The social position of Onegin and Lena quotes. What do Onegin and Lensky have in common

They met, wave and stone,

Poems and prose, ice and fire

Not so different among themselves.

A.S. Pushkin, "E.O."

Pushkin - great poet and a writer of the 19th century. He enriched Russian literature with many wonderful works. The most important work of Pushkin was his novel "E.O." rightly considered "an encyclopedia of Russian life." The author reflected in it the life of the noble youth of the 19th century, showed the peculiarities of Russia at that time.

The central figures of the novel are two completely different but at the same time similar heroes - Eugene Onegin and Vladimir Lensky. Onegin receives a typical aristocratic education. Pushkin writes: "First, Madame followed him, then Monsieur changed her." he also received the knowledge that was necessary for him in a secular society. Pushkin characterizes Eugene as follows:

He is in French completely

I could express myself and write

Easily danced the mazurka

And bowed at ease;

What is more to you? The light decided

That he is smart and very nice.

In his mind, Onegin is much higher than his peers. He knew a little classical literature, had an idea about Adam Smith, read Byron, but, nevertheless, all these hobbies do not awaken in Eugene's soul romantic, fiery feelings, like Lensky. Eugene spends his best years, like most young people of his circle, at balls, theaters, love affairs. Very soon he begins to understand that this life is empty, that there is nothing behind the "external tinsel", boredom, slander, envy reign in the world , people spend their inner strength on trifles, meaninglessly wasting their lives. A harsh, chilled mind and "supersaturation with the pleasures of the light" led to Onegin losing interest in life, he falls into a deep blues:

The blues were waiting for him on guard,

And she ran after him,

Like a shadow or a faithful wife.

Out of boredom, Eugene tries to look for the meaning of life in some kind of activity: he reads a lot, tries to write, but these attempts are unsuccessful. In the village where Eugene goes to get his inheritance, he makes another attempt to occupy himself with something:

Yarem he is an old corvee

Replaced the rent with a light one;

And the slave blessed fate.

But he sulked in his corner,

Seeing this terrible harm,

His calculating neighbor ...

But aversion to work, the habit of freedom and peace, lack of will and unwillingness to work led to the fact that Onegin became a real egoist, thinking only about himself, about his desires and pleasures, unable to pay attention to the feelings, interests and suffering of people, capable of easy to offend, offend, cause grief to a person, without even noticing it. However, Evgeny is not a narcissistic egoist, but, as V.G. Belinsky said, “a suffering egoist.” He understands that he is superfluous in this meaningless society, but how neither tries, cannot completely free himself from the influence of light. Onegin was not satisfied with an empty, meaningless life. But he did not have enough strength, nor the desire to break with this life, he continues to be just as passive and indifferent to everyone and to everything except his own calmness. Having received a challenge to a duel, perfectly realizing his wrongness and the senselessness of this fight, Onegin nevertheless accepts the challenge and kills his best friend Vladimir Lensky. Lensky's murder turned Onegin's life upside down. He is no longer able to live in those places where everything reminded of him terrible crime, "where a bloody shadow appeared to him every day." And, tormented by remorse, Onegin rushes about the world. But, despite the cruelty, this test helped Eugene to change internally, to become more responsive to the feelings of the people around him, his heart opens to love. But here too Onegin expects the collapse of all his hopes for happiness His unhappiness is the payback for his wasted life.

In the novel, in contrast to Onegin, the image of Vladimir Lensky is given. Lensky plays a significant role in comprehending the character of Onegin. Lensky is a nobleman, in age he is younger than Onegin. He was educated in Germany:

He's from foggy Germany

Brought fruits of scholarship,

The spirit is ardent and rather strange ...

The spiritual world of Lensky is the complete opposite of Onegin's worldview. Lensky is a "admirer of Kant and a poet," a hopeless romantic who lives in a world of beautiful dreams and dreams. Feelings rule over his mind, he believes in sincere and pure love, in friendship, in the decency of people. Lensky looks at life through rose-colored glasses, he naively finds his soul mate in Olga, who is the most ordinary empty girl who quickly forgot the one who died in a duel groom.

