Tatiana in the story of Eugene Onegin. Characteristics of Tatyana Larina from the novel by A.S.
So, her name was Tatyana!
Tatyana Larina is an image that captures all the best ideas about a woman in Russia.
Quiet, sad, silent, dim, alien. This is how Tatyana appears at the beginning of the novel. The absolute opposite of his sister Olga. Olga is a cheerful, frivolous girl. No wonder Pushkin, describing her flaxen curls and blue eyes, said that you would find a similar portrait in any novel. Olga is a cheerful, slightly spoiled, typical young lady of her age.
Tatyana is not like that. The common fun of girls of her age is alien to her. She is very unsociable and overly timid. Favorite activities: listening to grandma's scary stories, watching the moon rise in the sky, or reading. Books were her passion. Only these books were French novels that excited her girlish heart. Completely alien to her environment, Tatyana was waiting for something different. In books she found things that were not in her reality.
Perhaps this is why Tatyana fell in love with Evgeniy Onegin, not even Onegin himself, but the image that she invented for herself. After all, he was completely different from those whom she was used to meeting in her environment. With his coldness towards others, aloofness, and intelligence, Onegin attracted her attention and involuntarily became the object of her hopeless love.
The letter she wrote in a fit of feeling and despair is a masterpiece of literary art, fully reflecting everything that Tatyana lived with and that filled her soul so much. It’s all here: shame, recognition, fear of being rejected, understanding the difference between them, and a wild imagination. Onegin was for her a long-awaited prince, a savior, the meaning of life.
But the reality is simpler and harsher. Of course, Onegin was touched by Tatyana’s confessions. But he did not feel ready to take responsibility for someone else's fate. He declares this to Tatyana, also teaching her a life lesson.
The lesson did not go without a trace. With an incredible effort of will, having coped with mental pain, Tatyana learned to live by the rules of the “high society”. But this does not mean that from a beautiful, pure girl she turned into a typical lady. No! She managed not to lose her spiritual purity, but life forced her to hide her true feelings deep inside. Now she is the general's wife. And she will never disgrace her honor and her husband’s, even for the sake of love for Onegin. “But I was given to another. And I will be faithful to him forever!”
Yes, after so much time, Tatyana continued to love Evgeniy, but now she will not accept his feelings. And this is not so much resentment or mistrust, but rather moral principles and honesty towards the current spouse.
The image of Tatiana, the sweet, beloved heroine of the great Pushkin, will not lose its significance in society as long as honesty, sincerity, duty, and fidelity are held in high esteem.
Tatyana in the novel in verse by A.S. Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” is truly the ideal of a woman in the eyes of the author himself. She is honest and wise, capable of ardent feelings and nobility and devotion. This is one of the highest and most poetic female images in Russian literature.
At the beginning of the novel, Tatyana Larina is a romantic and sincere girl who loves solitude and seems like a stranger in her family:
Dick, sad, silent,
Like a forest deer is timid,
She is in her own family
The girl seemed like a stranger.
Of course, in the Larin family, where serious and deep feelings are not honored, no one understood Tanya. Her father is unable to understand her passion for reading, and her mother did not read anything herself, but heard about books from her cousin and loved them in absentia, from a distance.
Tatyana truly grew up as a stranger to the Larins. It’s not for nothing that she writes to Onegin: “Nobody understands me.” She is thoughtful, reads a lot, and partly romance novels have shaped her idea of love. But real love is not always like love stories from books, and men from novels are extremely rare in life. Tatyana seems to live in her own imaginary world, conversations about fashion are alien to her, games with her sister and friends are completely uninteresting to her:
She was bored and the ringing laughter,
And the noise of their windy pleasures...
Tatyana has her own idea of the ideal world, of her beloved man, who, of course, should be like the hero from her favorite novels. Therefore, she imagines herself to match him with the heroine of Rousseau or Richardson:
Now with what attention she pays
Reads a sweet novel
With such living charm
Drinks seductive deception!
Having met Onegin, the naive girl saw in him her hero, whom she had been waiting for so long:
And she waited... The eyes opened;
She said: it's him!
Tatyana falls in love with Onegin from the first minutes and cannot think about anything but him:
Everything is full of it; everything to the maiden dear
Incessantly magical power
Talks about him.
