Writing at Russia's Borders 9781442689664

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WR I TI NG AT R U S S I A’ S B O R D E R

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KATYA HOKANSON

Writing at Russia’s Border

U N I V E R S I T Y O F T O R O N TO P R E S S Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2008 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9306-6

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Hokanson, Katya Writing at Russia’s border / Katya Hokanson. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9306-6 1. Russian literature – 19th century – History and criticism. 2. National characteristics, Russian, in literature. I. Title. PG3012.H65 2008

891.709′003

C2007-903635-X

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

For my parents, and for Steven and Gabriel

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

ix

3

1 Pushkin, ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ and Russia’s Entry into History 23 2 The Poetry of Empire: ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ and ‘The Gypsies’ 73 3 Centring the Periphery: Eugene Onegin, ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ and ‘A Journey to Arzrum’ 108 4 The Future of Russia in the Mirror of the Caspian: Hybridity and Narodnost’ in Ammalat-bek and A Hero of Our Time 170 5 Tolstoy on the Margins Conclusion

198

224

Appendix: Aleksandr Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ – A Translation 229 Notes

255

Bibliography Index

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283

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Acknowledgments

The ideas in this book have percolated for a long time and therefore I have many debts to acknowledge. First of all to my undergraduate professors Michael Katz, Darra Goldstein, and the late Nick Fersen for inculcating a love and respect for Russian language, literature, and culture, and to my graduate professors and mentors Monika Greenleaf, William M. Todd III, Gregory Freidin, Lazar Fleishman, Andrew Wachtel, and Richard Schupbach, for their superb scholarly and professional role modelling as well as their unfailing support and guidance. Dear friends in the guise of department secretaries, Catalina Ilea and the late Anisya Kurbanali, assisted me and all of us graduate students both spiritually and materially. Friends and fellow students Gordana Crnkoviñ, Larry Joseph, Ben Robinson, Julie Cassiday, Jehanne Gheith, Sara Fenander, Sam Eisen, Mary-Lucia Bun, and Sally Kux were wonderful interlocutors. At the University of Oregon, many friends and colleagues have been supportive and it would be difficult to name them all, but I owe special thanks to Roland Greene, Kenneth Calhoon, Lisa Freinkel, Julie Hessler, Anindita Banerjee, Anne Lounsbery, and Jenifer Presto, and to former graduate students Barbara Brown and Anna-Minna Pavulans. Many friends outside the academy have also offered their support along the way; I’d like to thank Julie Jones, Leila O’Connell, Roxanna Gutierrez, Sonia Nazario, and Jill Robertson. I would also like to express my thanks to Jill McConkey, Barbara Porter, and Charles Stuart, editors at the University of Toronto Press, for their support of and assistance with my book, and to the anonymous reviewers whose ideas and comments greatly improved it. During the course of my academic career, I have received fellowship

x Acknowledgments

assistance from a number of institutions and would like to acknowledge their support. From Stanford University, I received a departmental fellowship and a Stanford Humanities Center fellowship. As a graduate student I received an IREX grant and a Whiting Fellowship, and from the University of Oregon I have received a New Faculty Award and a Faculty Research Development Award. Last and certainly not least go my thanks to my ever-supportive parents, William and Kay Hokanson, my parents-in-law, Verlin and Maryanne Brown, my brother Jon and sisters-in-law Jocelyn Worrall and Carrie Harnack, my nephews Brandon and Matthew Harnack and Silas Hokanson, my wonderful husband, Steven Brown, and my beloved son, Gabriel. A note about translation: throughout the text, I have typically provided both the original Russian and a translation of it when citing texts; occasionally, however, when the word or phrase is a fairly simple one or has already been mentioned, I have not included both the English and the Russian to avoid over-cluttering the text and improve readability. In the appendix, I have provided a rather straightforward line-byline translation of ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ (‘Kavkazskii plennik’), including Pushkin’s twelve footnotes. A translation by A.D.P. Briggs (without Pushkin’s notes) can be found on pp. 101–22 of volume 5 of The Complete Works of Alexander Pushkin, 15 vols (Norfolk: Milner and Company Ltd, 1999). Earlier versions of some of the material in this book, though generally now only distantly related, should be acknowledged. My first exploration into the status of Pushkin’s famous ‘Captive of the Caucasus,’ discussed here in chapter 1, was ‘Literary Imperialism, Narodnost’, and Pushkin’s Invention of the Caucasus,’ The Russian Review 53 (July 1994): 336–52. A significant part of chapter 2 was first published as ‘The Captivating Crimea: Visions of Empire in “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,”’ in Russian Subjects: Nation, Empire, and Russia’s Golden Age, ed. Monika Greenleaf and Stephen Moeller-Sally, 123–48 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), and appears here in revised form. In chapter 3, material from ‘Onegin’s Journey: The Orient Revisited,’ Pushkin Review 3 (December 2000): 151–68, appears in revised form. ‘“Barbarus hic ego sum”: Pushkin and Ovid on the Pontic Shore,’ Pushkin Review 8 (2005–6): 27–42, is also related to chapters 2 and 3.

