Quoted description of Olga Larina from “Eugene Onegin. “Always modest, always obedient, always cheerful like the morning...

Pushkin created a sort of Barbie. A real girlfriend for the already plastic Vladimir. So I would put them in a gingerbread house. And this is also “revealing the image” through a hyperlink: take, they say, any novel...

The girl “from novels” is preceded by the girl “from Pushkin” -
only for contrast, to Tatiana’s greater glory.
However, here is the same Olga:
“... bashfully at the altar
Stands with his head bowed,
With fire in downcast eyes,
With a light smile on your lips.”

Is it really the same Barbie?!

Nabokov writes: “Pushkin’s writing is, first of all, a phenomenon of style... We are not looking at “pictures of Russian life”; at best, this is a picture... which will immediately fall apart if the French supports are removed and if the French copyists of English and German authors stop suggesting words to the Russian-speaking heroes and heroines.”

And, it seems, it turned out that Olga and other minor characters of the novel, hastily caricatured by Pushkin and existing without support - her mother, nanny, Zagoretsky, Princess Alina, Guillo, the gray-haired Kalmyk, etc. turned out to be even more lively than those directed by Onegin, Tatyana and Lensky. It even seems that they are the only ones alive in this kingdom of shadows - the world of Onegin, Tatyana, Lensky.

A little boy, captivated by Olga,
Having not yet known heartache,
He was a touched witness
Her infant amusements;
In the shadow of a guardian oak grove
He shared her fun
And crowns were predicted for the children
Friends, neighbors, their fathers.
In the wilderness, under a humble canopy,
Full of innocent charm
In the eyes of her parents, she
Bloomed like a secret lily of the valley,
Unknown in the grass, deaf
Neither moths nor bees.
Here we see for the first time a representative of the Larin family - the youngest Olga, with whom Lensky has been in love since childhood, and for whom marriage was destined. Thankfully, neighbors

Olga Larina

She gave the poet
The first dream of youthful delights,
And the thought of her inspired
His tarsus's first groan.
Sorry, the games are golden!
He fell in love with dense groves,
Solitude, silence,
And the Night, and the Stars, and the Moon,
The moon, the heavenly lamp,
To which we dedicated
Walking in the evening darkness
And tears, secret torments will be a joy...
But now we see only in her
Replacing dim lights.

In general, the guy suffered. Sighed alone under the moon. Idyll and romanticism :-) This is emphasized even more deeply by the mention of the grasshopper. This is not what you thought of at first - it is such an ancient wind instrument, and in this particular case, a kind of symbol of idyllic poetry. But “the first dream of youthful delight” is exactly that - probably a wet dream :-))

Cevnica

Always modest, always obedient,
Always cheerful like the morning,
How a poet's life is simple-minded,
How sweet is love's kiss,
Eyes like the sky blue;
Smile, flaxen curls,
Movements, voice, light frame,
Everything in Olga... but any novel
Take it and find it right
Her portrait: he is very cute,
I used to love him myself,
But he bored me immensely.
Allow me, my reader,
Take care of your older sister.

Olga and Vladimir
The author does not speak very well of Olga. A sort of cute blonde, pleasant in all respects, but empty, and therefore boring. I think few girls would be happy to read such a derogatory description. However, Pushkin makes a reservation that before he himself was fond of such young ladies, but he was already very bored with them. But all the same, it’s even a little insulting for Olga :-)

Her sister's name was Tatyana...
For the first time with such a name
Tender pages of the novel
We willfully sanctify.
So what? it is pleasant, sonorous;
But with him, I know, it’s inseparable
Memories of antiquity
Or girlish! We all should
Frankly: there is very little taste
In us and in our names
(We're not talking about poetry);
We don't need enlightenment
And we got it from him
Pretense, nothing more.

TADAM! The second main character of this wonderful novel in verse appears - the older sister Tatyana Larina. She was a year older than Olga and must have been about 18 years old. Pushkin notes. that this is an old name, and therefore not very popular at that time. It was rarely used to call noble girls. It is interesting that after the publication of the novel the situation changed to the opposite :-)) The name means organizer, founder, ruler, installer, installed, appointed.

