WILLIAM E. HARKINS

The Rejected Image: Puškin’s Use of Antenantiosis

While reading through Puškin’s Evgenij Onegin (Eugene Onegin) recently with a class, I noticed a recurrent type of literary figure involving a more or less elaborated construction that was at once negated: an image that did not apply, so to speak, and which the poet therefore had to reject. The interesting feature of this figure was the degree of elaboration, sometimes quite extensive, as well as its content: the poet’s fantasy is let loose on a chain of inappropriate images or characterizing epithets.

Casting about for a name for this figure, I happened upon the term antenantiosis, a rare word which appears in neither Webster nor the Oxford Dictionary, but which does appear in Richard A. Lanham’s Handlist of Rhetorical Terms (1968: 9), transplanted there from the Hellenistic rhetoricians. Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon lists the term, which it defines as “a positive statement made in a negative form” (1940: 151). A common source cited by both these works is Alexander Numenius’s treatise De figuris, a second-century B.C. manual of rhetorical terms. The distinction between antenantiosis, as I employ the term, and the better-known litotes is at best tenuous, but litotes seems generally to be used to denote assertion either by understatement or by negation: its burden is rather the irony of understatement of positive qualities. An example of litotes, using negation and chosen from Eugene Onegin, is: “Da pomnil, xot’ ne bez grexa, / Iz Èneidy dva stixa” (And he remembered, if not without error, / Some two lines of the Aeneid) (PSS VI: 7).

In the following passage, describing Tat’jana in her role as grande dame, we have something quite different from litotes:

Here we have a catalogue of traits and mannerisms from which Tat’jana, in her new calling, is entirely free. The irony is one not of understatement but of purity or freedom from what might have been expected, either by us or by some other reader. The device we are scrutinizing here bears, then, a relation to the projected “ideal reader” for whom Puškin wrote and what such a reader’s expectations of the text might have been, and plays with those expectations.

Before going on, we ought to consider whether there may not be other negative rhetorical figures which largely lack the irony characteristic of our figure. We should exclude from consideration the antithesis, a figure that denies one thing to settle on another which is thus emphasized: not he but she, not town but country, etc. This seems to be a rhetorical device of emphasis or selection, and may be employed at times, at least, entirely without irony.

The key to the difference seems to be one of poetic logic and poetic development. The following two passages from Eugene Onegin are both figurative and ironic, at least potentially so, but they are hardly developed, and in their rhetorical form they could be classed as mere simple negation. The antenantiosis, as we will use the term, requires at least minimal positive development along with negation.

The first passage treats Onegin as a potential poet, but the image is kept strictly in hand, perhaps because a real poet (like Puškin himself) needs to do much more than distinguish iambs and trochees. It opens with the negation, it should be noticed. The second example is also ironic and witty enough: the reference is to a pair of “Eastern” feet, i.e., an unidentified woman’s, so that, “cradled in Eastern bliss, you left no traces” (a pun, since “feet” are meant here, and not just “influence,” which the Russian word sledov also implies) “on that northern, mournful snow.” Although rhetorically this passage is again simple negation, still it does permit a complex, ironic image to unfold, and we must classify it at least as a marginal case of antenantiosis.

There is, of course, the well-known Russian folk poetic image which the textbooks once misleadingly labeled “antithesis,” and which contemporary theoreticians now designate as “negative comparison.” Patricia Krafcik, in her article on the subject, has chosen the term “negative simile” (Krafcik 1976: 18-26).¹ Puškin imitated the device in the opening to his Brat’ja razbojniki (The Robber Brothers):

Puškin also used this device in his Poltava and occasionally in short poems of folk character. The curious thing is that the negative comparison only looks like our figure; its semantic content is entirely different, even opposite. For we are talking about “rejected images”: the negative comparison offers us a “rejected image,” but one rejected only in terms of syntax; in terms of semantics it is accepted as supremely appropriate. Thus, in the example quoted above, the “band of bold lads” coming together at night does indeed resemble, at least metaphorically, a flock of ravens, and this is the image’s point.

The negative comparison serves to remind us that in literary style, just as, as it is said, in the world of the Freudian id, the negative does not exist; everything is asserted. There are no real “rejected images,” then; every image creates a figure that is perceived: some of these figures may survive only for a moment, while others go on to survive the work of literature itself. Hence, our “rejected images” are in a sense every bit as positive as any of the images in Eugene Onegin, and as self-sufficient. Still, there may well be inner reasons that inclined Puškin to use negative imagery in his Eugene Onegin, and (since such images are not very common elsewhere in his poetry) it would seem fruitful to search for their logic in the characters he was portraying; most of our examples are elements of character portrayal, it should be noted.

