Podcast 34: Pushkin’s Hero, Tatyana Larina

In this program, my aim is to introduce the hearer to the hero (now rapidly

becoming a gender-neutral term) of Alexander Pushkin’s world-famed novel in

verse, Eugene Onegin. In many ways, she earns the laudatory title I’m giving her,

and my presentation will help you get acquainted with her background, her cultural

context, her family life, her mother’s personality, and her strong, evolving

personality and character. My “interview” technique, following each 14-line poem

of Pushkin’s with a commentary-sonnet of my own, was stimulated by the

narrator’s own habit of inserting his own comments repeatedly into the action of

the highly absorbing verse novel.

After reading poems 1.1 and 1.5, together with my verse “replies,” to show how

my “interview” or “dialogue” book operates, in my readings about Tatyana I’ll

feature, first, sections 2.23-2.35 with my two poems about Shrove Tuesday (Mardi

Gras) as observed in upstate New York. Then I’ll recite from section 3.1 to 3.21.

The action at this point will have reached a point of major suspense….