Roman A.S. Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" was completed in the spring of 1831. The novel reproduces a picture of the life of Russian society in the first third of the 19th century. Onegin, Lensky, Tatyana are contemporaries, peers of the Decembrists, people of the generation of the twenties and thirties. It should be noted that Pushkin himself described his novel as “free.” The plot feature of “Eugene Onegin” includes the freedom of the author’s deviations from the main line of the narrative. The author conducts casual conversations in various topics, while one of the most important types of lyrical digressions are numerous landscape sketches. It should be noted that in his early works Pushkin created idyllic landscapes and painted the exotic nature of the Caucasus, and in the novel “Eugene Onegin” the poet turned to depicting the Central Russian strip.

The landscape is present in “Eugene Onegin” in the form of detailed, complete paintings, most often serving as a kind of introduction to individual chapters or preceding new plot episodes within chapters. Thus, chapters two, five and seven open with descriptions of nature. Pictures of the onset of village winter precede the description of Onegin's lifestyle in the village in chapter four. The plot content of most of the novel is related to rural themes. It is natural, therefore, to abundantly fill these chapters with landscape elements. Thus, a small landscape is given at the beginning of the second chapter:

The village where Evgeniy was bored,

There was a lovely corner;

There's a friend of innocent pleasures

I could bless the sky.

Pushkin expresses his ironic attitude towards the works of sentimentalists, in which idyllic landscapes were created, characteristic of all noble poetry of the late 18th - early XIX century. The novel “Eugene Onegin” recreates a realistic landscape reflecting Pushkin’s impressions of the village of Mikhailovskoye.

Throughout the entire novel, thanks to the alternation of seasons, a chronology of events can be traced: in the summer Onegin goes to the village, bored, spends the autumn there, in the winter - after a duel with Lensky - he leaves his estate, in the spring Tatyana visits Onegin's house. This is how the landscape turns from the background of the action into the most important structural element of the narrative. It is important for Pushkin to show that the author of his novel is the creator of the work, accelerating or slowing down the development of action and determining the relationship storylines. For example, looking ahead, he talks about the development of the destinies of his heroes. So, immediately after the description of the duel that took place in winter, they talk about the monument on Lensky’s grave, which the “young city woman” saw in the summer. Then, again ahead of events, the author reports that Onegin is “no longer in the village”, and “the sad monument has been forgotten.” And only after that he talks about Olga’s marriage and Tatyana’s departure to Moscow.

Pushkin's landscapes are never static. In nature, everything is constantly changing: summer is “flickering”, November is “approaching”, the days are “rushing”. The depiction of nature is dominated by nouns and verbs; adjectives that capture this or that phenomenon in statics are practically not used. Thus, the landscape conveys the eternal movement that fills the life of nature:

...approaching

Quite a boring time;

It was already November outside the yard.

However, the main landscape sketches in the novel are lyrical digressions about nature. All four seasons are described, but in very different ways and to different extents.

Pushkin did not like summer, so only four lines are dedicated to this season, which is an apt ironic description: “a caricature of southern winters.” One lyrical digression is also dedicated to Pushkin’s favorite season - autumn, which, unlike Pushkin’s life-affirming poems, paints a depressing picture of late autumn - “a rather boring time,” which is emphasized by a number of details: “The sun shone less often, the days became shorter.”

In the only description of spring there are epithets characteristic of Pushkin’s poems and poems: “muddy streams”, “a bee flying to collect the field tribute”. The poet admits that he is “sad” about the phenomenon of spring.

The description of winter occurs three times in the novel. In the fourth chapter, a picture of early winter is created: “the river is shining, covered in ice.” This description is laconic, but cheerful: “The first snow is cheerful, flashing, curling.”

In the fifth chapter, Pushkin depicts “low nature” with such details as “yard boy”, “peasant on the firewood”. This is a realistic landscape, not understandable to the noble reader, but dearly loved by Pushkin. The author of the novel contrasts his winter landscapes with the descriptions of the poet, who “depicted for us the first snow and all the shades of winter bliss in a luxurious style.”

