Lonely, "seemed like a stranger girl", did not like children's games and silently could sit all day at the window, immersed in dreams. But outwardly motionless and cold, Tatyana lived a strong inner life. "Scary stories of the nanny" made her a dreamer, a child "not of this world."

Avoiding naive village entertainment, round dances and games, Tatyana, on the other hand, gave herself up to folk mysticism with all her heart, her inclination to fantasize directly attracted to this:

Tatyana believed the legends
Folk antiquity:
And dreams, and card fortune-telling,
And the predictions of the moon.
The omens worried her.
Mysteriously to her all objects
proclaimed something.
Premonitions pressed against my chest.

Suddenly seeing
Young two-horned face of the moon
In the sky on the left side
She trembled and turned pale.
Well? beauty found the secret
And in the most horror she:
This is how nature made you
Inclined to contradiction.

From fairy tales of the nanny Tatiana moved early to novels.

They replaced everything
She fell in love with novels
Both Richardson and Rousseau...

From a fantasy girl, Tatyana Larina became a "dreamy girl" who lived in her own special world: she surrounded herself with the heroes of her favorite novels and was alien to rural reality.

For a long time her imagination
Burning with grief and longing,
Alkalo fatal food.
Long hearted languor
Constricted her young breasts.
The soul was waiting for someone.

Tatyana Larina. Artist M. Klodt, 1886

Yu. V Lebedev History of Russian literature of the 19th century. Part 1- M., Education, 2011

The relationship between Onegin and Tatiana is based on the principle of antithesis, opposition. But at the heart of this confrontation lies a potential commonality. Like two oppositely charged poles of a magnet, Onegin and Tatyana are drawn to each other. Tatyana's character contains positive life values ​​that Onegin needs so much and from which he is so far away.

At the same time, there is something in common between all the young heroes of the novel. And Onegin, and Lensky, and Tatyana spiritually outgrew the environment that surrounds them. After all, Tatyana also feels like a stranger in her patriarchal-noble environment. “Imagine: I am here alone, / No one understands me, / My mind is exhausted, / And I must die in silence,” she laments in a love letter to Onegin.

But unlike Onegin, Tatyana grows up in a different environment, in different conditions. Her main advantage over the "non-Russian" Onegin and the "half-Russian" Lensky is that, according to Pushkin's definition, Tatiana is "Russian in spirit". And the author explains why she is like that. In contrast to Onegin, Tatyana grew up in the "backwoods of a forgotten village", in close proximity to the people, in an atmosphere of fairy tales, songs, divination, beliefs and "traditions of the common folk antiquity." The pictures of Tatyana's childhood, adolescence and youth echo Onegin's life on the principle of antithesis: they are opposite in everything.

Yevgeny has foreign tutors, Tatyana has a kind nanny, a simple Russian peasant woman, for whom it is easy to guess the nanny of Pushkin himself - Arina Rodionovna. Onegin has “the science of tender passion”, Tatyana has poverty, helping the poor and humble prayer, which “delights the anguish of an agitated soul”. Onegin has a vain youth, reminiscent of a repeating ritual from day to day - "a long row of dinners alone." Tatyana has solitude, the concentration of a silently ripening soul.

Talking about Tatyana's childhood, Pushkin introduces motifs of hagiographic literature into the novel for a reason. The childhood of all Orthodox righteous women was accompanied by alienation from fun, from children's games and pranks. Tatyana “didn’t play with burners”, “she was bored with both ringing laughter and the noise of their windy joys”:

Pensiveness, her friend From the most lullaby days, The flow of rural leisure Decorated her with dreams.

Avoiding childish pranks, she loved to listen to the nurse's stories on long winter evenings, in which the legends of ancient times came to life. If Onegin led an unnatural way of life in his youth, “turning the morning at midnight,” then Tatiana’s youth is obedient to the rhythms of nature and the rhythms of folk life that agree with it:

She loved on the balcony To warn the dawn of the dawn, When the round dance disappears in the pale sky of Stars.

Like a bird of God, she always wakes up at dawn, like all peasant and yard girls, on the morning of the first snow she “goes to meet the winter, / Breathe frosty dust / And the first snow from the roof of the bathhouse / Wash her face, shoulders and chest.

The world of nature in the novel invariably correlates with the image of this girl, whom Pushkin, at the risk of incurring the discontent of readers and readers, gave such a common name (in Pushkin's era it sounded like Akulina, Matryona or Lukerya). The very definition of Tatyana's Russianness is connected with her inherent poetic sense of nature:

Tatyana (Russian soul, Not knowing why) With her cold beauty She loved the Russian winter, Frost in the sun on a frosty day, And the sleigh, and the late dawn The radiance of pink snows, And the darkness of Epiphany evenings.

Nature in Pushkin's novel most often opens through the window through which Tatyana looks. We can say that Tatyana at the window is a leitmotif, a plot situation that repeats in the novel:

... Waking up early, Through the window Tatyana saw In the morning a whitened yard, Curtains, roofs and a fence.

“And often the whole day alone / I sat silently at the window”; “And silent, like Svetlana, / She came in and sat down by the window”; “Tatyana stood before the window, / Breathing on the cold glass”; “Looks, it’s already light in the room; / In the window through the frozen glass / The crimson ray of dawn plays ”; “Tanya sits down at the window, / The dusk is thinning; but she / does not distinguish between her fields”;

Alone, sad under the window Illuminated by the ray of Diana, Poor Tatyana does not sleep And looks into the dark field.

