Lacrimae Pondera Voces Habent: Ovid’s Heroides and Pushkin’s Tatiana

• In Event: The Intersection of Linguistics and 19th century Russian Poetry

Abstract

Ovid’s Heroides are elegiac poems that take the form of epistles sent from a mythological heroine to her
male counterpart, typically a hero of myth. Overall, these women are secondary to men in the stories in
which they appear, little more than victims in their original context, or at the very least defined by their
relationship to men. Within the epic tradition, there is no space for female voices; it is within Ovid’s
generic innovation that women are given the ability to speak. Knowing this, the Heroides seem to be a
natural point of comparison to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, which, famously, likewise features a woman
who first finds her voice through the form of a letter. However, and perhaps surprisingly, this connection
is one which has been to this point virtually ignored by scholars.
Through a non-exhaustive comparison of various poems from Ovid’s Heroides, focusing on the
so-called “double Heroides” and their questions of authorship, I will elucidate a strong parallel between
Pushkin and Ovid. Though the connection between Pushkin and Ovid has been explored through these
authors’ other works, this particular parallel has yet to be explored in any real detail.

Author

• Grace Clifford, Northwestern U