VICTOR TERRAS

Puškin’s Prose Fiction in a Historical Context

So wrote Vissarion Belinskij in his essay “On the Russian Short Story and the Short Stories of Mr. Gogol’ ” (1835). His essay puts Puškin’s prose fiction into a context in which it rarely has been seen since. In this context, Puškin is one of a number of writers who were responsible for the ascendancy of prose fiction described by Belinskij. In an earlier essay, “Literary Reveries” (1834), Belinskij had said that the year 1830 had launched “an entirely new period” of Russian literature (1953-59 I: 87). Indeed, 1830 was not only the year of Povesti pokojnogo Ivana Petroviča Belkina (The Tales of Belkin). Bestužev resumed publishing in 1830, and Dal’ published his first story that same year. Pogodin published a book of short stories in 1832, Polevoj in 1833, and Pavlov in 1835. Orest Somov, Vladimir Odoevskij, and Vladimir Sollogub also started their careers as writers of prose fiction at about the same time. A division into a “romantic” and a “naturalist” branch of fiction developed almost immediately—so in The Tales of Belkin.

How important was Puškin’s role in this development? “Pikovaja dama” (The Queen of Spades) is of course one of the best romantic short stories, and Kapitanskaja dočka (The Captain’s Daughter) is by far the best Waverley novel of Russian literature, but neither of these genres is very important in the general cast of Russian literature. Puškin’s contemporaries did not think highly of his prose. Certainly the age of prose was “the age of Gogol’.” However, the twentieth-century view which puts a very high value on Puškin’s prose was fully anticipated in almost every detail by Apollon Grigor’ev, a member of the generation immediately following Puškin’s. Grigor’ev saw Puškin as the father of Russian Realism, a position to which Vasilij Rozanov returned in the 1890s.¹ Grigor’ev (1967: 183) quite specifically saw in Puškin’s story “Grobovščik” (The Undertaker) no more and no less than “the seed of the entire school,” and the sensibility of Ivan Petrovič Belkin (which Grigor’ev allowed to subsume Grinev’s of The Captain’s Daughter) as “the seed of the writer’s rapprochement to everyday reality” (Grigor’ev 1970: 47). Grigor’ev finds reincarnations of Ivan Petrovič Belkin in the works of Turgenev and Tolstoj, to mention only the most important (1967: 337-38, 519).

It must be understood that Grigor’ev does not operate as an empirical comparatist when he makes these assertions, but rather as a Hegelian phenomenologist. He perceives Ivan Petrovič Belkin as a manifestation of “the process of negation” (1967: 517) by which native Russian common sense² sublates the Western ideas which the Russian elite had so ardently embraced. Belkin, says Grigor’ev, is the side of Puškin that fears Sil’vio, though still believing that he exists. Tolstoj will then simply deny that such a type exists (1967: 183). Of course, Belkin is only one aspect of Puškin’s allencompassing spirit which embraced “all the genuine, true strivings” that were to become manifest in the writings of the next generation (Grigor’ev wrote this in 1859; 1967: 517). Here Grigor’ev obviously anticipated Dostoevskij’s “Puškin Speech” (1880).