What can such seemingly different people have in common? They both belong to the nobility, both are smart, educated, both despise empty social life, and both stand much higher in internal development than the people around them. Lensky's romantic soul, not spoiled. life, looking for beauty everywhere. Pushkin writes about Lensky: "He was an ignoramus with his dear heart, he cherished hope, and the world had a new shine and noise." irony. Pushkin writes: "And I thought it was foolish for me to interfere with his momentary bliss, and without me the time will come, even if he lives and believes in the world to perfection. Forgive the fever of youth and youthful fever and youthful delirium." For Lensky, friendship is an urgent need, Onegin is friends "for the sake of boredom", although in his own way he is attached to Lensky. But, contrary to friendly feelings, Onegin is forced to kill Lensky. Despising the light, he still values ​​his opinion, fearing ridicule and reproach for cowardice. Because of a false sense of honor, he destroys an innocent soul. Who knows how the fate of Lensky would have developed if he had remained alive. Perhaps he would have become a Decembrist, and maybe just a common man. The author himself believed that

In many ways, he would have changed

Used to part with the muses, get married,

In the village, happy and horned,

Would wear a quilted robe.

I think Lensky's death is quite logical, he died, as his romanticism would have died with time. According to A.I. Herzen, Lensky was only capable of quickly flaring up and fading away. And even if Onegin had not killed him, most likely, an ordinary life awaited Lensky in the future, which would cool his ardor and turn him into a simple landowner who

Drank, ate, missed, got fat, sickly,

And finally in my bed

B died in the midst of children,

Crying women and doctors.

I think that Onegin was nevertheless inwardly deeper than Lensky. Dissatisfaction with life and oneself, first of all, can only be experienced by deep and thinking people. Throughout the whole novel I feel only pity for Eugene, because the realization of mistakes comes to him too late. I think Onegin is just a victim of a soulless society, from half the influence which Eugene could not get out.

Pushkin portrayed reality exactly as it was at that time, showed that in such a society rotting from the inside, only mediocre people can be happy, whose interests are small and limited. The same sublime people like Onegin and Lensky are unhappy in this life. They or perish. like Lensky, or continue to live with a devastated soul like Onegin. The wealth and high position in society that they inherited do not make their life easier and do not make them happy. Society and upbringing do not give them the opportunity for personal happiness, the realization of mistakes comes to them too late. But these mistakes cannot be blamed on the heroes themselves. They were made so by society. The environment that surrounded them from birth shaped their characters. According to Pushkin, it was the environment that made these beautiful, intelligent and noble people unhappy in their essence and in their inclinations.

Having comprehensively introduced the reader to Eugene Onegin, Pushkin introduces the novel of the second protagonist, Vladimir Lensky, and immediately gives both of them an accurate description:
They got along. Wave and stone
Poems and prose, ice and fire
Not so different among themselves.
And despite this dissimilarity, Onegin and Lensky nevertheless have something in common, making them akin and bringing them closer together. It is this general that attracts Pushkin, helping to create the world he needs around the heroes. They will become for the poet those characters, based on which he will build his concept thinking man era.
From the first chapter, the reader learns about Onegin's upbringing, education, interests, daily routine, and the impression made on society by the young hero. What is the main point in this story about Onegin?
Probably what made the hero stand out from his midst. In an era when poets and philosophers were the rulers of thoughts, Onegin clearly gravitates towards the exact sciences, to the political economy of Adam Smith, which, by the way, will soon try to apply in his village life: “He replaced the old corvée with a light one with a yarem; and the slave blessed fate. " However, the most important thing in this story about the hero turns out to be the author's confessions: I liked his features,
Unwitting devotion to dreams
Inimitable oddity
And a sharp, chilled mind.
Pushkin does not explain what this "inimitable strangeness" consists of, but, mentioned by the author in passing in the first chapter, it will be echoed later in the eighth chapter of the novel.
Much less has been said about Lenskoye. It is safe to assume that his early childhood was very similar to Onegin's childhood, with the only difference that he was sent to study in Europe, from where he comes to the village.
... Handsome, in full bloom of years,
Kant's admirer and poet,
He's from foggy Germany
Brought fruits of scholarship:
Freedom dreams
The spirit is fiery and rather strange
Always a rave speech
And black curls up to the shoulders.
Brought up “under the skies of Schiller and Goethe,” Lensky is far from the debauchery of the world so familiar to Onegin, and therefore believes in pure love and lofty ideals. Onegin is condescending frank confessions friend: "Forgive the fever of young years and youthful fever and youthful delirium."
Difference of temperaments and mental interests made them passionate debaters, interesting interlocutors, but at the same time they became strangers to all village neighbors, with their conversations "about haymaking, about wine, about a kennel, about their relatives." The skeptic Onegin and the romantic Lensky are incomprehensible to their neighbors. They did not fit into the melancholy and monotony of the usual village life.
The question naturally arises: what is more between the heroes of the novel - attraction or repulsion? Perhaps both are essential. Of course, Onegin and Lensky are antipodes, but they are not antagonists, like many other traditional pairs of Russian literature: Chatsky and Molchalin, Pechorin and Grushnitsky, Grinev and Shvabrin, Bazarov and Kirsanov.
Perhaps the main artistic discovery of Pushkin was the connection in the plot conflict of the novel not of a hero and a villain, but of young heroes who simply embodied the thoughts and feelings of a certain historical era... The author does not confront them in an acute conflict, but develops two lines of the novel running in parallel, differing from one another no less than the characters of the main characters.
Pushkin's contemporaries considered the duel of Onegin and Lensky to be insufficiently motivated. In this regard, Yuri Tynyanov draws attention to the character traits of the prototype of Lensky - the same transcendental dreamer Kuchelbecker - and argues that for Pushkin these motivations were sufficient, although they remained outside the work.
The duel between Onegin and Lensky is a turning point, the culmination of the novel. For Lensky, the duel ends in death, for Onegin it becomes the beginning of a new life. Having embarked on a journey, leaving the village, Petersburg and the world, Onegin seeks not just new impressions, but a new meaning of life, he is looking for himself.
The reader will not know anything about this page of his biography. Pushkin deliberately took Onegin's Journey outside the novel. The hero returns to the world as a familiar stranger, whom those around him cannot figure out, and therefore they are in a hurry to condemn him for his dissimilarity from the secular crowd.
Now Onegin is not up to the empty light, and therefore strange, just as Griboyedov's Chatsky was strange, sadly exclaiming: “I am strange, and not strange who? The one who looks like all fools? " These strange heroes do not find a place for themselves in life.
The poet Pushkin, of course, feels sorry for the poet Vladimir Lensky, who, "perhaps ... for the good of the world, or at least for glory, was born." But he is also sorry for Eugene Onegin, who “is sad to think that youth was given to us in vain”. Very different, almost opposite Onegin and Lensky are united by the author's compassion for their failed lives, for their lost hopes.
These two heroes of Pushkin awakened thought, a living feeling with their rejection of generally accepted norms, with a clear understanding that they did not want what the proud mediocrity was so content with.

