«Сгорая негой и тоской…» Чехов и пушкинская Татьяна
"Burning and unhappiness ..." Chekhov's and Pushkin's Tatiana

Summary/Abstract: The heroine of Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin, Tatyana became the prototype of a brilliant series of female characters in 19th-century Russian literature. Various interpretations of her image can be grouped around an idealizing pole (Dostoevsky: “apotheosis of the Russian woman”) and a realistic one (Belinsky regarding the figure in her evolution from an ardent but naive provincial damsel to a dame of the Muscovite high society). Chekhov narrates in his short story После театра [After the theater] about a 16-year-old girl Nadya, who, having returned home from the performance of the opera Eugene Onegin, and effected by Tatyana’s writing to Onegin, starts to write a letter to a young man, who, as she thinks, is in love with her; then, suddenly she decides to write to another young man who also pays court to her. At the same time, she experiences rapid changes of her mood: she bursts out now into tears, now into laughter without any real reason; and gradually, she becomes filled with an incomprehensible feeling of joy. Chekhov, who was not only a sensitive writer but also a sharp sighted physician, reliably describes in Nadya’s behavior the psycho-somatic symptoms of early puberty when the estrogenic hormones come into action. The undercurrent of this story is apparently a delicate ironical hint at Tatyana’s juvenile rapture over Onegin. Chekhov does not deglorify Pushkin’s heroine, he just supplements her realistic interpretation with the psycho-physiological aspect of the formation of her personality.

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