WR I TI NG AT R U S S I A’ S B O R D E R

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Introduction

Russia’s geographic expanse has always been one of its defining qualities, and conquest and annexation its mode of creation and development. As one historian puts it, ‘Russian expansion was overdetermined, driven by economic, ideological and security interests.’1 A land that became a contiguous empire, Russia’s vast reaches are known for having helped defeat Napoleon and Hitler and for subjecting countless political and social offenders to distant exile and imprisonment. The Mongol invaders, who appeared suddenly from the steppes early in the second millennium, controlled much Russian territory in spite of the distances involved and left lasting marks on Russian language and culture. At a time when Russia was seeking to raise its national cultural and literary status in the early nineteenth century, the classification of Russia as an ‘Oriental’ country on the periphery of Europe was already well established.2 As Russia sought to define itself as worthy of comparison in every way to its European counterparts, it needed to overcome the stigma of being understood as an empty, peripheral region, one of those dangerous areas at the edge of the map, that terra incognita where boundaries of gender, race, and political control come under question.3 For many decades, foreign commentary focused on the Asian qualities of Russia, and Europeans cast a critical eye when evaluating Russia’s status in world culture and history. One British travelogue of the sixteenth century, written in verse, declared: The manners are so Turkish like, the men so full of guile, The women wanton, temples stuft with idols that defile The seats that sacred ought to be, the customs are so quaint, As if I would describe the whole, I fear my pen would faint.4

4 Writing at Russia’s Border

The very discursive power of the traveller/writer in this quotation is challenged by the sheer backwardness of Russia; Russian territory, here in its incarnation as Muscovy, seems to delineate the limits of the written word itself. Allied with this sense of Russia as an Asian or Oriental country beyond the discursive reach of Europe was the notion that its spaces were vast, empty, and undifferentiated, embodying a frightening lacuna of meaning, culture, and history. It was as if Russia were made up almost entirely of periphery. Even though much had changed since Muscovite times, and Peter the Great had built St Petersburg and enacted many reforms intended to make Russia more European, European views of Russia did not change greatly. Over the years, Muscovy developed into the Russian Empire, while Russian military power gradually solidified the empire’s overall territory, which had nearly all land-based borders, carved out from important powers at its edges – Sweden, the Byzantine Empire, Ottoman Turkey, Prussia, the Khans. Russia’s status as an ‘Oriental’ country did not really change, however. While Peter the Great decreed major cultural changes for the upper classes, they were legislated by force, and evidence of the grafting continued to show – some would say, until the present day. The lower classes were not Europeanized. Two hundred and seventy years after the above-quoted British visitor’s trip, the French aristocrat Marquis de Custine, visiting Russia in 1839, described the main street of imperial capital St Petersburg in the following terms: ‘[T]his vast and splendid [Nevsky] Prospect that stretches, its crowds imperceptibly thinning out, the street itself gradually becoming more ugly and more gloomy, right to the vague limits of the habitable city, that is to say, to the borders of barbarian Asia, from which St Petersburg is constantly under siege.’5 Some travellers and foreigners who resided in Russia in the intervening years, such as Robert Lyall, John Cook, and Don Juan Van Halen, while less critical, were either from the periphery of Europe themselves (Spain, Van Halen’s home, was in fact the subject of Custine’s companion piece to his book on Russia) or in need of employment; Van Halen was disgraced at home and went to Russia to join the army. To most of Europe, however, early-nineteenth-century Russians appeared to be utterly imitative of European culture, having no history of their own, being at bottom mere nomads or descendants of Mongols. Their only cultural achievements were understood mimetically as merely pale reflections of the European originals. St Petersburg, a neoclassical European city sprung full grown from Peter the Great’s imagination, was a

