Found on 2026-10-10 by a search the owner asked for: a documented case of the half of a change of cover that CASE-072 lacks, a question the source decides that a rendering makes undecidable, for CLAIM-201.
The case
Pushkin, Евгений Онегин, chapter III, the letter between stanzas XXXI and XXXII. Russian text from ilibrary.ru, https://ilibrary.ru/text/436/p.4/index.html (fetched 2026-10-10).
- Opening, вы. «Я к вам пишу — чего же боле? … Вы не оставите меня.»
- The break, ты. «То воля неба: я твоя; / Вся жизнь моя была залогом / Свиданья верного с тобой; / Я знаю, ты мне послан богом». The ты runs on through the dream passage («Ты в сновиденьях мне являлся») and «Кто ты, мой ангел ли хранитель».
- The return, вы. «Кончаю! Страшно перечесть… / Стыдом и страхом замираю… / Но мне порукой ваша честь, / И смело ей себя вверяю…»
The letter never says that she changes address. The pronouns alone carry it. So the Russian decides two relational questions: at what point she drops propriety, and whether she takes it back at the end.
A rendering that loses both. A. S. Kline, Eugene Onegin (2009), https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Russian/Onegin3.php. Opening: “I know it’s in your power today / To punish me with your derision.” At the break: “It’s Heaven’s will: I am yours.” At the end: “On you alone I must depend / Boldly trusting in your honour…”. Kline’s letter has no “thou”, “thee”, “thy” or “thine” (checked by search of the page text).
A rendering that keeps the break and loses the return. Henry Spalding, Eugene Onéguine (London: Macmillan, 1881), Project Gutenberg #23997, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23997. Opening: “I write to you! Is more required?”, with “you” through the first part. At the break: “‘Tis Heaven’s will and I am thine. … I feel thou wast by God sent down”. At the end: “But boldly I myself resign: / Thine honour is my countersign!”. Spalding’s “Thine” stands where the Russian has «ваша».
Readers of the source on the switches. M. Naydorf, «Наблюдения над смыслом Письма Татьяны к Онегину», https://sites.google.com/site/marknaydorftexts/kulturologiceskij-analiz/nabludenia-nad-smyslom-pisma-tatany-k-oneginu, an undated, unrefereed essay that cites Lotman’s commentary: «Татьяна переходит на «ты»… обращается, собственно, не к Онегину, которого знает очень мало, а к герою своей девической мечты», and at the end «Татьяна как бы возвращается от «воображения» к «реальности», вновь переходит на «вы»». Russian school analyses seen only as search snippets call the ты “резкий, внезапный … неосознанный” and say “под конец она опять переходит на «вы»”; unverified, and evidence of how the text is taught, not scholarship.
The value of English “thou”. Brown and Gilman (1960), p. 253: “The pronoun ‘thou’ is reserved, nowadays, to prayer and naive poetry”. Beside “by God sent down” and “Guardian angel”, Spalding’s “thou” reads as devotional to a modern reader, which lies nearer Naydorf’s dream-hero reading than to plain intimacy.
Why Pushkin’s «Ты и вы» does not serve. The lead given to the search was Pushkin’s lyric «Ты и вы» (1828): «Пустое вы сердечным ты / Она, обмолвясь, заменила». The poem names its pronouns, so every rendering has to keep the switch explicit; Givental and Wilson-Egolf (https://math.berkeley.edu/~giventh/verse/thou.pdf): “Sweet thou for an empty you / She humorously substituted”. No rendering can make the question “did she change her address?” undecidable without dropping the poem’s subject. What English endangers there is the value of the poles: “thou” is now the elevated form, so a modern reader can take the direction of the slip backwards. That is distortion of an answer to a question both sides can decide, which CLAIM-257 measures apart, not a loss of cover. The letter is the better case because it never names the pronouns.
What it can show
The half of a change of cover that CLAIM-201 calls “the source decides what the target cannot”, which CASE-072 does not supply and which rested until now on CASE-010. The question is of the claim’s own kind, the speaker–addressee relation. On Kline’s text “At which line does she drop formality?” and “Does she take it back at the end?” have no textual answer; on the Russian both have one. No other question’s answers need move: the words of the letter are close in all three texts. The three texts also make a graded set, as CLAIM-257 wants: the Russian decides both questions, Spalding the first only, Kline neither.