As you read the novel, Russian nature, with its succession of seasons and seasons, merges so much with the image of the heroine beloved by Pushkin that sometimes you catch yourself thinking: any landscape in the novel is a “window” into the world of her poetic soul.

Significantly different from Onegin and that circle of reading, that European cultural tradition, which had a noticeable influence on the formation of Tatiana's character. Onegin, even disappointed in life and people, took with him to the village a number of books that retained unconditional interest and authority for him. Among them, Byron occupies the first place, and with him two or three more novels,

In which the age is reflected And the modern man Is depicted quite correctly With his immoral soul, Selfish and dry, A dream betrayed immeasurably, With his embittered mind, Boiling in action empty.

Tatyana is a "county lady", she is read by the old-fashioned literature of Western European sentimentalists, represented by the names of Richardson and Rousseau. Their works preserve faith in man, and high Christian ideals in them are associated with the deep needs of the human heart. Such literature does not contradict popular views on the true and imaginary values ​​of life. Sentimentalism is organically part of Tatiana's "Russian soul". And although the structure of thoughts and feelings of the heroine inspired by sentimental novels is naive, at the same time, as E. N. Kupreyanova noted, he is “highly spiritual and morally active.” In the novels of the sentimentalists, cordiality was cultivated and it was not the egoist and skeptic, as in Byron, who rose to the high pedestal, but the noble and sensitive hero, capable of the feat of self-sacrifice. The sentimentalist writer "showed us his hero as a model of perfection":

He endowed the beloved object, Always unjustly persecuted, With a sensitive soul, mind And an attractive face. Feeding the heat of the purest passion, The always enthusiastic hero was ready to sacrifice himself...

The poetic Tatyana dreams of such a chosen one of her heart when she meets Onegin, who is unlike anyone else, despised and persecuted by all the neighbors. And she took him for her ideal, which she had nurtured for so long in her imagination, about which she shed tears in the "silence of the forests":

You appeared to me in my dreams, Invisible, you were already dear to me, Your wonderful look tormented me, Your voice was heard in my soul.

In a letter to Onegin, the precious features of Tatyana's character appear - her sincerity and gullibility, as well as her ingenuous faith in her chosen dream. Tatyana is dear to Pushkin because she

... loves without art, Obedient to the command of feelings, That she is so trusting, That she is gifted from heaven With a rebellious Imagination, Mind and will alive, And a wayward head, And a fiery and tender heart.

In contrast to the "science of tender passion", from the love of secular "beauties of notes", Tatyana's feeling for Onegin is sublime and spiritual. In it there is not a facet of that love game to which Onegin paid tribute and which poisoned and withered his heart for the time being. In Tatyana's eyes, love is a sacred thing, God's gift, which must be handled with care and tenderness. In a letter to Onegin she says:

Isn't it true? I heard you: You spoke to me in silence, When I helped the poor Or with a prayer delighted the Anguish of an agitated soul?

In love, the main thing for her is not sensual passion, but a deep spiritual connection with her loved one. Love is a way out of loneliness, from low mercantile desires and interests in which people around Tatiana are mired. In alliance with Onegin, tempting prospects for spiritual growth and moral self-improvement open up for her:

My whole life has been a guarantee of a faithful date with you; I know you were sent to me by God, Until the grave you are my keeper.

Such a view of love is affirmed by the Orthodox Church in the “following of the betrothal”, where God Himself unites the bride and groom into an indestructible union and instructs them in every good deed in peace, unanimity, truth and love.

In trembling moments, when Tatyana is waiting for Onegin, Pushkin accompanies her experiences with a round dance of girls picking berries in the manor's garden:

Girls, beauties, Darlings, girlfriends ...

So the poet once again emphasizes the deep rootedness of Tatyana's heartfelt feelings in Russian national life and culture, the genuine nationality of her soul.

Satiated with superficial love pleasures, Onegin nevertheless felt something deep and serious in Tatyana's letter. "The gullibility of an innocent soul" touched him and brought "long-silenced feelings" to excitement. Humanly appreciating Tatyana's heart impulse, Onegin sincerely admitted to her that he could not respond with the same feeling to her love:

But I'm not made for bliss; My soul is alien to him; In vain are your perfections; I don't deserve them...

But after all, to refuse to accept "perfection" means not only to show generosity, but also to offend "perfection" by arrogant rejection of it. “And happiness was so possible, so close!” - Tatyana Onegin will reproach in the scene of the last meeting at the end of the novel. What does this accusation mean? The fact that Onegin is far from such a complete antipode of Tatyana.

E. N. Kupreyanova writes: “Onegin is as much superior to Tatyana with her Europeanized intellect as Tatyana, “Russian in soul”, rises above Onegin with her moral feeling, common with the people. And this feeling has not died out in Onegin, but smolders somewhere in the depths of his soul, incinerated by an outstanding, but chilled, embittered, Europeanized mind. And Onegin's trouble is that he does not recognize this healthy feeling in himself and becomes a slave to his skeptical mind.

In the rural wilderness, Onegin meets Tatyana three times: at the first appearance at the Larins, on the day of the explanation with Tatyana about her letter, and about a year later at her name day. And none of these meetings leaves him indifferent, which, however, he does not want to admit to himself and for which he is even angry with himself and others.

