WALTER VICKERY

Odessa—Watershed Year

Patterns in Puškin’s Love Lyrics

“Itak ja žil togda v Odesse”—”Thus I lived then in Odessa.” Puškin in fact spent, isolated visits apart, a year of his life in Odessa. He arrived there in early July 1823, and left in late July 1824. The relationships he established with women during that time and the love poems he wrote to them—then or later, over the next seven years—have given rise to much uncertainty. How serious were which relationships? Who were the addressees of which poems? I shall resist here the temptation to add to this confusion. Rather than targeting individual objects of Puškin’s desires, I propose to examine briefly a number of lyrics (1823-1830) and to try to establish some general patterns of thought and attitude to the business of love.

The poems or parts of poems we will be considering are the following:

ODESSA

1. “Noč’ ” (Night), October 26, 1823;

2. “Pridet užasnyj čas” (There will arrive a terrible hour), October 22-November 3, 1823;

3. “Prostiš’ li mne revnivye mečty” (Will you forgive me my jealous dreams), November 11, 1823;

4. “Zelanie slavy” (Desire for Glory), ROUGH DRAFT UNFINISHED, November 1823;

5. “Vse končeno: mež nami svjazi net” (All is ended: between us there is no connection), January-not later than February 8, 1824;

MIXAJLOVSICOE EXILE

6. “Razgovor knigoprodavea s poètom” (Conversation between Book-seller and Poet), September 26, 1824;

7. “Nenastnyj den’ potux” (The foul day has died out), probably September-November 1824;

8. “Sozzennoe pis’mo” (The Burned Letter), December 1824-January 5, 1825;

9. “Zelanie slavy” (Desire for Glory), January-first half of May 1825;

10. “Vse v žertvu pamjati tvoej” (All in sacrifice to your memory), 1825;

11. “Pod nebom golubym strany svoej rodnoj” (Under the blue sky of her native country), July 25-31, probably July 29, 1826;

CAUCASUS

12. “Na xolmax Gruzii ležit nočnaja mgla” (On the hills of Georgia there lies a nocturnal darkness/haze), May 15, 1829;

PETERSBURG(?)

13. “Ja vas ljubil” (I loved you), 1829, not later than November;

BOLDINO

14. “Proščanie” (Farewell), October 5, 1830;

15. “Zaklinanie” (Incantation), October 17, 1830;

16. “Dlja beregov otčizny dal’noj” (For the shores of a distant fatherland), November 27, 1830.

On what principle were these poems and not others chosen for study? The idea of corpus was suggested to me by the example of the Soviet scholar G. P. Makogonenko (1974). Makogonenko uses ten poems (1823-1830) in support of his contribution to the debate on the identity of Puškin’s Odessa love(s) (Makogonenko 1974: 30-95, esp. 82-83). To the ten Makogonenko items I have added a further six, because they shed additional light on Puškin’s emotional attitudes. The requirement for selection—which all sixteen poems meet—is that they evidence a serious attitude to the woman addressed; they operate in that area of experience where feelings of love and passion intersect with feelings about the meaning and purpose of life.¹

The first of the five Odessa poems, “Noč’ ” (Night; PSS I: 289), an eightline poem in six-foot iambic rhymed couplets, is one of the very few serious Puškin love lyrics to express unalloyed happiness and fulfilment, happiness unmixed with questioning, sorrow, or resignation. The poem starts, characteristically, in a minor key: the candle burning by the poet’s bed is described as sad (“pečal’naja sveča”). But a joyous note is then sounded: his verses gurgle forth, rivulets of love (“ruč’i ljubvi”), filled with the beloved (“tekut polny toboju”); he visualizes her eyes shining and smiling at him (“mne ulybajutsja”)—one of only two occasions in Puškin’s verse when a woman’s eyes are specifically depicted as smiling.² We note that his composing poetry forms an inextricable part of his love. That the lovers are imagined as completely alone in a world of only two people is strongly suggested by the emphatic foregrounding of the first and second persons: “moj golos dlja tebja . . . moi stixi . . . polny toboju . . . tvoi glaza . . . predo mnoju (rhyming with toboju), Mne ulybajutsja . . . i zvuki slyšu ja: Moj drug, moj nežnyj drug . . . ljublju . . . tvoja . . . tvoja.” The poem is all sound, all verse. And it is all you and me. It reaches a climax of happiness and fulfillment with the poet hearing the woman expressing her love and belonging. A reversal has taken place: at the start it is his voice, his verses; at the end it is her smiling-eyed voice proclaiming love and belonging.

