THE HIDDEN MOTIF OF SHOOTING IN THE EPIGRAPH TO “ONEGIN”

Abstract

The author argues that the famous French epigraph to the novel in verse by A. S. Pushkin contains an underlying meaning, hidden in the anagrammatic structure of the text. The rearrangement of letters in the repeated sound-letter combinations form an anagram of the French word tiré (participle formed from the verb tirer) used in the epigraph which means “to shoot”. Thus, the epigraph, in which the motif of shooting is hidden, becomes a foreshadowing of the fatal shot in the central plot event of the novel – the duel between Onegin and Lensky.