He is angry with himself for the fact that the feeling for Tatyana, awakened in the depths of his dormant heart, undermines his self-confident and cold egoism, in the captivity of which he found himself. But at the same time, Onegin is also angry with others, for example, with Lensky, who believes "in pure love and perfection of the world." After all, the desire to kill this faith in an enthusiastic poet tempts Onegin for a long time: "He has a cooling word / He tried to keep it in his mouth." The contemptuous irritation that had long smoldered in Onegin's soul breaks through now, when Onegin himself is irritated by his indifference to Tatyana:

... But the languid maiden, Noticing the quivering impulse, Lowering his eyes with annoyance, He pouted and, indignantly, Vowed to infuriate Lensky And to take revenge in order.

Paradoxical as it may seem at first glance, the sympathy for Tatiana that penetrates into Onegin’s heart, incompatible with his “embittered mind,” is a source of irritation that led to the severing of ties with Lensky, to a duel with him and to the murder of the young hero.

Heart intuition does not fail Tatyana here either. Let us recall her prophetic dream, in which she sees herself as the bride of Onegin, acting as a tempter-robber, the leader of a gang of unclean, demonic creatures. Seeing Tatyana, this evil wants to take possession of her as an impersonal commodity and shouts - “Mine! my!":

Mine - said Eugene menacingly, And the whole gang hid suddenly ...

The measure of the folk tale, which entered Tatyana's flesh and blood, is measured in this dream by the destructive (robber) nature of Onegin's egoism. And then Lensky appears as an obstacle to the implementation of Onegin’s selfish goals (“mine!”), A dispute arises:

Argument louder, louder; suddenly Yevgeny grabs a long knife, and in an instant Lensky is defeated; frightening shadows Condensed; An unbearable cry was heard... the hut shook... And Tanya woke up in horror...

It is noteworthy that the picture of the wedding feast in Tatyana's dream echoes the description of her name day. The guests who come to the ball in their caricature resemble the evil spirits that surrounded Onegin in Tatyana's dream. Moreover, Pushkin shows “barking mosek, smacking girls, noise, laughter, crush at the threshold” (compare: “hooves, crooked trunks, crested tails, mustaches”) through the eyes of a disgruntled Onegin, who “began to draw in his soul / caricatures of all the guests.”

The deadly cold, the threatening symptoms of which penetrated Onegin's soul already in the first chapter, now begins its destructive work in relation to people close to the hero. Yu. M. Lotman, in a commentary on “Eugene Onegin,” convincingly showed that the bloody outcome of Onegin’s duel with Lensky was provoked by the second Zaretsky, who, in violation of the rules of the dueling code, cut off all paths to reconciliation: when transferring the cartel, he ignored the duty of the second to persuade opponents to reconciliation; did not cancel the duel, although Onegin was almost two hours late; allowed his servant as Onegin's second; did not meet with this second the day before to discuss the rules of the duel. The researcher of the novel proved that Onegin did not intend to kill Lensky, that he turned out to be a murderer involuntarily. However, we note that it was Onegin who provoked the duel and that Zaretsky is the culprit of the murder with the tacit connivance of the same Onegin, who, frightened by the unfavorable public opinion for himself, gave free rein to this rogue.

"In the anguish of heartfelt remorse" Onegin leaves the estate. "He was seized with anxiety, / Wanderlust." By changing external impressions, he wants to drown out the remorse of conscience rising from the depths of his soul. The murder of a friend dealt a crushing blow to Onegin's selfishness. At one time, G. A. Gukovsky expressed the idea that in the process of traveling, and then under the influence of awakened love for Tatyana, the hero’s moral rebirth takes place, that Tatyana did not guess these changes in Onegin and her refusal is a cruel mistake of the heroine.

In fact, everything is much more complicated. If Pushkin wanted to show the rebirth of Onegin, he would not have excluded the chapter about his journey from the text of the novel. Starting from the seventh chapter, Pushkin's attention completely shifted from Onegin to Tatiana, since it was with her that Pushkin's dream about the ideal of a Russian person was connected. More than once in this regard, Pushkin confessed his love for Tatiana, and opened the seventh chapter with the theme of spring renewal. In this chapter, Tatyana is destined to endure and overcome the temptation of which Onegin was a victim. She visits the wanderer's office and reads those books that had a decisive influence on the hero's inner world:

What is he? Is it really an imitation, A worthless ghost, or even a Muscovite in Harold's cloak, An interpretation of strange whims, A complete lexicon of fashionable words? ... Isn't he a parody?

Discovering the intellectual world of Onegin for herself, "Russian in soul" Tatyana not only understands it, but also rises above it, giving an exact definition of one of the fundamental weaknesses of Onegin's mind. The ease with which she overcomes this temptation testifies to the healthy moral basis of her soul, to the maturity of her intellect gaining strength.

Tatyana's departure from the wilderness to Moscow, and then her appearance in the high society of St. Petersburg at the philosophical level of the novel, is accompanied by the resolution of that conflict between the "European" intellect and the "Russian soul", which Onegin was never able to overcome. When meeting with Tatyana in St. Petersburg, he cannot in any way combine in one person the ingenuous rural girl and the "goddess of the luxurious, regal Neva." The mystery of this unity remains beyond the threshold of his consciousness.