Eugene Onegin is peopled with types later popularly known as lisnie ljudi, “superfluous people.” Onegin and Lenskij both clearly belong to this category, while Tat’jana in childhood is depicted as wanting and “incomplete” (even in later life in Petersburg she remains unfulfilled and in a sense still incomplete). Of course, a negative image could just as well express virtue by rejecting vice, strength by negating weakness. (The litotes often functions in this way, though with its implicit irony the effect is to diminish, not underline, positive qualities.) There is something quite appropriate in the poet’s use of his negative imagery to depict negative characteristics: loss, inadequacy, superfluity. Before we reject this possibly too glib thesis, let us look at the evidence.

The great bulk of our examples from Eugene Onegin do indeed relate to the characters, and do express limitation, lack, or want. Chapter I describes Onegin’s lack of scholarly ambitions, as well as his inability to become a poet:

Near the end of the book, in Chapter VIII, Puškin again echoes this theme of the unmade poet; perhaps the author was obsessed with his relation to his hero, or with the idea that Eugene should have been a poet: “I on ne sdelalsja poètom, / Ne umer, ne sošel s uma” (And he didn’t become a poet, / Didn’t die, didn’t lose his mind) (PSS VI: 164).

This is all the material relevant to Eugene, and it seems very little. But we should remember that outside Chapter I and Chapter VIII, Puškin keeps Eugene somewhat at a distance and for the most part does not enter into his mental processes (as he does with Lenskij or Tat’jana in the intervening chapters).

Concerning Lenskij, the poet offers us a long catalogue of occupations and temptations that will not serve to distract him from his love:

And after Lenskij’s death, an interesting passage makes the ironic point that he will never have to put up with the boredom, worries, or sorrows of married life: “Gimena xlopoty, pečali, / Zevoty xladnaja čreda / Emu ne snilis’ nikogda” (The cares of matrimony, the griefs, / The yawns in cold succession / Never came to his dreams) (PSS VI: 94). These images serve to suggest, perhaps, a complete split within Lenskij between the poet and the lover: the lover and his love are unworthy of the poet.

It is Tat’jana with whom the device of antenantiosis is most closely linked. The characterization of the young country girl carries a whole series of images setting her off, not only against her elder sister Ol’ga but also against the village girl of the typical reader’s expectation, the “ordinary” child of the country. Our first example vividly contrasts her to her sister and also suggests that, as a country girl, she is alone and unique in aloneness:

Next comes one of our most felicitous examples: through an arrangement of syntax in which the negation is delayed, the poet creates an image that is rejected only at a point when it is almost complete:

The same delay of negation characterizes our next example:

These images serve, of course, to depict the life of the typical country girl, to which Tat’jana cannot and will not conform, as do several others:

This established pattern of the “typical” maiden versus Tat’jana is broken, however, with our next example:

The point here is not that Tat’jana does not love winter; we know very well that she does. But now she is making preparations to go to Moscow, and her customary life is broken off, never to be restored. There is pathos here as well as irony.

Next comes perhaps our wittiest and cruelest example:

If the negative imagery associated with Tat’jana’s childhood applied to her purely as an individual, here for the first time we learn how the world regards her (or rather, how it ignores her). Here, almost for the first time, Puškin injects a note of suspense and even melodrama; it is at this point we leave Tat’jana, to meet her again as the grande dame of Petersburg society of Chapter VIII. The example quoted above at the outset of the essay depicts her in this new role. It contrasts sharply with the negative images given for Tat’jana’s childhood; for the first time negative imagery has a clearly positive function and implies a heroic characterization rather than mere poverty or deprivation. We are thus reassured that, despite her new success, Tat’jana has not been spoiled; she has not yielded to the lure of the new life she has accepted for herself.

This last example may well supply a clue concerning Puškin’s preference for using the device more frequently in portraying Tat’jana than for Eugene or Lenskij. Perhaps the men were too obvious, too negative; a statement of total rejection for them would have been an overstatement, a device that Puškin did not often employ. In the case of Tat’jana, however, the negated images accomplish a double purpose: (I) they imply a soughtfor positive—Tat’jana’s lack of indulgence in childish pastimes may imply deeper spiritual concerns, for instance, even though we are not told very much concerning these; and (2) they create a certain melodramatic suspense, since their implication is so strongly negative that we are left unprepared for the heroine’s ultimate triumph. To be sure, this total lack of preparation for the change could be perceived as a fault, as certain of Puškin’s contemporaries already supposed. But if we recollect that Tat’jana’s negative behavior may point to a deeper spiritual reality within her, we cannot object to Puškin’s treatment.

Apart from these three chief characters, examples of negative imagery are rare. The minor characters, including Ol’ga and Mme. Larina, do not seem to have any. Rare (and rare in Puškin’s lyric poetry as well) are lyric uses of the device. An eloquent example that constitutes an exception is Puškin’s witty description of an absent moon: “I vod veseloe steklo / Ne otražaet lik Diany” (And the waters’ merry glass / Does not reflect Diana’s aspect) (PSS VI: 24). There is a comic suggestion here that the mechanism of the water’s mirror has broken down and is not functioning.

