Eugene Onegin: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

The narrator introduces Eugene Onegin, a man who was born by the Neva River (in St. Petersburg, Russia) and who served in the military. His father threw extravagant parties and was often in debt. Eugene himself now has a reputation for being educated and knowing some Latin, but he can sometimes be “pedantic.” He is bad at poetry and sometimes prefers reading prose books like those by Adam Smith.

Perhaps Eugene’s biggest interest is love. He thinks a lot about what to say and what to write to a potential beloved, and he often shows ingenuity, winning over women and defeating his rivals for their affection.

Some mornings, Eugene wakes up and has invitations to three different parties. He’ll go out and spend the day making merry, eating lots of food and drinking lots of alcohol, then maybe going to see a new ballet. He finds the theater a particularly magical place, often arriving late and using the evening to search for women he hasn’t met yet. Still, one evening when he’s at the ballet, he gets tired of it all and decides to leave early.

Eugene likes collecting nice things from around the world, like fine china and perfumes. He dresses like a “fop,” taking three hours to examine himself in the mirror. He wears such fancy types of clothes that they all have foreign names, not Russian ones.

After returning from the ballet, Eugene arrives back at his home’s gate. The narrator reflects on how he wasted much of his own youth chasing pleasure. He remembers his previous passions with women and how each seemed perfect at the time. He gets nostalgic for a while, then regrets it. Instead, he suggests that love is not worth all the praise and songs that it inspires.

Turning back to Eugene, the narrator describes how Eugene comes home exhausted in the evening after a day of revelry. The things that used to give Eugene pleasure, like beautiful women and champagne bottles, now just bore him. He comes down with an affliction that the English call “spleen” and Russians call “Russian soul” and considers killing himself, but instead he just wanders through life in a daze.

Late at night, Eugene locks himself in his den and tries to write, covering the emptiness in his soul by putting his own thoughts into other characters. Then he reads books by other writers and gets frustrated by how false or outdated everything is.

The narrator says that he actually first became friends with Eugene because both of them rejected worldly things in search of something more and were depressed. The narrator feels that anyone with the ability to feel is always trying to escape memories of the past. Still, the narrator found some solace in talking to Eugene, who despite being bitter was also frequently witty. They would drink together on quiet nights while the Neva sparkled.

Eugene and the narrator talked about traveling abroad together, but fate drove the two of them apart after Eugene’s father died, leaving Eugene to deal with the many people who all want a share of the inheritance. Not long after, Eugene’s rich uncle gets gravely ill. Eugene goes to see his uncle but arrives too late—by the time he gets there, his uncle has died. While others come from around the area for a funeral feast, Eugene himself prefers to walk through the woods and by the stream near his uncle’s home, finding a temporary cure for the dissatisfaction he felt in St. Petersburg. But after two days, he wants to go back to the city.

The narrator himself has a deep love of the countryside and its peaceful, poetic qualities—he disagrees with Eugene that it loses its splendor after a while. The narrator thinks it’s important to establish the differences between himself and Eugene—he wants it to be clear that he isn’t like Lord Byron, doing thinly veiled self-portrait. The narrator admits that many previous poets have written about love, but he feels compelled to do so himself, having recently gone through a heartbreak. The narrator reflects on his progress so far, and he’s proud of having completed a chapter about his hero. He expects critics will have things to say, but he personally wouldn’t change a word.