So, she was called Tatyana.
Not your sister's beauty,
Nor the freshness of her ruddy
She wouldn't attract anyone's attention.
Dick, sad, silent,
Like a forest deer is timid,
She is in her own family
The girl seemed like a stranger.
She didn't know how to caress
To your father, nor to your mother;
Child herself, in a crowd of children
I didn’t want to play or jump
And often alone all day
She sat silently by the window.

Again, a strange thing. The author seems to think that Tatyana is less attractive in appearance, and even “wild” than Olga (and which of the girls might like this), but from the first lines it is clear that she is more attractive to him. More interesting, deeper, there is a secret in it, passions raging inside.

Thoughtfulness, her friend
From the most lullabies of days,
The flow of rural leisure
Decorated her with dreams.
Her pampered fingers
They didn't know needles; leaning on the hoop,
She has a silk pattern
Didn't bring the canvas to life.
A sign of the desire to rule,
With an obedient doll child
Prepared in jest
To decency, the law of light,
And it’s important to repeat to her
Lessons from your mother.

But dolls even in these years
Tatyana didn’t take it in her hands;
About city news, about fashion
I didn’t have any conversations with her.
And there were children's pranks
They are alien to her; scary stories
In winter in the dark of nights
They captivated her heart more.
When did the nanny collect
For Olga on a wide meadow
All her little friends
She didn't play with burners,
She was bored and the ringing laughter
And the noise of their windy pleasures.
Neither embroidery, nor games, nor toys, but stories (especially horror stories) are more interesting to her. She's a loner. Likes to think and watch life from the outside.

Elizaveta Ksaverevna Vorontsova is one of the possible prototypes of Tatyana Larina.

She loved on the balcony
To warn the dawn of the sunrise,
When on a pale sky
The round dance of the stars disappears,
And quietly the edge of the earth brightens,
And, the harbinger of the morning, the wind blows,
And the day gradually rises.
In winter, when the night shadow
Has half the world's share,
And share in idle silence,
Under the foggy moon,
The lazy East rests,
Awakened at the usual hour
She got up by candlelight.

She liked novels early on;
They replaced everything for her;
She fell in love with deceptions
And Richardson and Russo.
Her father was a kind fellow,
Belated in the past century;
But I saw no harm in the books;
He never reads
I considered them an empty toy
And didn't care
What is my daughter's secret volume?
I dozed under my pillow until morning.
His wife was herself
Richardson is crazy.

S. Richardson

I started reading early, fortunately my dad didn’t forbid me, and my mom generally looked favorably on some books. I don’t know, however, why a young girl needs Rousseau, but with Samuel Richardson everything is clear :-) After all, the founder of “sensitive” literature of the 18th and early 19th centuries. I think the most popular romance novel of that time was his "Clarissa, or the Story of a Young Lady"
She loved Richardson
Not because I read it
Not because Grandison
She preferred Lovelace;
But in the old days, Princess Alina,
Her Moscow cousin,
She often told her about them.
There was still a groom at that time
Her husband, but in captivity;
She sighed about something else
Who with heart and mind
She liked it much more:
This Grandison was a nice dandy,
Player and Guard Sgt.

Sir Charles Gradinson
True, there is an immediate explanation of why Tatyana loved Richardson.... Ordinary feminine things, inspired by an older and more experienced cousin. Moscow cousin Alina, who will appear later on the pages of the novel. In general, the Moscow Cousin is a stable satirical mask, a combination of provincial panache and mannerisms of the time. But that's not what this is about. Alina favorably accepted the advances of her future husband, but dreamed of something else - a dandy and a guardsman. Don’t be confused by the title - nobles served in the guard, it’s just that its hero was still young.
And finally, I must mention the lines " that Not because she preferred Grandison to Lovelace"The first is a hero of impeccable virtue, the second - of insidious but charming evil. Their names became household names and were taken from Richardson’s novels.
To be continued...
Have a nice time of day.

