Reading 1001 discussion

Read in 2016. Here's my review
I took the opportunity to read Eugene Onegin by Aleksandr Pushkin. It happens to be on the 1001 Books list and a novel in poetry. A wonderful love story in prose of Eugene Onegin and Tatiana. Very Russian. I have the translation by Charles Johnston and listened to the story read by Stephen Fry of a different translation. He did a wonderful job. The audio book is a free download and can be found here, http://fryreadsonegin.com

Really glad I read this novel in verse. A tale of doomed love blighted by Onegin's jaded character and then by Tatyana choosing to remain faithful to her husband when Onegin comes to realise his mistake in turning down her love. In the meantime his actions also cost the life of the young poet Lensky whose idealism is paralleled with Onegin's aloofness and cynicism. The work is also a wonderful satire of Tsarist Russian society. Even the great hostess Tatyana would prefer a book to the endless round of parties and balls!

Like Kristel I read the Charles Johnston translation (Penguin) and it was very enjoyable.

Pre-2016 review:

***

A "novel in verse", Eugene Onegin is a little tour de force enclosing some social commentary on Russia at the beginning of the 19th century and the story of a bored dandy who attracts love, snubs it, gets into a duel, wins, meets again with the snubbed one now married and desperately falls in love. While the plot is rather common, it is the effort of putting this story into verse which make the novel interesting. The translation I read (in French) was from Jean-Louis Back's, who chose rhythm over rhyme. I have never been a big fan of free verse and, even if this was not totally free (these were tetrameters, after all), I felt that I was missing something without the rhymes. I should have read the translation by André Markovicz, which is fully rhymed (but harder to find).