In a commentary on Eugene Onegin, Yu. M. Lotman noted that in the eighth chapter of the novel, Pushkin's view of secular society becomes much more complicated. “The image of light receives double coverage: on the one hand, the world is soulless and mechanistic, it remains an object of condemnation, on the other hand, as a sphere in which Russian culture develops ... as the world of Karamzin and the Decembrists, Zhukovsky and the author of Eugene Onegin himself, it preserves absolute value." In this regard, Pushkin's very understanding of nationality expands and becomes more complex. “In the fifth chapter, it captures one layer of popular culture that is alien to ‘Europeanism’. Now it is conceived as a culturally comprehensive concept, embracing the highest spiritual achievements, including the spiritual values ​​of the peaks of noble culture. Therefore, Tatyana, having become a secular lady and intellectually rising to the level of the author, could remain for him a folk type of consciousness”:

She was unhurried, Not cold, not talkative, Without an insolent look for everyone, Without pretensions to success, Without these little antics, Without imitative undertakings ... Everything was quiet, it was just in her ...

A feeling for Tatyana that suddenly flared up in Onegin is accompanied by a bewildered exclamation: “How! from the wilderness of the steppe villages! ... "This exclamation suggests that Onegin's feeling glides over the surface of Tatyana's soul and does not capture her spiritual core: "Although he could not look more diligently, / But even the traces of the former Tatyana / Onegin could not find." And the hero is carried away “not by this timid, in love, poor and simple girl”, but by the “indifferent princess” and “impregnable goddess”. His feeling is sincere, but in the first place in it is still not spiritual intimacy, but sensual passion:

O people! you all look like the ancestor Eve: What is given to you does not attract, the serpent calls you unceasingly To itself, to the mysterious tree; Give you the forbidden fruit, And without that you will not have paradise.

Devastated and aged in soul, Onegin plays with fire, for his passion for Tatyana, reminiscent of youthful love (“in love with Tatyana like a child”), threatens him with complete incineration:

Love for all ages; But to young, virgin hearts Her gusts are beneficial, Like spring storms to fields: In the rain of passions they freshen, And are renewed, and ripen And the mighty life gives And lush blossom and sweet fruit. But at a late and fruitless age, At the turn of our years, The dead trace of passion is sad: So the storms of cold autumn turn the meadow into a swamp And expose the forest around.

The wise Tatyana feels the fatality of this “dead passion” for Onegin and, out of love-compassion for him, tries to extinguish it: “She does not notice him, / No matter how he fights, even die.” Tatyana is scared for Onegin, for the crazy lines of his letter, in which he sees “all the perfection” of his beloved in the “smile of the lips”, “in the movement of the eyes” and says:

Before you freeze in agony, Turn pale and fade away ... that's bliss!

Tatyana is afraid of that sensual fire that can burn Onegin. That is why she does not answer his letters, and at meetings she pours over him with "Epiphany cold". And all this is out of pity, out of compassion for him. Against this background, Onegin's complete misunderstanding of Tatyana's noble intentions is especially deadly:

Yes, maybe a fear of a secret, So that a husband or the world does not guess Leprosy, an accidental weakness ... Everything that my Onegin knew ...

This is how the hero explains the reason for Tatiana's impregnability in such a small way. Trying to get rid of passion, he tries to go into random reading of books, a set of which is striking in a strange variegation. And then some glimpses, some sparks of his possible awakening appear in the wilds of Onegin's soul:

He read other lines between printed lines with spiritual eyes. In them, he was completely deepened. Those were the secret legends of heartfelt, dark antiquity, Dreams unrelated to anything, Threats, rumors, predictions, Or a long fairy tale, living nonsense, Or letters from a young maiden.

Onegin's "spiritual eyes" are finally turned from external impressions, from books that help him little, in which alien wisdom, far from Russian soil, is imprinted, into the depths of his own heart. And there, in the dark labyrinths, saving, alluring lights begin to wander. Conscience wakes up, “the snake of heartfelt remorse”, Onegin sees a motionless young man on the melted snow - the ghost of Lensky killed by him; “a swarm of young traitors” flashes through his heartfelt imagination, and suddenly, like a blow and a reproach - “this is a rural house - and she is sitting at the window ... and that’s it!”.

These Russian depths of Onegin's soul, which he begins to discover in himself, lead him back to the "Russian soul" Tatyana, whom he did not understand and did not appreciate then and which he is trying in vain to understand now. But everything in this soul is still so ghostly, so vague and indefinite, that the author cannot stand it and breaks into a rude joke:

He's so used to getting lost in it, That he almost went crazy Or became a poet. To admit: I would have borrowed something!

Onegin's trouble lies in the fact that his intellect, his mind is not based on a high culture of human feelings. Onegin's feelings, for all their sincerity and strength, remain dark, damaged by the "science of tender passion." Onegin does not know the spiritualized culture of love, which rises above elementary human sensuality, which plays cruel jokes on the hero, turns him into a slave of spontaneous, uncontrollable passion. And Tatyana is right when, in the scene of the last meeting, she reproaches Onegin with “offensive passion”:

And now! What brought you to my feet? what a little! How is it with your heart and mind To be the feelings of a petty slave?

