Yu. N. Chumakov and Russian versicle novel

In this article the author makes an attempt to estimate contribution
of famous philologist Yu. N. Chumakov to research of text and genre specific
of «Eugeny Onegin». The author believes that the result of this research is
mostly determined by the method of the scientist, who preferred to focus on microelements of the text and only after it to extrapolate results on macrolevels
and large structure blocks. Yu. N. Chumakov has shared the principal ideas of
structuralism, but has understood the limits of this method. His method has resembled
the research of Germanic scientist V. Izer who has considered the poetry
as the reaction to global modifications of the world and the man. Analyzing
«Eugeny Onegin», Yu. N. Chumakov convincingly showed semiotic features of
text borders, related to their density and marking. As the result, the scientist was
able to establish principle of dynamic balance of two independent and
inceparable worlds of the author and the hero, and also to identify of original
principle of ending formation which exists as completeness in the form of incompleteness.
Yu. N. Chumakov has interested in the genesis of the Onegin
stanza and its correlation with the genre of the versicle novel. At the beginning
of 1980 years he has suggested me to find so called quasi- stanza of the Onegin
stanza in early Pushkin’s works. As result I have discovered the insertions of the
traditial stanza of ode – ababcccdeed – and one case of future Onegin stanza.
Meanwhile in 1977 year English scientist J. Smith in his PhG thesis “The
stanza Forms of Russian Poetry from Polotsky to Derzavin” has discovered
stanza used before Pushkin’s novel. Its author was Peter Shalikov, who has
devoted his ode to Alexander I (1813). This ode resembles Pushkin’s Onegin
stanza with the different arrangement of clausals: aBaBccDDeFFeGG instead of
AbAbCCddEffEgg. The observation of J. Smith allows to propose that ode stanza
but not sonnet has become the sourse of Onegfn stanza. That is why the
author of this article considers that the spread of Shalikov’s stanza allowed solving
a number of new problems in original genre which connected the Onegin
stanza with unregular stanza, fragments of prose and empty places (“equivalents
of text – term by Tynaynov). This thesis confirms the reflections by Yu. N. Chumakov
about the free movement of word masses in Pushkin’s versical novel.
According to the researcher, principles of text structure of «Eugeny Onegin»
created stable genre model, which influenced the works of poets of XIX–XX
centuries, from «Eugeny Velsky» of M. I. Voskresensky to «Spectorsky» of
B. L. Pasternak. In this article the author examines Chumakov’s analysis of the
poem “Mladenchestvo” (“Infancy”) by Vjacheslav Ivanov.