Onegin stanza as the "hidden engine" of a novel plot

The correlation of two unique phenomena in Russian literature - the Onegin stanza and the genre of the versicle novel - is a topical problem in modern philology, because a separate study does not give any positive results. The correlation demands to pay attention to the investigation of the Onegin stanza genesis. Most scientists consider the sonnet generates this stanza. At the same time the author of the article supposes that the genealogy of the Onegin stanza may be the decimal verse stanza used in the ode. This point of view was expressed by Yury Tynyanov. But the author did not give convincing arguments, because he did not know that Pushkin was not the first poet to use the Onegin stanza. Following Tynyanov, an outstanding researcher of Russian versification Mikhail Gasparov adhered to this opinion. Meanwhile in 1977 English scientist J. Smith in his PhD thesis "The Stanza Forms of Russian Poetry from Polotsky to Derzavin" discovered stanza used before Pushkin's versicle novel. Its author was Peter Shalikov who devoted his ode to Alexander I (1813). This ode resembles Pushkin's Onegin stanza with different arrangement of clausals: aBaBccDDeFFeGG instead of ababCCddEffEgg. The observation of J. Smith allows reanimating Tynyanov's point of view and considering the decimal verse stanza to be the source of the Onegin stanza. At the same time there is a difference between the ode genre from the genre of the Onegin stanza. The ode is not interested in metalanguage. It is completely about the development of the plot. On the contrary the Onegin stanza of Pushkin's verse novel creates a field of reflection which includes the fundamental characters of the metalanguage. That is why Pushkin refuses from the traditional stanza of the ode and invents the new stanza. The article aims to present a comparative study of Shalikov's stanza with the stanza of Pushkin's verse novel. The author considers that the spread of Shalikov's stanza allowed solving a number of new problems in the original genre which connected the Onegin stanza with unregular stanza, fragments of prose and empty places ("equivalents of text" - form by Tynyanov). The author also considers that the use of Shalikov's tradition allowed completing other tasks: firstly, to provide the free movement of word masses ("dal svobodnogo romana"), secondly, to intensity the simultation of the pictures, thirdly, to include elements distinctive from the Onegin stanza. At last, these innovations allowed broadening the plane of Europen culture together with the plane of "the encyclopedia of Russian life".

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