Introduction 5

symbol of how the grafting of European culture and manners onto unreceptive Russian soil had created a kind of monstrous hybrid: a beautiful stone city built on a mucky swamp. Greco-Roman columns, evoking the sunny Mediterranean, were incongruously set amidst cold northern plains. History, or the lack of it, was figured in geographical terms, with vast open spaces, whether inside or outside the city, symbolizing a featureless absence of discursive meaning. That which was impressive to foreigners was not Russian; that which was Russian was not impressive. Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish national poet, vented his fury over Russia’s domination of Poland in geographic terms in his famous ‘Digression,’ part of a longer narrative poem published in 1832. Describing the long, cold journey into Russia, Mickiewicz wrote: Across the snow, through ever wilder land, Like desert wind the lone kibitka flies; ............................................................................. No cities and no mountains meet the eye; No works of man or nature tower on high: ............................................................................. This level plain lies open, waste, and white, A wide-spread page prepared for God to write. – ............................................................................. I meet the men who dwell within this land, Broad-chested, great of strength, a stalwart band; And, like the trees and creatures of the North, They pulse with life and health that knows no pain: But every face is like their home, a plain, A waste on which no inward light shines forth.6

Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, in his book Native Realm, comments on Mickiewicz’s lines: ‘What horrifies Mickiewicz are the savage landscapes, the savagery in human relationships, the passivity and apathy of the people in their bondage. The very tribe of humanity inhabiting that land disquiets him like some formless hulk, which the sculptor history has left unchiseled.’7 Like Custine, Mickiewicz used the flat landscape as a trope for what he perceived to be the Russian people’s lack of recognizable historical or cultural features. The landscape, even the very faces of the Russian people, lie open and empty, awaiting the lines of a historian, the stamp of history. In accordance with contemporary

6 Writing at Russia’s Border

thinking about nationality and geography, landscape was destiny: the flatness of the plains indicated a lack of cultural and historical highs and lows – names and places that should have left their mark on history but had instead remained uninscribed by culture. Russian critics also couched their understanding of Russia’s lack of history and culture in geographical terms. Radishchev’s 1790 Journey from Petersburg to Moscow, for which he was imprisoned and exiled to Siberia, was a criticism of the evils of serfdom in the guise of a traveller’s notes. Petr Chaadaev’s first ‘Philosophical Letter,’ which appeared in 1836, caused such an uproar that the journal in which it was published was banned, its editor exiled, and Chaadaev himself declared insane and placed under house arrest. Among his more nihilistic claims, Chaadaev wrote: You would say we are all travelers on the move. No one has a fixed sphere of existence, there are no good habits, no rules that govern anything. We do not even have homes; we have nothing that binds, nothing that awakens our sympathies and affections, nothing that endures, nothing that remains. Everything passes, flows away, leaving no trace either outside or within us. We seem to camp in our houses, we behave like strangers in our families; and in our cities we appear to be nomads, more so than the real nomads who graze their flocks in our steppes, for they are more attached to their desert than we are to our towns.8

Chaadaev, like Mickiewicz, described Russia as a place unaffected by the passage of time, with no trace left upon its inhabitants by the course of history. The trope of the city as steppe, a wasteland that infiltrates and alters the typical city landscape of buildings, streets, people, and carriages, is one that appeared again and again. Akakii Akakievich, the hero of Gogol’s tale ‘The Overcoat,’ has his beloved overcoat stolen from him in the middle of a vast square that looks like a ‘fearful desert.’9 Though Akakii Akakievich is in the middle of the city, no one comes to his aid after the robbery. The nearest policeman says he thought the robbers were friends of the victim, since he saw them from so far away. A famous passage from Gogol’s satirical novel Dead Souls (1842) sums up these conceits of cultural and geographical emptiness: Rus! Rus! I see thee, from my wondrous, beautiful far-away, thee I see: all is poor, scattered and comfortless in thee; the gaze will be neither glad-

Introduction 7 dened nor awe-struck by bold marvels of nature crowned by bold marvels of art, by towns with many-windowed lofty palaces ingrown into crags, by picturesque trees and ivies ingrown into houses, all set in the roar and eternal mist of waterfalls; the head will not be thrown back to look at stone masses that tower above it on high wihout end; there will be no gleam through dark arches piled one upon the other, entangled in grapevines, ivy, and countless millions of wild roses, no distant gleam through them of the eternal lines of shining mountains soaring into silvery, clear skies. Open, desolate and flat is everything in thee; like dots, like specks thy lowlying towns protrude, imperceptible, amidst the plains; there is nothing that captivates, nothing that charms the gaze.10

