Question 13: Literary Creativity ("Onegin")

Text:

(Contains five fragments written from the perspective of different characters or in different styles, extending and reimagining Alexander Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin")

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Fragment 1

At the Larin estate, July stood as it does only in the heart of Russia—lazy, sultry, thick as honey. The air seemed frozen and trembled above the fields, smelling of linden blossoms, dusty roads, and sun-warmed nettles. All life had stilled in the midday haze, and only the persistent buzzing of bees and wasps, drawn to the sweet scent, disturbed the drowsy silence.

Beneath the canopy of old, sprawling linden trees, in that very spot in the garden where the shade was thickest, a sacred rite was being performed—jam was being made.

On a tripod, over barely smoldering coals, a huge copper basin puffed and sent up lazy bubbles, filled to the brim with a dark ruby, almost black mass of cherries. Around this altar of domestic comfort, two priestesses performed their unhurried service—the mistress and the nanny.

Praskovia Petrovna Larina, the mother, sat on a garden bench, straight-backed, full-figured, in a simple calico dress with the inevitable knitting needle in her hand, though now she wasn't knitting but merely adjusting with it the cap that had slipped from her graying head. She wasn't working—she was supervising. Her gaze, strict and proprietorial, followed the nanny's every movement, every bubble that burst on the jam's surface. Long gone were the days when she herself wept over a guardsman and read Richardson; now Praskovia Petrovna knew the value of sugar, understood the worth of salted saffron milk caps, and firmly believed that habit was the best substitute for happiness.

By the basin itself, on a low stool, Filipyevna the nanny bustled about. Her swarthy, wrinkled face, like a baked apple, was concentrated and serious. With a long wooden spoon with a charred end, she slowly stirred the bottom of the basin to prevent burning, while with her other hand, using a silver spoon, she skimmed the pink, hissing foam into a waiting saucer.

"Keep stirring, Filipyevna, get right to the bottom," came the mistress's even, serene voice. "The cherries are meaty this year, mustn't let them burn."

"I'm stirring, Praskovia Petrovna dear, stirring," the nanny mumbled in response without lifting her head. "It's not my first time. The hand remembers. Just the right amount of sugar, perfect. Berry to berry it'll be, won't fall apart."

They fell silent. One breathed measuredly, the other stirred just as measuredly. Their silence was comfortable, familiar, like old, worn-in shoes. They understood each other without words, these two women, one of whom was mistress and the other servant, but both were masters in this small, enclosed world.

"Have you heard, the Pustyakov son is getting married?" Praskovia Petrovna broke the silence, setting aside her needle. "To some Muscovite. They say she has no dowry."

"I heard, dear mistress, how could I not," the nanny responded readily, pausing her stirring for a moment. "A magpie brought it on her tail. Their coachman told our Anisim. Says she's a flighty girl, all ribbons and curls. No good for housekeeping. Our Olenka, thank the Lord, isn't like that."

Both women softened at the thought of Olga. Olga was understandable. Cheerful, rosy-cheeked, obedient. Her fiancé, Mr. Lensky—young, wealthy, and though he wrote poetry, was otherwise a gentle and accommodating gentleman. Here everything was proper, as in a church book.

"Our Olenka is well settled," the mistress pronounced with a satisfied sigh. "With her, one's soul is at peace."

"Truly so," the nanny confirmed, resuming her work. "But Tanechka..."

At the mention of the elder daughter, a barely perceptible pause hung in the air. Even the wasps' buzzing seemed to grow quieter. Praskovia Petrovna picked up her needle again, and the nanny stirred the jam a bit more slowly.

"What about Tanechka?" the mistress asked in a tone that was both question and assertion that no answer was really required.

"Well, nothing, dear mistress..." Filipyevna sighed. "She keeps to herself. Sits in her room, reads books. It's not proper for a girl. No friends, doesn't go out to the yard with the servants... When the foam comes off, Olenka runs over, laughing, dips her finger in the saucer, begs for sweets. But this one won't even look. As if we're brewing some bitter potion instead of cherry jam."

Praskovia Petrovna pursed her lips. She saw it all herself, knew everything. Her strange, silent, pensive daughter was for her as incomprehensible and slightly vexing a phenomenon as drought or cattle plague. Something one had to accept but could neither understand nor fix. Deep down, she might have remembered being like that herself, with a book in hand, but this memory was buried so deeply beneath layers of household cares and habits that it evoked nothing but mild irritation.

