Pushkin was the first Russian writer of European stature, and he is among
the very few artists - such as Homer and Shakespeare - to have shaped the
consciousness and history of an entire nation and its language, thereby
affecting the world at large. Eugene Onegin is not merely the greatest poem
in the Russian language by its most influential poet: it is a global
culture, social and political icon of the highest order. The historical
power of this work - a novel in verse - is made all the more extraordinary
by the simplicity of its subject. Eugene Onegin is a story of disappointed
love. Tatyana falls for the handsome Eugene to whom she daringly makes
advances. He cooly rejects her, then flirts with her sister, Olga. When
challenged by Olga's fiance, Lensky kills him in a duel, seemingly
indifferrent to the grief he causes. (Ironically, Puskhin himself was to be
killed in similar circumstances in 1937, some seven years after he
completed the work). Onegin leaves the district. When he returns four years
later, Tatyana has married another man and it is her turn to reject his
advances. But it turns out that Onegin's hauteur is affected: he has always
loved her passionately. She loves him too and both reflect painfully on
what might have been.