If on October 26 (“Night”) we had happiness and fulfillment, at nearly the same moment there sounds an ominous, sinister, macabre, almost necrophilic note, a total change of mood. The large Academy edition dates “Pridet užasnyj cas” (There will arrive a terrible hour; PSS II: 296) October 22-November 3. While the mood has changed very dramatically, from the joyful to the morbid, there are some similarities between this and the preceding poem—not merely that, like “Night,” the present poem is written in six-foot iambs, with rhymed couplets at least through the first eight lines (the poem being unfinished, of course), but also that the backgrounds of both poems are silence (here “molčan’e večnoe”) and night (“tumanom večnoj noči”).³ The difference is that while in “Night” darkness and silence indicate primarily the late hour, they are here used figuratively to describe death. And while in “Night” the minor key gives place to the major, in “There will arrive a terrible hour” the minor key persists unrelieved and unmitigated, to the end.

“Prostiš’ li mne revnivye mečty” (Will you forgive me my jealous dreams; PSS II: 300) is dated November 11, 1823—only sixteen days after “Night.” This poem is—let there be no doubt—a poem of agonizing jealousy. But for this assertion to stand, it must be defended against a thesis recently put forward by the eminent Soviet scholar V. E. Vacuro. Noting that the poem’s five-foot iambic meter is the Russian equivalent of the French décasyllabe, much favored at the time for the elegy, Vacuro not only places “Will you forgive me” within the French elegiac tradition but convincingly establishes the predecessor to whom Puškin is here most indebted—Charles-Hubert Millevoye and his elegy “L’inquiétude.” So far so good. But at this point Vacuro goes astray. He uses the Millevoye provenance in a logic-defying attempt to insist that Puškin’s poem, far from being a poem of jealousy, is the expression of emotion of a happy, satisfied, and basically confident lover whose temporary aberration is caused by passion! Vacuro’s line of reasoning is basically as follows: Millevoye’s hero has nothing really to worry about, the paradox in his situation consisting in his being tormented by imagined past lovers when in fact his present love is fully shared by the woman:

But conceding that Vacuro is right about Millevoye’s hero having nothing to worry about, this does not provide a certain clue to the “psychological collision” in Puškin’s elegy, does not mean that Puškin too has nothing to worry about. To work within a tradition is often to change that tradition (see Vacuro 1978: 5-21). “No ja ljubim .... Na edine so mnoju / Ty tak nežna! Lobzanija tvoi / No ja ljubim, tebja ja ponimaju” (But I am loved. . . . Alone with me / You are so tender! . . . / But I am loved, I understand you). “No ja ljubim” is not the final pronouncement of an omniscient author. It is the hero’s attempt to persuade himself, to reassure himself. “No ja ljubim” is represented speech.

We turn to the unfinished rough draft of “Zelanie slavy” (Desire for Glory; PSS II: 934), dated November 1823, close in time, therefore, to the three poems already discussed. The draft, in six-foot iambs, shows three consecutive, abortive openings—of six, four, and seven lines each. Like “Will you forgive me,” this poem, the difference in meter notwithstanding, belongs to the tradition of the elegy. And the poem contains one element which is central to the Millevoye elegy, namely, the two-part thought, the second part of which presents some sort of surprise or contrast to the first. This is what Vacuro calls the “psychological collision.” In Millevoye’s elegy there is the play between present satisfactions and jealousy of the past. In “Will you forgive me” the play is between the woman’s neglect and indifference when in company and her passionate attentions when they are alone. And in the first of the three fragments which, with corrections and variants, constitute this poem’s 1823 rough drafts, the play is between the tender lovemaking and, on the. other hand, something which inexplicably casts a shadow over the happiness of the lovers. The second fragment, a mere four lines, doesn’t get us beyond the turning point. The third fragment eliminates the “collision.” But it is to the first fragment—when in spite of everything good there is something wrong—that I wish to call attention. Let us note too, for future reference, that the lyric hero is down on his knees (“kolenopreklonennyj”). This is not so unusual a position. But it does occur in other Puškin lyrics, and is often the position of the supplicant.

So far we have had four poems (counting the rough draft excerpt as a poem) in a short space of time—to be exact, within a maximum of thirty-eight days, from October 22 to the end of November (nineteen days only for the first three poems). Now comes a short pause: there is nothing recorded for December. And then, sometime in January or early February, not later than February 8, we have “Vse končeno: mež nami svjazi net” (All is ended: between us there is no connection).