In the seventh chapter, Pushkin admires the “sorceress in winter” and the festive transformation that she brings to nature: “She lay down in wavy carpets among the fields, around the hills.” At the same time, the author of the novel does not forget to note the imperious attempt of winter to stop all movement: the Brega with the motionless river was “leveled with a plump veil.”

The connection between the life of nature and human life is constantly emphasized in the novel. In the first chapters of the novel, the image of nature is correlated with the image of Eugene:

Two days seemed new to him

Lonely fields

The coolness of the gloomy oak forest,

The murmuring of a quiet stream...

“Secluded fields”, “gloomy oak grove” - these are all classic signs of a kind of “shelter” of an exile of light. To a certain extent, thanks to this, the character of the bored Onegin becomes clear, and signs of subtle authorial irony are already felt. If the poet blossoms in the bosom of rural nature: “I was born for a peaceful life, for village silence,” then Onegin “gets bored” in the village and does not see the “lovely corner” in which he lives.

The image of nature has a completely different relationship with the image of Tatiana. Most landscape paintings and individual sketches of nature are associated with its image:

She loved on the balcony

Warn the dawn,

When on a pale sky

The round dance of the stars disappears...

The romantic coloring of the landscape in this case is due to the romantic attitude of the heroine herself. Separate signs of the summer and winter state of nature are given, which are included in the description of Tatyana’s lifestyle.

In the composition of the seventh chapter, the spring landscape and the author’s thoughts that follow it are not accidental. This chapter is in its own way a turning point in Tatyana’s fate. And it is through the landscape, through the relationship between the image of Tatiana and nature that Pushkin reveals the meaning of this turning point. Never before has the author emphasized the internal unity and inseparability of the heroine with rural nature so strongly:

Her walks last a long time.

Now it’s either a hill or a stream

Stopped unwillingly

Tatyana with her charm!...

Tatiana's fate is decided. And the pictures of the onset of the Russian winter, replacing the description of autumn, further strengthen the heroine’s feeling of doom in the general context:

Here is the north, the clouds are catching up,

He breathed, howled - and here she is

The sorceress winter is coming.

Quite often, the landscape is presented to the reader as Tatyana sees it: “In the morning Tatyana saw a white courtyard through the window.” Pushkin notes that the change of seasons is closely related to the state of mind of his “sweet ideal.” That is why purity, inner severity, majesty and restrained harmony inherent in winter turned out to be Tatyana’s natural properties.

Nature relates to the image of Lensky in a completely different way; one can feel the author’s ironic attitude towards the hero. Descriptions of Lensky's feelings for Olga are constantly expressed in elegiac tones. “Moon”, “night”, “solitude” - the stylistic complex of the elegy genre dominates the description:

Sorry, the games are golden!

He fell in love with dense groves,

Solitude, silence,

And the night, and the stars, and the moon.

Lensky does not have access to a true understanding of the beauty of nature, since the young poet is interested in “romantic roses” and not real ones.

Thus, the life of all the heroes of Pushkin’s novel turns out to be inscribed in the life of nature. The change of seasons and, accordingly, the change of landscape paintings determines the chronology of the plot, at the same time being a metaphor for the eternal movement of human life. Thanks to the landscape in the novel, a picture of a rapidly changing world is created, into the life of which the fates of the heroes of Eugene Onegin are intertwined. Pushkin’s love for nature is revealed in many ways in the novel: these include lengthy lyrical digressions depicting different seasons; and short landscape sketches; and, finally, the precise and subtle understanding of native nature that is inherent only in Pushkin’s beloved heroine.

Nature appears in the novel in different images: these are landscape sketches, and the natural, harmonious world, opposing the vanity and confusion of the human soul, pacifying and ennobling, and a source of expressive means for recreating the various mental states of the characters.
Affirming the inconstancy and changeability of women's feelings, Onegin compares them with fleeting natural phenomena:

The young maiden will change more than once
Dreams are easy dreams;
So the tree has its own leaves
Changes every spring.
So, apparently, it was destined by heaven.