An early confrontation of the “Puškinian” and “Gogolian” trends of Russian literature appears in Dostoevskij’s Bednye ljudi (Poor Folk, 1846), whose hero vehemently disapproves of “Šinel’ ” (The Overcoat), while wholeheartedly approving of “Stancionnyj smotritel’ ” (The Stationmaster). Devuškin sincerely sympathizes with Samson Vyrin. He recognizes himself in Akakij Akak’evič, but still feels that the image drawn of the poor clerk is not fair. Dostoevskij accordingly “corrects” Gogol’ by humanizing Gogol”s metaphysical grotesque (Terras 1984) and letting his story drift from “The Overcoat” into “The Stationmaster”—Devuskin, like Vyrin, will not overcome the loss of Varen’ka, will take to drink, and will die. Dostoevskij intentionally or unintentionally misinterprets Gogol’ and sidesteps the issue of the human reduced to the subhuman in “The Overcoat.” It does not necessarily follow from this that Dostoevskij failed to see the irony in “The Stationmaster,” since we have only Devuškin’s reading of it, but Dostoevskij’s grafts of Puškin’s plot and psychology on the character of Gogol”s “poor clerk” make it likely. At any rate, in Dostoevskij’s Poor Folk, at least as read and welcomed by Belinskij, Russian prose fiction has abandoned the detachment which marks Puškin’s and even Gogol”s prose. In Devuškin’s reading, “The Stationmaster” is an example of what Grigor’ev called “sentimental humanitarianism,” a label which he applied to Poor Folk and other, less remarkable works of the natural school.³ It is a distinct possibility that in Dostoevskij’s reading, “The Stationmaster” and The Tales of Belkin as a whole served as a paradigm of that writer’s own early manner: a narrative generated by transformation, often bordering on travesty, of familiar literary themes, images, characters, and styles. An important point, demonstrated by Paul Debreczeny (1983b) in meticulous detail,⁴ is that virtually every single motif in Puškin’s prose fiction is of literary origin. In many instances we are dealing with a patent literary subtext which is often pointed out by an epigraph. Obviously this trait interferes with “realism.” Similarly, the early Dostoevskij used themes from Puškin, Gogol’, Rousseau, Hoffmann, George Sand, Sue, and many other authors, making them serve specific ideal or parodic ends. Often the result was a parodie sérieuse—in the sense that Sil’vio of “The Shot” may be a parodie sérieuse of the Byronic hero.

Dostoevskij’s Poor Folk is a paradigm of the phenomenological as well as of the empirical relation of Puškin’s prose fiction to later Russian literature. Many observations regarding both types of relation are on the record for some important works by major authors. It is remarkable that in an ambience where originality is at a premium, Gogol’ claimed that he owed the ideas of his two greatest works to Puškin. He created a powerful precedent which has a parallel in the mythical My vse vyšli iz ‘šineli’ Gogolja (We all have emerged/come from Gogol”s “Overcoat”). One is used to reading statements such as the following, which combines an empirical and a phenomenological conception of the Puškinian presence in Russian prose fiction:

The fame of Puškin the poet and legend has caused every line he wrote to be highly visible regardless of its intrinsic value or interest. Hence the question may be raised how much of the reputation of Puškin’s prose fiction, so little regarded in his lifetime, is a side effect of his total stature. Also, it ought to be considered that the privilege of having many attentive and ingenious readers results in an enhancement of the content of the text, as all possible angles and nuances are discovered and added to the initial impression. Only a few select texts get the exhaustive interpretation accorded, for example, “The Stationmaster” by J. Thomas Shaw (1977: 3-29).

How distinctive is Puškin’s prose style? Some quite specific observations have been made on this score. First of all, Puškin’s prose has been seen in antithesis to his poetry, so by Puškin himself. This is an exceptional situation, not met with in the case of other major figures who wrote prose as well as poetry, say Goethe or Hugo, or even Lermontov, to take an example from Russian literature. Puškin’s very special case may be the ultimate reason why some scholars, notably Ju. M. Lotman, have decided to deal with prose as a form of “anti-poetry.”

Adolf Stender-Petersen characterizes Puškin’s prose style as follows:

This characterization, which reflects the prevailing view in Soviet scholarship, disregards the ironic detachment of Puškin’s prose, the “verbal gestures” which tell the reader that the story should not be taken too seriously, for example, the flippant details inserted in the scene of the old countess’s funeral in “The Queen of Spades.” Such a show of detachment is characteristic of Russian (and Western) “romantic realism.” It is precisely this trait which prevents the Russian natural school from reaching full-fledged realism. While Puškin’s poetry often reaches a high level of immediacy, his prose rarely escapes the magic circle of romantic irony. It may be argued that Puškin never got as close to reality in any of his prose works as he did in some of his poetry.

Nor is it to be taken for granted that Puškin’s prose style was the perfect expression of his creative vision. D. S. Mirsky writes: “Prose was to him a foreign tongue, acquired by more or less laborious learning. . . . There is always in his prose a sense of constraint, a lack of freedom, a harking back to some outer rule” (1958: 121). Stender-Petersen may also be overestimating the originality of Puškin’s prose. In fact, he observes himself: “It is obvious that the manner of composition of Puškin’s first stories, The Tales of Belkin, came directly out of Walter Scott” (1978: 146).⁵ Walter Scott was of course widely imitated in Russian prose fiction of the 1830s and 1840s. If Scott’s direct influence on the whole manner of The Tales of Belkin is granted, the very close connection between The Captain’s Daughter and Scott’s Waverley novels can hardly be overlooked.