The message of the first line seems to indicate, though not conclusively, the end of an affair. The poet is here painfully weighing himself: “Ne dlja menja sotvorena ljubov’ ” (Love was not made for me). He is down on his knees—a position of supplication. He is not the one who has broken off the affair: he has been reproaching her, but everything is now over, he hears her answer: “ja slyšu tvoj otvet.” In fact, his declaration that all is ended—”vse končeno,” repeated—is to reassure her that he recognizes and accepts her verdict. The poem foreshadows to some degree Puškin’s 1830 “Proščan’e” (Farewell): “ V poslednij raz tvoj obraz milyj . . . Kak drug, obnjavšij molča druga . . . “(For the last time. . . . As a friend, silently embracing a friend . . . )—”V poslednij raz obnjav tvoi koleni” (Embracing your knees for the last time). It foreshadows to a far greater degree another poem of farewell, his 1829 “Ja vas ljubil: ljubov’ ešče, byt’ možet . . . “ (I loved you . . . ). In the two poems there is the same almost reluctant recognition that all is over; the same insistence that he will trouble her no more: “No pust’ ona [moja ljubov’] vas bol’še ne trevožit;Ja ne хоčи pečalit’ vas ničem ” But let it [my love] no longer disturb you; I do not wish to cause you sorrow in anyway)—”Tebja toskoj presledovat’ ne budu” (I will not persecute you with my anguish); the same suggestion that his love is not altogether extinguished: “byt’ možet, / V duše moej ugasla ne sov- sem” (perhaps, / In my soul is not quite extinguished)—”Prošedšee, byt’ možet, pozabudu” (The past I shall, perhaps, forget); the same more or less resigned pondering of her future lover(s): “Kak daj vam Bog ljubimoj byt’ drugim” (As God grant you to be loved by another)—”I mnogimi ljubima budeš’ ty” (And you will be loved by many). There is also an important difference between these two poems. Our present 1824 poem, “All is ended,” refers to an affair which is still, for all practical purposes, in the present. Certainly the poet speaks of the past (“Prošedšee”), but I would be inclined to paraphrase that as equivalent to “what has recently taken place between us.” Note in this connection “Ja slyšu tvoj otvet”; i.e., the dialog has been or is still in progress between them. In “I loved you ...” the time lapse between the past—the time of past loving, or at least the time when that loving was a current activity—and the present seems significantly greater.

There are two points about the Odessa poems that are worth carrying forward: (I) the short space of time in which they were written and the extraordinary variety of emotion expressed: love fulfilled, necrophilic musings, jealousy, a sorrow hard to explain, and termination; (2) the fact that they all deal with current love (we took note above of the fact that in “All is ended” the past, if that is the right term, is in fact contiguous with the present).

The next six poems on my list were all written in Mixajlovskoe or, in one case, Trigorskoe. Without exception they are poems of recollection, harking back to Puškin’s Odessa experiences. The first of these, “Razgovor knigoprodavca s poètom” (Conversation between Bookseller and Poet), is dated September 26,1824. We confine ourselves to that part of the poem— in either the final version or the drafts—which specifically relates to a beloved woman and therefore becomes our concern here (PSS II: 324; lines 129-59). We recall that the poet is polemicizing with the bookseller and that consequently the lyric passages to which we refer are brought in to help the poet score his points; they are subordinated to the poet’s overall line of argument. With this caveat, we may take them here for what they are: the poet’s thoughts about a love affair located in the past. Here we have, for the first time in this study, the use of four-foot iambs. Partly the shorter lines and partly the framing of the love passage in a larger polemically oriented context have combined to impart a no-nonsense, elliptical quality to the piece. There is no room for background, for setting. Only the bare essentials of the emotional situation are reported. Witness the magnificently elliptical ambiguity of the line “Vsja žizn’, odna li, dve li noči?” (All of life, or one night, two nights?)—a line in its way without superior in poetry. Yet, notwithstanding this clipped staccato style, the reader is for two reasons reminded of the first poem discussed, the 1823 “Night”—first, because of the smiling eyes: “Kak nebo, ulybalis’ mne?” (Like the heavens, smiled upon me?), and second, because of the close association between poetry and the poet’s lov “Ona odna by razumela / Stixi nejasnye moi” (She alone would have un erstood / My unclear verses). The obvious difference between this passage and the eight lines of “Night” is that whereas the latter describe reciprocity in present time, the “Conversation” passage describes rejection in the past: the suppliant poet has in vain entreated the woman to prolong the relationship.