Olga Larina is a character in the novel in verse by A. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”. Olga is the younger sister of the heroine, Tatyana Larina. Like Tanya, Olga grew up in the countryside, under the caring wing of her parents.

Full of innocent charm

In the eyes of her parents, she

Bloomed like a secret lily of the valley...

Olya is lively, pretty, loves games, dancing, laughter and entertainment. She has many girlfriends. A young visiting poet, Vladimir Lensky, falls in love with Olga. Olga becomes his muse: “She gave the poet his first dream to Young Delights...”

Olga pleases the eyes of her mother and everyone around her. In appearance, this is an ideal girl, with whom it is impossible not to fall in love, with whom one cannot help but admire. However, Olya is superficial. There is no sensitivity and spiritual depth in her, unlike her older sister. Olga decorates the Larins' house, but is unable to do more. She does not shine with intelligence, does not strive for knowledge and does not try to develop in herself anything other than what she already possesses.

“Always modest, always obedient,

Always, like the morning, cheerful.

How a poet's life is simple-minded,

Like a kiss of love - sweet.

Eyes like the sky are blue,

Everything is in Olga...

But any novel

Take it and find it right

Her portrait: he is very cute,

I used to love him myself,

But he tired me immensely...”

Onegin did not like Olga; he did not find a spiritual component in her. With his characteristic manner of despising women, Onegin says to Lensky:

"I would choose another

If only I were a poet like you.

Olga has no life in her features...

Exactly like Vandyk's Madonna:

She's round and red-faced

Like this stupid moon

On this stupid horizon."

The love of Olga and Lensky is childish, romantic. They walk hand in hand in the garden, sit for a long time together. Lensky's feeling borders on adoration. He diligently decorates scrapbook pages for his bride, reads moral novels to her, carefully omitting too intimate details so as not to embarrass his girlfriend. Olga likes his love, she likes being a bride, she likes the worship of a young man. In fact, she controls it and enjoys it. Olga flutters around, not thinking about anything, not trying to penetrate into the depths of the groom’s soul and evaluate his feelings:

"Aurora of the Northern Alley

And lighter than a swallow..."

Olya doesn’t see anything wrong with flirting with other men in the presence of her fiancé. More precisely, Olga simply does not pay attention to the groom when she does this. Her flirting with Onegin caused Lensky to be mortally jealous and upset, but Olya herself does not notice this, and the next day she does not remember her act:

“It wasn’t like that: as before,

To meet the poor singer

Olenka jumped from the porch,

Like windy hope

Frisky, carefree, cheerful..."

Clarity of vision, gentle simplicity, ruddy freshness, playfulness, feminine beauty, promising healthy children - these are Olga’s virtues.

Olya had no premonitions about the death of her loved one, unlike her older sister. After the death of the groom in a duel, Olga gets closer to her sister for a while, hugging and crying with her at the grave. But the bride does not grieve for long over her groom, who dreamed of defending her honor in a duel. After some time, a military man appears in the sisters’ field of vision: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Olenka marries him, “unfaithful to her sadness.”

“Another one caught her attention,

Another managed her suffering

To lull you to sleep with loving flattery,

Ulan knew how to captivate her,

Ulan loves her with all her soul...

And now with him before the altar

She's shyly down the aisle

Stands with his head bowed,

With fire in downcast eyes,

With a light smile on your lips.”

Olga Larina leaves her native place for a new family, where she will now please her husband, as she did her parents, pour tea for guests, as she did at home, chirp frivolously, give birth to children, run the house and household. Alexander Pushkin says nothing about whether Olya will be happy. Olga Larina probably doesn’t even think about it. She doesn't have the habit of thinking.

