Eugene Onegin: A Slow Reading Course
13 sessions, 8 chapters, hundreds of literary references, and two centuries of reader debates.
Why is Onegin a dandy and Lensky a romantic? From which books did Tatyana learn how to love? Why did the duel take place even though it could have been avoided? What is Pushkin laughing at when he writes Lensky's poetry? And why does the novel end literally mid-word?
Over the course of 13 sessions, we will read and analyze Eugene Onegin step by step: from the French epigraph to the stanzas about the hero's travels that were excluded from the novel.
What to expect in the course
Literary history
Classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, and the birth of realism. Byron, Rousseau, Zhukovsky, Karamzin, and dozens of other authors with whom Pushkin is in continuous dialogue across the pages of the novel.
19th-century everyday life
Duels, balls, theater, fashion, high-society etiquette, women's education, fortune-telling, and nobility libraries. We will figure out what details meant to contemporaries that today's reader might miss.
How literature works
We will learn to spot the unreliable narrator, literary masks, hidden quotations, mirror composition, and play with reader expectations. We will explore literary concepts using concrete examples from the novel.
How others read Onegin
We will compare the interpretations of Belinsky, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, and Lotman. We will see how the perception of the novel has changed over nearly 200 years.
How the sessions are structured
- We read the novel in small parts, sequentially, chapter by chapter.
- At each session, we analyze the text, the historical context, and a specific literary theme.
- We work with illustrations, manuscripts, letters, historical documents, musical excerpts, and screen adaptations.
- We discuss controversial passages and test our own interpretations.
Each participant will have their own copy of the novel with space for notes and comments. By the end of the course, these individual notebooks will come together to form a personalized, annotated Eugene Onegin.
Who is this for?
For adult readers who want to explore literature beyond the school curriculum.
No special preparation is required: all necessary historical and literary concepts will be explained during the sessions.
When and where?
Sundays, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Sessions take place 2–3 times a month, on Sundays when there is no book club.
Starts November 8.
Session fee — 15–20 €
Sign up by sending a direct message to @dododo