Onegin in Tatiana's thoughts has little in common with a real man: he appears to the girl in love as either an angel, or a demon, or Grandison. Tatyana is fascinated by Eugene, but she herself “drew” his image for herself, largely anticipating events and idealizing her lover:
Tatiana loves seriously
And he surrenders unconditionally
Love like a sweet child.
Tatyana is a romantic and naive girl who has no experience in love affairs. She is not one of those women who knows how to flirt and flirt with men, and she takes the object of her love very seriously. In her letter to Onegin, she honestly admits her feelings for him, which speaks not only of her sincerity, but also of her inexperience. She did not know how to be hypocritical and hide her feelings, did not want to intrigue and deceive; in the lines of this letter she bared her soul, confessing to Onegin her deep and true love:
Another!.. No, to no one in the world
I wouldn't give my heart!
It is destined in the highest council...
That is the will of heaven: I am yours;
My whole life was a pledge
The faithful's meeting with you;
I know you were sent to me by God,
Until the grave you are my keeper...
Tatyana “entrusts” her fate into the hands of Onegin, having no idea what kind of person he is. She expects too much from him, her love is too romantic, too sublime, the image of Onegin that she created in her imagination does not correspond much to reality.
Nevertheless, Tatyana accepts Onegin’s refusal with dignity; she silently and carefully listens to him, without appealing to his pity and without begging for reciprocal feelings. Tatyana speaks about her love only to her nanny; no one from her family knows about her feelings for Onegin anymore. With her behavior, Tatyana evokes respect from readers; she behaves with restraint and decentness, does not hold a grudge against Onegin, and does not accuse him of unrequited feelings.
Lensky's murder and Onegin's departure deeply wound the girl's heart, but she does not lose herself. During long walks, she reaches Onegin's estate, visits the library of the empty house and finally reads the books that Eugene read - of course, not romance novels. Tatyana begins to understand the one who has settled in her heart forever: “Isn’t he a parody?”
At the request of her family, Tatyana marries an “important general,” because without Onegin, “all her lots were equal.” But her conscience does not allow her to become a bad wife, and she tries to live up to her husband’s status, especially since her beloved man gave her fair advice: “Learn to control yourself.” It is precisely this, the famous socialite, the unapproachable princess, that Onegin sees her upon returning from his voluntary exile.
However, even now her image in the work remains the image of a beautiful and worthy girl who knows how to remain faithful to her man. At the end of the novel, Tatyana reveals herself to Onegin from the other side: as a strong and majestic woman who knows how to “control herself,” which he himself taught her in his time. Now Tatyana does not follow her feelings; she restrains her ardor, remaining faithful to her husband.
The image of Tatyana in A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” has conceptual significance. Firstly, the poet created the unique character of the Russian woman. Secondly, this image embodies the principle of realistic art. In the article “Opinion of M.E. Lobanov on the spirit of literature, both foreign and domestic” A. S. Pushkin analyzes and explains the reasons for the appearance of “literary monsters” by the emergence and development of the literature of romanticism, which replaced classicism.
He agrees that the general tendency of literature - the depiction of an ideal, and not a moral teaching - is essentially correct, however, in Pushkin’s opinion, neither the previous idea of human nature as “cute pomposity”, nor the current reflection of the vice triumphant in the human heart are deep-seated . The poet affirms new ideals (13th and 14th stanzas of the third chapter of “Eugene Onegin”): the novel, built on a love conflict, according to the author’s plan, was supposed to reflect the most characteristic and stable signs of the life of representatives of several generations of the Russian noble family. The heroes of the work speak natural language, their experiences are not schematic and monotonous, but natural and multifaceted. Describing the experiences of the heroes of the novel, the poet checks the veracity of his descriptions with his life, relying on his own observations and impressions.
If we take into account this concept of the author, the meaning of the contrast between the images of Olga and Tatyana becomes clear, which for the reader marks an acquaintance with the main character of the novel. Olga is modest, obedient, cheerful, simple-minded and sweet. She has eyes as blue as the sky, flaxen curls, a light figure, but at the same time nothing sets her apart from the ranks of the same provincial young ladies - “take any novel and you will definitely find her portrait.” Tatyana is not outwardly as attractive as her sister; her behavior and hobbies emphasize the originality of this heroine, her dissimilarity from everyone else:
* Dick, sad, silent.