Implicit or explicit in all of these descriptions is the notion that in Russia, even the center itself is fraught with emptiness, shot through with the same absences as the vast reaches between the major cities. Even so, Russia fit the imperial structure of having a metropole with periphery, with a classic metropole that is, in the words Ronald Suny, ‘uniquely sovereign, able to override routinely the desires and decisions of peripheral units. The flow of goods, information and power runs from periphery to metropole and back to periphery but seldom from periphery to periphery [...] Roads and railroads run to the capital; elaborate architectural and monumental displays mark the imperial center off from other centers; and the central imperial elite distinguishes itself in a variety of ways from both peripheral elites, often their servants and agents, and the ruled population.’11 Indeed, St Petersburg was replete with elaborate architectural and monumental displays to mark it off, while Alexander I and particularly Nicholas I created extremely elaborate displays, parades, and public functions intended to proclaim the supremacy of the metropole.12 However, what complicated the picture was that Russia’s main cities were located at the periphery of Europe, and their supposed centrality was suspect. In the ongoing work of establishing national identity, two sets of centre and periphery had to be contended with: that of Russia’s metropolitan centres vis-à-vis her distant borders, and that of Russia’s peripheral status vis-à-vis European centres of culture. The way in which Russia became defined as a European empire depended on the interplay of these two sets of centre and periphery, and it was by enlarging Russia’s territorial holdings to the south and east, often involving the control of historically Muslim areas, that Russia created herself as a European power. Discourses of nationalism and imperial-

8 Writing at Russia’s Border

ism that in other countries were far more differentiated were instead closely allied in Russia. As Mark Bassin writes, many scholars have pointed to an incompatibility between ideologies of nationalism and imperialism, viewing imperialism as a phase coming only after a distinct, non-imperialist nationalist period. This assumption has been put into question by scholars such as Reinhold Niebuhr even for western European cases, but for Russia it is a very problematic distinction. Notes Bassin: What I would suggest is that from the very beginning there was no such contradiction or incompatibility in Russia. Here nationalists, however Russophilic and – more importantly – however implacably opposed to the dynastic and autocratic state, at once embraced the entirety of their unmistakably multinational empire, and did so with singular devotion. Beyond this, they virtually unanimously endorsed the desirability and even necessity of further political-territorial expansion into non-Russian areas as an important part of their program of national advancement and renewal. This enthusiasm was characteristic, as we will see, not only for reactionary chauvinists but for tolerant liberals and even for proto-socialist radicals. Moreover, not only did an unmistakeable expansionist element have a presence in nineteenth-century Russian nationalism from the moment of its first articulation, this element was an inalienable part of it, which derived from the same general rationale and spoke to the same needs. Effectively, nationalism and imperial vision were joined in a common project and could not be divorced. ... As had been the case in Germany some decades earlier, nationalism in Russia arose out of the confrontation with the West, as Russians sought to rationalize and master the overwhelming sense of inadequacy with which this confrontation left them. Within the ideological framework of Russian nationalism, the prospect of political-territorial expansion was intended not so much to satisfy an appetite for control of foreign lands and peoples as to secure evidence of positive or even superior national qualities which could serve to raise Russia’s stature vis à vis the West. The Imperialist project thus assumed a significance for the national psychology as what Adam Ulam has called a ‘mechanism of compensation for backwardness,’ and its real concern was accordingly not with the object of conquest and incorporation but rather with Russia itself.13

To become fully Russian, Russia had to be imperial, had to encounter those less ‘civilized.’ And as critics Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura

Introduction 9

Stoler point out, ‘the otherness of colonized persons was neither inherent nor stable; his or her difference had to be defined and maintained’;14 hence a continued expansion assured a stream of new populations against which Russians could style themselves Europeans. As Michael Khodarkovsky notes, ‘it would be incongruous to apply the term “colonial” to the Russian-ruled Poland or Baltic region where the population was overwhelmingly Christian and where Russia could hardly claim to bring Christianity, Enlightenment and Civilization to the local residents [...] a colonial situation existed in Russia’s southern and southeastern borderlands.’15 In fact, when Pushkin wrote ‘To the Slanderers of Russia’ in 1831, in which he championed Russian control of Poland, one of the rhetorical strategies he used in the poem was to enclose Poland within the vast purview of colonized Asiatic Russia. For example, by asserting in the poem the connection between Suvorov as victor at Ismail and Suvorov as victor in Praga, a section of Warsaw, Pushkin linked Russia’s Western dominions to its Eastern ones. Not only had Russia been victorious in these battles, both Eastern and Western, but uniting them in the person of Suvorov had the effect of putting Poland on an even keel with Turkey and Crimea in order to undercut European claims to Poland as part of the West.16 Furthermore, borderlands extending into Siberia were not as invested with difference as the mountainous, southern ones were; Yuri Slezkine notes that there were no natural barriers, no sense that northern, Siberian peoples were drastically different: ‘In the Byronic age of “dread and splendor,” the taiga and the tundra could not compete with the glorious peaks, lush valleys, and mutinous streams of the Caucasus, just as the relatively peaceful pursuits of the northerners seemed “timid” compared to the implacable ferocity of the fictional Circassians.’17 Russia, at a sensitive point soon after the impressive defeat of Napoleon, sought to create itself as European. What, then, was to provide an antidote to the characterization of Russia as a land with no history, barbarians living on a European stage set, that persisted among Europeans and Russians alike? It seemed that, along with a military victory, a convincing national narrative was needed: the skilled touch of a historiographer could claim meaning and plenitude for Russia’s empty spaces and provide a narrative of a developing nation. Although Russian histories had been written, they had not seized the popular imagination, nor had most been easily accessible to the reading public. Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, a writer who came to prominence by publish-

10

Writing at Russia’s Border

ing his travel notes, recognized the need for a Russian national narrative and sought to place his own imprint on this ‘empty’ landscape and imbue it with meaning. Armed with the experience of representing Europe to Russia and Russia to Europe in his famed Letters of a Russian Traveller, published serially in 1791–2, Karamzin turned to representing Russian history. Karamzin spanned the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries not just chronologically, but discursively. Journalist, poet, literary stylist, traveller, and historian, Karamzin is well known for having improved the Russian literary language, which at the time was often snubbed by Russians themselves in favour of French. Combining both his flair for written Russian and his determination to put Russia’s past on the map, Karamzin produced the first comprehensive and fully readable Russian-language history of Russia, which was read by every contemporary person of influence and remained a standard for years to come. Karamzin’s History of the Russian State, in twelve volumes, brought to Russians a sense of themselves as a people with a history and therefore a rooted identity. Its impact on Russian society was immense and long lasting. Karamzin gave Russians a particular perception of Russia’s historicity: he made it possible for Russia’s history to be interpreted as comparable to Europe’s and therefore ‘legitimate.’18 Lamenting Peter’s enormous cultural changes and yet also fully recognizing and accepting their incontrovertibility, Karamzin strove to show that Russians, as the Slavs who had established their own state, overcome the Mongol yoke, and controlled their own destiny, could favourably compare their own history to that of the Europeans, while also presenting his account in a style which served as a model of sophisticated, readable Russian prose. In his foreword to History of the Russian State, the first eight volumes of which appeared in 1818, Karamzin wrote: If any history, even when written without skill, can be pleasant, as Pliny contends, all the more so can the history of one’s native land [...] Universal history with its great memories adds beauty to the world for the intellect, but Russian history adds beauty to the native land where we live and feel. How attractive are the banks of the Volkhov, the Dnieper, and the Don when we know what happened on them in times long past! Not only Novgorod, Kiev, and Vladimir but also the huts of Elets, Kozel’sk, and Galich become interesting monuments, and mute objects become eloquent. Everywhere the shadows of bygone centuries create images before our eyes.19

Introduction 11

Immediately striking a tone that showed he would account for both rulers and common people, Karamzin declared that even modest huts could be redolent of historical significance. The Russian landscape might be plain, but the historiographically constructed images before the eyes of the reader/historian could supplement its featurelessness and assure the reader that the presence of huts did not imply an absence of historical meaning and stature, nor did the huts’ peasant inhabitants condemn the land to obscurity. An understanding of Russia’s past would fill its landscape with significance and assure sceptics that it was indeed a landscape with a history. Karamzin believed that history had to be narrated before it could, in a sense, truly exist; Karamzin’s narratival role is active and partisan; he takes sides and his historical figures are characters who are given motivation and dialogue; Belinskii compared them to the ‘heroes of the tragedies of Corneille and Racine.’20 As Andreas Schönle notes, Karamzin concedes to discourse a primacy over the world. To him, the only existing order of being is that brought about by the word. Only what is written truly exists [...] Karamzin is keenly aware of and genuinely committed to the performative function of language, to its capacity for generating ‘something that only begins to exist at the moment when the utterance is made.’ Thus, instead of attempting to transcend language and reach a more ontologically grounded extratextual reality, he is merely concerned with contriving a beautiful and enjoyable linguistic object, one that will in turn affect the world.21