And so their days flowed, in labors and unhurried conversations, beneath the canopy of old lindens, in the sweet and viscous haze of jam and existence, in which both future love and future trouble were already ripening, like berries in the sun.

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Fragment 2

...three in the morning, maybe four. Sleep won't come... Old bones find no rest, everything aches, everything hurts. I lie on my pallet behind the stove, turning from side to side. The house is dead silent, the masters sleeping, the servants snoring in their corners. Only the floorboards creak now and then, as if the house itself is sighing heavily.

And then I hear—a rustle. Quiet, from the young mistress's bedchamber. Either she sighed or got out of bed. My old heart, which had been dozing, startled awake. Oh, this bodes ill. The child can't sleep. She's suffering.

Groaning, I lower my feet onto the cold floor. I throw my old shawl over my shoulders, shuffle in bare feet down the corridor. Darkness thick enough to poke your eye out, only in the far window the moon shines like holey cheese. The door to her room isn't locked, slightly ajar. I peek in...

Just as I thought.

My dove sits on the bed, unmade, in just her nightgown. Pale as linen, but her eyes burn like two embers. She stares out the window at that cursed moon and doesn't move. There's a chill in the room, the window wide open.

"What is it, Tanya, what's wrong with you?" I approach quietly so as not to frighten her.

She starts, turns around.

"Ah, nanny, I'm unwell."

Unwell... I see she's unwell. But this isn't an illness a doctor can cure. This sickness comes from the evil one and from those intoxicating books.

She shivered. "I'm bored, nanny, here... Open the window and sit with me."

Bored! At night! Lord, grant this child wisdom... The window's already wide open, the cold pouring into the room.

"What is it, Tanechka? What troubles you?" I sit on the edge of the bed, take her hand. The hand is ice-cold, but the palm burns. Fever, no doubt. "Let me cross you," I begin, but she pulls away.

"Ah, nanny, nanny, I'm in love."

I freeze. My hand hangs in the air. I cross myself, my lips silently whispering: "Lord have mercy and save us!"

In love... Such a word, a master's word, a book word. In our time we said it simpler—time to marry, and that's all. But what kind of illness is this? Not measles, not smallpox... yet the child is wasting away before my eyes. She won't say his name, she's afraid... but I already know. Ever since that... neighbor... was at dinner, she's been beside herself. She looked at him, couldn't breathe.

"My child, you're unwell," I say firmly, trying to hide the fear in my voice.

"Leave me. I'm in love," she whispers, and looks past me into the window's darkness.

We're silent. Only the wind howling in the chimney can be heard.

Then she turns to me, her eyes full of unlived tears. "Well then, tell me, nanny, about your old days. Were you in love then?"

Oh, my dear... What love?

"Come now, Tanya! In those years we never heard of love; my late mother-in-law would have driven me from this world otherwise." I sigh, remembering what barely was. "Yes, indeed! I was thirteen... They arranged my marriage. My Vanya was younger than me, and I... I cried for two weeks, was afraid. And with tears they led me to the altar. That's how they gave us away to a stranger's family..."

I speak, but I see—she's not listening. Her head has dropped to her chest, she's biting her finger. She looks but doesn't see. She listens but doesn't hear. She's entirely there, in her thoughts, in that letter of hers that I know she's already conceived.

Oh, there'll be trouble. My old heart senses it—trouble ahead. A maiden writing a letter... to a gentleman... unheard-of shame! He'll ruin her, he will. He'll toy with her and cast her aside, as they say. And then she'll have to live with it...

I fall silent. What's the use of talking? What's the use of an old, worn-out nanny contradicting a young lady who's read too many novels?

Quietly I rise, close the window a bit to keep at least some warmth in the room. I find her shawl on a chair, drape it over her thin, trembling shoulders. She doesn't even notice.

I look at her, at this lost child, and my chest aches with pity and helplessness.

Lord, save and protect Your servant Tatiana. Grant her wisdom, don't let her perish through girlish foolishness...

And just as quietly as I entered, I leave the room, leaving her alone—with the moon, with her dreams, and with the inevitable trouble already standing at her shoulder.

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Fragment 3

Mon Dieu, what cold! This cursed frost penetrates to the very bones, even through my finest frock coat. I stand knee-deep in this barbaric snow and feel my Parisian boots getting soaked. Quelle horreur! And all this for what? So that two Russian gentlemen with heads heavy with melancholy can shoot at each other by an abandoned mill. Un moulin! How primitive.