* Like a forest deer is timid,
* She is in her own family
* The girl seemed like a stranger.
Tatyana Pushkin gives a note to the name: “The most sweet-sounding Greek names, such as, for example, Agathon, Filat, Fedora, Thekla, etc., are used among us only among common people.” In the author’s digression, the poet develops this idea: “For the first time, with such a name, we willfully consecrate the tender pages of a novel.” The sonorous name Tatyana harmoniously merged with the appearance of its owner, with her habits, manners, and character traits. Nature, books, the countryside, the nanny's scary stories in the dark of night in winter - all these sweet, simple hobbies gradually shape the girl's character. Pushkin also talks about what was especially dear to Tatyana:
* She loved on the balcony
* Warn the dawn of the sunrise,
* When on a pale sky
* The round dance of the stars disappears.
Books, by which she judged life, played a big role in shaping Tatyana’s views and feelings; novels replaced everything for her, giving her the opportunity to find “her secret heat, her dreams, the fruits of heartfeltness.” Passion for books, immersion in another, fantastic world filled with all the colors of life, was not just entertainment for Tatyana. The girl was looking for something in him that she could not find in the real world. Perhaps in connection with this, her first failure in life befell her, a fatal mistake - her love for Onegin. Perceiving the surrounding environment as alien, disgusting to every cell of her poetic soul, Tatyana created her own illusory world, in which goodness, beauty, love, and justice ruled. To complete the picture, only one thing was missing - a hero, the one and only. Is this why the thoughtful neighbor Onegin, shrouded in mystery, seemed to Tatyana the embodiment of all her girlish dreams:
* With the happy power of dreaming
* Animated creatures...
* Everything for the tender dreamer
* They clothed themselves in one image,
* Merged into one Onegin.
Tatyana's letter, this sweet and touching declaration of love, most fully reflects the whole gamut of feelings that gripped her immaculate, restless soul. Hence the sharp contrast: “you are unsociable,” “in the wilderness, in the village, everything is boring for you,” and we “don’t shine at all, even though you are welcome in a simple-minded way.” Hence the excessive praise of the chosen one, conveyed, among other things, by Tatyana’s description of her indelible impression of her first meeting with Eugene: she always knew him, but evil fate did not give the lovers a chance to meet in the real world. And then this wonderful moment of meeting and recognition happened:
* You barely walked in, I instantly recognized
* Everything was stupefied, on fire
* And in my thoughts I said: here he is!
For Tatyana, whom no one understands, and this misunderstanding brings her suffering, Onegin is a savior, a deliverer, a handsome prince, who is destined to disenchant and revive her unfortunate heart. It would seem that dreams have come true, but reality sometimes turns out to be even more deceptive and cruel than one might imagine. Onegin is touched by Tatiana's tender confession, but he is not ready to take on the burden of responsibility for someone else's fate, someone else's feelings and someone else's hope. His advice is simple in everyday life and reflects his accumulated experience of living in society:
* Learn to control yourself;
* Not everyone will understand you like I do;
* Inexperience leads to trouble.
Tatyana, in love, turned out to be a good student. Having overcome unbearable mental pain, she learned to “control herself”: “How Tatyana has changed! How firmly she stepped into her role!” In the indifferent princess, stately and careless, it is difficult to recognize the old Tatyana - timid, in love, poor and simple. However, is it fair to say that if significant changes have occurred in the character of the heroine, then her life principles have also undergone dramatic changes? If we interpret the behavior of the new Tatiana in this way, then we will follow Onegin, who was inflamed with passion for the unapproachable goddess of the “royal Neva”. Tatyana accepted the rules of someone else's game, but did her moral purity, sincerity, directness, inquisitiveness of mind, understanding of justice and duty, ability to face and overcome difficulties with dignity and courage disappear?
* “I love you (why lie?),
* But I was given to another;
* I will be faithful to him forever.”
Such simple words, but how much bitterness, resentment, suffering, and mental pain is hidden behind this mask of simplicity! The image of Tatiana, in my opinion, is convincing and lifelike. He evokes sincere sympathy and admiration.
