A portrait of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin by Wassili Tropinin.

Surprising as it may seem, Pushkin’s great novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, which all Russians know by heart – at least in part – has never been adapted for the theatre. The success ofTchaikovsky’s opera, composed in 1877-78, seems to have stifled any idea of basing a play on the same text. The dramatisation is the brainchild of Lithuanian director Rimas Tuminas, 62, now artistic director of the Vakhtangov theatre, launched in 1920 by a former disciple of Konstantin Stanislavski. The adaptation was performed recently in Russian, with subtitles, at the MC93 arts centre at Bobigny, east of Paris, and will feature at the New York City Centre inat the end of May.

“The language of Pushkin is a miracle of simplicity, grace, harmony, lightness and humour”, in the words of French translator André Markowicz, and it is perfectly expressed in this stage production. It tells the story of a young Byronic dandy who, tiring of his bright but futile life in St Petersburg, settles in the country. Here he makes friends with a poet, Vladimir Lensky, who favours a more German brand of romanticism, largely influenced by Schiller.

Lensky is in love with a young woman, Olga. Her sister, Tatyana, falls hopelessly in love with Onegin, who rejects her advances. At a ball organised for Tatyana’s birthday, the world-weary dandy tries to seduce his friend’s fiancee. Shocked by such behaviour, Lensky challenges him and is fatally wounded in the ensuing duel. Onegin leaves the countryside and Tatyana moves to Moscow, where she marries an old general. A few years later they meet again and Onegin realises how much he has lost. The novel ends in a stream of remorse and longing for time past, a melancholy but infinitely delicate sonata.

“Preferring lightness and smiles, Pushkin’s novel is unique in Russian literature: it’s not a lesson in living, it neither accuses nor condemns anyone, it’s not a call to revolt, nor does it impose a particular point of view, unlike, each in their own way, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn and so many others, with the exception of Chekhov,” Markowicz adds. In Russia Pushkin is still a part of daily life, to a far greater extent than say Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma or Flaubert’s Sentimental Education in France.

“And happiness was so close, So possible …” Pushkin writes at the end of the novel. The whole of Tuminas’s dramatisation hinges on what might have been but was not, on what appears in the tarnished, distorting mirror of memory. It is as light and graceful as falling snow.

Tuminas has set his version of Onegin in a huge dance studio, with a great mirror at the back of the stage. But what is the connection with dancing? Perhaps Pushkin’s recurrent references to Terpsichore, the muse of ballet, symbolising the aerial grace he sought to achieve in his poetry. Some theatregoers may be upset by the rather invasive presence of the young dancers. But in narrative terms Tuminas has done a remarkable job. He has duplicated Onegin and Lensky, and the aged doppelgangers coexist with their youthful counterparts on stage. The narrator takes the form of a slightly tipsy hussar.

This literary, novelistic quality, enhanced by Tuminas’s gift for creating magnificent, poetic images, such as the journey to Moscow in the snow, account for the excellence of this version of Eugene Onegin, which brings new life to a luminous form of romanticism without sacrificing Pushkin’s irony. There are the marvellous Russian actors too, who, generation after generation, have regenerated a style of acting that is not afraid of emotion. The cast includes two legends of Russian theatre: Galina Konovalova, 97 (as Tatyana’s aunt), and Yuliya Borisova, 88 (in Tatyana’s dream). Whenever they appear on stage in Moscow they are greeted with a storm of applause worthy of rock stars.

Life is often a story told by a tipsy hussar. But we can always choose to face it with elegance and style, taking our cue from Pushkin and Tuminas. Even if it means dying in a duel, as Pushkin himself did, on 29 January 1837, aged 37, mortally wounded by an adventurer from France.

Fabienne Darge

Guardian Weekly, Friday 11 April 2014.