45 pages • 1 hour read
Alexander PushkinEugene Onegin
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1832A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
At the end of Tatyana’s name day party, Onegin leaves for home. He reflects on the way such events bore him and feels his “old ennui” (6.1.3) return. Meanwhile, Tatyana stays up while her family is asleep. She ruminates on the distressing party. The next day, Onegin is visited by a man named Zaretsky. In the community, Zaretsky has a reputation for being something of a reformed “rowdy clown” (6.4.7) and a big fan of duels. He brings a note to Onegin from Lensky. In the note, Lensky challenges Onegin to a duel. Onegin feels honor bound to accept, but, when he thinks about his actions with Olga and his friendship with Lensky, he feels very guilty and believes that he was “at fault” (6.10.4).
Lensky worries that Onegin would not take him seriously, but he is pleased when Onegin accepts his challenge. Lensky does not want to see Olga before he duels Onegin, as he is convinced that she was playing with his affections for her at the party. However, he is overcome by his passion. He feels the need to see Olga so he visits the Larin house. When he sees Olga, his fears abandon him. She looks at him with a sincere and honest expression in her eyes that assures him that she loves him. He feels his “jealousy and rage” (6.14.5) depart him, feeling foolish that he became so emotional. Nevertheless, he resolves to protect Olga from Onegin’s advances. That evening, he leaves the Larin house without telling Olga about the duel that is set to take place the following day.
Lensky returns home. He reads a book of poetry by Friedrich Schiller and his mind is filled with passionate thoughts about Olga. He feels inspired to write a poem; in the poem, he regrets how time passes so quickly, especially with the threat of his death now only hours away. If he dies, he writes, he hopes that Olga will come to mourn at his “untimely grave” (6.22.10). The next day, Lensky wakes up at his writing desk. He travels to the place where he and Onegin have agreed to host the duel. They will duel at a mill and Zaretsky will act as Lensky’s second. Onegin arrives late. He has not arranged for a proper second and plans to use his servant instead. Zaretsky makes arrangements for the duel to begin. Onegin and Lensky take their pistols, approach the line, and prepare to fire. They both shoot: Lensky misses and Onegin hits Lensky.
Onegin immediately rushes to his “stricken” (6.31.8) friend. He is overcome with despair. The narrator reflects on the tragedy of the untimely end to such a promising life. Lensky dies and they bury him nearby, beneath two pines. The narrator takes a moment to reflect on his own youth. Now nearing the age of 30, he hopes that his experiences of love and romance can keep him young.
Chapter 7 Summary
The snows melt and spring arrives. Despite spring being the season of rebirth, the narrator is still thinking about the loss of Lensky. He cannot be reborn. Onegin has deserted his house, while Tatyana and Olga lay flowers at the grave of the “young poet” (7.6.14). Shortly after Lensky’s death, Olga married a military officer. She left the family home to be with him. Tatyana, left alone, became sad. Still thinking about Onegin, she visits his empty house in the middle of the night. She enters with the servants’ permission and even returns the next day to explore his library. As she examines Onegin’s books, she hopes that his reading tastes might explain his character to her. She notices the many notes Onegin has added to the margins of his books. These notes reveal a different side of “Onegin’s soul” (7.23.12) to her, to the point where she begins to wonder whether Onegin is even a real person. To her, he seems like an “empty phantom” (7.24.10) or an amalgamation of many different literary heroes that have been taken from these books.
Tatyana returns home. She is displeased by her mother’s plans to move to Moscow for the winter with the intent of finding a suitable man to marry Tatyana. Tatyana spends her time wandering through natural landscapes, returning to the nature she once loved before she knew Onegin. When winter arrives, she leaves for Moscow. She stays with an aunt and attends many social events. Despite the lavish nature of her life, she misses books and nature. The gossiping socialites whom she meets at parties seem alien to her, and she struggles to keep up with the energetic dances, in which she “takes no part” (7.47.10). At one dance, she steps to the side of the dance floor and notices an older general glancing in her direction.
Chapters 6-7 Analysis
Tatyana’s name day party is a disaster. As he rides home, Onegin indulges in a moment of self-reflection. He regrets flirting with Olga and realizes that he acted more out of spite toward Lensky than any true insult on his behalf. The next day, Lensky wakes up and still feels furious. He challenges Onegin to a duel. This challenge is ironic, as the two men built their friendship on a common rejection of social expectations. The duel is a product of the same social etiquette they claim to hate, allowing the men of Russian elite society to vent their violent urges in a socially acceptable manner. Rather than reject social convention, Lensky turns to it in a moment of passion. Similarly, Onegin feels bound to accept the challenge; to turn it down would be dishonorable. That Lensky should issue the challenge and that Onegin would accept demonstrate that—despite their loud rejection of Russian social etiquette—they cannot truly escape social convention. Even when both men reflect with regret on the duel, wishing that they could escape in some way, they know that they cannot, which supports the theme of Etiquette as a Prison. They feel bound by honor to take part, adding an additional element of tragedy that the two friends who shared a distaste for Russian attitudes should be caught in a trap of their own design.
The duel is a brief bout of violence, caught between longer, reflective periods of tragedy. In the build up to the duel, both men are sad. Lensky already regrets that he was so offended by Onegin’s interaction with Olga, while Onegin also regrets that he acted in such a manner. Rather than discuss the matter and apologize, they make their way to the dueling ground with a sense of resignation. The duel takes place, and Onegin kills Lensky. He buries him nearby and then slouches away, forced to live for the rest of his life with the knowledge that he killed the only man who came close to understanding him. The death of Lensky is also the death of a part of Onegin. From this moment on, he will be a changed man. The cynicism and social critique that once made up his worldview are now imbued with a more tragic air. Onegin is no longer an outsider, criticizing Russian society from an aloof and alienated position. Now, he is a killer who has acted out the rigors and expectations of the same society he loathes. He can no longer claim to be detached or uninvolved, as he is just as bad as the world he critiques.
After the duel, the narrator describes the passing of the seasons. The snows melt and spring arrives, but the characters are caught in a period of staid depression. Onegin sees no way to persist in the countryside, so he forces himself into exile, imposing a punishment on himself for killing his friend. He leaves everything behind. Meanwhile, Olga marries a different person while Tatyana takes Onegin’s words to heart. She accepts her mother’s position that she should find a husband for practical reasons. Onegin’s devastating insistence that love is just naivety has a telling effect on Tatyana, forcing her to abandon the dream of meeting someone she truly loves. However, she cannot escape the idea of Onegin. He haunts her, just as he and his monsters haunted her dreams. When she goes to his house, however, she makes a shocking discovery. She reads through his books and realizes that the man she loved was only a facade. Onegin never showed her his true self, only a carefully assembled identity that he pieced together from literary characters. This realization brings an end to Tatyana’s naivety. She fell in love with a mirage, suggesting to her that the very concept of love is as illusory and as fictional as the public identity of Eugene Onegin.
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