Karamzin’s History, of course, performs exactly this function, providing the necessary narrative that will in turn affect Russians’ perceptions and make them believe they have a history – hence they will act as a people with a history. Elaborating on the geographic metaphor, Aleksandr Pushkin hailed Karamzin’s History as the work of an explorer: ‘Everyone, even society ladies, rushed to read the history of their fatherland, until then unknown to them. It was a new discovery for them. Ancient Russia, it seemed, had been discovered by Karamzin, as America had been by Columbus. For a time nowhere did anyone speak of anything else.’22 ‘Ancient Russia,’ then, was there all along, just as the New World had been there before Columbus travelled to it. This new territory of Russia’s past was explored enthusiastically by Russian writers, who used Karamzin’s work as a source of material for historical novels and liter-

12

Writing at Russia’s Border

ary texts dealing with Russian history. Karamzin, in fact, intended his work to be a source for writers of fiction, and he wrote essays about what methods writers should use to turn historical chronicles into absorbing fiction.23 ‘[The History of the Russian State] is also a literary work, and the literary method [Karamzin] uses is in a profound sense sentimentalist: the voice of the narrator-historian is heard, rejoicing and grieving with his heroes, his own emotions penetrating the events he relates.’24 Over and over, Hans Rothe writes, there is a reaffirmation by writers and scholars that Karamzin is the starting point in the history of Russian letters.25 To some historians Karamzin’s History was a model of historical research, to others it was a work more of literature than of history. It quickly became canonical. It was endorsed by the tsarist government, transcribed and condensed for children’s textbooks, and partially translated into other languages.26 One writer even made up some satirical ‘Karamzinian Commandments,’ in which it was forbidden to recognize anyone as Karamzin’s equal or to mention his name except in reverential tones.27 It was considered, for a time, well-nigh unpatriotic to criticize Karamzin.28 Karamzin, seeking to remedy Russia’s self-understood lack of history and lack of knowledge about its past and development, based his History on Western models of history writing. Hence there existed from the beginning a conflict in the work: ‘Karamzin wanted to write a history based on primary sources, and the reports of foreign travelers were priceless for that purpose. Yet to use these sources was to introduce into Russian historiography a constant tension between the modern and the old, the native and the foreign.’29 The problem of the fact of Russia’s being different from Europe – its susceptibility to unflattering comparison with Europe – existed even within this monumental work intended to place Russia in her proper historical context, to give her the cultural prestige to compete with Europe. Much as Karamzin sought to place Russia on an equal footing with Europe, to remedy the problem, the tension remained. One of the most important functions of Karamzin’s History was to tell the story of Russia’s relationship with her geographical neighbours – Europe, the Caucasus, the Mongol lands. Karamzin sought to establish Russia’s place as a country that was not isolated and unknown but had long-standing links to other cultures. Rather than seeing Russians as people cast adrift in history, Karamzin emphasized their contacts with other peoples. And rather than orienting Russia only towards Europe,

Introduction

13

Karamzin painted a picture of Russia’s connections to non-European bordering peoples as well, establishing that other, more foreign places lay beyond Russia. Karamzin’s description of ancient Russian encounters in the Caucasus, for example, helped to make it a place that was not merely subject to the Russian Empire’s expansionist tactics, but a part of Russia’s past that was once again in the process of being joined to the trajectory of Russian history. In Karamzin’s first chapter, indeed in the first paragraph, he writes that only a few things about Russia are known from early sources, and names the Caucasus as one of these. Further, he writes in the penultimate paragraph of chapter 1 of the first volume of his History: ‘Having presented the reader with the settling of the Slavic peoples from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic, from the Elba to Morea and Asia, we shall say that they, powerful in numbers and courage, could have controlled Europe had they united; but they were weak from the diversion of their powers and disagreement, and almost all lost their independence, but only one of them, schooled by misfortunes, is now surprising the world with its power.’30 In other words, Karamzin writes, the many wars and difficulties Russia survived in the process of establishing its boundaries, and the problems that were solved, according to Karamzin, by Russia’s form of government, were what allowed the Russians to prevail over the other Slavs. What I would like to do in this study is to show that Russian national identity as expressed in literature was formed in great part by Russia’s relationship to its margins, primarily its southern/eastern ones. Although Russia’s relationship with peoples to the west was part of the story of that country’s margins, it was an unequal relationship: militarily, the West was often stronger while, culturally, it was felt to be superior. To become the kind of Russians they wanted to be, Russians had to emphasize their relationship to their southern and eastern borders. It was when Russians first wrote about their military exploits in the Caucasus, bringing together discourses of empire, the civilizing mission, liberty from oppression, and an appeal to Russian history set down in great part by Karamzin, that Russians recognized this literature as being truly national, independent of European models and themes. To be sure, a long history of imperial writing pre-existed Russian writing about the Caucasus, upon which Pushkin and others depended when they created ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ and other seminal works.31 A long history of odic writing, starting with Lomonosov’s ‘Ode on the Taking of Khotin’ in 1739, had linked Russia’s premier literary forms with her status as a nation and as an unfolding empire, and with the construction

