You are too late, I can't save you.”

Giles 2022-11-02 14:20:51

Onegin left the city again, drifting around, just as he did six years ago. He is the "superfluous person" in this world, and he would rather live on the tip of his own iceberg and watch the world with a cold eye, rather than learn to have his own real life and love. He regards himself as arrogant but curses himself, he is too lazy to love, even too lazy to live. This morbid harmony made Russia of that period seem peaceful, but inside it was nothing.
Tatyana was unfortunate, she finally obeyed her fate, married a general, and lost her ideal of love; she was lucky again, and her inner temperance brought her a peaceful real life. Compared with Tatyana, Onegin's lazy heart doesn't know when he will be able to park in one place in the world and find the meaning of life.

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Extended Reading

Onegin quotes

  • Evgeny Onegin: [writing to Tatyana] I can forsee the bitter scorn blazing at me from your proud eyes when you have read my secret sorrow. When we first met, through chance, I saw tenderness like a shooting star but did not dare to put my faith in it. Then Lensky fell, which parted us til further. Then I tore my heart away from everything I loved, rootless, estranged from all, I thought that liberty and peace would serve instead of happiness. My God, how wrong I was. How I have been punished. No, day by day to be with you, follow you everywhere, alive to every smile, each movement of your eyes, to dwell upon you soul's perfection, listen to your voice and grow faint with yearning. That is bliss and I'm cut off from it. My time is short, each day and hour is precious yet I just drag myself around in boredom. Everyday a desert unless when I wake up I know the day will bring a glimpse of you. If you but knew the flames that burn in me, which I attempt to beat down with my reason, but let it be. I cannot struggle against my feelings anymore, I am entirely in your will.

  • Evgeny Onegin: When will the devil take me?