The notion that Puškin’s prose is “objective” is hardly tenable in view of the multiple layers of irony and ambiguity found in it. The “Chinese box” type composition of The Tales of Belkin (and there are elements of it present in Puškin’s other prose works) is common in the romantic fiction of the period, abroad and in Russia. Bestužev offers some good examples, and so does Vel’tmann. This kind of composition has stylistic implications. Nevertheless, there may be some truth in Stender-Petersen’s suggestion that Puškin’s stories were “stages on the road to a great realist novel.” It does seem likely that Puškin was indeed groping for a new form, the prose novel, in which he would give expression to his most cherished concerns and convictions. He had, albeit marginally, touched upon one of these concerns in “Egyptian Nights”: the threatened dignity and freedom of the Russian nobleman, and had approached another quite explicitly: the conflict between the man and the poet within himself. Another vital concern, the anticipation of a new pugačevščina, is stated in The Captain’s Daughter. The tragedy of an unhappy marriage emerges from the sketches which are credited with being the model for Anna Karenina.

It may be asked whether the isomorphism of content (“life”) and literary form, which some structuralists have observed in so much detail in Evgenij Onegin (Eugene Onegin),⁶ extends to Puškin’s prose, and also whether the transition to prose was “organically” motivated by a change in the life which Puškin lived and of which he was a part. Lotman’s observations on the period before the transition to prose make this a logical corollary:

As Todd has pointed out, Puškin took the step from literature as a pastime of “polite society” to literature as a profession, but explicitly refused to participate in the move to make literature into a social institution (for which he was chided by Belinskij). This seems consistent with Lotman’s conception. Puškin, a committed poet of the aristocratic Decembrist movement, was after 1830 an uncommitted litterateur.⁷ It is consistent with this notion if one sees Puškin’s prose as detached, even aloof, seeking to put a certain distance between the author and his text. There are some exceptions, to be sure. The beginning of “Egyptian Nights” is almost a “confession.” But certainly any “involved” socialité could not be a trait of Puškin’s prose.

It was only natural that a story by the manumitted serf Pavlov should lack the quality of detachment if it dealt with the plight of the educated serf. In fact, Pavlov’s story “The Nameday Party” (1835) “comes on” as strongly as any American abolitionist piece, striking the detached reader as sentimental and too transparently tendentious. Likewise, it was to be expected that women writers of the period should lack detachment when describing the misery of an educated woman left without a chance to exert her intellectual faculties. By the same token, Puškin would lose his detachment when his subject was the freedom and dignity of a Russian nobleman—as when Čarskij lectures his Italian visitor on the independence of Russian poets.

Yet it is also true that among the writers of the natural school who were very much “involved” with the social underdog, one finds Count Vladimir Sollogub, very much a member of high society. And it could be argued that some of the tales of Jakov Butkov, whose heroes are poor devils like their author, are ironically detached. Still, the fact remains that Puškin does gravitate toward a narrative manner which is in one way or another detached from its subject. This detachment is obtained in various ways: through a pointedly—one is tempted to say “artfully”—terse and artless narrative manner, through irony, or through the creation of a dummy narrator. All of these manners are common in romantic prose. I do not believe that there really is such a thing as a distinctive “Puškinian” prose style .⁸ I submit that the whole notion that Russian realist prose “came straight from Puškin” is at least as suspect as that according to which it “came straight out of Gogol”s ‘Overcoat.’ ”

The prose fiction of Puškin’s contemporaries, with the exception of Gogol’, is rarely read and rarely discussed in scholarly literature. Much of it has not been reprinted since the mid-nineteenth century. Meanwhile, Puškin’s prose fiction continues to be read by millions of readers and to be studied by hundreds of scholars. The point of my remarks is that an assessment of the value of Puškin’s prose fiction in context and in comparison with the works of his contemporaries is in order. Whether this will lead to a revision of the prevailing view that makes Puškin one of the pillars of Russian prose fiction is a different question.