Bright, colorful pictures of nature, scattered throughout the motley plot of the novel, sparkle and shimmer like precious stones. Many of them became winged and took on life as independent works. However, the author depicts nature not in an enthusiastic-romantic way, but in a subjective-realistic way - after all, the eternal and many-sided nature is objectively perfect and does not need verbal decoration. Sometimes Pushkin even allows himself a touch of irony when describing his least favorite seasons:

But our northern summer,
Caricature of southern winters,
It will flash and not: this is known,
Even though we don't want to admit it...
Fog lay over the fields,
Noisy caravan of geese
Stretched to the south: approaching
Quite a boring time;
It was already November outside the yard.

But even in these ironic sketches there is amazing precision, amazing accuracy in conveying moods. The poet paid tribute to all seasons. Following the sad, full of expectation (“nature waited, waited for winter”), sometimes, when the rich, bright colors of ripened nature were replaced by monochromatic black and gray, the long-awaited winter comes:

Winter!.. The peasant, triumphant,
On the firewood he renews the path;
His horse smells the snow,
Trotting along somehow...

True to the truth of life, Pushkin paints not just a winter landscape, he creates a psychological portrait of the beginning of the season, an image of winter perceived by the peasants. For people, nature is not only an object of admiration, but also a favorable period for sleigh rides after the autumn off-road season. The details of peasant winter life are recreated quite poetically: a red sash against the backdrop of a bright white, brilliant snow carpet, the rapid flight of a wagon exploding its “fluffy reins.” And yet, the poeticization of simple, unremarkable life phenomena was defiantly daring for the belles-lettres of that time. But Pushkin demonstratively emphasizes the principle of a realistic view of the world:

But maybe this kind
Pictures will not attract you:
All this is low nature;
There's not much that's elegant here.

Contrasting his winter landscape, rich in realistic details, with exquisite depictions in a “luxurious style” of “all shades of winter bliss,” the poet defends the right to creative independence and naturalness.
But Pushkin is changeable and multifaceted. Through the eyes of his beloved heroine, he recreates the image of a colorful and poetic winter:

Tatiana (Russian soul,
Without knowing why)
With her cold beauty
I loved the Russian winter,
There is frost in the sun on a frosty day,
And the sleigh and the late dawn
The glow of pink snows,
And the darkness of Epiphany evenings.

Pushkin paints the arrival of spring with bright, light colors.
The joy of the awakening of nature, the renewal of life is conveyed by a variety of definitions, epithets, and an abundance of verbs:

Nature's clear smile
Through a dream he greets the morning of the year;
The skies are shining blue.
Still transparent, forests
It's like they're turning green.

But Pushkin does not simply reflect the outside world; nature is the background against which a person’s spiritual life takes place. Inner life is not always in tune with changes in nature; in this case, the contrast between the naturalness of natural phenomena and mental turmoil emphasizes the mood of the hero. A clear, cloudless sky and transparent air make spiritual sadness even more difficult.

How sad your appearance is to me,
Spring, spring! it's time for love!
What languid excitement
In my soul, in my blood!
With what heavy tenderness
I enjoy the breeze
In the face of the blowing spring...

What inspired me in my youth, gave me strength and energy, now only causes me sadness. There is no joy in the soul of discovering the world - there is only the heaviness of past years and unfulfilled hopes.
Pushkin perfectly described a summer evening, bathed in moonlight, filled with peaceful sounds. Every sound is heard clearly, even the quietest. The silence fascinates with the harmony of resting nature, peace and tranquility.
True, Tatyana, immersed in her dreams, does not admire the beauty of nature this time; mental pain has completely consumed her.

It was evening. The sky was darkening. Water
They flowed quietly. The beetle was buzzing.
The round dances were already breaking up;
Already across the river, smoking, was burning
Fishing fire.

And finally - autumn. Pushkin’s favorite time, a riot of colors of ripe nature, a time of fruitful creative work and inspiration. Bright, saturated colors delight the eye and soul, but anxiety is already creeping into the heart - the heyday is short-lived, the harsh winter will soon swallow up this farewell smile of nature:

Golden autumn has come
Nature is tremulous, pale,
Like a sacrifice, luxuriously decorated...
Here is the north, the clouds are catching up,
He breathed, howled - and here she is
The sorceress winter is coming.

