Mediating "Eugene Onegin"

“The sun of Russian poetry”, Alexander Pushkin, wrote his novel in verse “Eugene Onegin” from 1823 to 1831. Since then it has been regarded as a masterpiece of literature and Pushkin’s key work. From the school curriculum every student is familiar with Pushkin’s famous iambic tetrameter, an unusual rhyme, which is also famous as the “Onegin stanza” or the “Pushkin sonnet”. But what still has been disputed by Pushkin researchers, is the query, what is it which is so unique about “Onegin”: is it the poetic structure of the novel, and the tempo-rhythm which the poetic structure produces while reciting and acting on stage? Or is it the national cultural content, called by the Russian critic Vissarion G. Belinsky "the encyclopaedia of Russian life”? There were many attempts to interpret the novel. But to interpret Pushkin is not the same as to recite him. That is why the former director of Taganka Theatre in Moscow Yuri Lyubimov (1917-2014) staged “Onegin” in 2000 focusing on the tempo-rhythm of the Pushkin stanza. However, “Eugene Onegin” remains undoubtedly “the encyclopaedia” where national manners, customs, and cultural traditions from every field of life are described with brilliant virtuosity. In this connection, Alvis Hermanis’ (1965-) interpretation of “Eugene Onegin” at the Schaubühne Berlin in 2011 should be mentioned. Hermanis concentrated particularly upon Russian cultural embodiment. Five actors embodied the main characters of the novel and were both its narrators and historians who allowed the audience to the backstage of Russian and European everyday life. So it was the actors themselves who embodied the “encyclopaedia of Russian life” in Belinsky’s sense on stage. Both, Lyubimov and Hermanis, chose heterogeneous forms of mediation for their performances. In my paper I investigate mediation practices applied to preserve the tempo-rhythm on the one hand, and to reveal cultural traditions on the other.