“Nenastnyj den’ potux” (The foul day has died out; PSS II: 348) is dated as probably written in September-November 1824. Puškin misleadingly dated it 1823. Puškin’s dating is belied by the contrast made in the poem between the discomfortable dark northern nature of Mixajlovskoe and the moonlit warm southern seashore clime of the Odessa area. This poem of potential jealousy differs from “Will you forgive me” in, other things apart, the quality of the uncertainty. In “Will you forgive me” the hero can observe the acts and conduct of the woman: the uncertainty therefore rests on interpretation. How significant is her behavior in company? Is it offset by her behavior alone with him? In “The foul day” everything takes place in the hero’s imagination—though clearly the woman’s evening walk to the shore is habitual, and he has certainly in the past shared these walks. The uncertainty rests on whether or not she is alone. If she is alone and miserable, he is happy. But if . . . Note the effectiveness of the switch from third to second person: “Ne pravda l’: ty odna ...” (It’s true, is it not, that you’re alone). The “ty odna” fulfills here the same function as did “Ja ljubim” in the earlier poem: he is seeking to reassure himself.

“Sozzennoe pis’mo” (The Burned Letter; PSS II: 373) is dated the second half of December 1824-January 5, 1825., It is a contrived and ineffective little piece, which falls below the high standards characteristic of most of the lyrics under discussion. It is included here because Makogonenko included it in his cycle. I note, for what it may be worth in our discussion, that Puškin was instructed to burn the letter by its author; i.e., we may speculate that it is once more the woman who seeks to bring the relationship to a close.

We discussed earlier an incomplete draft of “Desire for Glory” (1823). We come now to the finished product (PSS II: 392), in six-foot iambic couplets, dated January-the first half of May 1825. The poetic tension of “Desire for Glory” rests on two stages in the relationship, the change from the earlier to the later stage having taken place in the past, with its effects extending into the present. The two different stages determine the poet’s changed attitude to the desirability of glory: then we had reciprocal love, and I didn’t care about glory; now, catastrophe having occurred, I desire glory so that you may be surrounded by my name and may remember my last entreaties. This poem marks the first occasion in the present corpus on which the intrusions of the outside world play a significant role: tears, torments, and betrayals (“Slezy, muki, izmeny”) could be purely internal upheavals, between the lovers, but calumny (“kleveta”) is surely from without. Clearly his poetry plays here an essential role. But it is a very different role from that observed in “Night” and in “Conversation between Bookseller and Poet,” where it was an organic part of the relationship. Here it is a means through which he can obtain glory, thus, of course, getting the attention of the woman. In “Desire for Glory,” we note briefly, he is again the supplicant (“čtob . . . Ty pomnila moi poslednie molen’ja”).

“Vse v žertvu pamjati tvoej” (All in sacrifice to your memory), dated 1825, provides a curiously elliptical little list in four-foot iambs of the things the poet considers as having been sacrificed to “your” memory:

The list, though not altogether clear from the biographer’s standpoint, pretty well speaks for itself as far as present needs go. His poetry (“golos liry vdoxnovennoj”) is again involved. His jealousy is acknowledged. He mentions the glitter of glory (“slavy blesk”), which ties in loosely with “zelanie slavy.” His exile is connected in his mind with his love (“mrak izgnan’ja”). So too the beauty of his verse, and bitter suffering and thoughts of revenge.

“Pod nebom golubym strany svoej rodnoj” (Under the blue sky of her native country; PSS I: 20), the last of our Mixajlovskoe exile poems, dated July 25-31, 1826, was written shortly after Puškin heard of Amalia Riznič’s death, probably on July 29. The poem consists of four quatrains of alternating masculine six-foot iambs and feminine four-foot iambs with crisscross rhymes—an arrangement which obviously appealed to Puškin for poems of recollection; cf. “Vospominanie” (Recollection, 1828) and “Na xolmax Gruzii” (On the hills of Georgia, 1829).⁴ The news of the woman’s death leaves the poet entirely indifferent (“ravnodusno ej vnimal ja”[absorbed it without emotion]). His present indifference is contrasted with the intensity of his onetime feelings (“S takim tjaželym naprjazen’em”[with such heavy strain]), his madness and torment (“S takim bezumstvom i mučen’em” [with such madness and torment]).