The image of autumn is also tragic because it is perceived through the eyes of Tatiana, whose feelings are heightened to the limit. She says goodbye to her girlish dreams, to her beloved rural landscapes. Her childhood is over, she is being taken “to the brides fair,” and her heart is breaking from unrequited love and hopelessness.
For Pushkin, nature is a world of harmony, a source of inner peace. A spiritual connection with nature is a sign of a deep nature, rejection of it is a feature of the spiritual poor, the limitations of a person.

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“Pushkin did not need to go to Italy for pictures of beautiful nature: beautiful nature was at his fingertips here, in Rus', on its flat and monotonous steppes, under its eternally gray sky, in its sad villages and its rich and poor cities... ." These words of Belinsky, characterizing Pushkin’s lyrics, are also true in relation to the novel “Eugene Onegin”, the encyclopedicism of which is determined not only by the breadth of coverage of objects and phenomena of “modern real life”, but also by the description of the complete cycle of natural phenomena. “There is a fertile spring, and a hot summer, and a rotten rainy autumn, and a frosty winter.”

The landscapes in Eugene Onegin are mostly concrete and realistic. On this occasion, the poet ironically remarked: “But perhaps this kind of Pictures will not attract you: All this is low nature; There’s not much that’s elegant here.”

The functions of the landscape in a novel are different: it creates a background against which the action takes place, creates a mood, frames the author’s feelings and emotions in lyrical digressions, reveals the inner appearance of the characters, and delays the course of the plot action.

One of the first landscapes in the novel is a description of the village “where Eugene was bored”:

Two days seemed new to him

Lonely fields

The coolness of the gloomy oak tree,

The babbling of a quiet stream;

On the third grove, hill and field

He was no longer occupied...

The “village” landscapes in the novel go back to the literary tradition. “Secluded fields”, “the murmur of a quiet stream”, “impenetrable vaults”, “shady canopy” - all these, as V. Nabokov noted, are “cute clichés of French poetry”.

Considering this landscape, V. Nabokov notes that the “stream” referred to here will be present in other village landscapes. The researcher traces the path of this stream: it runs from the spring located on Lensky’s estate, through the Larins’ garden, near the linden alley, then turns near the hill and runs through the groves belonging to Onegin. V. Nabokov believes that it was this stream (a symbol of separation in Tatyana’s mind) that in the heroine’s dream turned into a rapid stream.

The “village” landscape acts as a means of characterizing the character, emphasizing Onegin’s satiety with the impressions of life, his coldness and disappointment, mental fatigue, indifference to life and nature as an integral component of it.

In contrast to his hero, the author appears to us as a “living” person, emotional, loving nature and attentive to everything that surrounds him. In the lyrical digressions of the novel, pictures of nature often appear, thanks to which the author argues with his hero. The same simple village picture appears to Pushkin’s gaze as a magnificent summer landscape: “a secluded master’s house”, “a huge, neglected garden”, flowering meadows and golden fields, herds lazily wandering in the meadows,

With the help of landscapes, Pushkin also reveals Tatiana’s inner world:

She loved on the balcony

Warn the dawn,

When on a pale sky

The round dance of the stars disappears,

And quietly the edge of the earth brightens...

This romantic landscape correlates with Tatiana’s youth, with the expectation of first love. In addition, already in this picture Pushkin defines the heroine’s mental makeup - her thoughtfulness, dreaminess, poetry.

Tatyana is often depicted in the novel against the backdrop of natural images - the starry sky, the flickering moon, the rising dawn. She makes a wish on a falling star; her visit to Lensky's grave is illuminated by the mysterious light of the moon. As K. Kedrov notes, “Tatiana’s entire universe is revealed in the natural and cosmic images of the novel”1.

The heroine’s love for everything Russian and national, the purity and purity of her soul are emphasized by the dazzling winter landscape:

Tatyana (Russian soul,

Without knowing why)

With her cold beauty

I loved the Russian winter,

There is frost in the sun on a frosty day,

And the sleigh and the late dawn

The glow of pink snows,

And the darkness of Epiphany evenings.

Pushkin also emphasizes Tatiana’s inextricable connection with the natural world with another landscape. On the eve of leaving for Moscow, she, as with old friends, says goodbye to fields and “peaceful valleys,” forests and “familiar mountain peaks”:

Her walks last a long time.