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Writing at Russia’s Border

of a benevolent autocrat overseeing a multinational empire. Most of the premier writers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – Lomonosov, Trediakovskii, Derzhavin – were from peripheral areas of Russia and/or Russian culture, or, in the case of Zhukovskii, whose mother was Turkish, were in part non-Russian, hence affording them a view that was highly attuned to the cultural construction of a coherent Russian national rhetoric. Pushkin both depended upon and went beyond this odic tradition, while Karamzin also represented a break away from it, as he advocated changes in the Russian literary language and sought new readership for Russian literature. The very conception of these issues owes its existence to Edward Said’s Orientalism and to the research and thinking that has grown out of it. Said mentioned the case of Russia in his book but did not offer his own interpretation. The person who effectively pioneered the idea of discussing Orientalism in Russian literature is Susan Layton, who has published many articles on the subject as well as her important monograph Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy. Layton provides an exhaustive history of what Russian scholarship termed ‘the Caucasian theme,’ addressing the textual nature of Russian Orientalism, constructions of nation and empire, treatment of landscape, providing readings of major and minor texts, and voluminous research. Overall, Layton is far more confident of the notion that Pushkin’s and others’ works problematized Russia’s civilizing mission, while this study concurs more with the viewpoint of Mark Bassin, who shows in Imperial Visions and elsewhere how important to Russia’s national self-construction is its identity as colonizer of southern/eastern lands. Contradictions that we now see from our present perspective were not necessarily part of the world view of most writers of the nineteenth century; indeed, it was the ‘mature Tolstoy,’ as Layton herself very powerfully demonstrates, who from a much later vantage point critiqued Russia’s imperialist role. The many native warriors in Russian literature, from Pushkin’s Circassians to Ammalat-Bek, Kazbich, Izmail-Bey, and Tolstoy’s semi-Russian Cossack Lukashka, could be, I would argue, safely identified with by Russian readers without the loss of Russian identity, feelings of superiority, or alliance with the ‘other side,’ precisely because they were literary figures presented in the context of Russian-language form. Layton, while impressively skilled in political and historical research and a knowledgeable literary critic with excellent insights, on occasion gives the impression of underestimating the many frames of

Introduction

15

language and convention that insulate the reader from necessarily dealing with a text in an ontological way. Harsha Ram’s Imperial Sublime, on the other hand, is highly focused on literary form, in particular the Russian ode, charting the course of the ‘imperial sublime’ from Simeon Polotskii to Lermontov in a necessary corrective to an overemphasis on Pushkin as inventor ex nihilo of imperialism in Russian literature, which Ram shows begins at the latest with Lomonosov’s ode on the taking of Khotin. His highly nuanced readings of the odic tradition before Pushkin, as well as Pushkin’s Caucasian/southern poetry which reformulates poetic form using the toolbox of odic features, are remarkable for their attention to poetics, form, reception and relation to the Russian imperial project. In Pushkin’s ‘Captive of the Caucasus,’ Ram sees the description of the mountains not as a depoliticized realm or refuge from combat, as Layton does, but instead as a way to show the disparate and uneven reactions of the captive, rather than his identification or special relation with the landscape. Like Layton, Ram is also concerned with poets’ inconsistency in critiquing autocratic power, yet permitting it in the area of the subjugation of peripheral peoples, concluding that since the poet, a critic of autocracy, could not identify with the imperialist project, he perforce had to identify with the conquered peoples.32 Although it is true that ‘In the prisoner’s fate, we see the many-sided effects of Russia’s coercive state apparatus, which stifles the creative artist from the metropolis just as it subjugates the peoples of the southern periphery,’ the poet is only metropolitan as a result of the necessary and constantly receding periphery.33 Hence he cannot, nor can he ask the reader to, identify with the subdued peoples, but must point to them only as a sign of what Russians could be – free and independent.34 Stephanie Sandler’s Distant Pleasures has provided much trenchant analysis of Pushkin’s early poems, focusing in particular on gender implications, and Monika Greenleaf’s Pushkin and Romantic Fashion contextualizes Pushkin against a fully rounded backdrop of his contemporaries and their poetic forms. The work of William Todd, Iurii Lotman, Paul Debreczeny, Vadim Vatsuro, and many others has played a large role in our understanding of texts of the period. Though Pushkin was not the first poet to create the literature of empire, it was Pushkin’s narrative poems that were the first to be acknowledged by his contemporaries as once and for all settling the question of whether original Russian works of literature had been written, a watershed moment in Russian literary history.35 Clearly, as Push-