To sum up briefly the emerging patterns of emotion relating to affairs of the heart, I noted above that the five pieces written in Odessa had in common that they all dealt with a current love relationship. I now note that the six pieces written during Puškin’s Mixajlovskoe exile all hark back to past relationships, or at least to a period when the association was more actual than it is at the time of writing. In “The Burned Letter” we are, if you will, watching in present time the burning of the letter. The letter indicates that a relationship is still alive. But it also is a symbol of a time in the past when the relationship was more actual. By the same token, the imaginings of “The foul day” are in present time, and the relationship is still alive, but the poem is set in motion largely by memories of a past time when the lovers were together. The passage from “Conversation” recounts a parting at some time in the past, as does “Desire for Glory.” “All in sacrifice to your memory” is a summary of past events. And in “Under the blue sky” the heroine who at one time in the past had so agitated him is dead, and he now feels only indifference. Only in the last poem, “Under the blue sky,” does the poet declare himself liberated from the torments of past love. All the other five poems here discussed reveal in one way or another a present entanglement with the emotions of past time.

“Na xolmax Gruzii ležit nočnaja mgla” (On the hills of Georgia there lies a nocturnal darkness) is dated May 15, 1829. There are two versions—a four-stanza (16-line) draft version, and the two-stanza (8-line) canonical text. It has been plausibly suggested that both versions should be published in Puškin collections, separately, and with equal rights (Bondi 1971: 24), and less plausibly argued that the two versions are addressed to two different women (Blagoj 1977: 390-91).⁵ Both versions are of interest to us here. First the canonical text:

And now the sixteen-line draft version:

Puškin uses here the same alternating six-foot masculine and four-foot feminine rhyming iambs as in “Under the blue sky” (and in “Recollection,” 1828); already noted is the tie between this arrangement and the theme of recollection. Recollection is more frequently spelled out in the original version, but is no less present in the final text. In both versions (line 7) we find the word vnov’ “once more”, indicating that the heart had at some point ceased burning and loving, but is now doing so again. In the original version (third stanza) the poet harks back to the people he once knew (“Inye daleko, inyx už v mire net” [Some are no more, others are far away]) (cf. Evgenij Onegin, VIII.51: “Inyx už net, a te daleče”), and to the memories which alone remain (“odni vospominan’ja”). And in the final, fourth, stanza, “po-preznemu” and “vnov’ ” echo the “vnov’ ” of the second stanza. A significant difference between the original and final versions is the setting, the geographical location. In the original version it is the Caucasus. Puškin was in the Caucasus on May 15; he spent the night of May 15 in Georgievsk (Lerner 1903: 61). Whereas in the final version we are in Georgia—where Puškin had never been in his life before and whence therefore he could not claim to draw memories. And in fact, strictly speaking, he does not mention memories, except of love.

What we have, therefore, if we compare the two versions, is a movement away from an original, more accurate, more specific, more autobiographical version to a more generalized, less biographical final version. The year 1828 had been even for Puškin exceptionally bad; the end of the Chénier inquiry, the Gavriliada inquiry, his rejection by Olenina, his overall recognition that in various ways he was a marked man, finally in 1829 Gončarova’s coldness to his suit: all these things added up to desperately bad news for Puškin—witness “Recollection,” “Dar naprasnyj” (The Futile Gift), “Snova tuči nado mnoj” (Again clouds above me).⁶ His 1829 journey to Arzrum was therefore a flight. “On the hills of Georgia,” written early on in his journey, to some extent reflects the relief of the escapee. It can be interpreted as a happy poem—happiness oxymoronically mixed with sorrow; happiness brought in the present by the recollection of fond memories from the past. The reader cannot fail to note the reappearance of some of the same structural features which were present in “Night,” that almost uniquely happy Puškin love lyric. We note the following: (1) night and darkness (both versions) (“nočnaja mgla” [night mist]), relieved by a not-too-bright light (original version only) (“Vosxodjat zvezdy” [The stars climb high])—cf “pecal’naja sveca” [sad candle]; (2) quietness (original version) (“Vse tixo”), broken by a not overly harsh sound (final version) (“šumit Aragva”)—cf. “Moj golos . . . žurča, / Tekut, ruč’i ljubvi” [My voice . . . murmuring, / Flow, rivulets of love]; thus in both poems we have flowing water; (3) the following lexical items: gorit, (ne) trevožit, pečal’ / pečal’naja; (4) the idea of being full of some positive emotion, full of the loved one, precisely the same words here as in “Night” (“polny toboju”) ending the line and giving the rhyme, in fact the rhymed endings are identical in the two poems, nado mnoju [above me] or predo mnoju [before me] / polny (polna) toboju [full of you]. (5) as in “Night,” considerable play with the first- and second-person pronoun.

