How War and Peace drew on Eugene Onegin
A documented line of influence: Leo Tolstoy demonstrably engaged Alexander Pushkin’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Eugene Onegin
Alexander Pushkin · 1833
RomanticismThe influenced
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy · 1869
The Age of the NovelRelevance
6/10
On War and Peace’s page
- Natasha Rostova has a mother: Pushkin's Tatiana, the heroine Tolstoy reread obsessively
- The wounded-Andrei-sees-Natasha scene echoes a comparable moment in Eugene Onegin
- Reading Pushkin first shows you the template Tolstoy was building on — the ardent, intuitive Russian heroine, before War and Peace made her epic
On Eugene Onegin’s page
- Tatiana, Pushkin's heroine, is the acknowledged forebear of Tolstoy's Natasha Rostova
- Tolstoy revered Pushkin and reread him obsessively — "Never have I admired Pushkin so much"
- The Russian novel's most beloved heroine begins here, in verse, decades before War and Peace gave her a sequel in prose