The article is a step-by-step microanalysis of the stanzas of the second half of the first chapter of “Eugene Onegin”. The originality of the study lies, firstly, in the very choice of the angle of the subject of study, since the reader gets to know Tatyana Larina directly in the middle of the second — and not the first — chapter of the Pushkin work. The text takes on the character of a paradoxical search for the “presence” (secret, in a closed casket) of a heroine who is not in the actual stanzas created, and even in the original plan of the work in general.

Secondly, another distinctive feature of this experience is the inclusion in the literary field of Eugene Onegin of extra-literary facts of Pushkin’s biography on an equal footing. The direct and immediate active influence of key events in the history of his “secret love” for Olga Pototskaya (the prototype of Olga Larina) is embodied in the first chapter in the image of the Author. A detailed analysis-commentary reveals how the growing dependence on a Friend infected with cruel blues brings the Author to the brink of death, both poetic and human. Self-re-evaluation by the Storyteller of identity in the unity of communication between himself and Yevgeny Onegin to the difference, gradually expanding to their complete incompatibility, turns out to be saving from a fatal fall into the Abyss of nothingness. The first glimpses of the Soul coming out of the gloomy storm of rebellious and vengeful hostility towards Being and itself in it begin to be seen in the turn of the author's gaze from the spell of the Demon of hopeless gloom and desperate determination to avenge the Unfaithful to the living, albeit small, but constant work of world creation in the world of elements, as well as sweet visions of a distant childhood, returning the disease to the uncomplicated, pure springs of Poetry. The crystallization of the obscure glare of heaven in the future work on an open new distance of the free novel, which includes the ups and downs of extra-literary reality, will mark the need (in her birth, formation and implementation) of the image of Tatyana Larina.