poets. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd, 1976. 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Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1957. Zhirmunskii, Viktor. "Baironizm Pushkina kak istoriko-literaturnaia problema." Pushkinskii sbornik 4: 295-325. This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 12 Oct 2013 07:09:04 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions