Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. Berberova 1960: 229. This sententia was then taken by Xodasevič as epigraph to his book on Puškin, Poètičeskoe xozjajstvo Puškina ( 1924).

2. The Puškin Symposium was the culmination of a semester-long universitywide Puškin Festival. Among the various events in that festival were the following: a production of Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin, based on Puškin’s novel in verse, by the University of Wisconsin Opera (6, 7, 13, 15 February 1987); a performance of Russian music by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (6 February 1987); two exhibitions at the Elvejhem Art Museum (“Russian Paintings in the Davies Collection,” 7 February-8 March 1987; and “Popov, Vilner, and Utenkov: Contemporary Russian Printmakers,” 21 February-5 April 1987); Puškin exhibits in the Memorial Library (the Rare Book Room and the Music Library) and at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (10 February 1987 to the end of the semester); a program featuring Russian music given by the University of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra and the Choral Union (28 February 1987); three programs of dances featuring Russian music (5 and 7 May and 21 November 1987)—the last of these included the premiere of an original choreographed solo ballet based on Puškin’s lyric “The Demon”; a Russian chamber music concert broadcast live over the state (15 March 1987); and a four-evening series of Russian films on Puškin’s works (2, 9, 16, 23 April 1987). Finally, at the Puškin Symposium there was a special exhibition featuring copies of all the U.S. dissertations on Puškin completed at U.S. institutions up to that time, and books on Puškin and/or his time by participants at the symposium.

The Puškin Symposium itself included 25 papers by American Puškinists (all on faculties of U.S. institutions, except one who earned his Ph.D. in the U.S.). The complete list of participants is as follows (together with their institutional affiliation at that time): Walter Arndt (Dartmouth Coll.), David Bethea (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison), James Brown (Univ. of Minnesota), Brett L. Cooke (Texas A.&M. Univ.), Sergej Davydov (Bryn Mawr Coll.), Paul Debreczeny (Univ. of North Carolina), J. Clayton Douglas (Univ. of Ottawa), Caryl Emerson (Cornell Univ.), Monika Frenkel (Stanford Univ.), Antonia Glasse (Duke Univ.), George Gutsche (Northern Illinois Univ.), William Harkins (Columbia Univ.), Sona Hoisington (Univ. of Illinois, Chicago), Simon Karlinsky (Univ. of California, Berkeley), Lauren Leighton (Univ. of Illinois, Chicago), Gerald Mikkelson (Univ. of Kansas), Leslie O’Bell (Univ. of Texas), Daniel Rancour-Laferriere (Univ. of California, Davis), Roberta Reeder (Harvard Univ.), Savely Senderovich (Cornell Univ.), J. Thomas Shaw (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison), Victor Terras (Brown Univ.), William Mills Todd III (Stanford Univ.), and Walter Vickery (Univ. of North Carolina).

3. This situation (religious intolerance in the Soviet Union) has changed radically (for the better) in recent years under the impact of glasnost’.

“THE RUSSIAN TERPSICHORE’S SOUL-FILLED FLIGHT”

1. Leon Stilman (1958) provides a discussion of these two “realities” (characters’ and authors’). In an earlier study (Todd 1986) I analyzed the ways in which Puškin related these two ontological levels to others by treating each in terms of convention, choice, and autonomy.

2. Unless otherwise noted, I shall use Arndt’s translation (Puškin 1981), indicating chapter and stanza in the form [1.3]. The square brackets and roman numeral will distinguish these references to the novel from references to the “large Academy” edition of Puškin’s works (PSS).

3. Turgenev’s essay, a taxonomy of dance forms, gives valuable insights into the state of dance theory in early nineteenth-century Russia. Distinguishing dance forms according to the dominant emotion that each expresses, Turgenev’s essay reveals the impact of Sentimentalist poetics, which classified verse forms by their dominant emotions.

4. It lies beyond the scope of this essay to comment on the vicious theatrical politics of which there is a hint in these lines. Slonimskij (1974) has several excellent chapters on the subject.

5. V. S. Baevskij (1986: 140) notes that for Puškin and his contemporaries Istomina was indeed “the Russian Terpsichore.”

6. Krasovskaja (1958: 157) identifies the dance movements here as a rond de jambe, a renversé, and a battement battu. Slonimskij (1974: 33-34), following an unpublished manuscript by L. D. Blok, prefers to describe them as a grand fouetté de face on demi-pointe, performed to an andante violin or cello solo and followed by a series of brisés (jetés battus).

7. “Odnoj nogoj kasajas’ pola”; “I vdrug pryžok, i vdrug letit”; “Letit, kak pux ot ust Eola”; and “I bystroj nozkoj nožku b’et.” The two-stress line begins the passage “Blistatel’na, polovuzdusna” [1.20].

On the prosody of Eugene Onegin see Tomaševskij (1918), Vinokur (1941), and Nabokov (1975 III: 448-540).

8. The sense of social dance as ritual that I am advancing here is derived from Claude Lévi-Strauss (1966: 30-33), who distinguishes conjunctive ritual from competitive, disjunctive game.

9. In a manuscript note Puškin acknowledged the inaccuracy of the spurs—the cavalier guards wore low shoes to balls—but kept them in the stanza for their “poetic” quality (PSS VI: 528).

10. The translator’s “unbridle” somewhat reverses the sense of the Russian vlečet (“draw,” “attract”); desire here is aroused and directed by the dancing feet.

11. Flora, in Didelot’s Zephyr and Flora, was one of Istomina’s best-known roles; it has been argued that Puškin intended his sketch on Acteon and Diana (PSS V: 154) to become a Didelot ballet (Baevskij 1986: 141-42).

12. Nabokov (1975 II: 148) reminds us that this phrase is “an old French cliché . . . a standardized echo of Rome and her poets.” Within the context of Eugene Onegin, however, the phrase acquires new life and concreteness from the clamor of the ballroom scenes that I have just discussed. Within the novel, “noise” and “clamor” stand in binary opposition to the “magic” sounds of poetry and music.

13. Chapters II and III touch upon the choral dance of the folk; Chapter IV compares the ice on which some boys are skating to the polished parquet of a ballroom floor; Chapters V and VI feature a ball at the Larins; Chapter VII takes Tat’jana to a Moscow ball. In the final chapter, however, reference to the dance is only implicit, as the poet recalls the bacchanal revels of his youthful days. To assume that this stanza refers to the Green Lamp Society’s discussion of the ballet is not far-fetched, but the reference is not explicit. On this point, see Slonimskij (1974: 48).

14. For further information on the serf ballets see Krasovskaja (1958: 67-80).

15. Puškin includes two other forms of folk dance in the novel. Tat’jana’s dream, which shows how thoroughly the gentry could assimilate both folk and European culture, features a windmill dancing the “squat-jig” (pljašet vprisjadku, PSS V: 17), as Nabokov translates it. In the stanzas from “Onegin’s Journey,” which Puškin appended to the novel, the poet includes the “drunken stomping of the trepak” among the prosaic scenes that he would like to describe (PSS VI: 201).

16. Lotman (1983: 85-86) notes the connotations of eroticism, modernity, and romanticism that were linked with waltzing in the 1920s.

17. Lotman (1983: 81) makes the important point that salons also differed from balls in the more intellectual quality of their talk.

18. I am most grateful to my colleagues Carol Anschuetz, Victoria Bonnell, Gregory Freidin, Herbert Lindenberger, and John Malmstad for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this essay.

“THE QUEEN OF SPADES” AND THE OPEN END

This essay is developed out of ideas generated through discussion with Gary Saul Morson on a larger co-authored work in progress on parodic strategies in Puškin.

1. In an excellent, as yet unpublished essay, Felix Raskolnikov summarizes the major Soviet contributions to this debate on “the real versus the irrational” in “The Queen of Spades,” regretting that earlier studies have not “admitted the possibility of a serious attitude on Puškin’s part toward the irrational.”

2. This aspect of the Onegin-Tat’jana relationship received provocative treatment by Sergej Bočarov in a paper prepared for—but not delivered at—the Kennan Institute’s Conference on Russian Classic Literature, “Puškin: The Shorter Prose Works” (January 20-21, 1986, Washington, D.C.). Bočarov points out that Onegin’s first reference to Tat’jana is already provisional and twice displaced, “not from himself nor for himself’ (“I would have chosen the other / If I were a poet like you”). The fact that he is not a poet but a sceptic effectively bars him from satisfying any of the definitions Tat’jana craves; for most of the novel he represents openness, potential, whereas Tat’jana is forever the symbol of resoluteness and irreversible decision. The tension between the hero and heroine, Bočarov suggests, is the tension between “dal’ svobodnogo romana” (distance of a free novel) (which Onegin represents) and the more teleological variant of that line in the notebooks, “plan svobodnogo romana” (plan of a free novel), which is the realm of Tat’jana’s equilibrium and quest for answers. See Bočarov 1986.

3. From Puškin’s review of the second volume of Polevoj’s Istorija russkogo naroda (History of the Russian People, 1830), in PSS XI: 127.

4. Interestingly enough, this subtext of real gambling—which Puškin so cunningly hides from Germann himself—is revealed to the hero in Čįkovskij’s much-maligned operatic version of the tale. In the main, of course, Čajkovskij sentimentalizes the plot, creating a banal love story between Liza and Germann and stripping away Puškin’s cool irony as surely as he strips it from his operatic Onegin. But on close inspection, Čajkovskij’s Germann is a surprisingly selfconscious character. Perhaps because he must sing arias about himself, he has perspective on his dilemma—which Puškin’s hero does not.

Consider, for example, Germann’s ruminations at the beginning of Act II, scene 4, as he enters the old Countess’s bedroom and vows to extract her secret. “A esli tajny net?” (And if there is no secret?) he suddenly sings. “I èto vse puštoj liš’ bred moej bol’noj duši!” (And it is all merely the empty delirium of my sick soul!). Even more telling is the nervous song Germann performs at the gaming tables (Act III, scene 7) while he is still in his winning phase, that is, before he draws the fatal queen of spades. Surrounded by stunned friends and watched maliciously by Prince Eleckij—the injured ex-fiance, from whom Germann had stolen Liza— Germann calls for wine and “giggles hysterically.” He then sings: “Čto žizn’ naša? Igra! Dobro i zlo—odni mečty! Trud, čestnost’ —skazki dlja bab’ja! Kto prav, kto sčastliv zdes’, druz’ja? Segodnja ty a zavtra ja!” (And what is our life? A game! Good and evil—both are only dreams! Labor, honor—old wives’ tales! Who is right, who is happy here, friends? Today it’s you, tomorrow it’s I!).

Both Puškin’s and Čajkovskij’s heroes are close to being obsessive paranoids, to be sure. But only the operatic Germann is granted the right to question and mock his own pathology. He has clearly glimpsed by the end of the opera what real gambling requires, and the realization kills him.

Puškin’S EASTER TRIPTYCH

1. The eventual shape of this cycle was discussed by Izmajlov (1954: 553-55; 1958: 29-40), Stepanov (1959: 30-34), and Alekseev (1967: 122-27). A slightly expanded Russian version of this article appeared in Revue des études slaves 59 (Paris, 1987): 157-72.

2. E. Etkind, in the French edition of Puškin, published the four poems under the title “Les deux pouvoirs” (Puškin 1983).

3. At the time this essay was written, I was not familiar with the excellent work of V. P. Stark (1982), who analyzes the poem (“Hermit fathers. . . ”) in a similar context, and E. A. Toddes (1983), who interprets the cycle in a broader Christian framework.

4. My calculation is based on K. Taranovsky’s table of stressed vowel frequencies (Taranovsky 1965: 116). See also Cherry, Halle, and Jakobson (1953: 34-46). If one were to read the poem with the Old Church Slavic pronunciation, that is, without a reduction of the unstressed “o’s,” the first segment would become even more marked.

5. Annenkov (1855: 312). The poem is also quoted by Lerner (Puškin 1907-15 VI: 491) and Tomaševskij (1930: 78—79).

6. There is really no simple way to translate the difference in English between besy (devils) and diavol (devil, the devil). Hence we have decided in the interest of clarity to leave the Russian terms when describing this “infernal trinity.”

7. By calling Judas “vsemirnyj vrag” (universal foe), Puškin endows him with Satan’s attributes. “Satan” in Hebrew is a descriptive title meaning “adversary.” When the Old Testament was translated into Greek, Satan became diabolos, which meant “accuser, slanderer” (Fishwick 1963: 18 and Cavendish 1975: 185).

8. An analogous plot (though contrary to that of “Imitation of the Italian”) can be found in Puškin’s “Prorok” (Prophet) (1826), based on Isaiah 6:1-13, in which a six-winged Seraph enlivens the senses of a dying man and places a burning coal in his chest, whereupon God resurrects the man and turns him into a prophet.

9. I include both graphic and phonetic occurrences. The average incidence of this anagram in other Puškin texts of the same length is only 2, 3. My calculation is based on 40 samples of Puškin’s Alexandrines.

10. It is said in the Gospel that Satan planted betrayal in the heart of Judas (John 13:2, 27). But evil presupposes freedom of consent. It is, perhaps, interesting to note that the inversion of the word “ad” (hell) is the affirmative “da” (yes). Most meaningful, the anagram “da” figures, of course, in the name of Iuda, who is not named in the poem but is referred to as “pre DAtel’,” containing the same anagram.

11. Dante, too, meted out punishment for his sinners, identical with their transgression (contrapasso): they are doomed to suffer the harm they committed in life. This notion is not accepted by the Catholic Church at large and is unique to Dante. Both Satan and Judas, having betrayed God and Christ, are reunited in the lowest, ninth circle of Hell, where Judas’s head is being chewed by Satan (“Measure for measure, or one good kiss deserves another”).

12. In order to avoid the “orthographic atheism” of post-revolutionary editions, I capitalize certain words, as was the custom in Puškin’s time. According to the manuscript reproduced and described by Izmajlov (1954), Puškin crossed out two epithets in line 5 without replacing them: “Stojali [, blednye,] dve [slabye] ženy” (Stood [, pale,] two [weak] women). The poem was published in censored form by Annenkov in 1855 and 1857 (without the title and with the omission of lines 12-13 and 19-22), and later by Gercen in London in Poljarnaja zvezda (Polar Star) (1856). The full version appeared in Russia in 1870.

13. The other relevant subtext for this line is Matt. 6:19-20: “Ne sobirajte sebe sokrovišč na zemle, gde mol’ i rža istrebljajut i gde vory podkoryvajut i kradut; No sobirajte sebe sokrovišča na nebe, gde ni mol’, ni rža ne istrebljaet i gde vory ne podkoryvajut i ne kradut” (Do not collect for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; But collect for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal).

BESTUŽEV-MARLINSKIJ’S JOURNEYTO REVEL’ AND Puškin

1. Russian literary travelogues and their Western sources are discussed in Wilson 1973. There are separate chapters devoted to Bestužev’s models Sterne, Dupaty, and Karamzin. There is also a brief account of Journey to Revel’ in Chapter IX, “The Epigones” (meaning the epigones of Karamzin, whose Pis’ma russkogo putešestvennika [Letters of a Russian Traveler] is the subject of the preceding Chapter VIII). Wilson cites the same six lines of the prefatory poem that Nikolaj Mordovčenko quoted in his edition of Bestužev’s poetry (Bestužev-Marlinskij 1948 and 1961). Unlike Mordovčenko, Wilson does perceive that “the tone [of this poem] is not unlike that of Puškin’s Eugene Onegin” (Wilson 1973: 87).

I am grateful to my colleague Hugh McLean for bringing Wilson’s book to my attention after the present study was completed.

2. Evgenij Baratynskij, in his poems of 1820-21, associated dosug and dosugi with erotic situations rather than poetry. Konstantin Batjuškov, the direct predecessor of Puškin, Baratynskij, and Bestužev in the sphere of light poetry, did connect leisure and friendship with the genesis of poetry in his 1806 poem “K Gnediču” (To Gnedič): “Pel ot leni i dosuga; / Muza mne byla podruga” (Batjuškov 1964: 76-77; Shaw 1975a: 2, 3).

3. Baratynskij’s numerous instances of the inchoative Byvalo all occur in poems written after 1828 (Shaw 1975b: 3).

4. Boris Modzalevskij’s catalogue of Puškin’s personal library shows that he had a number of issues of the journal Sorevnovatel’ (The Contender), where Journey to Revel’ first appeared, though the issue of February 1821 is not listed in the catalogue (Modzalevskij 1910: 132). Considering the fate of Puškin’s library as described by Modzalevskij (xiff.) and later by Arnol’d Gessen (1965), the absence of a particular edition from a twentieth-century catalogue can in no way indicate that Puškin did not own a copy of it in his lifetime.

THE COUVADE OF PETER THE GREAT

I wish to thank Barbara Milman and Galya Diment for their constructive suggestions. All translations of passages in The Bronze Horseman are from Walter Arndt’s Pushkin Threefold (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972), pp. 401-27. Other translations are my own.

1. Izmajlov (Puškin 1978: 259) goes so far as to apply the verb “rozdat’sja” (to be born) in its figurative sense: “ . . . v mae 1703 g. v soznanii Petra roždaetsja derzkaja, no genial’naja mysl’ ob osnovanii novogo goroda . . . But this metaphor is not extended, and there is no suggestion that the poem contains a fantasy of male childbirth.

At one point Makogonenko speaks of the “vse novye i novye storony goroda— narodnogo i Petrova detišča” (1982: 169, emphasis added). This metaphor too is not developed.

Gutsche describes the origin of St. Petersburg in these terms: “Its very birth was morally tainted by the anonymous graves of its builders” (1986: 17, emphasis added). Again the metaphor is not extended.

2. I wish to thank Simon Karlinsky for bringing these lines to my attention. They are quoted in Karlinsky 1985: 257.

3. I borrow the verx/niz opposition from the Soviet semioticians (e.g., Ivanov 1976: 336; see also Belyj 1929: 190). The contrast of high and low in the passage is just one more example of what Knigge calls “das Kontrastprinzip” in the poem (1984: 72).

4. The myth of the birth of Athena is directly alluded to in Egipeckie noči (Egyptian Nights) (Cooke 1983: 253).

5. An association of water with horses as well has been discussed by psychoanalyst Ernest Jones: “In general the ideas of horse and water have always been closely associated, suggesting that something about a horse instinctively brings to mind the idea of water” (1951: 291-92). In Puškin’s poem the horse of Peter stands immovably over the waters of the Neva and is tied to the Neva in other ways, as we have seen. Jones’s examples of the horse-water association include the Centaurs with their “essentially watery origin” (1951: 293), the aquatic Hippocampen, the sea god Poseidon, who begat horses and discovered the riding art, the Hippocrene spring, etc. Belyj believes that the waves of the flooding Neva represent Neptune’s (i.e., Poseidon’s) horses (1929: 274). Jones adduces evidence for his thesis that “the actual link between the ideas of Horse and Water is the reproductive powers of both” (1951: 296). The exercise of reproductive power is of course precisely what the couvade of Peter the Great means._

6. Perhaps, following the structural scheme of Žolkovskij (1979: 46), the couvade of Peter as well as the couvade of Puškin’s poetic creativity could be regarded as manifestations of the abstract notion of “vyxod iz sebja” (coming out of oneself).

In a handout provided to all participants in the conference “Pushkin Scholarship in America Today,” Professor Shaw made the following observation:

A psychoanalyst’s answer to this question would occupy many pages. Each of the eleven rhyme sets would have to be examined in context, just as the opening rhyme in The Bronze Horseman has here been examined in the context of the poem.

In another context the voln-poln rhyme could conceivably have an entirely different psychoanalytic meaning. Here, for example, is the final quatrain of “K morju” (To the Sea): “V lesa, v pustyni molčalivy / Perenesu, toboju [morem] poln, / Tvoi skaly, tvoi zalivy, /I blesk, i ten’, i govor voln” (To forests, to silent wildernesses /I will transport, full of you [the sea], / Your cliffs, your bays, / And the glitter and shade and murmur of waves) (PSS II: 333). In this particular case the persona expresses an intense identification with the personified sea. Psychoanalytically speaking, the persona is identifying with the lost object. What the poln-voln rhyme does is reinforce the identification by making a word that refers to the persona match up with a word that refers to the lost object itself, the sea, or its metonymically functioning waves ( voln ). The phonological (rhyme) similarity bolsters the semantic similarity implicit in the psychological process of identification. The rhyme thus has a completely different psychoanalytic function in “To the Sea” than it has at the beginning of The Bronze Horseman. The “eleven pregnancies” whimsically proposed by Professor Shaw therefore have to be reduced to ten, and would probably have to be reduced even further if each of the poems possessing the voln-poln rhyme were to be examined in psychoanalytic detail.

7. The meaning of the reference to Aleksandrov is not clear.

8. Kučera (1956: 281) suggests that in each of the works The Bronze Horseman, The Stone Guest, and The Tale of the Golden Cockerel there is a “tired man” who is involved in an Oedipal triangle with a desired woman, and a statue that functions as a “father-image.” Unfortunately, Kučera concentrates his analysis on The Stone Guest, but his valuable insight would obviously be the starting point for any future study of the Oedipal dynamics of Bronze Horseman.

THE REJECTED IMAGE

1. See also Kvjatkovskij (1966: 189-90).

THE ROLE OF THE EQUES IN Puškin’S BRONZE HORSEMAN

1. An extensive overview of Russian/Soviet scholarship on Bronze Horseman is found in Makarovskaja 1978. For full recent interpretations/critical treatments, see Borev 1981 and Knigge 1984. Perhaps the two finest single works on Bronze Horseman are Lednicki 1955 and Puškin (Izmajlov) 1978. See as well Ospovat and Timenčik 1985, a study which is particularly helpful for its wealth of information about the subsequent reception of Puškin’s work.

2. See, for example, Sergej Davydov’s study in this volume of the religious motifs in Puškin’s last poems (“Puškin’s Easter Triptych”). The situation with regard to religious intolerance in the Soviet Union has of course changed fundamentally in the glasnost’ era, especially since the Puškin conference (April 1987; see Introduction), which provided the impetus for the present volume. Two recent Soviet works linking Puškin’s text to the Book of Job, the Ten Commandments, Revelation, and various Old Testament themes are Tarxov 1977 and Nemirovskij 1990.

3. For more on the links between Puškin’s poèma (narrative poem) and the later explicitly apocalyptic connotations associated with Peter as horseman of doom, see Ospovat and Timenčik 1985, Bethea 1989, and Nemirovskij 1990.

4. Much of the following section on the role of the equestrian in European statuary is taken from my book The Shape of Apocalypse (see note 3). I have been particularly aided in this discussion by the articles of Janson 1974, Levitine 1972, and Watson 1983. The most complete study to date of Falconet and his work on the statue of Peter is Kaganovič 1975.

5. Here I follow the chronology and emphasis of Janson (1974: 166-67), who singles out Bernini as the turning point in this tradition. Kaganovič (1975: 82) suggests that Pietro Tacca’s equestrian of Phillip IV of Spain, created in the midseventeenth century, is the most likely predecessor/model for Falconet. Janson, however, who mentions the Tacca equestrian, is the better informed about the European tradition of equestrians. His point is that Bernini represents the logical culmination of a tradition which includes the works of Giovanni da Bologna, Tacca, and Francesco Mochi and which may be expressed as a move away from an emphasis on virtù (the prowess of the individual hero) and toward an emphasis on dynastic authority (166).

6. These words belong to Giles Fletcher, an envoy of England’s Queen Elizabeth I who visited Russia during the reign of Fedor Ivanovič. See Durov 1977: 4. It is intriguing to note that on some of these medals there was simply a horseman, without the defeated dragon, or a unicorn. Some scholars attest that the dragon came later—that is, after the solitary horseman—during the late fifteenth century, when Moscow was considering the significance of the fall of Constantinople and adopting as state emblem the two-headed eagle. For more on the history of the St. George medal and order on Russian soil, see Lakier 1855 I: 228-31, 290-91; and Speransov 1974: 25-26.

7. “An additional iconographie manifestation of the changed [i.e., more secularized—DMB] image of the ruler is provided by numismatic evidence: Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Moscovite coins bore the representation of St. George. At the same time, the image of the saint was modified by an imperial radiate crown and by a portrait of the reigning tsar; i.e., the ’Moscow rider’ of Moscovite coinage was, simultaneously St. George and the Tsar. With Peter, the tsar gives way to the saint and the coins were not regarded as portraits of the tsar-saint; by the end of Peter’s reign even the saintly symbol loses its significance and a decree of 1724 refers to the representation simply as ‘rider with spear’ ” (Cherniavsky 1961: 82, n23). See also Spasskij 1955: 266-67.

8. Blok, for example, makes explicit reference in his “Petersburg Poem” to an apocalyptic confrontation between Moscow horseman and Petersburg horseman. See Hackel 1975: 41.

9. Here and elsewhere I use the literal translation of Bronze Horseman found in Arndt 1972: 400-27.

10. Puškin clearly did not have what today would be called an apocalyptic “turn of mind.” But he did take for granted a knowledge of the last book of the Bible on the part of his readers and correspondents. There are in all five indisputable mentions of the apocalypse in Puškin’s literary works (including drafts) and letters. (See the “large” Academy edition: PSS I: 162-63, III: 860, XII: 174, XIII: 29, XIV: 121.) Most of these references are parodic; that is, Puškin tended to use them in a comic rather than serious context, referring to himself during the first Boldino autumn (1830), for example, as sending regards from his “Patmos” (letter to M. P. Pogodin of November 1830 in XIV: 121). On another occasion, Puškin includes an allusion to the Pale Horse of Revelation in a draft of the poem “Stixi, sočinennye noč’ju vo vremja bessonnicy” (Verses composed at night during insomnia) (1830), but then removes it, presumably because he does not want the elements of this mythological system to invade his art on a serious level. In an interesting recent study (“The Apocalyptic Theme in Puškin’s ‘Count Nulin’ ”) the émigré scholar Boris Gasparov argues for the presence of an apocalyptic subtext in Graf Nulin (1825). The Russian eschatological tradition, especially as it relates to the equine motif, is treated at some length in Bethea 1989.

11. The important point to be made here is that, in carefully studying the biography of Peter and in insisting on the greatest possible verisimilitude allowable within the sculptural conventions of the time, Falconet the foreigner was trying to get at his own, fully dimensionalized understanding of the Petrine myth. His visual conception went against the “classicism” being imposed upon him “from within,” just as Puškin’s verbal conception would to a significant degree go against the unquestioning “panegyric tradition” established by Kantemir, Trediakovskij, Sumarokov, Lomonosov, and others (see Vickery 1963). That the cliff juts out into space (and by analogy time) and the steed and rider are perched in mid-stride atop it gives the entire ensemble a “revolutionary character” (i.e., this is no simple, straightforward “progress” but a great “turning-point”) within the context of eighteenth-century statuary, leading Diderot to comment in a letter of 6 December 1773 to the sculptor, “May I be stricken dead if I suspected that you had anything like that in your head” (cited in Levitine 1972: 60). And as shall be shown presently, it is precisely this revolt against classicism which the raised steed epitomizes that Puškin chooses to focus on in his “poetic” concetto.

12. See the excellent studies on the lack of a “middle ground” in Russian history and the role of tsar as revolutionary in Lotman and Uspenskij 1975 and 1985.

13. The statue of a triumphant Lenin arriving at the Finland Station in his armored car ( bronevik) is of course further evidence that even the Soviets have felt compelled to tap into a transparently similar version of the imperial equestrian.

14. Puškin himself on several occasions made remarks about Peter’s essentially revolutionary character. See, e.g., his notes for a planned work about the nobility (1830): “Pierre I est tout à la fois Robespierre et Napoléon (la Revolution incarnée)” (PSS XII: 205).

15. Falconet, by contrast, kept Peter’s clothing simple (a loose-fitting shirt such as that worn by the Volga boatmen—see Levitine 1972: 55) but did give him a crown of laurels.

16. Cf. the opening scenes of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, where Icarus/Phaeton imagery, in conjunction with that of the passing chariot and the fawning crowd, plays an important role (l.i.69-75).

17. This word is of course especially marked, with connotations of doom, in Bronze Horseman. Depending on whether the poet/speaker views the subject as a “hero” or “tyrant,” the word can mean either “awesome” or “awful, terrible” in Puškin’s vocabulary. The paradox in Bronze Horseman is that Peter is both “awesome” for his creation of the beautiful city and “awful, terrible” for his “execution” of Paraša and his degradation of Evgenij. See, e.g., the discussion of Peter and Mazepa in Poltava in Shaw 1985b: 659.

18. Recall the important lines in Bronze Horseman when the narrator, surveying the rising tide of floodwaters, exclaims, “Narod / Zrit božij gnev i kazni ždet. / Uvy! Vse gibnet ...” (The people / gaze on the wrath of God and bide [their] doom. / Woe! All is perishing . . . ”) (PSS V: 141).

19. Puškin compares the poet to his opposite, the zemnye kumiry (earthly idols), in his first draft of Bronze Horseman (“Pervaja čemovaja rukopis’,” in Puškin (Izmajlov) 1978: 36).

20. Puškin is not an author who is likely to use scapegoats. His victims are almost always endowed with larger ideological and artistic concerns.

21. All references to Puškin’s use of gerb (coat-of-arms) have been checked against the four-volume Slovar’ jazyka Puškina (Vinogradov 1956-61).

22. Son (sleep, dream) is a very important word and theme in Bronze Horseman (see below).

23. See as well the closely related “Moja rodoslovnaja” (My Genealogy, 1830).

24. The image complex of boyars’ domicile + overgrown grass + coat-of-arms reappears a few years later in “Putesestvie iz Moskvy v Peterburg” (Journey from Moscow to Petersburg, dated 1834-35) (PSS XI: 246), where the basic meaning of “hereditary nobility in eclipse” is further reinforced.

25. The emblems of Jaroslav’, Nižnij Novgorod, Rostov, and Perm’ may be older than that of Vladimir, but their exact age has not been firmly established (Speransov 1974: 22).

26. For a description of the way the house and square looked at the time of the great flood of 1824, see “Primečanija k tekstu poèmy,” in Puškin (Izmajlov) 1978: 173.

27. In this regard, it may be appropriate to recall that in one of the early sketches for Bronze Horseman, Evgenij’s ancestor fought on the side of the Old Believers against Peter (noted in Jakobson 1975: 41).

28. Evgenij is now “seized with a dark force” (obujannyj siloj černoj) as the people ( narod) were earlier “struck mad with fright” (straxom obujalyj) during the flood. A form of the same word is used in each case (PSS V: 141, 148).

29. It is possible, upon careful reading, to demonstrate how Puškin’s “panegyric” style in the “Introduction” already contains thematic and semantic elements that potentially undermine it. In any event, it is not a simple reproduction of the odic manner of various eighteenth-century writers (Kantemir, Trediakovskij, Sumarokov, Lomonosov, Deržavin, etc.).

30. “Mode of address” is something of a play on words in this context since the Bronze Horseman does not actually speak in the poem. However, in Evgenij’s mind, at least, the statue’s “silence” changes from one of indifference to one of threatening attentiveness.

PUŠKIN ON HIS AFRICAN HERITAGE

1. The most extensive treatment of the question of the precise homeland of Abram Gannibal is that of Vladimir Nabokov (1975). S. S. Gejčenko (1977: 332-34) gives an interesting account of a Russian journalist visiting in 1960 what he takes to be Puškin’s ancestral home in Ethiopia. Interest in Puškin’s black ancestry has been shown by biographers and scholars since 1855, when Annenkov’s biography first appeared (Annenkov 1984). The most thorough recent studies are those of Teletova (1981), Fejnberg (1983), and Leec (1984). Among the important earlier studies, one should mention those of Auslender (1910), Modzalevskij (1929), Vegner (1937), and Paina (1962).

2. In this essay, citations directly from Puškin’s text are from the “large Academy” textual edition (Puškin 1937-59), and are indicated by PSS plus volume and page, except that poems are cited by volume and number according to the system in Slovar’ jazyka Puškina (Vinogradov 1956-61). Factual information regarding dating, titles, and publication is drawn from the notes to that edition. For precise timing of publications, PSS has been supplemented by Sinjavskij and Cjavlovskij (1938). Reliance for biographical information has been placed mainly on Cjavlovskij (1951) and Čerejskij (1975). Translations from the letters are from Shaw (1967). Translations from Puškin’s prose fiction are from Debreczeny (1983a); plain translations of the verse and other translations from the prose are mine.

3. The specific reference here is to Negro slaves in the Americas; those slaves were from south of the Sahara. Puškin uses the term in a letter in which he is less than enthusiastic about the modern Greeks he had seen during the early part of the effort at independence from Turkey: “About the fate of the Greeks, one is permitted to reason, just as of the fate of my brothers the Negroes—one may wish both groups freedom from unendurable slavery” (Letter to P. A. Vjazemskij of 24-25 June 1824; PSS XII: 99; Shaw 1967: 161). It should be noted that the kind of “brotherhood” Puškin speaks of here did not preclude the possibility of social distinctions. Russian peasant serfs, like all other Russians, were also his “brothers,” but that hardly made them his social equals, however much he may have favored the liberation of the serfs. In Odessa, according to I. I. Liprandi, Puškin thought of Morali (the “Moor Ali”), a ship captain originally from Tunis, as possibly a descendant of a close relative of his own great-grandfather—so that the Moor very well might be a relative (Vacuro 1974 I: 338).

4. The lithograph was of Puškin as a blackamoor boy, some 13-15 years old. Puškin was obviously unenthusiastic at the publication of this lithograph; he commented as follows: “Alexander Puškin is masterfully lithographed, but I do not know whether it resembles him” (Letter to N. I. Gnedič of 27 Sept. 1822; Shaw 1967: 102; PSS XIII: 48).

5. In 1824, in addition to the prose note to EO.I.50 and the verse epistle to his friend Jazykov, Puškin also wrote of his “blackamoor” great-grandfather in an uncompleted poem which exists only in rough draft and which was first published sixty years later. It is one of Puškin’s earliest experiments in imitating Russian folk poetics and diction: “When the Tsar’s Blackamoor Took a Notion to Get Married” (Kak ženit’ sja zadumal carskij arap). It ends, in plain translation, as follows: “The blackamoor has chosen a lady (sudarušku) for himself; the black raven, a white swan, but he is a black blackamoor (arap čerešenek), and she is a white darling (duša belešen’ka).”

6. Puškin’s surviving papers show that he retained his interest in biographical information about his ancestors and apparently thought of publishing a biography or autobiography including information about them (see PSS XI: 310-14). The closest he comes to dealing with the question of his black ancestry in works he completed after 1830-31 and himself wished to publish is in a number of individual items (mainly anecdotes) in his “Table Talk” (title in English, written 1835-36); there are mentions of arapy in Russia, and one of the items, as noted above, is about Othello. If Puškin had lived longer, apparently he would have published them; they appeared only after his death, like the uncompleted Blackamoor of Peter the Great, except for the two chapters he published and which are treated here.

7. The south-north, north-south theme here may be compared with his poem “To Ovid,” in which the poet-persona, on exile from St. Petersburg to a place close to where Ovid had been exiled so many years ago, identifies himself with Ovid and at the same time—as both being poets in exile in the same general place, Ovid from south to north (like the enforced movement of old Gannibal from Africa), and Puškin from north to south (St. Petersburg to the Black Sea area). The contrast of north and south—and of thinking of or remembering one from the other—recurs in Puškin’s verse, particularly in “Nenastnyj den’ potux ...” (Odessa and Mixajlovskoe), and, curiously enough, in The Stone Guest (Paris and Madrid).

8. In reading memoirs about Puškin, one can never be sure whether he might not have suggested both the term and the perception. Contemporaries, in memoirs written after Puškin’s death, spoke of his “blackamoor profile.” An example is the novelist I. I. Lažečnikov, who uses the term in his account of meeting Puškin in 1819 or 1820, some eight or nine years before this poem (Vacuro 1974 I: 178; Veresaev 1936 I: 119). In this essay, citations from the memoir literature of Puškin’s contemporaries are, for convenience, from these two compilations: Vacuro has particularly useful notes and introductions evaluating the accuracy and importance of the materials included.

9. There is a curious history of the printing of this poem. Jur’ev himself privately printed the poem when it was first written, in a very limited number of copies. Obviously Puškin considered the first publication to be the unauthorized one of 1829. See Annenkov (1984: 55n).

10. Debreczeny (1983b: 34) interestingly compares Puškin’s characterizations of Ibragim and Mazepa as “explorations of how disadvantaged men might fare in love—one disadvantaged by the color of his skin, the other by his age.” One major contrast might, however, be mentioned. In the full form, as we now have it, of The Blackamoor of Peter the Great, there is no hint that Gannibal thinks it will be possible for him to inspire a real love that will be faithful— respect is the most he can hope for. However, Mazepa, like Othello, inspires a young woman’s intense and faithful love. The irrationality of Desdemona’s love for Othello is specifically mentioned in the lack of “laws” for the wind, the eagle, a maid’s heart, and the poet in the unfinished Ezerskij (EZ. 168-82; 1833-36), and the passage from it inserted in the unfinished Egyptian Nights (PSS VIII: 269; 1835?).

11. But only barely so. Puškin and his friends were convinced that Bulgarin read Boris Godunov for Count Benkendorf, head of the Secret Police, through whom Puškin had to communicate with Nicholas I, supposedly his “only censor.” Before Nicholas I allowed Boris Godunov to be published, Bulgarin’s historical novel Dimitrij the Pretender ( Dimitrij Samozvanec, 1829) appeared, containing some of Puskin’s own fictional inventions. However, when Puškin’s play was finally published, Bulgarin accused Puškin of plagiarizing from him, citing points in common between the two works. For details, see Shaw (1963), and references there.

12. It is in his article “Vtoroe pis’mo iz Karlova na Kamennyj Ostrov” (in The Northern Bee [Severnaja pčela], 1830, No. 104). For a detailed study of Puškin’s use of a fictional journalistic persona, Feofilakt Kosičkin, so as to succeed in publishing an unanswerable response, see Shaw 1963. The second of the two articles, “Feofilakt Kosickin,” gives details of Bulgarin’s life, beginning with his birth in a kennel (making clear his maternity). According to Greč, Bulgarin heard the anecdote told by by Count S. S. Uvarov in the home of A. O. Olenin (Veresaev 1936 II: 121). Olenin was the father of the 0[lenina] whose beauty is contrasted to Puškin’s “blackamoor profile” in “To Dawe, Esq.,” treated above.

13. Before writing “My Genealogy,” Puškin wrote of Bulgarin’s attacks in one of his notes which he never published; these notes were combined as “Rebuttal to Criticisms” and published after his death (PSS XI: 152). In the note, as in the poem, Puškin does not deny the possibility that his great-grandfather was “purchased”; in both places he insists that people should be remembered for what they do, specifically their important service to the nation.

14. For Naščokin’s sources, see Bartenev (1925: 35).

ODESSA—WATERSHED YEAR

1. There is in my mind the strong possibility that not all sixteen poems refer to attachments formed in 1823-1824 in Odessa. But we are close in place; i.e., all attachments referred to in the sixteen poems originated during the poet’s southern exile.

2. See “Razgovor knigoprodavca s poètom” (Conversation between Bookseller and Poet, 1824), to be discussed, and close, his use of the noun: “Ulybka ust, ulybka vzorov” (Smile of the lips, smile of the eyes), from an 1823 excerpt (PSS II: 471); perhaps also Ruslan i Ljudmila (Ruslan and Ljudmila, PSS IV: 50): “ulybka, oči golubye” (Their smiles and their blue eyes).

3. Without pushing parallels too far, let us note for what it’s worth that the sorrowful candle (“pečal’naja sveča”) relieving the darkness of “Noč’ ” (Night) is loosely echoed in “Pridet užasnyi čas” (There will arrive a terrible hour), in a draft variant: “Lampada blednaja tvoj xladnyj trup osvetit” (A pale lamp will throw light on your cold corpse).

4. For further comments on this arrangement see Tomaševskij 1958 II: 67-68.

5. Blagoj wants to have the original dedicated to Marija Raevskaja Volkonskaja, and the final version to Puškin’s future wife.

6. See the situation excellently described in Levkovič 1974: 107-20; see also Axmatova 1977: 207-22.

7. See the excellent analysis in Xolševnikov 1985: 98-105.

SOLITUDE AND SOLILOQUY IN BORIS GODUNOV

I am grateful to Caryl Emerson and Susan Amert for critical comments on earlier versions of this essay.

1. Whether that final stage direction should be considered Puškin’s has been disputed. See Alekseev 1984: 221-52 and Vinokur 1935: 430-31. Their positions are summarized in Emerson 1986: 243, nl20.

2. I refer throughout to the experience of “reading” the play, an imperfect but necessary choice meant to suggest two things: first, since I am not writing a review of any particular performance of the play, nor can I assume that readers of my words will have anything more than a visualization of a performance in mind, I necessarily work from the published, printed script of the play. Yet Puškin clearly wished for his play to exist as a performed piece of drama, and I will address myself throughout to the implications for performance of various features of the written text. Second, I “read” the play as a way to name my own cognitive activity of reacting to the play in writing. The term “reading” has taken on particular meanings in recent criticism, in opposition to the idea of “interpretation.” “Reading” strives less for closure and seeks more actively to account for textual moments that make “interpretation” impossible. For a good description of the difference as well as a fine example of such a “reading,” see Burt 1985.

3. Comedy was Puškin’s touch. Compare the indignant tones of Karamzin’s Istorija gosudarstva rossijskogo (History of the Russian State): “In the manuscript document: ‘women threw their suckling infants down to the ground, with crying sobs.’ In one chronicle, it is said that some people, afraid not to cry, but unable to feign tears, wiped saliva into their eyes!” (Karamzin [1852], Notes to XII: 121). On Puškin’s reliance upon Karamzin, to whom he dedicated the play, for historical facts and descriptive details, see Luzjanina (1972, 1974), Vacuro, and Emerson 1986: 82-87.

4. My sense of the empty grave as a sign which gives everything else the possibility of meaning derives much from the work of Jacques Lacan (1979; 1982).

5. The reference is to Racinean tragedy, though it describes Boris’s plight perfectly. See Kurrik 1979: 40.

6. Compare the observations about the “strange impersonality” of Boris’s speech in Konick 1982: 58.

7. Boris has a particular terror of empty language because he thinks it is inappropriate for a tsar to speak unless his words be weighty. Compare his farewell speech to his son, where Boris advises him to be taciturn.

8. The evidence of the Slovar’ jazyka Puškina (Vinogradov 1956-61 IV: 611-15) suggests that Puškin used the adjectives tjaželyj and tjažkij interchangeably: both words show several kinds of usage and appear often.

9. The effects of epigrammatic discourse as a defense mechanism are explored in Cameron 1979: 32-35.

10. Puškin’s hoped-for innovations in Boris Godunov can be recognized in many of his writings about drama, including draft prefaces to Boris Godunov (XI: 140-42). For an excellent discussion of these innovations, see Emerson 1986: 91-99.

11. Here and in all prose citations to follow, translations from the Russian originals are mine.

Puškin AND NICHOLAS

1. Puškin presented this poem to Nicholas himself, who responded, through Benkendorf, that he was pleased with the poem but nonetheless did not want it published, possibly because it might appear unseemly to allow the publication of a poem praising him. Critics have subsequently speculated that Nicholas did not want it published because of the last three quatrains, where Puškin presumably expressed his beliefs that the autocracy should be limited, that people should have the right of free expression of their views, and that enlightenment and human rights should serve as principal values in Nicholas’s reign (see commentary in 10-vol. edition; PSS [1963-68] III: 486).

2. The content of this audience with the tsar is still the subject of considerable discussion; see Ejdel’man (1985) for a recent treatment which utilizes previously neglected memoir material.

Puškin found himself in an unusual situation: six years of efforts by his friends had failed to free him from an exile to which he had been sentenced without any clear political crime and in the absence of any real evidence. Now there was politically incriminating evidence—the testimony of Decembrists on the revolutionary meaning of Puškin’s poetry, his friends and acquaintances sent to exile or hanged—and the government freed him from exile and offered him support as well (Vacuro 1974: 16-17).

3. N. O. Lerner’s commentary on the poem (1910, xxi-xxii) gives some of the reactions: N. M. Jazykov called the verses cold; Aleksandr Mixajlovič Turgenev said they were composed impromptu in the tsar’s chamber. See also Mejlax (1959: 99-100).

4. Puškin’s interest in the reign of Peter is of course documented in other ways; he mentioned to his friend Vul’f in 1827 that he planned to write a history of Peter (in A. S. Puškin v vospominanijax. . . , PSS I: 416). Several years later (1831), Puškin requested permission to use the archives to study the reigns of Peter I through Peter III. Formal permission, through Benkendorf, was given the same year. Puškin’s contemporaries understood this as meaning that Puškin had become official historiographer of Peter I. (See commentary in the small academy edition, PSS [1963-68] IX: 514.) Puškin, of course, was interested in Russian history before this time (Ejdel’man 1984).

5. Vickery (1989 and forthcoming) has many valuable comments on Puškin’s affinities with and attitudes toward Radiščev.

6. Puškin’s post-Decembrist political views are partially reflected in his essay on popular education, and his letter to Žukovskij of 7 March 1826 (PSS XIII: 265), which he assumed would be shown to Nicholas; a relevant passage of this letter, which was written so that it could be shown to Nicholas, is the following: “Whatever may have been my political and religious way of thinking, I am keeping it to myself, and I have no intention of insanely opposing the generally accepted order of things, and necessity” (Shaw 1967: 307).

Driver (1981) and Mikkelson (1980) have particularly good discussions of Puškin ‘s political views in the post-Decembrist period; Driver (1981: 8-9) convincingly argues for a continuity with Puškin’s pre-Decembrist thinking.

7. The Decembrist Lorer said that Puškin did not sympathize with their task (delo), was critical of their ideas, but nonetheless maintained a warm personal relationship with many of them. Although Puškin’s real convictions may not have been clear, it was clear (according to Lerner) that the Decembrists in exile expected more from swords than from love and friendship. And in his epistle to them, Puškin was promising only amnesty and the restoration of their rights, not the realization of their political ideals (xxiii). Commiseration with their fate and hope for amnesty, not sympathy for their ideals, was the principal message of the epistle. Nepomnjaščij (1984) argued along these lines in order to bring it politically and morally closer to “Stansy.”

8. Mejlax (1959) argues against “smoothing over” the rough edges, and urges that Puškin’s occasional political lapses, such as “Stansy” (which he calls a “tragic mistake” [99]), not be given undue importance.

PUŠKIN’S REPUTATION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIA

1. I am grateful to my former graduate students Kate Dubina, Terry Kersey, and Amy Miller for helping me in surveying these two periodicals.

2. A detailed description of nineteenth-century Russian journals can be found in Evgen’ev-Maksimov 1950 and Zaxarova 1965.

3. V. B. Sandomirskaja, in her survey of Puškin criticism during the 1850s and 1860s, concludes that “Pisarev’s article for fifteen years obliterated Puškin as a topic of contemporary interest for critics and publicists, unequivocally declaring the great poet’s heritage to be an outmoded, even retrograde phenomenon, which had no vital connection with the present” (Gorodeckij 1966: 72).

PUŠKIN’S PROSE FICTION IN A HISTORICAL CONTEXT

1. “Eto on est’ istinnyj osnovatel’ natural’noj školy, vsegda vernyj prirode čeloveka, vernyj i sud’be ego. Ničego naprjažennogo v nem net, nikakogo boleznennogo voobraženija ili nepravil’nogo čuvstva” ( Legenda o velikom inkvizitore, in Rozanov 1906: 225).

2. “ . . . [P]rostoj zdravyj tolk i zdravoe čuvstvo” (Grigor’ev 1967: 182).

3. The question whether or not a deep irony lurks even in Poor Folk need not concern us here.

4. See also Tamarčenko 1972 and 1973.

5. Stender-Petersen identifies Scott’s Tales of My Landlord as the immediate source.

6. For example: “Onegin’s nonchalant rebellion—bringing a valet as his second and showing up inexcusably late—runs parallel to the author-narrator’s invocation of the muse in the last stanza of chapter 7” (Todd 1986: 134).

7. It ought to be mentioned that a social commitment could be expressed in poetry as well as prose. Note, for example, Nekrasov’s civic poetry.

8. It might appear that the “Puškinian” strain in Russian realist prose is represented by writers who came from Puškin’s milieu: Aksakov, Turgenev, Tolstoj, Bunin. But what about Gončarov or Pisemskij? And is not Dostoevskij’s habit “not to show his own mug” but to create dummy narrators also “Puškinian”?