A character from “any novel.” Olga Larina in the context of Pushkin's Onegin

GALLERY

Vyacheslav KOSHELEV,
Veliky Novgorod

A character from “any novel”

Olga Larina in the context of Pushkin's Onegin

That improvised portrait of Olga, which Pushkin gives in the second chapter of “Onegin” (p. XXIII), seems to be a characteristic of an absolutely uninteresting girl - a completely “passable” character, introduced for a purely “plot” purpose: through Lensky and Olga, the thread of the narrative reaches to the truly extraordinary female character - to Tatyana. There seems to be nothing much to say about Olga:

Always modest, always obedient,
Always cheerful like the morning,
How a poet's life is simple-minded,
How sweet is love's kiss,
Eyes like the sky blue,
Smile, flaxen curls,
Movements, voice, light frame,
Everything in Olga... but any novel
Take it and find it right
Her portrait: he is very cute,
I used to love him myself,
But he bored me immensely...(VI, 41)

Before us is a common, completely traditional appearance of a “Russian beauty”, completely corresponding to the sentimental-romantic template of the heroine of the works of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. N.L. Brodsky, in his commentary on the novel, draws attention to the fact that Pushkin here focuses specifically on Olga’s “appearance,” which he conveys in “details that are too general, devoid of individualization”: “Poor in internal content, Olga’s portrait did not require in-depth disclosure.” V.V. Nabokov actually agrees with this statement, defining the description of Olga’s appearance as a set of “pattern rhetorical figures of similar descriptions in the European novel of that time with a recitative of enumerations resolved by the enthusiastic “everything...””, and citing a number of examples from the novels of J. de Staël “Delphine ”, C. Nodier “Jean Sbogar”, O. Balzac’s “Thirty-Year-Old Woman”, and at the same time from the poetry of E. Marvell, A. Ramsay, P.D. Ekuchar-Le Brun and A. Piron. Yu.M. Lotman adds Russian “samples” to this list: “Roman and Olga” by A.A. Bestuzhev, stories by N.M. Karamzin “Poor Liza”, “A Knight of Our Time”, “The Beautiful Princess and the Happy Karla” and the like.

In a word, it is no coincidence that already in the draft manuscript of “Onegin” Pushkin chose to start from the “boring” template and declared a fundamentally new approach:

AND new pencil I'll take it
To describe her sister.
(VI, 289; emphasis added. -VC.)

Meanwhile, from the surviving drafts of “Onegin” it is clear that in the original plan of the story about the “adventures” of the hero (which were supposed to be carried out “in the style of Don Juan”) there was no place at all for any “sister” of his hero’s beloved. Drawing the subject of Lensky’s love sighs in stanzas that later received numbers from XX to XXIII (of the second chapter), Pushkin in workbook PD No. 834 on sheets 34–35 successively wrote out a more extensive sketch of the character of a woman who was supposed to connect her fate with the personality of someone suffering from “the blues.” Onegin. She has already received the name Olga, but her initial characteristics are somewhat reminiscent of Tatyana’s character. The image of the romantic beauty, depicted in the XXIII stanza, was preceded by two stanzas, which later migrated to the first white autograph and were already crossed out in it. The first of these rejected stanzas hinted at the heroine's possible tragic future:

Who was she whose eyes
He, without art, attracted
Which he is both days and nights,
And dedicated my heart's thoughts
The youngest daughter - the neighbors of the poor -
Far away from fun, harmful connections
Full of innocent charm
In the eyes of her parents she
Blossomed like a secret lily of the valley -
Unknown in the grass, deaf
Neither moths nor bees -
And maybe already doomed
Morning Dew Pet
To the blind [edge] of the scythe.(VI, 287)

Olga in the final version of the novel in verse cannot be compared with a “hidden lily of the valley”: initially there is nothing “hidden” in her. V.V. Nabokov, commenting on the ending of this stanza, crossed out in the final version, noted: “I wonder if Olga’s fate, which we all now know about, was so obvious to Pushkin at that moment<…>I think that at that time Olga was still made up of two persons - Olga and Tatyana - and was the only daughter who (with inevitable literary consequences) was to be seduced by the scoundrel Onegin. In this set of variants we observe a process of biological differentiation.” It seems worth agreeing with this hypothesis about the original plan of the novel’s plot: such a “move” fit very well into the narrative “in the style of Don Juan.”