My name is Guillot. I am Mr. Onegin's servant. His valet. I'm responsible for his wardrobe, his coiffure, his morning chocolate. I'm not responsible for pistols and corpses. But today, in this icy wilderness, my master said: "Guillot, you will be my second."

Moi? Son valet? C'est ridicule! This violates all rules, all propriety! Where has it been seen that a servant witnesses a duel of honor? But this is Russia, where nothing is as it should be. Here there are bears, snow, and honor that's worth less than a pair of good gloves.

I look at them. My master, Evgeny, pale and bored as always, as if this weren't a duel but another tedious ball. And the other one... just a boy. Un poète, je crois. A poet, yes. With long hair and eyes full of some foolish, tragic determination. He's trembling, but I'm not sure if it's from cold or fear. Beside him is his second, Mr. Zaretsky, who looks like an old martinet relishing the moment. He's the only one here getting pleasure from this.

Et pourquoi? Why all this? I've heard fragments of conversation. Something about a young lady, a dance, some impertinence at a name-day party. Pour une femme! My God, in Paris they fight over women with swords, elegantly, to first blood, after which everyone goes to dinner. But here... here they take these horrible, heavy Lepage pistols to make holes in each other.

Mr. Zaretsky has measured the paces. Thirty-two paces. Trente-deux pas. This is practically a death sentence. I hand the pistol to my master. The metal is cold as a gravestone. My hands, accustomed to fine batiste and lace, seem clumsy. Mr. Onegin takes it with the same lazy grace with which he takes a glass of wine.

They converge. I see how tense the poet-boy is. He aims. But my master... he doesn't even look. He walks, calmly raising his pistol.

Mon Dieu, this is madness. Il est fou. They're all mad here.

A shot rings out.

A dry, crackling sound that seems indecent in this white, dead silence. It echoes through the frozen forest and fades.

I see the poet arch backward, his body jerking awkwardly. He drops his pistol in the snow. For a moment he freezes, hand pressed to his chest, with an expression of absolute, childlike surprise on his face. As if he can't believe that the game he started has turned out to be real.

And then he simply falls. Not picturesquely, not like on stage. But heavily, awkwardly, like a sack of flour dropped from a cart. Pouff. And that's all. A red stain begins to spread slowly, almost lazily, on his white shirt, on the white snow.

Silence.

I look at my master. All the boredom has fled his face. Now there's only horror. Pure, unconcealed horror. He stares at the body in the snow, and for the first time I see his hands trembling.

Mr. Zaretsky approaches the body, pronounces death with the businesslike air of a butcher.

And here I understand that my work is only beginning. Not the work of a valet. The work of a rescuer.

"Monsieur," I say quietly but insistently. "Monsieur, il faut partir. Vite." We must leave. Quickly.

He doesn't hear. He's looking at his handiwork. At this boy whose body is cooling in the snow as quickly as this cursed country cools.

I approach and touch his elbow. "Evgeny!" For the first time I call him by his first name.

He flinches, looks at me with empty eyes. And then we leave. We simply get in the sleigh and leave, abandoning this Zaretsky with his corpse in the middle of this white nothing. They'll leave him here like a dog that's been run over.

Ah, la Russie... pays sauvage. Savage country. I must convince my master to return to Paris. There it's cold only in the hearts of former lovers, not in the air that smells of gunpowder and fresh blood.

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Fragment 4

Evening had finally descended on the Odessa courtyard. Yellow light appeared in the windows. Sema had finally defeated the lock and now sat on the steps of his apartment, watching life with a weary expression. Aunt Rosa, Marina, Leva, and Fima had gathered at the bench under the acacia, forming something like an evening parliament.

Fima: (thoughtfully clicking his nail against an empty beer bottle) Leva, yesterday for lack of anything better to do, I was leafing through a book my daughter's studying in school. This... Pushkin fellow. About your colleague-philosopher, Onegin.

Leva: Fima, don't compare God's gift with scrambled eggs. I'm a philosopher of life, and that Onegin—he was a philosopher of stupidity and a good inheritance.

Aunt Rosa: (throwing up her hands so that the whole bench shook) Oy, don't mention this Pushkin with his unfortunates to me! This isn't tragedy, it's a three-hundred-page joke! I'll tell you now how it really was, without all those beautiful words.