Onegin's love, devoid of national moral support, is therefore doomed, and therefore offensive to Tatyana, because for all its strength and recklessness, it does not go beyond the secular "standard". It is based on moral lightness, indefatigable sensuality. And therefore, turning to Onegin with annoyance and reproach, Tatyana says:

And for me, Onegin, this splendor, Tinsel of a disgusting life, My successes in a whirlwind of light, My fashion house and evenings, What's in them? Now I'm glad to give All this masquerade rags, All this brilliance, and noise, and fumes For a shelf of books, for a wild garden, For our poor dwelling, For those places where for the first time, Onegin, I saw you, Yes, for a humble cemetery Where is the cross now in the shade of the branches Over my poor nanny ...

Only Tatyana, whose high mind and intellect fed on her "Russian soul", could understand the full force of Onegin's love-passion and all its destructive futility. In the name of love for Onegin, not carnal, not sensual, but lofty and spiritual, Tatiana found the strength to utter the most courageous and wise words in the novel:

I ask you to leave me; I know: in your heart there is And pride and direct honor, I love you (why dissemble?), But I am given to another; I will be faithful to him forever.

V. S. Nepomniachtchi is right, arguing that Tatyana’s feeling, love is “not at all a manifestation of the ‘needs’ and ‘passions’ of an egoistic ‘nature’”: “For understanding the novel, especially Tatyana, this is of paramount importance. All disputes, all bewildered or condemning views towards Tatyana in connection with her behavior in the last chapter of the novel are explained by the fact that Tatyana's actions are considered in the usual plane of the struggle between "feelings" and "duty". But this is not Tatyana's collision - her worldview is fundamentally different from that described above. Tatyana's feeling for Onegin does not at all "fight" with duty, quite the contrary: Tatyana parted with Onegin in the name of love, for his sake - and in this clash of the hero with completely different, unfamiliar foundations of moral life lies the whole meaning of the finale of the novel.

It was Tatyana who understood the deepest, tragic discrepancy between the appointment of Onegin and his existence, separating the “Onegin” from Onegin and making sure that this “Onegin” is a “ghost”, “parody”, “imitation”. It was she who felt that Onegin has a different, higher destiny, which "Oneginism" crushes in him, preventing him from opening and unfolding, turning Onegin into a victim of "violent delusions and unbridled passions."

“The novel moves into the depths of the soul of the motionless hero,” notes V. S. Nepomniachtchi, “to where the light of hope for the rebirth of this soul can dawn, and stops at the moment when “Eugene is standing, / As if struck by thunder.” The refusal of Tatyana, who loves him, “showed that there are - not in dreams, but in reality - other values, a different life and a different love than those to which he was used to - and therefore, not everything in life is lost and one can believe "peace perfection." By her act, Tatyana showed him that a person is not a game of "natural" elements and "natural" desires, that he has a higher destiny in this world.

V. G. Belinsky, who did not understand at all the depth and significance of Tatyana's act, described the meaning of the open ending of the novel as follows: “What happened to Onegin then? Did his passion resurrect him for a new, more human-worthy suffering? Or did she kill all the strength of his soul, and his bleak longing turned into dead, cold apathy? “We don’t know, and why should we know this when we know that the forces of this rich nature were left without application, life without meaning, and the romance without end? It is enough to know this, so as not to want to know anything more ... "

Such a bleak view of the outcome of the novel follows directly from a misunderstanding of the meaning of its final scene. The very question of Belinsky, whether “passion” “resurrected” Onegin, testifies to a misunderstanding of the pernicious and destructive basis of this passion. Such a passion is not capable of resurrecting anyone. Belinsky's level of comprehension of Tatyana's act turns out to be even lower than Onegin's. If Yevgeny “stands ... as if struck by thunder”, then Belinsky, not without irony, resonates: “But I am given to another - it is given, and not surrendered! Eternal fidelity - to whom and in what? Loyalty to such relationships, which constitute a profanation of the feeling of purity and femininity, because some relationships, not sanctified by love, are highly immoral ... "

In a hidden polemic with Belinsky, F. M. Dostoevsky assessed Tatyana's act in a speech about Pushkin differently. He claimed that Tatyana firmly expressed her refusal to Onegin, “as a Russian woman, this is her apotheosis. She tells the truth of the poem. Oh, I will not say a word about her religious beliefs, about her view of the sacrament of marriage - no, I will not touch on this. But what: was it because she refused to follow him ... because she, "like a Russian woman" ... is not capable of taking a bold step, unable to sacrifice the charm of honors, wealth, her secular significance, the conditions of virtue? No, the Russian woman is brave. A Russian woman will boldly follow what she believes in, and she proved it. But she is "given to another and will be faithful to him for a century." To whom, what is she faithful to? ... Yes, she is faithful to this general, her husband, an honest man who loves her and is proud of her. Let her “begged her mother,” but she, and no one else, agreed, she, after all, she herself swore to him to be his honest wife. Let her marry him out of desperation, but now he is her husband, and her betrayal will cover him with shame, shame and kill him. And how can a person base his happiness on the misfortune of another? Happiness is not only in the pleasures of love, but in the highest harmony of the spirit ... They will say: but Onegin is also unhappy; She saved one and ruined the other! ... This is how I think: if Tatyana had become free, if her old husband had died and she had become a widow, then even then she would not have followed Onegin. It is necessary to understand the essence of this character! After all, she sees who he is ... After all, if she follows him, then tomorrow he will be disappointed and look at his passion mockingly. It has no soil, it is a blade of grass carried by the wind. She is not like that at all: she, both in despair and in the suffering consciousness that her life has perished, still has something solid and unshakable on which her soul rests. These are her childhood memories, memories of her homeland, the rural wilderness in which her humble, pure life began - this is the “cross and the shadow of the branches” over the grave of her poor nanny ... Here is contact with the homeland, with her native people, with their shrine. And what does he have and who is he?... No, there are deep and firm souls who cannot consciously give up their shrine to shame, even if only out of infinite compassion. No, Tatyana could not follow Onegin.

