Pushkin’s epistolary references to his work on EO are considerably more frequent in 1824–25 than in 1823 or 1826–31. Regarding the complete editions of 1833 and 1837 there reigns a rather eerie silence in his correspondence. In the following notes I have covered the ground prior to the publication of Chapter One fairly completely. Other excerpts will be found in the Commentary.
The first mention is in a letter from Odessa to the man who is alluded to or mentioned four times in the complete edition of EO, the poet and critic Prince Pyotr Vyazemski, who lived mainly in Moscow, near which he had a large estate (Ostafievo). The letter is dated Nov. 4, 1823. By that time (half a year after starting EO) Chapter One and at least seventeen stanzas of Two had been completed. The relevant passage reads: “As to my occupations, I am writing now—not a novel—but a novel in verse—a deuced difference [or “a devil of a difference,” d’yavol’ skaya raznitsa, une diable de différence].” Pushkin repeats the same expression in another connection, when writing to Vyazemski, on Dec. 13, 1825, from Mihaylovskoe, that his friends prevent him from complaining about his banishment “not in verse but in prose—a deuced difference.” The passage continues:
It is in the genre of Don Juan [Byron’s poem, the first five cantos of which Pushkin had read in Pichot’s French prose]. Publication is unthinkable. I write without restraining myself [spustya rukava, an idiom that connotes otherwise a careless manner]. Our censorship is so whimsical that it is impossible to shape a course of action—better not to think about it at all.
(In the draft of the letter: “The first canto or chapter is finished—I shall send it to you. I write it with rapture, which has not happened to me in a long time.”)
On Nov. 16 of the same year, 1823, he writes from Odessa to St. Petersburg to the poet Baron Anton Delvig, an old schoolmate of his, thus:
I am now writing a new poema [“long poem,” “narrative poem”], in which I permit myself to babble beyond all limits. Biryukov [the censor] shall not see it because he is a fie-baby, a capricious child. God knows when we shall read it together.
On Dec. 1, 1823, from Odessa, to Aleksandr Turgenev in St. Petersburg:
I, in my leisure hours, am writing a new poema, Eugene Onegin, wherein I choke on my bile. Two cantos are now ready.
From Odessa to St. Petersburg, in the second part of January or the beginning of February, 1824, to his brother Lev Pushkin:
Perhaps I shall send Delvig excerpts from Onegin—it is my best work. Do not believe Nikolay Raevski, who berates it: he expected Romanticism from me, found Satire and Cynicism, and did not make out sufficiently [what it was all about].
From Odessa to St. Petersburg, Feb. 8, 1824, to the writer Aleksandr Bestuzhev-Marlinski:
As to [printing] my poema, no use thinking of it. [After this in the draft of the letter: “Its stanzas are perhaps even more licentious (vol’nee) than those of Don Juan.”] If it is to be published, this surely will be not in Moscow and not in St. Petersburg.
From Odessa to Moscow, at the beginning of April, 1824, to Vyazemski:
Slyonin [a publisher] offers me as much as I want for Onegin. What say you about Russia—verily she is in Europe, and I thought it was a mistake of the geographers. The obstacle is censorship, and this to me is no joking matter, for it is the question of my future fate, of the independence I need. In order to publish Onegin I am ready to … [my prudish Soviet sources expurgate an obscene phrase and a lewd proverb, which I cannot reconstruct exactly]. Anyway, I am ready to hang myself if necessary.
In a letter (intercepted by the police and known only from a fragment), written in Odessa, presumably in early May, 1824, and addressed, perhaps, to the poet Küchelbecker, a Lyceum schoolmate: “I am writing the motley strophes of a romantic poem” (romanticheskoy poemϊ, “poème romantique,” as Pichot translated Byron’s term “romaunt,” in Childe-Harold, 1822; Œuvres de Lord Byron, 4th edn., vol. II).
From Odessa to Moscow, June 7, 1824, to Vyazemski:
I shall send you with your wife* the first canto of Onegin. Mayhap [avos’] the cabinet change† will lead to its getting published.
From Odessa to St. Petersburg, June 13, 1824, to Lev Pushkin:
I shall attempt to knock at the holy gate of the censorship with the first chapter or canto of Onegin. Mayhap we may wriggle through. You demand of me details anent Onegin. The matter bores me, my dear old fellow. Another time. I am not writing anything now—have worries of a different kind.
(Pushkin had quarreled with Count Vorontsov, the Governor of New Russia, to whose chancery he was attached.)
From Odessa to Moscow, June 29, 1824, to Bestuzhev-Marlinski:
My Onegin is growing;* yet the devil knows who will publish it; I thought censorship had become more intelligent under Shishkov but now I see that under the old [some kind of slip here] everything remains as of old.
From Odessa to St. Petersburg, July 14, 1824, to A. Turgenev:
Knowing your ancient affection for the pranks of my outcast Muse, I was about to send you several stanzas of my Onegin but was too lazy to do so. I do not know if they will let my poor Onegin into the Heavenly Kingdom of Publication; in any case I will try.