Everyone in the courtyard, including the cat and Sema, prepared to listen. Aunt Rosa was the best storyteller in Moldavanka.

Aunt Rosa: So listen here. Once upon a time in the capital lived a boy, Zhenya. The boy was bored because he had everything, and when a person has everything, he lacks only one thing—problems. And then, for his happiness, his uncle dies in the countryside and leaves him a business—an estate! Zhenya arrives, and he's even more bored there, because in the countryside the only entertainment is flies and neighbors.

Marina: (knowledgeably) And neighbors are worse than flies. A fly just buzzes, but a neighbor also asks why you're still not married.

Aunt Rosa: Golden words, Marinochka! And so, among the neighbors—a respectable family. Mother, father, and two daughters of marriageable age. One, Olya, is a normal girl, rosy, cheerful. The other, Tanya—the opposite. Doesn't talk, doesn't laugh, just reads books and stares at the moon. Already a problem! If I were her mother, I would have burned those books long ago and sent her to the Privoz market to sell bull's-eyes, so she could see real life!

Leva: Rosa Markovna, you're wrong. A person has the right to melancholy. It's the only luxury left to poor Jews.

Aunt Rosa: Leva, don't make that smart face at me! This Tanya fell in love with our Zhenya at first sight. And what does this idiot do? She writes him a letter! First! A girl writes to a man! Sema, are you hearing this?!

Sema: (from the doorway) I hear, Mama. If a girl wrote me a letter, I'd think it was a summons from the draft board.

Aunt Rosa: And you'd be right! And this Zhenya, instead of going to her mother and saying: "Madame, your daughter is doing foolish things, marry her off quickly to some decent person," he lectures her! In the garden! He spent half an hour telling her he wasn't made for happiness!

Fima: So what, was he made for unhappiness? Well, unhappiness could have been arranged much faster.

Aunt Rosa: Exactly! And he did arrange it! He comes to this Tanya's name-day party, angry as a dog, and to get revenge on his poet-friend, this Lensky, he dances all evening with his fiancée, with Olya.

Marina: Oh, I know such men! It's called "making a goat's face." My first husband did that.

Aunt Rosa: And what did you do with him?

Marina: Divorced him. And I did right. But this poet, Lensky, instead of giving Onegin a punch in his impudent face and going home to drink tea, he challenges him to a duel!

Leva: And this, I'll tell you, is a classic example of when a person has more pride than brains. Two roosters couldn't share a hen that neither of them needed.

Fima: And what's the result of this business?

Aunt Rosa: What result?! The result—one corpse! This idiot Onegin killed this idiot Lensky! And left. And Tanya was left to suffer. Then, thank God, her mother got tired of it, they took her to Moscow, found her a decent, adult man—a general!—and married her off. That's it! End of story! The girl is settled, everyone's happy!

Marina: So that's a good ending!

Aunt Rosa: I thought so too! But then, two years later, this Zhenya of ours returns. He sees Tanya—and she's no longer a tearful fool from the countryside, but an important lady, a general's wife! And what do you think? He falls in love with her!

The whole courtyard emits a groan—a mixture of laughter and indignation.

Fima: So he didn't need just Tanya, but Tanya plus a general? That's a completely different kettle of fish.

Aunt Rosa: Of course! And he starts writing her letters! Now he does! And she, my clever one, my beauty, what does she tell him? She tells him: "Zhenya, the train has left! I, of course, still love you a little, but I'm married to a decent man, and I'm not going to trade a general for you, young man, with your holes in your pockets and in your head!"

Leva: That is, she explained to him that free cheese only exists in the mousetrap he just escaped from.

Aunt Rosa: Exactly! And he was left holding the bag! That's your whole great Russian literature!

She triumphantly surveys her audience. Everyone silently digests what they've heard.

Sema: (quietly) Poor Lensky...

Aunt Rosa: (turning to him) What?! Why is he poor?

Sema: Because he was the only one in this whole story who never found out what idiots all the others were.

Aunt Rosa thinks for a second, then waves her hand.

Aunt Rosa: Oy vey, don't confuse me! Fima, go home already, and Marina and I will go eat fish. So at least something in this world has a happy ending!

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Fragment 5

The sun was declining toward sunset, painting the tops of the old lindens in the Larin garden with molten gold. The air, sultry and lazy all day, had now become tender and full of evening coolness; it smelled of mown grass, river dampness, and late roses, whose fragrance grew thicker in the gathering dusk. In the farthest gazebo, entwined with wild grape, they sat together.

Vladimir, as befitted his ardent soul, was reading poetry. His own, of course. His voice, still breaking with youth but full of sincere feeling, trembled and strengthened, describing the torments of unrequited love, the longing of the spirit, and the inevitability of fate. He was beautiful in this moment, with burning eyes, dark curls tousled by the wind, and a hand resting tragically on the manuscript lying on his knees. He was the hero of his own novel.

Olga listened. She always listened. She sat with downcast cornflower-blue eyes, only occasionally raising her lashes to smile at him encouragingly. She knew he needed this. She was a kind and simple soul, and if her Vladimir wanted to suffer on paper, she was ready to serve him as a quiet, benevolent audience. But today something was different.

While he read about "pale cheeks" and "death's kiss," she looked not at him but at his lips. Living, childishly full, now formed for pronouncing pathetic lines. And in her pretty head, where thoughts of the sublime so rarely lingered, a thought suddenly arose—exceedingly simple and clear.

Lord, what a boy he still is! she thought without any irony, with only sudden, sharp tenderness. He writes about passions he doesn't know, about storms he hasn't felt. He loves not me but the words he says about me. But I... I'm here. Real. And I love him—the real him. This one, funny, enthusiastic, with an ink stain on his finger.

Lensky finished reading the last quatrain. Silence fell, filled only with the chirping of crickets and expectation. He raised to her his gaze full of delight and pleading, expecting praise, tears, anything that would confirm his talent.

And Olga said not a word.

Instead, moved by an impulse as natural as breathing, she leaned forward slightly. She took his hand, in which he still clutched his precious manuscript, and gently took away the written sheet, placing it on the bench. Vladimir froze in bewilderment. And she, not letting him recover, placed both her palms on his cheeks, feeling under her fingers the surprised tremor of his skin, and looked directly into his eyes.

And then, before he could ask, before he could turn back into a poet, she kissed him.

At first it was just a light, almost childlike touch. But Lensky, instead of pulling away or responding with equally timid affection, froze as if struck by lightning. He didn't know what to do. All his experience, gleaned from novels, all his theory of feelings crumbled to dust before this simple, living warmth.

And then Olga, sensing his confusion, did what wasn't written in any "moral tale." Her lips, hitherto closed, parted slightly, and she, with tender, unprecedented boldness, touched his lips with her tongue. Timidly, questioningly, and then, meeting no resistance, a bit more insistently.

For Vladimir, in this moment, the world collapsed.

Everything he knew, everything he believed in—Schiller's poetry, Kant's teaching, the hazy raptures of his Göttingen soul—all of it compressed into one tiny, meaningless point and disappeared. Only this remained. This incredible, stunning, maddening sensation. This wasn't a symbol, not a metaphor, not a "monument to dreaming." This was life. Real, hot, moist, demanding. He felt fire run through his entire body from fingertips to hair roots, washing away, burning to ashes all his affected melancholy, all his bookish sadness.

Olga pulled back as suddenly as she had approached. Her cheeks were ablaze, but in her eyes there was neither shame nor embarrassment. Laughter danced in them.

"There, my poet," she whispered, and in her voice sounded an unfamiliar, slightly mocking tenderness. "That's what you should write poems about."

He was silent, looking at her with new eyes. For the first time he saw not his ideal, not the "rosy color of cheeks," not a muse for his elegies. He saw a woman. Living, warm, bold, and infinitely desirable.

And in this very moment, in this sleeping gazebo, the poet Lensky, author of high-flown verses, died. And Vladimir was born—a man who had just learned what real love is.

In that second, the duel that might have happened evaporated. The jealousy that might have poisoned his heart died without being born. He suddenly didn't care at all with whom his Olga would dance at the name-day party. Because now he knew what no one else knew, and first of all—Olga herself. She belonged to him not in verses, not in dreams, but truly. And this simple, deafening knowledge was enough to despise all worldly conventions and foolish offenses.

He took her hand, but not to play with a curl. He brought it to his lips and kissed it—not the edge of her dress, but the warm, living skin. And in this kiss there was more truth than in all his poems combined.

They were saved. And even Pushkin, watching them with a sly smile from somewhere in eternity, would seemingly have been glad of this.