“The Flemish School’s variegated dross” as a constructive principle in the novel in verse “Eugene Onegin”

The research aims to characterize the constructive principle of A. S. Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” in the aspect of visual poetics and in the context of the artistic method that marked the transition to mature Pushkin’s work. This transition is indicated in the text of the novel by the formula “The Flemish School’s variegated dross”. It has been repeatedly commented on by researchers who saw in it either the author’s declaration of empirical description of everyday life, or, on the contrary, a polemic with naturalism already emerging in Russian literature of the late 1820s-1830s. The scientific novelty of the research lies in overcoming the dichotomy of declaration vs. polemic with naturalism by specifying the figurative content of the formula “The Flemish School’s variegated dross” in the text of the novel, identifying its semantic potential and describing the interaction of the text with the visual sources of “Flemishness”, which allows us to clarify the concepts of mature Pushkin’s realism that have developed in philological science. Research results: a system of motifs representing the “Flemish code” in the chapter “Excerpts from Onegin’s Journey” was identified and described; philosophical and aesthetic connections of Pushkin’s text with the picturesque context were established; the connection of the artistic language of Baroque painting with the settings of Pushkin’s “poetry of reality” was interpreted.