Eugene Onegin

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Russians, revering Alexander Pushkin as a national hero, see his novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, as the pinnacle not only of his oeuvre, but of their entire literature. Its brilliant sonnets are traditionally memorized by youngsters, and even today nearly any Russian adult can quote many passages with fervor. No literary work plays a comparable role in the English-speaking world. The plot swirls around Onegin - a disillusioned roue who mourns youth's passing, his poet-friend Vladimir Lensky and two neighbor-girls - perky Olga and pensive Tanya. Infatuation leads to disappointment, jealousy to duelling, and in the end, obsession to rejection, in a twist that leaves readers hanging. But the novel's charm resides as much in its digressions as in its plot, for Pushkin exploits the "Onegin stanza" as a device for musing on wine, women's legs, poetry, hypocrisy - whatever strikes his fancy. In 1999 - Alexander Pushkin's bicentennial year - here is his poetic masterpiece in a new American translation by Douglas Hofstadter, author of Godel, Escher, Bach and Le Ton beau de Marot.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

The alarmingly learned mathematician and author of such interdisciplinary marvels as his seminal Gødel, Escher, Bach moves into new territory with a lively English version of Pushkin's 1831 verse novel: the mock-heroic tale of how its bored Byronic "hero" (the eponymous Eugene) enchants, then callously rejects the loving Tatyana, and lives to suffer for his caddish behavior. Hofstadter employs the demanding original rhyme scheme (ABABCCDDEFFEGG: a hybrid of the sonnet and the couplet), devising dozens of ingenious rhymes—and recounts his delighted immersion in Pushkin and the Russian language, in a beguiling Preface that's almost as much fun as the immortal Eugene Onegin itself. A masterly performance, and a thoroughly charming book. .