Let us note also some differences between “Night” and our 1829 poem: (1) the setting of the former is the indoors, while the setting of the latter is the outdoors (“sveca” [candle] against “zvezdy” [stars]); (2) in “Night” the poet’s verses have an important function, whereas in “On the hills of Georgia” there is no mention of them; (3) in “Night” the beloved is imagined as being present and declaring her love; in 1829 she is not imagined as present, there is no fulfillment, no expectation of reciprocity (“I bez nadežd i bez želanij”). In this last respect, the rejection of hope of reciprocity, there is a move away from “Night” toward another link—that with “I loved you” of 1829. And, finally, let us emphasize that both versions of our 1829 poem make extremely effective use of symmetry: in the six-foot lines the caesura is syntactically reinforced, and there is repeated use of pairs, either close in meaning, augmenting each other (“Toboj, odnoj toboj . . . ne mučit, ne trevožit . . . gorit i ljubit . . . po-prežnemu . . . vnov’ . . . bez nadežd i bez želanij”), or oxymoronically opposed (“grustno i legko” echoed and reinforced by the following oxymoron: “Pečal moja svetla,” topped and explained by “pečal’ moja polna toboju”); note too the double negative with inversion: “ne ljubit’ ono ne možet.”⁷

“Ja vas ljubil” (I loved you; PSS III: 183) was written in 1829, not later than November. The meter is five-foot iambics, with masculine and feminine alternating rhymes, making up the poem’s two quatrains. For the first and only time in the poems of our corpus we have the more formal form of the second-person pronoun (Vas, vam instead of ty, tebja, tebe). There is constant interplay of the first- and second-person pronouns, with the second person invariably an object, and the first person a subject. The poem is totally without background, without decor—without reference to any particular scene or event. It describes in the past the poet’s attitude, his central concerns in the present, and his wish for the woman in the future. And it operates entirely without images (“poèzija bez obrazov,” to use Roman Jakobson’s characterization; Jakobson 1981 II: 72-75). In this respect, and in the poem’s overall theme and tenor, it is clearly a development of the 1824 “All is ended: between us there is no connection.” Excerpts from the two poems were juxtaposed, above, to demonstrate their similarities. In its theme of tender, timid, undemanding love, this poem is close also to “On the hills of Georgia”—especially to the original version: “I bez nadežd, i bez želanij.” The two poems were written in the same year. Thematically, “I loved you” has points of contact with the three “poems of recollection” mentioned—“Under the blue sky,” “Recollection,” and “On the hills of Georgia.” Although metrically it does not follow their six-foot, four-foot alternating pattern, it shares with them the symmetricality and tendency to emphasize the message by the use of pairs, close in meaning. This tendency was pointed out above for “On the hills of Georgia.” So I merely note for “I loved you”: “ . . . ne trevožit; / Ja ne xoču pečalit’ . . . bezmolvno, beznadežno, / To robost’ju, to revnost’ju . . . tak iskrenno, tak nežno. not disturb you; / I do not wish to cause you sorrow . . . silently, without hope, / Now by shyness, now jealousy . . . so sincerely, so tenderly]. We note as familiar lexical items “ne trevozit” (cf. “Night” and “On the hills of Georgia”—also in “All is ended”: “Tebja toskoj presledovat’ ne budu”); “pecalit’ ” (cf. “Night” and “On the hills”); “ugasla” (cf. “Night” and “On the hills”); “gorit”; “Beznadezno” (cf. in “On the hills”: “bez nadezd”); “ljubil,” “ljubov’,” “ljubimoj,” etc., passim. The closeness, noted above, of “I loved you” to “On the hills” serves to reinforce the idea of a lapse in time between the love in its active phase and the present moment of recollection; cf. in the original version of “On the hills”: “sokrylas’ mnogo let.”

Above, we characterized the Odessa pieces as current, and the Mixajlovskoe pieces as past in the sense that they looked back to, put in perspective, or drew their nourishment from a relationship which had been in the past more actual, since at that time the lovers had been able to see and meet each other. How should we characterize “On the hills” and “I loved you”? They seem to me to be poems of reduced demandingness—in terms of the lover’s rights and expectations. Past love is recalled, its continuance or reawakening is acknowledged, but the great emphasis is on the man’s insistence, his reassuring the woman (more specifically in the original than in the final version of “On the hills”) that he has no demands to make. He has therefore in his own mind reached some sort of elevated plateau of not disinterested but not demanding love. Characterize his newfound attitude how we will, we are bound to recognize that a qualitative change has taken place. And while “On the hills” expresses resignation, “I loved you” goes one step further—by looking into a future in which some other man will have replaced the departing lover. Both poems stand close together, on the threshold of being poems of farewell.

