Identifying Ovidian Themes in Pushkin’s Tatiana: Language, Epistles, and the Muse

• In Event: In Dialogue with the Antique: Russian Reception of Classical Literature

Abstract

This paper intends to look at the metapoetic resonance between the works of Pushkin and Ovid with a focus on the epistolary expression in Evgenii Onegin and the Heroides. Through a comparison of Sappho’s letter to Phaon and Tatiana’s letter to Onegin, I will explore Pushkin’s “metamorphoses” of an Ovidian motif, namely, the discovery, actualization, and emancipation of a subjective “self” through poetic letters of love, and demonstrate how Pushkin speaks to Ovid not only from his identification with the latter’s politically desolated circumstance but also through a shared tendency to transform and broaden the self-referentiality of a poet’s narcissistic use of language.

Author

• Chutong Liu, U of Oregon