The image of Tatyana Larina in Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin" An important place in the novel “Eugene Onegin” is occupied by the image of Tatyana Larina - Pushkin’s “sweet ideal”. It was in her face that the poet embodied the best feminine qualities that he had noticed earlier in life. And the most important thing for the poet is that the heroine is “Russian in soul.” What makes her like this and what traits of her character are close to Pushkin? Dick, sad, silent,... Like a forest deer, timid... Tatyana likes to watch the sunrise, wander through the forests, enjoy the silence and harmony of nature, and relax in its bosom. It is no coincidence that the heroine does not want to leave the estate and contrasts the “hateful life” of high society in St. Petersburg with her native, rural places close to her heart, and vast open spaces. In the novel “Eugene Onegin” Pushkin created a new literary type, which has no analogues in Russian literature. According to Belinsky, “he was the first to poetically reproduce, in the person of Tatyana, a Russian woman.”
What Russian person doesn’t love nature and the beautiful Russian winter! The poet emphasizes the heroine’s closeness to nature in her portrait:
Tatyana Pushkin gives a purely Russian name, unconventional for noble heroines, with which “the memory of antiquity is inseparable.” After all, the heroine is the embodiment of national character. It is closely connected with people's life through spiritual ties. The best personality traits of Tatyana are rooted in folk soil. Raised by a simple peasant woman, just like Pushkin himself - Arina Radionovna, Tatyana received from Filipyevna all the folk wisdom, comprehended the concepts of good and evil, duty. Knowledge of folklore, fairy tales, rituals, folk traditions, “sweet legends of common folk antiquity,” and Russian dreams serves as proof of this.
Pushkin is always happy to emphasize Tatyana’s individuality, her difference from empty girls. The heroine's feelings are full of sincerity and purity. She knows neither mannered affectation, nor sly coquetry, nor sentimental sensitivity - all that was characteristic of most of her peers. She loves Onegin “not in jest,” seriously, for life. Her naively pure, touching and sincere letter breathes with deep feeling, it is full of sublime simplicity. The reverent words of her declaration of love for Evgeniy are so similar to the confessions of Pushkin himself!
And finally, Pushkin admires the natural intelligence of his heroine. Tatiana's intellectual development helps her in St. Petersburg to understand and internally reject the “tinsel that is hateful to life,” and to maintain her high moral character. And the world sees a strong-willed nature in her and realizes her superiority. But, even though Tatyana hides her feelings under the guise of a society lady, Pushkin still sees her suffering. Tatyana wants to run to the village, but she can’t. The heroine is not able to break the bonds of marriage with the man she married. No matter who he is, she will never hurt him
Tatyana appears in Chapter II of the novel. The choice of the heroine’s name and the author’s thoughts on this matter seem to indicate a distinctive feature compared to other characters:
Her sister's name was Tatyana...
Tender pages of the novel
For the first time with such a name
We willfully sanctify.
In these lines, the author introduces Tatyana to the reader for the first time. We see the image of a simple provincial girl with very peculiar features. Tatyana is “wild, sad, silent”, “she seemed like a stranger in her own family”, “often she sat silently by the window all day long.” She did not play with her sister Olga’s friends, “she was bored by their ringing laughter and the noise of their windy pleasures.” Larina grows up 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 influence 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 dark of night in winter,” i.e. fairy tales of a serf nanny. She loves nature, reads the novels of Richardson and Rousseau, which cultivate her sensitivity and develop her imagination.
The appearance of Onegin, who immediately struck Tatyana with his peculiarity, his dissimilarity with others whom she saw around, leads to the fact that love flares up in Tatyana.
The girl in love turns to books again: after all, she has no one to trust her secret to, no one to talk to.
Sincere and strong love does not willingly take on the character of those passionate and strong feelings with which the loving and suffering heroines of the books they read are endowed.
So, Tatiana was strongly influenced by the sentimental West, but the European novel. But this, of course, was not the main factor in Tatyana’s development.
A lot for understanding the image of Tatiana is given by the episode of Tatiana’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 great intimacy between them. The image of Filipyevna carries the beginnings of folk wisdom; her words reflect the experience of the 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 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 padded jacket.
