Pushkin's own opinion of the work is shown in the dedication:
"Accept these motley chapters' run,
Pages half mirth, half sadness blending,
Idealistic, unpretending:
The casual fruit of leisure, fun,
Insomnia, light inspirations
In youthful and unripened years
My mind's dispassioned observations,
My heart's grave notes on human cares."
In form the novel is like Childe Harold. But the descriptions, the irony, and humour are truly Russian.
As an example of all three in one these may suffice:
"For forty years he nagged with his housekeeper, looked out of the window and squashed flies."
"Once upon a time the head of a secret team of gamblers, now he was a kind and simple father of a bachelor's numerous brood, living the life of a true philosopher: planting cabbages, breeding ducks and geese and teaching his youngsters the A B C."
All the characters use genuine everyday speech, and yet the realistic subjects are magically turned into poetry. "One can be a serious man and yet think of the beauty of one's nails."
An example of his descriptive power may be found in this stanza on Moscow:
"O'er the snow-humps the sleigh is dashing,
Alongside in the streets are flashing
Shops, convents, palaces, mean shacks,
Peasantry, country-wives, cozàcks,
Gardens of kitchen-stuff and flowers,
Street-boys, lamps, chemists, fashion-stores,
Churches, stone lions at house doors,
Sentries, sleighs, balconies, old towers,
Merchants, Tartars that sell old clo'
And on the crosses many a crow."
As you can see even from these few extracts, the realism in Onyégin is the realism of Jane Austen—meticulous, correct, amazingly sketched in.