"Eugene Onegin" is a great work of Pushkin, which still does not lose its relevance. VG Belinsky believed that this novel allows one to learn all the subtleties of Russian reality, and this is true. Indeed, the work perfectly reflects 19th century and the people who lived then. But what were the poet's contemporaries? This can be seen on the example of Eugene and Vladimir, whom Pushkin sincerely loved. Lensky and Onegin are of interest to many schoolchildren and even readers of the novel. They have quite a lot of similarities and differences, they are like two sides of the same personality ... As sooner or later adolescence ends, as experience comes to replace it, and with it conformism, death must surely overtake the young dreamer.

Onegin's characteristic

Eugene Onegin was raised from childhood as a typical representative of high society. It cannot be said that he was loaded with studies, but he mastered the basics of the sciences, which an aristocrat must certainly understand.

From an early age, Eugene was much smarter than other children. He knew a little about classical literature, loved Byron, read Adam Smith in his spare time, however, he did not have any dreaminess or emotionality. This is how he differs from Lensky. Maybe then he looks like Chatsky? Also not, since the hero of Griboyedov was interested in politics, in contrast to him.

Eugene was distinguished by an unusually cold and sober mind, and he could no longer enjoy anything, because he was tired of everything for a long time. As a result, as might be expected, he became completely disgusted with life and became depressed. To many, the friendship between Lensky and Onegin may seem surprising and strange, well, perhaps it is.

The search for the meaning of life, negative qualities of Onegin

Melancholy pushed Eugene to search for some meaning, he wondered what to do with himself. He began to devote a lot of time to reading, he also tried to write his own own work, however, he did not succeed.

The aristocratic way of life developed in Eugene not best qualities- dislike for work, laziness, unwillingness to take on any obligations and pronounced, one might even say, ostentatious egocentrism.

Characteristic of Lensky

Vladimir is the opposite of Onegin, he personifies another aristocratic type. Surprisingly, reading about him makes it easier for us to understand the nuances of Evgeny's personality. Vladimir is a nobleman, he is 18 years old, and Onegin is 24. Lensky studied in Germany for some time. In which city it is not specified. Comparative characteristics Lensky and Onegin will be useful to those who want to better understand the work.

Vladimir is particularly romantic and dreamy, he loves Kant and writes poetry. He lives not with his mind, but with his heart: he believes in sincere feelings, in friendship, in humanity. It seems that in the whole world there is no other such idealist. He takes up his free time with daydreams and fantasies. Vladimir looks at the world through soon he falls in love with Olga and for some reason believes that she is close to him like no one else, although this girl is not at all wealthy inner peace and spirituality.