Then in the draft manuscript there follows a stanza telling the story of Olga's initial upbringing; It is significant that, having rewritten it into a white manuscript, Pushkin tried to “adapt” it to characterize Tatyana:

Not a fool of the English breed,
Nor the wayward Mamzel
(In Russia, according to the regulations [fashion]
Necessary until now)
Olga was not spoiled with her sweetness.
Fadeevna with a frail hand
She was rocked by the cradle,
I made her a child's bed,
Have mercy on me, you taught me to read,
I walked with her in the middle of the night
I told Bova<ей>,
She followed Olga
I poured tea in the morning
And I spoiled her by accident. (VI, 287–288)

It is significant that in the white autograph as part of this stanza there was also an indication of the heroine’s appearance: “She carded her golden curls” (VI, 566). “Reworking” the stanza to characterize Tatyana, Pushkin changed the “gold of her curls” to “the silk of her curls”: judging by the version of the draft manuscript, the poet imagined Tatyana to be similar in appearance to Olga with one difference:

[You can, my friends,
Imagine her face yourself,
But only with black eyes.]
(VI, 290; PD 834, l. 35 vol.)

That is, the idea of withdrawing is not one beloved (probably assumed to be the subject of love rivalry between Onegin and Lensky), and two sisters came to Pushkin already in the process of working on the verbal design of the second chapter of Onegin. In essence, this was a completely new idea for such a “love” novel: before Pushkin, antinomy two sisters I haven’t really developed much in it yet.

Two- according to Dahl - “second counting number, one with one, pair, couple, friend”; this number “expresses doubling, duality.” This “duality” can be different: Dahl distinguishes between the concepts binary, dual And twofold(a synonym is given for the last concept bivariate). The very idea of two sisters- that is, about blood relatives - provokes the restoration of preposition similarities(by type: “two from a casket, identical in appearance”). But Pushkin prefers binary opposition like when one of Gogol’s Ivan’s head “looks like a radish with its tail down,” and the other’s is “like a radish with its tail up.”

This binary antinomy is already enshrined in the details of the initial description of the first of the sisters introduced in the novel. Olga is “always modest, always obedient” - Tatyana’s very first act (her letter to Onegin) testifies to the opposite traits of her character. Olga is “always as cheerful as the morning” - Tatyana, as a rule, is “sad”. Olga is “simple-minded” - Tatyana, on the contrary, initially demonstrates a complex mental organization. And so on.

The same is true in appearance. Olga, according to Pushkin’s ideas, is light: “eyes as blue as the sky,” “flaxen curls.” Tatyana is dark, “with black eyes.” Let us note that in the final edition of the novel, Tatyana’s appearance is not described at all, but in our minds she acts as the antipode of the younger sister, and, accordingly, the reader’s idea of her appearance is constructed “by contradiction” in relation to Olga.

Tatyana is “pale” - this is her usual state. Olga blush: “Aurora of the northern alleys” (VI, 106). From this point of view, the younger sister seems to be closer to the common people than Tatyana: “... a fresh complexion and a blush all over the cheek is the first condition of beauty according to common people’s concepts” (N.G. Chernyshevsky). It is about Olga’s “blush” that the first “controversy” between Onegin and Lensky unfolds in the novel.

