What does Tatyana's letter say, how old she was, and who was killed by Pushkin in the person of Lensky

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Pushkin published his novel in verse almost two hundred years ago, but it is still becoming the subject of heated discussions, reflections, and interpretations. To excite bloggers with the assumption that Tatyana was 13 years old is as easy as news from the personal life of some movie star. Tatiana's letter - an example of vulgarity or trepidation? Who could be Tatyana's husband? Is Onegin a heartless type or a decent person? These questions are not tormented by art critics - ordinary people who, with relief, postponed the novel even at school. And then they grew up - and suddenly thought.

Tatyana's age

For several years, a text has been circulating on social networks proving that at the time of falling in love with Onegin, Tatyana was 13 years old. The author's line of reasoning is interesting, but it is refuted by two circumstances. Firstly, Tatyana and her younger sister Olga began to be published. And it's not easy to deduce - adult men are allowed to dance with them. At the time of Pushkin, girls began to attend balls "in an adult way" at the age of 16-17, although it was not too shameful to fall in love with a girl younger than her age - but the man in love could not see each other at balls and dance with her. Remember that the first ball of Natasha Rostova - also the beginning of the 19th century - falls on her 16 years!

Secondly, in a letter to Vyazemsky, Pushkin himself mentions that Tatiana is 17. And you cannot argue with the author. That is, the poet, of course, may not track the voice of his unconscious in some moments, but a plan is a plan. Tatyana is conceived by a girl of older adolescence and behaves, I must say, quite according to her years.

By the way, Pushkin himself condemned the hunt of the ladies' men of the previous generation for girls 13-14 years old. In this respect, he was in the progressive part of Russian society.

Tatyana's letter

At school lessons, it is customary to interpret Tatyana's first love letter as an example of pure, reverent, high recognition. Without a doubt, there is a pure and quivering feeling behind it. But the letter itself is conceived by the author as an example of bad taste, it is stuffed with templates from French novels. Perhaps Tatiana herself is not aware of what her chosen formulations are talking about - and they, in fact, are not just about dating and recognition of feelings, but about the readiness to "fall", to give up her virginity.

Fortunately, Onegin perfectly understands the difference between the romantic wording of the letter and Tanya's true intentions, he reads her (offensive, I suppose, at that age) a lecture on safety, and … After that, he gives the girl access to his extensive library. If at first a girl reads books only because her lover read them, then in the end reading helps her to seriously grow above herself. Pushkin clearly shows that Tanya's act, the vulgarity of her letter is not at all a consequence of the vulgarity of nature. The usual lack of impressions, food for the mind, education.

In addition, Tatyana's letter helps to assess how much she has grown as a person by the end of the novel. From clichéd speech to simple, free phrases, followed by independence of thought.

Character prototypes

Although Pushkin is famous as a womanizer and, in the spirit of his time, chose disparaging language when talking about women with other men, he showed sincere friendliness in dealing with living women. I was worried about an acquaintance who almost died - the birth lasted several days. He considered his wife not only beautiful, but also a moral and intelligent woman (unlike most of Pushkin's admirers, among whom insults to Natalya Pushkina became the norm at some point). He highly appreciated the heroism of the cavalier girl Nadezhda Durova and defended her from the attacks of bigots. Among the disgusting features of the landowner Troyekurov, he prescribed the rape of peasant women - the censorship did not allow it. Although, even if she had let this pass, many landowners would not have understood at all why such a treatment of a serf woman, a girl, is something bad. Although at the time of writing Onegin, the poet was still full of prejudices, later, after reading the notes of Ekaterina Dashkova, he began to defend the woman's right to the most ordinary, normal, human mind.

It is quite possible that Tatyana Larina was not just some kind of embodied ideal, and her prototype is worth looking for among the acquaintances of Alexander Sergeevich. But this is not so easy to do. After all, Tanya is not only a certain appearance (pale, dark-haired, not very beautiful) and a biography (she was born and raised in the village, married a general). Attention is drawn to her closed, frankly strange character for those around her. Perhaps she simply does not fit into her society too much, but our contemporary can also offer autistic character traits. She took pride in people, did not understand very simple things, gravitated to books more than to any other amusement.

In any case, many girls are seen as prototypes of the heroine. Including - Pushkin's sister Olga! She looked exactly as the poet describes Tanya. But besides, brother and sister were very close friends … Even when Olga secretly married, the first to whom she told about it - and asked to tell her parents - was brother Alexander. By the way, Olga was also a writer, and her son highly appreciated at least the historical value of her notes, but once she was carried away by spiritualism and, as if taught by the spirit of her deceased brother, burned almost all of her writings.

Onegin, no doubt, is in many ways similar to his creator and to his friend Peter Chaadaev. The prototype of Lensky is called the friend of the youth of the poet Küchelbecker. And Tatyana Larina's husband is most likely one of the young generals of 1812. And, although Tatiana finds him "fat", he is hardly much older than her. Judging by the drafts, Tatyana's husband is generally the same age as Onegin. Nevertheless, starting with Dostoevsky, many readers see him as an old man - this is a very popular misconception.

Read also about who were the prototypes of famous literary characters - Musketeers, the most famous detective and not only them.