The similarities and differences of the main characters

What unites Lensky and Onegin? Probably only that they are both aristocrats, have received a good education, are distinguished by intelligence and, undoubtedly, stand out from the crowd around them. Vladimir sees beauty everywhere. And for Eugene this is a passed stage, he understands that people are far from perfect, prone to hypocrisy and deeply vicious. The author writes that Vladimir was somewhat naive, always hoped for the best, he was attracted by life in its variegated colors. His friend Eugene Onegin treated him condescendingly. Lensky's characterization may make some readers smile. Eugene listened to Vladimir's outpourings, grinning ironically, but at the same time tried not to show his slight contempt, believing that it was not worth persuading him in anything, anyway, sooner or later he would understand that he was wrong. In the meantime, let this crazy romantic enjoy the imaginary perfection of the surrounding reality, because such a worldview is typical for many young people.

For Vladimir, friendship is of great importance, and Eugene communicates with him only because he is bored, although he has some sympathy for him. Lensky, who does not understand anything in life, is a typical representative of aristocratic youth, although there were also many like Onegin. Perhaps some will recognize themselves in the heroes of Pushkin. The comparative characteristic of Lensky and Onegin is obligatory for such people to read, perhaps they will take something new from it for themselves.

The author, noting the dissimilarity of two friends, at the same time, emphasizes that they also have some common personal qualities... He writes that fire and ice, prose and poetry, stone and water do not have so many differences. How to understand this sentence? Most likely, Pushkin means that Eugene and Vladimir are united by selfishness, complacency and self-admiration. This phrase of the writer, perhaps, will make Lensky more understandable for some.

What do Pushkin and Onegin have in common?

Yet Onegin is much more interesting and smarter than his friend. His sober mind evokes much more sympathy than Vladimir's naive dreaminess, of which not a trace would soon remain, as is the case with flowers in the fall. Dissatisfaction with the surrounding reality is most often characteristic of deep personalities. Besides, the author is closer to Eugene, and he compares himself to him. He writes that he was angry, and his hero was gloomy, that once they were happy about life, but soon they got tired of everything, and they plunged into despondency. The comparative characterization of Lensky and Onegin is, of course, interesting, but it is also curious to know the similarities and differences in the characters of Pushkin and Eugene.

Yearning

The author openly says that the personality of the protagonist is to his liking, one way or another he notes this throughout the novel. Onegin's torment is strong enough. He even regrets that he is still alive and young, because he does not receive pleasure from this at all, but only suffers. How much more will he have to suffer, how long will his heart beat? Nothing seduces him, he only yearns ...

The writer awarded Eugene with many qualities that would later appear in the heroes of Lermontov, Herzen, Turgenev, Goncharov and other authors. And dreamers like Vladimir are completely unadapted to life: some put up with it, while others die.

Ludicrous conflict

How insignificant and even strange is the conflict between Lensky and Onegin. And the reader would like to hope: everything will end well, comrades will forget about this insignificant quarrel, Vladimir will marry his beloved ... But the duel will still happen, someone must die. But who? Even the most inattentive reader understands: Vladimir will die. The author unobtrusively prepared us for this conclusion. Comparison of Onegin and Lensky is of interest to many, but the duel raises many more questions.

The true reason for the fight

An absurd conflict is just a pretext for a duel, and the reason for it does not lie on the surface. To this quarrel is mingled a destructive force that no one can resist, - public opinion.

Eugene could go to Vladimir, talk to him heart to heart, make peace - there is still time ... But no, this is impossible!

Pushkin calls public opinion our idol and writes that the world rests on it. This is the reason for the duel between Lensky and Onegin.

Eugene had to kill Vladimir. He looks down on society, but still he is not indifferent to what people think of him, he is afraid of ridicule and contemptuous attitude. He values ​​his honor and therefore is forced to kill his friend. Who knows what would have happened to Vladimir in the future if he had not died ... Maybe he would have participated in December uprising, and perhaps would lead a simple, unremarkable life.

A harmless trick that turned into a tragedy

What really happened? Eugene simply decided to take revenge on Vladimir for persuading him to go to the ball, where everyone he despised so much gathered. For Onegin, this is just a harmless trick, but Lensky perceives it in a completely different way. His pink dreams are destroyed - he considered it cheating, although, of course, this is a wild exaggeration. And Vladimir decided that a duel in this situation is mandatory, there is no other way out. Lensky in the novel "Eugene Onegin" sometimes may not seem quite a reasonable person, and this is the tragedy that his excessive emotionality led to. If Vladimir had been even a little more restrained, nothing like this would have happened. This should be a lesson for all readers: you need to listen to the voice of reason, and not act under the influence of emotions.