Now it’s either a hill or a stream

They stop you willy-nilly

Tatyana with her charm.

The landscape also symbolizes the heroine’s age and changes in her destiny. Thus, the onset of autumn in the novel coincides with the era of maturity in Tatiana’s life, with her marriage:

Golden autumn has arrived.

Nature is tremulous, pale,

Like a sacrifice, luxuriously decorated...

Behind her is a carefree, happy youth, first love... Now the heroine has a long “winter journey” ahead of her. Marriage for her is only the fulfillment of a life’s duty, where the soul is not enlivened by love. I think this is what the poet is metaphorically hinting at: “Tatyana is afraid of the winter journey.” The fact is that in the Slavic pagan tradition, winter and frost were associated with death. In Pushkin's novel, this is the dying of the hopes of youth, the romantic delusions of the excitement of first love.

In general, in Eugene Onegin we encounter many winter landscapes. “The Russian winter is better than the Russian summer - this caricature of southern winters. She looks like herself, whereas our summer is as much like summer as the scenery trees in the theater are like real trees in the forest. Pushkin was the first to understand this, and the first to express it,” Belinsky wrote.

Winter landscapes in “Eugene Onegin” are full of inexpressible charm: the crackling of frost that silvers among the fields; river shining with ice; the first snow falling like stars on the “shore”; trees in “winter silver”; “there are light patterns on the glass And the softly covered mountains of Winter with a brilliant carpet.” And, at the same time, these pictures are very realistic, concrete, correlated with Russian village life and peasant life:

Winter!.. The peasant, triumphant,

On the firewood he renews the path;

His horse smells the snow,

Trotting along somehow;

Fluffy reins exploding,

The daring carriage flies;

The coachman sits on the beam

In a sheepskin coat and a red sash.

Here is a yard boy running,

Having planted a bug in the sled,

Transforming himself into a horse...

Similar realistic concreteness is also characteristic of the autumn landscapes in Eugene Onegin. Here, pictures of nature act as the background against which the action takes place. The poet correlates the arrival of autumn with the cessation of peasant work: “in the fields the noise of work has ceased,” “at dawn the shepherd no longer drives the cows out of the barn.” A rather boring time is coming.

What to do in the wilderness at this time?

Walk? The village at that time

Involuntarily bothers the eye

Monotonous nakedness.

But autumn passes, a harsh winter passes, and again “with a clear smile nature greets the morning of the year through a dream” - spring, with its bright, riotous colors and the constant triumph of life, joyful renewal:

Driven by spring rays,

There is already snow from the surrounding mountains

Escaped through muddy streams

To the flooded meadows.

Nature's clear smile

Through a dream he greets the morning of the year;

The skies are shining blue.

Still transparent, forests

It's like they're turning green.

Bee for field tribute

Flies from a wax cell.

The valleys are dry and colorful;

The herds rustle and the nightingale

Already singing in the silence of the night.

The poet associates spring with youth, with love, with trembling hearts. And this landscape smoothly turns into a lyrical digression, merging with the author’s memories of what was so dear to his soul. In addition, the picture of the renewal of nature, paradoxically, recalls “the fading of our years,” awakening in the poet’s soul thoughts about the eternal.

This romantic landscape evokes romantic image- the image of a poet who died “in the prime of his life.” And here a subtle motive of confrontation between eternal, powerful nature and fragile human destiny arises. The charming picture of a stream in a green meadow, a river, the singing of a nightingale and blooming rose hips contrasts with the picture of the tombstone “in the shadow of two obsolete pines,” where the untimely death of Vladimir Lensky lies. Thus, the revival of nature and the “breath of blowing spring” remind us of the dreams of youth and at the same time - of the frailty of human existence.

But there is another spring landscape in the novel. It can perhaps be called urban:

Spring lives him: for the first time

Your chambers are locked,

Where did he spend the winter like a groundhog?

Double windows, fireplace

He leaves on a clear morning,

Rushing along the Neva in a sleigh.

On blue, scarred ice

The sun is playing; dirty melts

There's snow on the streets...