Onegin and Lensky return home after their first visit to the Larins' house; Onegin wonders why his friend chose the “smaller” of the two sisters:

- And what? - “I would choose another one,
If only I were like you, a poet.
Olga has no life in her features.
Exactly in Vandik's Madona:
She's round and red-faced,
Like this stupid moon
On this stupid firmament."
Vladimir answered dryly
(VI, 53)

It is curious that Nabokov comments on Onegin’s remark as an undoubted praise of Olga’s beauty: “The old meaning of the word “red” is “beautiful,” and I understand the expression “she is red in the face” as “she has a beautiful face,” and not as a statement that “ her face is red.” A “red face” would indicate a rough blush of intemperance, high blood pressure, anger, a sense of shame, and so on, which would absolutely not correspond to the image of the pink-faced Pamela or Madonna that Onegin has in mind. He's pretty rude here anyway<…>My choice of this meaning is also due to comparison with the moon, which appears here as a beautiful sphere (“round and white-faced”), glorified by poets<…>Naturally, this lyrically generalized moon is not painted in any color; be that as it may, comparing a red face with a red moon would evoke in the reader the color of a tomato, not a rose.”

But Lensky was clearly offended by this Onegin remark: it turns out that he did not understand the compliment... And why, in this case, does Onegin prefer the “ugly” Tatyana over the “beautiful” Olga?

In the draft and white manuscripts of the third chapter, however, there is no “stupid moon”. The white manuscripts even contain two versions of this short dialogue between two friends about Olga’s beauty. In the first version, Lensky’s indicative “dry” answer is given:

Olga has no idea about features.
Like in Raphael's Madonna,
Blush and innocent look
I've been tired of it for a long time. -
- Everyone prays to their icon, -
Vladimir answered dryly,
And our Onegin fell silent.(VI, 575)

In the second version, the “literary” reference is indicative:

Olga has no idea about her features,
Like Raphael in Madona.
Believe me, innocence is nonsense
And Pamela's luscious gaze
I'm tired of Richardson too, -
Vladimir answered dryly
And then he was silent the whole way.(VI, 575)

In addition to the attempt to replace the “stupid moon,” two significant differences in the semantics of both versions and the final edition are striking. Firstly, Onegin is not talking about the absence of “life” in the facial features of Lensky’s beloved, but about the absence of “thought”. Secondly, in comparison with “Madonna” we are not talking about any specific painting by A. Van Dyck (the only painting of this kind that Pushkin could see was “Madonna with Partridges” - for some reason it seemed to N.L. Brodsky “sweet” and “sentimental”). For some reason, Pushkin’s Onegin does not want to appreciate the beauty of the Madonna as such: both “Raphael’s” and “Peruginova” appear as variants of “Vandice’s Madonna” (VI, 575).

Notes

Brodsky N.L."Eugene Onegin". Roman A.S. Pushkin. Manual for teachers. 4th ed. M., 1957. P. 161.

Pushkin’s lines “Always modest, always obedient” are used by mothers in relation to their daughters when they want to boast about their behavior. This stanza is dedicated from the novel “Eugene Onegin” ().

Willingly or unwittingly, Pushkin portrayed more than just an obedient angelic girl. Olga is sweet and childishly naive, as naive as an 11-12 year old child can be. Since childhood, she heard that she was destined. She managed to make friends with him and fall in love with him. She willingly listened to his poems, and perhaps expressed her opinion. Olga played chess with him and listened to books that Lensky read to her. Vladimir came to the Larins almost every evening and he was not bored with her. There were common interests and common topics for conversation.

Unlike her, who only did what she was sad, Olga helped her mother set the table and do other household chores. I was doing handicrafts. Olga should have made a wonderful housewife and mother. Or did he strive to see future Decembrists in the heroines? Even so, Olga was more suitable for this role. She would not have disappeared because she was more skilled and was stronger in spirit than her sister.

Pay attention to the last 3 lines. It was not Olga that bothered Pushkin, but her portrait. A portrait of a blue-eyed, blond girl, which was depicted by other writers and poets. Artists loved to depict this sentimental image on their canvases. He could be found everywhere. Is it Olga’s fault that she was born a blond angel with blue eyes?

Always modest, always obedient,
Always cheerful like the morning,
How a poet's life is simple-minded,
How sweet is love's kiss,
Eyes like the sky blue,
Smile, flaxen curls,
Movements, voice, light frame,
Everything in Olga... but any novel
Take it and find it right
Her portrait: he is very cute,
I used to love him myself,
But he bored me immensely.