ALEXANDER PUSHKIN’S VERSE NOVEL EUGENE ONEGIN
by Martin Bidney
ALEXANDER PUSHKIN (1799-1837) is Russia’s most beloved poet. Eugene Onegin, called by Pushkin a “novel in verse,” is Russia’s favorite narrative poem and her most influential novel. The narrative—about what was widely called a “su- perfluous man”—sets a context for works by Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov that were to follow. From Lord Byron, Pushkin borrowed a clever device: the use of a casual narrator who becomes a fascinating character in the story. Tchaikovsky made Onegin into a great tragic op- era, but he had to leave out the entertaining character of the narrator—plus all the delightful mood changes in the storyteller’s personality. Form-faithful translator MAR- TIN BIDNEY has created a new genre of literature, the verse interview book. For every 14-line poem of Pushkin’s, Bidney
writes a Pushkin-style “reply” poem! So the book becomes a total dialogue, really two verse novels in conversation. Utterly unprecedented. The translator as collocutor. Professor Caryl Emerson is the foremost authority on the “dialogic” approach to literature explored by Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin. So Bidney’s “Introduction” takes the form of a dialogue with her! At the start she writes: “I just read the first two stanzas . . . you’re awfully good. And of course an in-form dialogic response is completely in keeping with the digressive, invasive, in-your-face na- ture of Pushkin’s indulgent Narrator.” That sets the tone for all of her remarks.
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