Nature here is also correlated with human feelings. Thus, this “prosaic” landscape correlates with Onegin’s love. And Pushkin, clearly sympathizing with the hero, nevertheless quite definitely expresses his attitude towards his belated passion:

Love for all ages;

But to young, virgin hearts

Her impulses are beneficial,

Like spring storms across the fields...

But at a late and barren age,

At the turn of our years,

Sad is the passion of the dead trail:

So the storms of autumn are cold

A meadow is turned into a swamp

And they expose the forest around.

Thus, the landscapes in “Eugene Onegin” are often symbolic: the poet correlates the life of nature with human destinies, with the feelings of the heroes. But in the novel, Pushkin continues to assert the special concreteness and realism of the landscape, correlating pictures of nature with Russian life, with the national characteristics of life. Gone are the days when the poet needed “deserts, edges of pearly waves, And the noise of the sea, and piles of rocks” - now completely different pictures are sweet to his gaze:

I love the sandy slope,

There are two rowan trees in front of the hut,

A gate, a broken fence,

There are gray clouds in the sky,

There are piles of straw in front of the threshing floor -

Yes, a pond under the canopy of thick willows,

The expanse of young ducks...

Pushkin recreates Russian nature in all its originality, and we feel how close it is to him, how “true” his poetry is to Russian reality.