This is Dostoevsky's answer, seemingly deeper and more correct, with the exception of one thing: from the writer's reasoning it remains unclear why Tatiana loves Onegin? In the interpretation that Dostoevsky gives to Onegin, everything in him is killed and replaced by "Onegin", "secular", superficial and frivolous. Tatyana perfectly understands this facet in Onegin's character and, of course, she does not want and cannot love Onegin for his “Oneginism”. The thing is that behind the secular depravity, groundlessness and emptiness of “Oneginism”, Tatyana sees in Onegin a spiritual core that he himself is not fully aware of, relying on which he can turn his life in another, directly opposite direction. Tatyana loves in Onegin what he has not yet understood and revealed in himself.

Who are you, my guardian angel, Or the insidious tempter: Resolve my doubts,

Tatyana addresses the question in a girlish letter to Onegin. She retains the same lofty spiritual request towards him even now, saying that she loves something else in him. Tatyana's "given to another" means not only fidelity to her old husband, but also devotion to that greatest shrine that was revealed to her and which she sees in the disappointed, restless Onegin. But this shrine cannot be imposed on anyone. Onegin himself must discover it in himself through the suffering experience of life.

Like thunder struck by the last meeting with Tatyana, Onegin remains on the threshold of a new life and a new search. Pushkin resolves at the end of the novel its main, key conflict, pointing out to Onegin through the mouth of Tatyana "the path, truth and life." At the same time, in the character of Onegin, he gives an artistic formula for the future hero of Russian novels by Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. All these writers will "open the brackets" of Pushkin's formula and lead their heroes along paths whose vectors, as well as boundaries and horizons, are outlined by Pushkin. The same can be said about Tatyana. The gallery of female images of Turgenev, Goncharov, Tolstoy, Nekrasov, Ostrovsky and Dostoevsky goes back to it. "The Distance of the Free Romance" opens in Pushkin into the future of Russian life and Russian literature.

Appearance, habits of the heroine

Tatyana Larina is the main female image of the novel "Eugene Onegin". Belinsky called the novel "an encyclopedia of Russian life." The image of Tatyana, like the images of other heroes, was typical for Russia in the 20-30s. 19th century But Tatyana is a living woman with a unique strong character. Her actions, dictated by internal logic and circumstances, are unexpected even for the author: "My Tatyana has done it".

Tatyana is not like her younger sister Olga, a cheerful beauty. The older sister does not attract the eyes either by beauty or freshness. In addition, she is unsociable, unkind: "Dika, sad, silent, like a doe forest timid".

Tatyana does not resemble a traditional folklore hardworking girl: she does not embroider, does not play with dolls, is not interested in fashion and outfits. The girl does not like "in the crowd of children to play and jump", run into burners (an outdoor game), does not play pranks and does not play pranks.

Tatyana loves scary stories, is thoughtful, meets the dawn on the balcony. Since childhood, she has been inclined to move away from reality into the world of dreams, imagining herself the heroine of the novels of Richardson and Rousseau: "She fell in love with deceptions".

Character and its origins, character development

Tatyana grew up in the village, was a neighbor on the estate of Eugene Onegin. Her parents kept the old patriarchal way. It is said about the father that he was late in the last century. This is probably why Tatyana received such an exotic name, with which she is inseparable. "memories of antiquity or maiden". Tatyana's mother in her youth was fond of the same novels that her eldest daughter later read. In the village of her husband, for whom Tatyana's mother was not given for love, she, in the end, "I got used to it and became satisfied" forgetting romantic hobbies. The couple lived keeping "habits of dear old times".

Tatyana is cut off from her environment. On the one hand, she "Russian soul, without knowing why". Pushkin, according to the laws of realism, discovers why Tatyana is like that. She lived in "backwoods of the forgotten village", raised by a nanny, "cordial friend", in the atmosphere "traditions of common antiquity". But the nanny, whose prototype was Pushkin's nanny, does not understand Tatyana's feelings.

On the other hand, Tatyana was brought up on foreign novels, "I didn't know Russian very well". She writes a letter to Onegin in French because "explained with difficulty in her native language".

The novel traces the change in the life of Tanya, brought by her mother to the capital and liked "important general". Everything that happens in St. Petersburg is alien to her: “The excitement of the world hates; it’s stuffy here ... she strives with a dream for field life ”.

Onegin fell in love with a completely different Tatyana, not a timid girl, in love, poor and simple, but an indifferent princess, an impregnable goddess of the luxurious, regal Neva, "legislator hall". But internally Tatyana remains the same: "Everything is quiet, it was just in her". Dignity and nobility were added to simplicity. The appearance of the heroine also changes. No one would call her beautiful, but her sophistication could not be overshadowed by the first beauty of St. Petersburg.