The last three lyrics on our list were all written in the fall of 1830 at Boldino. During this highly creative period, Puškin was, in part, as noted above, bidding farewell to his pre-married life. Leave-taking is the central theme of the three lyrics involved. Of these the first in time is entitled “Proščanie” (Farewell; PSS III: 233), dated October 5. This AbAAb-rhyming four-foot iambic stanza is used consistently in only two Puškin poems, “Farewell” and “Paž” (Page), the latter dated October 7, 1830, i.e., two days after “Farewell.” The strophe in the case of “Page” was suggested by de Musset’s “L’Andalouse,” and it was used ten times in Sainte-Beuve’s Poésies de Joseph Delorme (1829), which had favorably impressed Puškin. The strophe itself is regarded by B. V. Tomaševskij as thematically “neutral” (Tomaševskij 1958 II: 78). The idea espoused by some scholars that “Farewell” is addressed to a dead woman is patently wrong. Note that “dlja svoego poèta” and “dlja tebja” are in perfect symmetry—i.e., for me you’re dead, for you I’m dead, because our separation is final and decisive, not because either one of us is clinically dead. “I s negoj robkoj i unyloj”— applied to his own feelings—is a pretty good indication that the addressee is alive (cf. in “I loved you” nežno, robost’); it is a part of the poet’s reassurance formula—his love will be undemanding. “Menjaja vse, menjaja nas” means changing both of us as the years change everything else—not changing you by death, and me in some less conspicuous way. The poem has been pruned of eroticism and is dominated by a mood of controlled gloom as the future is contemplated. In a draft we read “S negoj sladkoj” [with sweet voluptuousness], changed, of course, to “robkoj” [shy]. And in the final three lines we have two similes working together, which clearly militate against eroticism and in the direction of onetime love now recollected in tranquility.

To examine the two similes briefly: The idea of a widowed spouse is clear enough, and it enhances the overall melancholic tone of the poem; it also carries finality. But the addressee is seen also to be embracing a friend prior to his incarceration, which puts the poet-narrator in the position of facing imminent imprisonment! I don’t think this is impossible. Puškin’s views on his approaching marriage were not consistent—they varied with mood and with whom he was addressing. But one feeling that seems to constitute a strand in this emotional complex or composite is a feeling of being about to be tied, to be deprived of freedoms, in a sense imprisoned. His “Elegija” (Elegy) (“Bezumnyx let ugasšee vesel’e” [The extinguished merriment of mad years]), dated September 8, 1830, is frequently cited as an expression of Puškin’s courage, his positive view of life. But it also contains, in my view, a measure of self-pity:

I. e., despite the odds, I may still squeeze out of life a little joy. The idea that a onetime love could be bidding him farewell before his incarceration is by no means far-fetched.

“Zaklinanie” (Incantation; PSS III: 246) was written on October 17, and is clearly addressed to a dead woman. This poem has its derivation in a forty-two-line poem by Barry Cornwall, “Invocation.” Although “Invocation” and “Incantation” are both devoted to a beloved woman who has died, they differ markedly in tone and atmosphere. By and large, Cornwall is summoning a spirit, whereas Puškin has not entirely disincarnated the object of his love. He bids Leila to appear “as thou wast before we parted, pale, cold, like a winter day, contorted with thy final agony”—which fits what seems to be a Puškin pattern of fascination with fading and ailing charm. In this sense the poem is loosely reminiscent of the 1823 “There will arrive a terrible hour.” The three stanzas of four-foot iambs follow a not particularly meaningful pattern—aBaBcDDc—with the sjuda, sjuda! refrain ending for each stanza (Tomaševskij 1958: II: 87-88).