The landscape is present in “Eugene Onegin” in the form of detailed, complete paintings, most often serving as a kind of introduction to individual chapters or preceding new plot episodes within chapters. Thus, chapters two, five and seven open with descriptions of nature. Pictures of the onset of village winter precede the description of Onegin's lifestyle in the village in chapter four. The plot content of most of the novel is related to rural themes. It is natural, therefore, to abundantly fill these chapters with landscape elements. Thus, a small landscape is given at the beginning of the second chapter:
The village where Evgeniy was bored,
There was a lovely corner;
There's a friend of innocent pleasures
I could bless the sky.
Pushkin expresses his ironic attitude towards the works of sentimentalists, in which idyllic landscapes were created, characteristic of all noble poetry of the late X/III - early XIX centuries. The novel “Eugene Onegin” recreates a realistic landscape reflecting Pushkin’s impressions of the village of Mikhailovskoye.
Throughout the entire novel, thanks to the alternation of seasons, a chronology of events can be traced: in the summer Onegin goes to the village, bored, spends the autumn there, in the winter - after a duel with Lensky - he leaves his estate, in the spring Tatyana visits Onegin's house. This is how the landscape turns from the background of the action into the most important structural element of the narrative. It is important for Pushkin to show that the author of his novel is the creator of the work, accelerating or slowing down the development of the action and determining the relationship of plot lines. For example, looking ahead, he talks about the development of the destinies of his heroes. So, immediately after the description of the duel that took place in winter, they talk about the monument on Lensky’s grave, which the “young city woman” saw in the summer. Then, again ahead of events, the author reports that Onegin is “no longer in the village”, and “the sad monument has been forgotten.” And only after that he talks about Olga’s marriage and Tatyana’s departure to Moscow.
Pushkin's landscapes are never static. In nature, everything is constantly changing: summer is “flickering”, November is “approaching”, the days are “rushing”. The depiction of nature is dominated by nouns and verbs; adjectives that capture this or that phenomenon in statics are practically not used. Thus, the landscape conveys the eternal movement that fills the life of nature:
...approaching
Quite a boring time;
It was already November outside the yard.
However, the main landscape sketches in the novel are lyrical digressions about nature. All four seasons are described, but in very different ways and to different extents.
Pushkin did not like summer, so only four lines are dedicated to this season, which is an apt ironic description: “a caricature of southern winters.” One lyrical digression is also dedicated to Pushkin’s favorite season - autumn, which, unlike Pushkin’s life-affirming poems, paints a depressing picture of late autumn - “a rather boring time,” which is emphasized by a number of details: “The sun shone less often, the days became shorter.”
In the only description of spring there are epithets characteristic of Pushkin’s poems and poems: “muddy streams”, “a bee flying to collect the field tribute”. The poet admits that he is “sad” about the phenomenon of spring.
The description of winter occurs three times in the novel. In the fourth chapter, a picture of early winter is created: “the river is shining, covered in ice.” This description is laconic, but cheerful: “The first snow is cheerful, flashing, curling.”
In the fifth chapter, Pushkin depicts “low nature” with such details as “yard boy”, “peasant on the firewood”. This is a realistic landscape, not understandable to the noble reader, but dearly loved by Pushkin. The author of the novel contrasts his winter landscapes with the descriptions of the poet, who “depicted for us the first snow and all the shades of winter bliss in a luxurious style.”
In the seventh chapter, Pushkin admires the “sorceress in winter” and the festive transformation that she brings to nature: “She lay down in wavy carpets among the fields, around the hills.” At the same time, the author of the novel does not forget to note the imperious attempt of winter to stop all movement: the Brega with the motionless river was “leveled with a plump veil.”
The connection between the life of nature and human life is constantly emphasized in the novel. In the first chapters of the novel, the image of nature is correlated with the image of Eugene:
Two days seemed new to him
Lonely fields
The coolness of the gloomy oak forest,
The murmuring of a quiet stream...
“Secluded fields”, “gloomy oak grove” - these are all classic signs of a kind of “shelter” of an exile of light. To a certain extent, thanks to this, the character of the bored Onegin becomes clear, and signs of subtle authorial irony are already felt. If the poet blossoms in the bosom of rural nature: “I was born for a peaceful life, for village silence,” then Onegin “gets bored” in the village and does not see the “lovely corner” in which he lives.
The image of nature has a completely different relationship with the image of Tatiana. Most landscape paintings and individual sketches of nature are associated with its image:
She loved on the balcony
Warn the dawn,
When on a pale sky
The round dance of the stars disappears...
The romantic coloring of the landscape in this case is due to the romantic attitude of the heroine herself. Separate signs of the summer and winter state of nature are given, which are included in the description of Tatyana’s lifestyle.
In the composition of the seventh chapter, the spring landscape and the author’s thoughts that follow it are not accidental. This chapter is in its own way a turning point in Tatyana’s fate. And it is through the landscape, through the relationship between the image of Tatiana and nature that Pushkin reveals the meaning of this turning point. Never before has the author emphasized the internal unity and inseparability of the heroine with rural nature so strongly:
Her walks last a long time.
Now it’s either a hill or a stream
Stopped unwillingly
Tatyana with her charm!...
Tatiana's fate is decided. And the pictures of the onset of the Russian winter, replacing the description of autumn, further strengthen the heroine’s feeling of doom in the general context:
Here is the north, the clouds are catching up,
He breathed, howled - and here she is
The sorceress winter is coming.
Quite often, the landscape is presented to the reader as Tatyana sees it: “In the morning Tatyana saw a white courtyard through the window.” Pushkin notes that the change of seasons is closely related to the state of mind of his “sweet ideal.” That is why purity, inner severity, majesty and restrained harmony inherent in winter turned out to be Tatyana’s natural properties.
Nature relates to the image of Lensky in a completely different way; one can feel the author’s ironic attitude towards the hero. Descriptions of Lensky's feelings for Olga are constantly expressed in elegiac tones. “Moon”, “night”, “solitude” - the stylistic complex of the elegy genre dominates the description:
Sorry, the games are golden!
He fell in love with dense groves,
Solitude, silence,
And the night, and the stars, and the moon.
Lensky does not have access to a true understanding of the beauty of nature, since the young poet is interested in “romantic roses” and not real ones.
Thus, the life of all the heroes of Pushkin’s novel turns out to be inscribed in the life of nature. The change of seasons and, accordingly, the change of landscape paintings determines the chronology of the plot, at the same time being a metaphor for the eternal movement of human life. Thanks to the landscape in the novel, a picture of a rapidly changing world is created, into the life of which the fates of the heroes of Eugene Onegin are intertwined. Pushkin’s love for nature is revealed in many ways in the novel: these include lengthy lyrical digressions depicting different seasons; and short landscape sketches; and, finally, the precise and subtle understanding of native nature that is inherent only in Pushkin’s beloved heroine.

When V.G. Belinsky called the novel “Eugene Onegin” “an encyclopedia of Russian life,” then, first of all, of course, he highlighted the variety of scenes and pictures of social life, rural and urban life, shown by the writer. But in this “encyclopedia”, a prominent place was also occupied by descriptions of nature, which appear on the pages of the novel, either in the form of individual strokes and comparisons, or in the form of detailed pictures in several stanzas.