Onegin does not recognize the former Tatyana. She is indifferent, bold, calm, free, severe. There is no coquetry in Tatyana, which "does not tolerate the upper world", confusion and compassion. She doesn't look like the girl who wrote "a letter where the heart speaks, where everything is outside, everything is free".

The relationship between Tatyana and Onegin is the main storyline of the novel

After Onegin, who arrived in his village, visited the Larins, they began to read him to Tatyana as a suitor. She fell in love with Onegin simply because "time has come". But, brought up in a healthy folk atmosphere, Tatyana is waiting for great love, the only betrothed.

Onegin taught Tatyana the most important lesson in life, which she learned well: "Learn to control yourself". He acted nobly, but Pushkin sympathizes with Tatyana: "With you now I shed tears"- and foresees her death at the hands of "fashion tyrant"(Onegin).

The lesson that Tatyana gives Onegin, having become a secular lady, in turn, consists in the same wisdom: you can’t be "feelings of a petty slave". This should be preferred "cold, stern talk". But the motives of Onegin and Tatyana are different. He never could become "natural person", which Tatiana has always been. For her, life in the world is hateful, this "rags of masquerade". Tatyana deliberately doomed herself to such a life, because when she got married, for her "all were equal lot". And although the first love still lives in the heroine, she sincerely and with conviction remains faithful to her husband. Onegin, on the other hand, does not fully realize that his love is excited by the desire to be noticed in society, to have "seductive honor".

• "Eugene Onegin", analysis of the novel by Alexander Pushkin
• "Eugene Onegin", a summary of the chapters of Pushkin's novel

Tatyana appears in chapter II of the novel. The choice of the heroine's name and the author's thoughts on this matter, as it were, indicate a distinctive feature compared to other characters:

Her sister's name was Tatyana...
Gentle pages of a novel
For the first time with such a name
We will sanctify.

In these lines, the author introduces Tatyana to the reader for the first time. We are presented with the image of a simple provincial girl with very peculiar features. Tatyana is “wild, sad, silent”, “in her own family she seemed like a stranger girl”, “often she sat silently at the window all day long”. She did not play with her sister Olga's friends, "she was bored with their sonorous laughter and the noise of their windy joys." Larina grows thoughtful and lonely. The environment to which parents, relatives, guests belong, i.e. the society of local nobles is something alien to her, which has almost no effect on Tatyana. Other aspects of her being have a stronger influence on the formation of her personality. She is captivated by "terrible stories in the winter in the darkness of nights", i.e. fairy tales of a serf nanny. She loves nature, reads the novels of Richardson and Rousseau, which educate her sensitivity, develop her imagination.

The appearance of Onegin, who immediately struck Tatyana with his peculiarity, dissimilarity with others whom she saw around, leads to the fact that love flares up in Tatyana.
The girl in love again turns to books: after all, she has no one to trust her secret, no one to talk to.
Sincere and strong love involuntarily takes on the character of those passionate and strong feelings that the loving and suffering heroines of the books read are endowed with.
So, Tatyana was strongly influenced by the sentimental West, but the European novel. But this, of course, was not the main factor in the development of Tatyana.

A lot to understand the image of Tatyana is given by the episode of Tatyana's conversation with the nanny and the letter to Onegin. This whole scene - one of the best in the novel - is something amazing, beautiful, whole.

The nature of Tatyana's frank conversation with the old nanny is such that we see a great intimacy between them. The image of Filipyevna bears the beginnings of folk wisdom, her words reflect the experience of a long and difficult life of a simple Russian woman. The story is short and simple, but it contains imagery, expressiveness, purity and power of thought and a truly folk language. And we vividly imagine Tatyana in her room at night, and

On the bench
With a scarf on his gray head,
Before the young heroine
An old woman in a long jacket.

We begin to understand how much the nanny meant to Tatyana, the closeness to her; we note those purely Russian influences that will occupy the main place in the formation of Tatyana.
Tatyana perfectly understands the common language of the nanny, for her this language is her mother tongue. Her speech is figurative and at the same time clear, there are also elements of folk vernacular in it: “I feel sick”, “what needs me”, “yes tell him” ... etc.
Tatyana's letter to Onegin is a desperate act, but it is completely alien to the environment of a young girl. Larina was guided only by feeling, but not by reason. The love letter does not contain coquetry, antics - Tatyana writes frankly, as her heart tells her.

I am writing to you - what more?
What else can I say?

And following these simple and touching words, in which trembling and restrained excitement are heard, Tatyana, with increasing delight, with excitement already openly pouring out in the lines of the letter, reveals this “trusting soul” to Onegin. The central part of the letter is the image of Onegin, as he appeared to Tatyana in her imagination inspired by love. The end of the letter is as sincere as the beginning. The girl is fully aware of her actions:

I'm cumming! Scary to read...
But your honor is my guarantee,
I freeze with shame and fear ...
And I boldly entrust myself to her ...

The writing scene is over. Tatyana is waiting for an answer. Her condition, immersion in the feeling that had taken possession of her, was noted in scanty details:
The second meeting with Onegin and his cold "rebuke". But Tatyana does not stop loving.

Love insane suffering
Don't stop worrying
Young soul...

Chapter V opens with a landscape of a belated but suddenly come winter. It is noteworthy that a purely Russian landscape of a winter estate and a village is given through Tatiana's perception of it.

