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Pushkin's best work, his novel in verse, "Evgeny Onyegin," although it came so early, was constructed according to realistic principles; and although we still distinguish romantic tints, it is a striking picture of Russian society at the beginning of the 19th century.

It has always been a flock which needs good shepherds and dogs, and it has always gone in the direction in which the shepherds and the dogs drove it. You are indignant that it laughs at flat witticisms and applauds sounding phrases; but then the very same stupid public fills the house to hear "Othello," and, listening to the opera "Evgeny Onyegin," weeps when Tatyana writes her letter.

In their feeling of hostility to all authority, and all fixed things, including bourgeois happiness and economical principles, some of Gorky's characters resemble some of those superior heroes of Russian literature, like Pushkin's Evgeny Onyegin, Lermontov's Pechorine, and, finally, Turgenev's Rudin, who, in their way, are vagabonds, filled with the same independent spirit in their respective social, intellectual, or political circles.

We find the same tendency in Lermontov's prose novel, "A Hero of Our Times," in which the hero, Pechorin, has many traits in common with Evgeny Onyegin. This book immediately made a deep impression. It was really nothing more than a step taken in a new direction by its author. But it was a step that promised much.

She is to sing a romance by Glinka ... and one by Tchaikóvsky, and then she will recite the letter from 'Evgény Onyégin' Come now! Wilt thou take a ticket?" "But when is it to be?" "To-morrow ... to-morrow, at half-past one, in a private hall, on Ostozhyónka Street.... I will come for thee. A ticket at five rubles?... Here it is.... No, this is a three-ruble ticket. Here it is.

You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for the artist. In "Anna Karenin" and "Evgeny Onyegin" not a single problem is solved, but they satisfy you completely because all the problems are correctly stated in them.