Evgenii Onegin

A New Translation by Mary Hobson

By: Alexander Pushkin, Mary Hobson - translator

Narrated by: Neville Jason

Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Evgenii Onegin is best known in the West through Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin. But the original narrative poem (consisting of 389 stanzas, the form of which has become known as the "Pushkin sonnet") is one of the landmarks of Russian literature.

In the poem, the eponymous hero repudiates love, only to later experience the pain of rejection himself. Pushkin’s unique style proves timeless in its exploration of love, life, passion, jealousy, and the consequences of social convention.

This is the first time the work has appeared in audiobook form and is part of Naxos AudioBooks' intention to make the major European literary works available on audio.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

Public Domain (P)2012 Naxos AudioBooks

Definitely worth a listen!

One of the best classics with an amazing narrator and female heroine! Definitely worth the listen if you're a fan of Russian literature!

Floats Like a Butterfly, Stings Like a Bee

Usually when we enjoy a book, we heap praise on the writer and the reader. Here we need to include the translator as well.

Vladimir Nabokov’s prose rendering may be, as academics assure us, the closest thing to the original Russian. But comic verse, especially sly, cynical comic verse, needs rhymes to elicit the sudden bark of laughter that makes fellow passengers on the train home from work wonder what you’re up to. And, out of the myriad verse translations available, the good folks at Naxos selected a winner in Mary Hobson’s effort. In its dexterous fluidity, there's more than a passing likeness to Muhammed Ali’s performance in the ring.

As in the case of another reviewer ("Maker of Images") this book has been on my "I-should-read-that-one-sometime-soon" shelf for quite a while. I was surprised to find that, although he follows the trail blazed by Byron, Pushkin voices some apposite critiques of that bad boy of the British peerage. Nevertheless, the parallels are there. As with Byron, Pushkin reverences the Enlightenment though, of all of Napoleon's victims, Russia suffered perhaps most at the hands of that imperial offspring of the Enlightenment. As with Byron, here we have a narrative poem that serves just as often as a forum for the poet’s barbed views on fashion, society, poetry, literary critics, love, lust, the city, the country, marriage and any other topic the flow of the story may suggest. As with Byron, the stings aren’t exclusively comic; the same buoyant stanza can carry serious, even tragic freight as well. And, as with Byron, one just sits back and soaks it in through the pores.

Of course, much of the butterfly-and-bee effect is due to Neville Jason’s pretty-near-perfect performance.

Classic

Classic Russian Narrative poetry. Pushkin is dope. Give it a listen and you’ll enjoy it

a book I always wanted to read

but never had the time to ... it is a stirring story that has helped me understand Russian literary history better

An exceptional translation of a timeless masterpiece!

I walked along Arbat in Moscow one day and saw immaculately dressed small children standing on the street reciting Pushkin's poetry. To Russians he is their Shakespeare, and so no child can escape him. A lot of Russia is in this one short work, and even though I have come to him after many other Russian authors it seems now to have been a crime to have sought to understand the Russian soul without its leading light. As a historian of people of 'mixed race' its interesting to note that Pushkin was, to a lesser degree than Dumas, of black descent - yet both thoroughly assimilated to and taking their respective tongues and national cultures to the greatest heights.

The reason that Pushkin is so little known relative to the other Russian greats is surely because he is a poet, and poetry, even more than prose, must suffer alteration in translation. However, this is truly wonderful and lyrical translation of Pushkin's masterpiece into English verse, for which Dr. Mary Hobson is to be commended. Inspirationally Hobson began learning Russian at 56 and received her PhD in the subject at 74, as well as - appropriately - the Pushkin Gold Medal for translation! Even if Russian speakers may say all translation is an echo, this beautiful English language version is a testament both to the depth of Pushkin's original and to Hobson's skill in bringing it to life for us. Anthem Press published her written translation, which I am now eager to get hold of.

#MidlifeCrisis #UnlikelyHero #Cynical #Tearjerker #Russia #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

Poem/ Novel

Excellent translation of Pushkin's seminal work. Neville Jason is a pleasure to listen to, as always. Now I want to read Nabokov's translation of Onegin, for comparison.

Wonderful!

Really enjoyable narration!! An interesting experience to listen to instead of read. Wonderful delivery, I could listen to this narrator all day.

Wonderful verse translation of a great work

Highly recommended! I know not one word of Russian, so I can't speak to how faithful/faithless Mary Hobson's translation might be (bearing in mind that Nabokov (and others) have said that the original is completely untranslateable), but to my ears it was an absolute delight, wonderfully brought to life by Neville Jason's reading. It gave me a taste for why this is considered one of the true masterpieces of Western literature.

5 star

Beautiful verse, exquisitely translated and elegantly read! I highly recommend this version of this book.

Wonderful! Just wonderful!

Any additional comments?

If you haven't gotten around to reading Eugene Onegin yet, get this Naxos audio version. The translation by Mary Hobson is very pleasing, and Neville Jacobson's narration is superb. I have read Pushkin's novel in verse in several very good translations, and none is better than this. To finally be able to hear the lines is amazingly satisfying. What's it about, you ask? Oh, Russia, family, society, unrequited love, that sort of thing. You just have to read it to begin to know. And here's a plus--the download is only 4 1/2 hours long, so you can read it 10 times or more in the time it takes to read the average Russian classic. I know I will. If you already know the novel, this version will not disappoint you. If you don't know it yet--well, I already told you what to do.