Waking up early
Trees in winter silver
Tatyana saw through the window
Forty merry in the yard
Whitewashed yard in the morning,
And softly padded mountains

And in direct connection with the pictures of native nature, the author's statement of the national, Russian appearance of the heroine is expressed:

Tatyana (Russian soul,
With her cold beauty
I don't know why.)
I loved Russian winter...

Poetic pictures of Christmas divination also connect Tatyana with the Russian, national, folk origin.
"... Tatyana, on the advice of the nanny" tells fortunes at night in the bath.
Russian national features are more and more clearly put forward in the development of the image of Tatyana.

In the depiction of Tatiana, Pushkin completely renounces all irony, and in this sense, Tatiana is the only character in the novel, in relation to whom, from the moment of its appearance to the end, we feel only the love and respect of the author. The poet more than once calls Tatyana "dear", declares: "I love Tatyana my dear so much."
Tatyana's dream is a fantastic combination of motifs from the nanny's fairy tales, pictures that arose in the play of Tatyana's imagination, but at the same time - and real life impressions. The artistic meaning of the dream in the story about Tatyana is an expression of the heroine's state of mind, her thoughts about Onegin (he is strong in her dream, but also formidable, dangerous, terrible), and at the same time - a premonition of future misfortunes.

All subsequent tragedies: the death of Lensky, the departure of Yevgeny, the imminent marriage of her sister - deeply touched Tatyana's heart. The impressions gained from reading books are replenished by the harsh lessons of life. Gradually, Tatyana gains life experience and seriously thinks about her fate. The image of Tatyana is enriched in the course of events, but by nature Tatyana is still the same, and her “fiery and tender heart” is still given to the feeling that once and for all took possession of her.
Visiting Onegin's house, Tatyana "with a greedy soul" indulges in reading. Byron's poems and novels are added to the previously read sentimental novels.

Reading Onegin's books is a new step in Tatyana's development. She does not freely compare what she knows about Onegin with what she learns from books. A whole swarm of new thoughts, assumptions. In the last stanzas of Chapter VII, Tatyana is in Moscow society. She "... is not well at a housewarming party", she seems strange to the young ladies of the Moscow noble circle, she is still restrained, silent
At the end of the work, Tatyana appears to us as a lady of secular society, but Pushkin clearly distinguishes her from the circle into which her fate has led her. Drawing her appearance at a social event, the poet simultaneously emphasizes Tatyana's aristocracy, in Pushkin's high sense of the word, and her simplicity.

She was slow
Without these little antics
Not cold, not talkative
No imitations...
Without an arrogant look for everyone,
Everything is quiet, it was just in her ...

Episodes of meetings with Onegin after many years of separation emphasize Tatyana's complete self-control. Larina turned into a secular lady, into an “indifferent princess”, “an impregnable goddess of the luxurious, regal Neva”. But her worldview has not changed, her principles and foundations have remained the same. It was these principles that prevailed over Tatyana's innermost feeling: over her love for Eugene. The whole essence of Larina's character is revealed in her last monologue:

...You should,
I know that there is in your heart
And pride and direct honor ...
I ask you to leave me;
And pride and direct honor ...

In our imagination, the image of Tatyana will forever remain something high, unshakable, pure and beautiful.
We also understand all the poet's love for his creation, when in the last stanza of the novel, saying goodbye to the heroes, he recalls "Tatiana's dear ideal."

Tatyana Larina symbolizes the image of a Russian girl. It is difficult to understand the soul of a Russian without being a Russian. It is Tatyana who appears before us as a symbol of the mysterious Russian soul.

From childhood, she was distinguished by her dissimilarity to others. Her originality, sometimes wildness, seems to some to be pride, affectation. But it's not. A meek disposition, but the strength of character is manifested and even more emphasized against the background of Olga's sister. It would seem that a young girl in a noble family can worry. Is it inherent in such a greenhouse environment deep thoughts, the ability to reason and analyze. Ease, carelessness should have become her companions, but everything turned out differently. The desire to study, self-development made the girls a strong character, deeply thinking, empathizing. Frequent solitude contributed to deep immersion in oneself and self-knowledge.

The first feeling that flooded over Tatiana completely swallowed her up. She was ready to meet love. Reading novels contributed to this. And so, the image of a person who corresponded to her fictional character appeared in reality.

Tatyana, a pure and open person, went towards the feeling. She accepted it and decided on a difficult but necessary step - recognition.

Busting girlish pride, I dared to take the first step. What did she get in return? Condescension on the part of the brilliant Onegin to a provincial girl, a humane act of refusal. First love often breaks youthful hearts. But this defeat made Tatyana stronger. The feeling did not fade away, but only lurked somewhere in the depths of the soul. Nothing could stop her from loving Yevgeny, neither his indifference, nor cruelty, nor cynicism, nor the murder of Lensky. You can’t love for something, you can love in spite of. Only then is it love.

Tatyana is a sensual but proud person. She did not humiliate herself and ask for Onegin's love. She tried to pull away and forget. Only she herself knows what was going on in the soul, what a struggle between the mind and the heart raged. The mind allowed the provincial savage girl to turn into a sedate lady, the hostess of the salon. An unloved husband, even for a second, cannot doubt the tenderness and fidelity of his wife.

The power of love, its beauty is most colorfully revealed in tragedy. Tatyana is not destined to be with Onegin. Love is alive in her heart, and perhaps only intensified over time. But, alas. A sacrifice of love for the sake of honor and the promised oath at the altar.