We begin to understand how much the nanny and closeness to her meant to Tatyana; We note those purely Russian influences that will occupy the main place in the formation of Tatiana.
Tatyana perfectly understands the nanny’s common speech; this language is native to her. Her speech is figurative and at the same time clear; it also contains elements of popular vernacular: “I’m sick,” “what do I need,” “let him tell him”... etc.
Tatiana's letter to Onegin is a desperate act, but it is completely alien to the young girl's surroundings. Larina was guided only by feeling, but not by reason. The love letter does not contain coquetry or antics - Tatyana writes frankly, as her heart tells her.
I am writing to you - what more?
What more can I say?
And following these simple and touching words, in which one can hear trepidation and suppressed excitement, Tatyana, with ever-increasing delight, with excitement already openly pouring out in the lines of the letter, reveals this “trusting soul” of hers 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 its beginning. The girl is fully aware of her actions:
I'm cumming! It's scary to read...
But your honor is my guarantee,
I freeze with shame and fear...
And I boldly entrust myself to her...
The letter scene is over. Tatyana is waiting for an answer. Sparing details indicate her state, her immersion in the feeling that possessed her:
Second date with Onegin and his cold “reprimand”. But Tatyana does not stop loving.
Love's mad suffering
Haven't stopped worrying
Young soul...
Chapter V opens with a landscape of late but suddenly arrived winter. It is noteworthy that the purely Russian landscape of the winter estate and village is given through Tatyana’s perception of it.
Waking up early
Trees in winter silver,
Tatiana saw through the window
Forty merry ones in the yard
In the morning the whitewashed yard,
And softly carpeted 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:
Tatiana (Russian soul,
With her cold beauty
Without knowing why)
I loved Russian winter...
Poetic pictures of Christmas fortune-telling also connect Tatyana with the Russian, national, folk principle.
“...Tatiana, on the advice of the nanny” casts spells at night in the bathhouse.
Russian national traits come to the fore more and more clearly in the development of Tatiana's image.
In his portrayal of Tatyana, Pushkin completely abandons all irony, and in this sense, Tatyana is the only character in the novel for whom, from the moment of her appearance to the end, we feel only the author’s love and respect. The poet more than once calls Tatyana “sweetheart” and declares: “I love my dear Tatyana so much.”
Tatiana's dream is a fantastic combination of motifs from the nanny's fairy tales, pictures that arose in the play of Tatiana's own 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 (even in her dreams he appears strong to her, but also threatening, dangerous, scary), and at the same time - a premonition of future misfortunes.
All subsequent tragedies: Lensky's death, Evgeniy's departure, her sister's imminent marriage - deeply touched Tatiana's heart. The impressions gained from reading books are supplemented by harsh life lessons. Gradually, Tatyana gains life experience and seriously thinks about her destiny. The image of Tatyana is increasingly enriched as events unfold, but by nature Tatyana is still the same, and her “fiery and tender heart” is still given over to the feeling that has taken possession of her once and for all.
Visiting Onegin’s house, Tatyana’s “greedy soul” indulges in reading. Byron's poems and novels are added to the sentimental novels read earlier.
Reading Onegin's books is a new stage 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 and assumptions. In the last stanzas of Chapter VII, Tatyana is in Moscow society. She “... doesn’t feel well at the housewarming party,” she seems strange to the young ladies of the Moscow noble circle, she is still reserved and 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 fate has brought her. Depicting her appearance at a social event, the poet emphasizes both Tatyana’s aristocracy, in the high Pushkin sense of the word, and her simplicity.
She was leisurely
Without these little antics,
Not cold, not talkative,
No imitative ideas...
Without an insolent look for everyone,
Everything was quiet, it was just there...
Episodes of meetings with Onegin after many years of separation emphasize Tatiana's complete self-control. Larina turned into a society lady, into an “indifferent princess,” “the unapproachable goddess of the luxurious, royal Neva.” But her worldview has not changed, her principles and foundations remain the same. It was these principles that prevailed over Tatiana’s innermost feeling: over her love for Eugene. The whole essence of Larina’s character is revealed in her last monologue:
...You must,
I know: in your heart there is
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 lofty, 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 characters, he remembers “Tatyana’s sweet ideal.”