What it cannot show
- Two conditions are met only partly or not at all. The texts are attested, and the renderings that lose the switches are read directly. But the attestation that the source decides the question for its readers is one essayist and unchecked school notes; Lotman’s commentary and Nabokov’s, the obvious authorities, were not read. And there is no evidence at all about English readers: that Kline’s readers cannot answer is inferred from the text, not measured. The claim’s test is reader agreement above a threshold, and neither side’s agreement is measured.
- The strongest reply. The letter is itself framed as a translation. Tatiana writes in French («Итак, писала по-французски»), and the narrator calls his Russian «Неполный, слабый перевод» (Spalding: “A feeble version read below”). So the вы/ты switch is the narrator’s rendering of a vous/tu switch, and Russian readers are reading a text that announces it is already a rendering. A defender could add that context decides the intimacy anyway: “I am yours” and the passion around it tell an English reader where she lets go, so the pronoun is redundant at the break. The first point does not touch the case, since what is compared is the Russian and the English, each as its readers have it. The second is the better objection, and it is why the return is the cleaner item: “trusting in your honour” does not mark a retreat in English, and only «ваша» marks it in Russian.
- What would close the gap. The reader test the search report sketches, which could be items in the discriminating study (CASE-055). Ask Russian readers of the source, and matched English readers of Kline and of Spalding: “Does her attitude to Onegin change in the last four lines? If so, how?” and “At which line does she become most intimate?”. The case supports the claim if Russian readers agree above the threshold fixed in advance (a return to formality; intimacy at «я твоя»), Kline’s readers fall below it on both, and Spalding’s agree on the second question and not the first. It is the reply’s case if Kline’s readers agree on the second question from context alone.
- It is not contextuality, as CLAIM-201 says of any change of cover, and it measures no distortion.
Sources
None of these works is held in the record as a LIT. They are cited here by identifier.
- Pushkin, A. S., Евгений Онегин, chapter III: https://ilibrary.ru/text/436/p.4/index.html. Read directly.
- Kline, A. S. (trans.), Eugene Onegin (2009): https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Russian/Onegin3.php. Read directly.
- Spalding, Henry (trans.), Eugene Onéguine: A Romance of Russian Life in Verse (London: Macmillan, 1881): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23997. Read directly in the Gutenberg text.
- Naydorf, M., «Наблюдения над смыслом Письма Татьяны к Онегину», URL above. Read directly; undated and not peer-reviewed.
- Russian school analyses (obrazovaka.ru, nauka.club and others): seen only as search snippets; unverified.
- Brown, R. and Gilman, A., “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity”, in T. A. Sebeok (ed.), Style in Language (MIT Press, 1960), pp. 253–276. Read in the transcription at https://pages.mtu.edu/~rlstrick/rsvtxt/pronoun.htm, as CASE-066 records; page numbers unverified against the printed volume.
- Cornford, Frances and Salaman, E. Polianowsky (trans.), a note on the letter reported by search to call it “peculiarly untranslatable” and to say Tatiana breaks “unconsciously it seems, into the familiar ‘thou’ and ‘thee’”: https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/pml1/onegin/cornford.docx. The site refused the fetch; unverified.
- Lotman, Yu. M., Роман А. С. Пушкина «Евгений Онегин». Комментарий (1980; 1983). Not read.
- Nabokov, V. (trans. and comm.), Eugene Onegin (New York: Bollingen / Pantheon, 1964). Not read.
- For «Ты и вы»: Pushkin (1828); Givental, A. and Wilson-Egolf, E. (trans.), https://math.berkeley.edu/~giventh/verse/thou.pdf, read directly; Sharandin, A. L., Vestnik VolGU. Ser. 2. Yazykoznanie 25(2): 166–177 (2026), doi:10.15688/jvolsu2.2026.2.13, known only from its abstract.