A fortnight later Pushkin was expelled from Odessa to his mother’s country estate, Mihaylovskoe, in the province of Pskov. From there, in the autumn of 1824, he dispatched Chapter One of EO with Lev Pushkin to Pletnyov in St. Petersburg for publication. In my Commentary, I quote the accompanying letter as well as some other letters of that period.
On Jan. 25, 1825, from Mihaylovskoe, in a letter to the poet Kondratiy Rïleev in St. Petersburg, he complains about Bestuzhev-Marlinski’s not understanding EO, of which he had seen the Chapter One transcript:
Bestuzhev writes me a lot about Onegin. Tell him he is wrong: does he really want to banish from the domain of poetry all that is light and gay? Whither then should satires and comedies go? In result, one would have to abolish Orlando furioso [by Ariosto] and Gudibras [Hudibras, by Samuel Butler], and the Pucelle [by Voltaire], and Ver-ver [Vert-Vert, by Gresset], and Renikefuks [Reineke Fuchs, by Goethe], and the best part of Little Psyche [by Bogdanovich] and the tales [Contes] of La Fontaine, and Krïlov’s fables, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. This is rather strict. Pictures of society life also enter the domain of poetry; but enough of Onegin.
To Bestuzhev in St. Petersburg he writes from Mihaylovskoe on Mar. 24, 1825:
Your letter is very clever, but still you are wrong, still you regard Onegin from the wrong point of view, still it is my best work. You compare the first chapter with Don Juan. None esteems Don Juan (its first five cantos [in Pichot’s French]—I have not read the rest) more than I, but it has nothing in common with Onegin. You speak of a satire by an Englishman, Byron, and you compare it with mine, and demand one like it from me! No, my dear old fellow, you ask too much. Where do I have a satire? There is not the ghost of it in Eugene Onegin. With me, the embankment would crack [idiom for, say, “the earth would rumble”] if I touched satire. The very word “satirical” should not have occurred in my preface. Wait till you see the other cantos. Ah, if only I could lure you to Mihaylovskoe! You would see that if one really must compare Onegin with Don Juan it should be done in one respect only: who is more winsome and more charming, gracieuse [Fr.], Tatiana or Julia? Canto One is merely a rapid introduction, and I am pleased with it (which very seldom happens to me).
Vyazemski, as already mentioned, was Pushkin’s first correspondent to learn of EO (Nov. 4, 1823). At the end of March, 1825, from Mihaylovskoe, our poet informs his old friend (whom by now he has not seen for more than five years) that he is doing something quite special for him—copying out Chapter Two:
I wish it might help to make you smile.* This is the first time a reader’s smile me sourit (pardon this platitude: ’tis in the blood).* Meantime, be grateful to me—never in my life have I copied out anything.
This is followed up by a letter of Apr. 7, “the anniversary of Byron’s death,” in which Pushkin, from Mihaylovskoe, informs Vyazemski that he has had the village pope sing a Requiem Mass for God’s slave, boyarin Georgiy, complete with an apportioned piece of blessed bread, prosvira, which he sends Vyazemski, also a great admirer of Pichot’s author. “I am transcribing Onegin. He too will soon reach you.”
With Delvig, who visited him in Mihaylovskoe in mid-April, 1825, Pushkin sent this MS copy of Chapter Two to Vyazemski, “made for you and only for you” (letter to Vyazemski of c. Apr. 20). Delvig took it to Petersburg; Vyazemski was expected to come there from Moscow, but his arrival was postponed. Throughout May Chapter Two was eagerly read by Pushkin’s and Delvig’s literary friends, and the MS (“only for you”) reached Vyazemski in Moscow only in the first week of June. To him Pushkin wrote from Mihaylovskoe a year later (May 27, 1826):
If the new tsar [Nicholas I] grants me my freedom, I will not stay [in Russia] another month. We live in a sorry era, but when I imagine London, railroads, steamships, the English reviews or the theaters and bordellos of Paris—then my Mihaylovskoe backwoods make me sick and mad. In Canto Four of Onegin I have depicted my life [at Mihaylovskoe].
In a letter to Vyazemski, dated Dec. 1, 1826, from an inn in Pskov, where he stopped for a few days on his way to Moscow, after a sojourn of three weeks at Mihaylovskoe, Pushkin says of this same Canto Four: “In Pskov, instead of writing Chapter Seven of Onegin, I go and lose Chapter Four at stuss—which is not funny.”
*Vera Vyazemski, who had arrived that day and was to spend three months in Odessa; actually, Pushkin left before she did.
†Admiral Aleksandr Shishkov, a man of letters, had replaced Prince A. Golitsïn as Minister of Public Education, which post he was to occupy till 1828.
*Which surely means that Pushkin had been continuing Chapter Three, after his gloomy letter of June 13.
*Vyazemski had just lost a child, little Nikolay, and had been seriously ill himself; it is curious to note that in a kind of poetical compensation Vyazemski cheers up Tatiana in the imaginary Moscow of Chapter Seven.
*Both Pushkin’s father and uncle, Vasiliy Pushkin, were incorrigible punsters.