It is interesting to note that the poet begins to describe his native nature in detail only from the fourth chapter, in which Tatyana’s poetic soul is gradually revealed to us. It seems that the author is trying to reveal the character of the heroes through the perception of nature. Larina merges a special perception of peace, love, life through nature. And it’s not for nothing that Pushkin said:

Tatiana (Russian soul,

Without knowing why)

With her cold beauty

I loved Russian winter...

One can guess why, of all the seasons, Alexander Sergeevich chose winter to emphasize his “Russianness.” After all, the first thing that foreigners who lived in Russia always noted was the long winter (there is nothing like it in Europe), the Russian cold, and snow. This is, one might say, a characteristic time of year for the country. But the novelist chuckles at summer:

But naked northern summer,

Caricature of southern winters,

It will flash and no...

If, when talking about his “sweet ideal,” the creator of the novel gives rich, free descriptions, then the unpoetic Onegin sometimes evokes in him a slightly mocking attitude towards nature. Even the comparisons that Eugene uses show how indifferent he is to her beauty. So, in a conversation with Lensky, he compares Olga to the moon:

She's round and red-faced,

Like this stupid moon

On this stupid sky.

But Tatyana in the fifth chapter is also compared to the moon, but in a completely different way: “And, paler than the morning moon...”

Onegin was bored in the city, where “he equally yawned among the fashionable and ancient halls,” and he was also bored on the estate, although “the village where Eugene was bored was a charming corner.”

The creator of the novel in verse, locked up for a long time in Mikhailovsky, undoubtedly laughed at the boring village monotony and was eager to go to the capital, but at the same time enjoyed the beauties of his native nature. As you know, he loved autumn most of all.

The sky was already breathing in autumn,

The sun shone less often,

The day was getting shorter

Mysterious forest canopy

With a sad noise she stripped herself,

Fog lay over the fields,

Noisy caravan of geese

Reached south...

The descriptions of nature in the work are inextricably linked with the life of the people; the unity of peasant life and nature is emphasized. Pushkin caustically contrasts his “low” description of fields and forests with the way other poets describe nature in a “luxurious style” in a romantic style. But it is precisely these pictures of “low nature” that sink surprisingly deeply into the soul.

Winter!.. The peasant, triumphant,

On the firewood he renews the path;

His horse smells the snow,

Trotting along somehow;

Fluffy reins exploding,

The daring carriage flies;

The coachman sits on the beam.

In a sheepskin coat and a red sash.

Here is a yard boy running,

Having planted a bug in the sled,

Transforming himself into a horse;

The naughty man has already frozen his finger:

He is both painful and funny,

And his mother threatens him through the window...

The great artist of words is very diverse in his descriptions. The style and language of his descriptions constantly change depending on what goals he sets. I just brought a household sketch. And in the scenes of Tatiana’s dream, which is as romantic as this girl’s love for her hero, nature becomes mysterious and enigmatic.

There is a forest in front of them; motionless pines

In its frowning beauty;

All their branches are weighed down

Pieces of snow; through the peaks

Aspen, birch and linden trees

The ray of the night luminaries shines;

There is no road; bushes, rapids

Everyone is covered in a blizzard,

Immersed deep in the snow.

And the place where Lensky, “a poet, a brooding dreamer,” killed by a friend’s hand, is buried is again described in such a way as to emphasize how this young man saw the world.

There is a place: to the left of the village,

Where did the descendant of inspiration live?

Two pine trees have grown together with their roots...

The plowman likes to relax there,

And plunge the reapers into the waves

The ringing jugs are coming...

There by the stream in the thick shade

A simple monument was erected.

Pushkin's descriptions of winter and autumn are beautiful. And I would like to end the essay with an equally wonderful description of spring, which begins the seventh chapter:

Driven by spring rays,

There is already snow from the surrounding mountains

Escaped through muddy streams

To the flooded meadows.

Nature's clear smile

Through a dream he greets the morning of the year;

The skies are shining blue.

Still transparent, forests

It's like they're turning green.