Eugene Onegin
About This Novel
"Eugene Onegin" is Pushkin's masterpiece. This poetic novel broadly reflects the social life of Russia in the 1820s, truly expresses the anguish, exploration and awakening of Russian youth of that era, and raises many important social issues. Therefore, Belinsky called it "an encyclopedia of Russian life and the most popular work." The central protagonist of the work is the aristocratic young man Onegin. Onegin had a luxurious life similar to that of ordinary aristocratic youths, but the atmosphere of the times and progressive Enlightenment ideas, Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" and Rousseau's "Social Contract", and Byron's poems praising freedom and individual liberation all had an impact on him, causing his attitude towards reality to change. He began to be tired of the empty and boring life in the upper class, and came to the countryside with a desire for a new life, and tried to engage in agricultural reform. However, the flashy aristocratic education did not give him any practical ability to work, and the bad habits of leisure and indolence left a deep mark on him. Coupled with the criticism and opposition from the surrounding landowners, Onegin was still in a state of idleness, depression and hesitation in the end, and contracted the typical disease of the times-melancholy.
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