The change of seasons also brings absence and deprivation, and enables the poet to parody the imagery of pastoral poetry:

Recollecting the importance of metapoetry both in Eugene Onegin and in Puškin’s poetry in general, we should ask, Are there any metapoetic passages that can be classified as showing negative imagery? One passage does indeed recall for us Puškin’s custom of doodling in the margins while writing, presumably when poetic inspiration deserted him:

There is a sharp satiric attack on Moscow society:

The following passage is technically an antithesis, since it rejects В for A. But within the A part an image arises that must be negated:

The reference here, of course, is to Napoleon’s entrance into Moscow and the great fire of Moscow which “answered” that entrance.

Curiously, Puškin made relatively little use of antenantiosis in his other poetry. I have listed below a few of the more interesting examples. The first is from Ruslan and Ljudmila, and is a rare instance (in Puškin) of an extended nature description carried out in largely negative terms:

There are several instances of the device in the comic narratives Graf Nulin (Count Nulin) and Domnik v Kolomne (Little House in Kolomna), as we might predict, since one possible use of irony is humor. Here is a long and striking example from Graf Nulin:

This technically is antithesis, too, but before the negation a long series of images of household life and chores the heroine ought to perform (but does not) is built up.

Another satiric example comes from Puškin’s poetic genealogy, “Moja rodoslovnaja”:

Here Puškin underlines his removal from courtly favor by poking fun at the favorites to tsars and tsarinas: Peter the Great’s Menšikov, supposedly once a seller of pancakes, or the court scrivener who was the lover of the Empress Elizaveta Petrovna.

These examples might lead us to inquire whether the negative image of ironic wit ought not to have appeared more frequently in the poetry of Puškin, celebrated for its irony. Yet, perhaps we do have sufficient wit in the examples already given. Onegin the non-scholar and non-poet is surely witty, as is the water’s failure to reflect the image of the moon. In the first instance Onegin’s would-be pretensions contrast with the writer Puškin’s actual achievements. The second image is comical because the sentence form employed suggests a failure of a “mechanism,” in this case the mirror, to function. Less funny are the passages connected with Tat’jana, but this is quite natural in terms of their inverse seriousness and their suspense-making function.

Examples of antenantiosis in Puškin’s lyric poetry can hardly be found, though negative rhetorical constructions are fairly common. Either the negative is asserted as such, without irony (e.g., “Ne daj mne bog sojti s uma”—PSS III: 322), or we are dealing with an antithesis (“Net, ja ne l’stec”—Puskin’s abject apology for his loyalty to Tsar Nicholas—PSS III: 89). Even when the first element of the antithesis is fairly well extended, it always remains clear within the poem’s context that its ultimate resolution will arrive (e.g., “Ne tem gorožas’ ”—PSS II: 2: 49). Perhaps the short lyric poem did not offer Puškin the poetic space essential to the rhetorical development of the antenantiosis, and prefers the balder, sharper outline of the antithesis.

In closing, we should pose the question, From where might Puškin have taken this ironic device? Its use was sufficiently widespread, of course, that a specific answer to this question will scarcely be possible. It is enough to suggest here, I believe, that Puskin did not lack sources.

In classical literature the obvious, though hardly the unique, source might well be Horace. Horace was probably Puškin’s favorite classical poet, and in fact examples of our device abound in his poetry. I quote two fairly extended instances from the Odes:

This is actually an antithesis, of course, but the opening series of negative images describing the heifer’s immaturity and unfitness for love is developed as an independent chain of images.

This could be read minimally as simple negation (which it is rhetorically), but Horace seems to extract a good deal of irony from describing nature images that are not “typical” or expected. This makes his use of the device approximate that of Puškin, though of course his images are much more lyric than most of Puškin’s (compare, however, the image quoted above from Puškin’s Ruslan and Ljudmila).

If we turn to the Russian poet who was, more than any other, a follower of Horace (and, of course, a predecessor of Puškin), Deržavin, we find striking examples of the device. Here is a negative chain of images from the fourth stanza of Felica:

This is no doubt more labored than Puškin, but it does show much of the ironic wit of certain of Puškin’s examples.

Curiously, though Byron’s Don Juan gave so much to the original conception of Eugene Onegin, examples seem to be rare in that work. But Byron’s Beppo does have an extended example that is outstanding and very funny: a negative description of those women whom Byron punningly calls “Musselwomen,” i.e., the women of Musselmen (Moslems, in the terminology of Byron’s day):

I do not suggest, however, that Puškin took the device from Byron; it was too general, and in any case such a hypothesis would leave us without an explanation for the example quoted above from Ruslan and Ljudmila.

As the two examples quoted from Horace and the one from Puškin’s Ruslan and Ljudmila would confirm, Puškin could have made our negative device one that combined lyricism and irony. But his finest lyric poetry is too direct for this and generally eschews irony. Instead Puškin employed it in those longer works, in particular Onegin, in which there is much irony, often tinged with humor. Puškin is no doubt the ironic poet par excellence in Russian verse, and it is clear that he integrated our device with the tone, imagery, and lexicon of his well-known, even celebrated ironic manner.