Our last poem, “Dlja beregov otčizny dal’noj” (For the shores of a distant fatherland; PSS III: 257), is also written to a dead woman. It is dated November 27, 1830. This poem, three stanzas of four-foot iambs following the pattern AbAbCdCd, has created no little confusion. The definitive text would justify the assumption that the addressee is a foreigner returning to her distant homeland. But the draft gives the opposite picture: “Dlja beregov čužbiny dal’noj / Ту pokidala kraj rodnoj” [For the shores of a distant alien land / You left your native country]. According to this version the addressee would seem to be a Russian woman going abroad— not a foreign woman returning home. There is another feature in this poem which may be of some general interest. Italy, most scholars agree, is the land to which the beloved woman was summoning the poet, and the land where she died. But Puškin has evoked Italy by recalling scenery with which he was himself familiar from his southern sojourn, the scenery of the Odessa area. As B. P. Gorodeckij so convincingly notes, this is the only poem in which Puškin mentions—in fact, twice—the presence of olive trees in connection with Italy. Gorodeckij links this to Puškin’s personal memories of Odessa and the South, and points out that the “Nereida” (1820) line “Sokrytyj mež derev, edva ja smel doxnut’ ” [Concealed among the trees, I scarcely dared to breathe] originally read “Sokrytyj mež oliv, edva ja smel doxnut’ ” [Concealed among the olive trees, I scarcely dared to breathe], thus referring to a bona fide olive grove near the Richelieu house where Puškin was staying in 1820 with the Raevskijs (Gorodeckij 1962: 382-83). Also, in an early draft line 19 appears not as “Gde [ten’ oliv legla] na vody” [Where the shade of the olive trees lay across the waters] but as “Gde pod skalami dremljut vody” [Where beneath the cliffs the waters slumber]. It is difficult to believe that the “skaly” are not those near Odessa, the same ones mentioned (“Pod golubymi nebesami . . . Tam, pod zavetnymi skalami” [Beneath the blue heavens . . . There, beneath the cherished cliffs]) in Puškin’s 1824 “The foul day has died out.” We note that the poet had tried in vain to impede the woman’s departure.

The last three poems discussed, those written in Boldino in the fall of 1830, are clearly poems of farewell.

What pattern, if any, emerges? The sixteen poems here studied cover a space of seven years. It does not seem far-fetched to divide them into four periods. These four periods correspond to the composition dates, but they also, in the character of their respective lyrics, reflect a quality which differentiates them from the other periods. Proceeding along these lines, it is possible to characterize the periods as follows:

1. 1823-24, Odessa: poems involving current love affairs;

2. 1824-26, Mixajlovskoe: poems in which past love affairs are recollected;

3. 1829: two poems of recollection in which expectations have been reduced and there is a conscious effort to let go the past;

4. 1830, Boldino: poems of farewell.

Our study is posited on the belief that our post-Odessa lyrics refer back to the Odessa period (or possibly in one or two cases to 1820-23 in the Odessa area, i.e., to the pre-Odessa southern exile, but not Kišinev). This means that in our view the Odessa experiences continued to be felt right up to Puškin’s marriage. That these experiences should in successive stages be recollected with diminishing intensity is in the nature of things. Time has its effect. But what is significant is that nothing in the years following Odessa came to replace these memories. We do not forget Kern, Ušakova, Olenina. But relations with these women would seem not to have been of comparable intensity with the experiences which produced the five Odessa lyrics. And this makes Odessa a watershed year. From Odessa on, the road was all downhill—to February 18, 1831. This may sound a cynical comment, and indeed it is. But that is precisely the point—for the remark could very well have been made by Puškin himself!

We have already noted the emotional disorder of the Odessa period as expressed in the five lyrics: love fulfilled; necrophilic musings; jealousy; something amiss in the midst of an apparently satisfactory love relationship; supplication; termination.

Obviously these poems were not written to one woman only. For example, “There will arrive a terrible hour” and “All is ended” are mutually exclusive; you cannot describe in advance a woman’s death through illness, and then two months later tell her she is young, and will be loved by many. But the question of how many women went into the making of the five Odessa pieces, though fascinating, is not my point. My point is the wide variety of intense, contradictory, and conflicting emotions that went into their making. The chaotic nature of the Odessa period also needs to be stressed, for it gives, with hindsight, to be sure, a clear indication of the non-viability of the attachments formed in 1823-24 in that city.

Second, and finally, there is one other feature of the sixteen pieces that attracts attention—the very considerable extent to which the pieces depict the man as a supplicant, as seeking to hold back or restrain the woman, to prolong a relationship which the woman is terminating. This can be seen in “Will you forgive me my jealous dreams,” “All is ended: between us there is no connection,” and “Conversation between Bookseller and Poet,” in the 1825 final version of “Desire for Glory,” in “I loved you” by implication (since he now wishes that his love no longer importune her or give her sorrow), and in “For the shores of a distant fatherland.”

Our study appears—going up to 1830, at least—to substantiate Puskin’s feeling that he was not made for love—at least not for love that stands the test of time: “Ne dlja menja sotvorena ljubov’.” Or rather, more accurately, love was not made for him.