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kin himself recognized and even pointed to in his own footnotes, Zhukovskii and Derzhavin were essential precursors, important Russian poets. Yet at the same time, their works were not received by contemporaries as Pushkin’s were, as something new and national. The explanation of why this is so is complex, depending on a number of factors such as the discourse of nationalism itself, the timing of Pushkin’s arrival on the scene, and Russians’ self-perceptions in the first decades of the nineteenth century. But I would contend that Pushkin’s work overshadowed that of his predecessors because he was innovative in form and language, combining an already established poetic language of biblical/Oriental style with a real place and real events, he explicitly positioned the Caucasian borderlands as sites of empire and nation making, his work asserted that the Russian language played a powerful role in the construction of Russianness, and furthermore, he embraced a view of Romanticism, which, helpfully for the Russian situation, asserted that various European literatures had common traits and experiences, allowing broad experience to be expressed in an individual manner. Just as Karamzin was providing a readable and well-styled narrative of Russian history, thus creating, for all intents and purposes, that history, so Pushkin was establishing the encounter between Russians and non-Russians as the first site of national literature; the poetry of imperial expansion, combining the Karamzinist literary school’s concern about the individual and rights with the ‘Slavonic school,’ which focused on narodnost’ and originality. The Russian south, as formed by Pushkin’s pen, drew from a panorama of Russian history, an association with antiquity and biblical lands, encompassed the very newsworthy and popular battle for Greek national independence, replete with popular military heroes, as well as political unrest due to dissatisfaction with autocratic government. Further, the mountaineers offered both a view of a potentially different way of life that was free of European preconceptions, as well as a terrifying foe, backed by a dramatic and threatening mountain landscape. Hence domestic and world politics, history and literature, culture and freedom combined in a heady mix. The Caucasus as an up-to-the-minute theatre of war, combining newsworthiness and ‘true-to-life’ ethnography with pan-European literary and political associations, gave Pushkin’s poems special status, just as Byron’s own travels in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage had spotlighted important places in the news, while also portraying an individual whom readers could recognize in themselves, an educated young man

Introduction

17

from good society who feels a sorrow and alienation beyond his years, personalizing an ongoing political situation for the reader.36 At a moment of great interest in the Greek struggle for independence, which elicited the concern of young people throughout Europe, Pushkin was exiled to the south, itself a hotbed of Russian anti-autocratic feeling and in a sense, an ‘alternative power base to St. Petersburg.’37 This realignment of vision took contemporaries by storm. The importance of the Greek cause, Maria Todorova notes, cannot be underestimated in evaluating the romantic passion of Byron and Pushkin.38 While Pushkin thought of himself as akin to Ovid, distant from Petersburg as Ovid was from Rome, he was not only among the Sarmatians and the Getae, at whose barbarism Ovid shuddered, but also among the flower of Petersburg youth, amongst Ypsilantis and other leaders of the Greek struggle. And further, he knew that although the local mountaineers must ultimately submit to Russian power, they nevertheless could teach a lesson of independence of their own.39 It was by means of military conquests of the region between the Black and Caspian seas, the site of wars that had begun with Peter and Catherine and were continued through the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century, that Russians most prominently created their identity as European-style colonizers, and in poems that referred to the history of conflicts in the Caucasus as well as the centuries-long conflict with the Crimean khans, Pushkin created narratives that both connected the present to the past and charted Russia’s independent course. These works involved refracting Russian identity through representations of others. The literature created at the periphery, by being created out of ‘moments or processes produced in the articulation of cultural differences, in-between spaces that provide terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood that initiate new signs of identity,’40 was literature which had to find new ways of defining Russian cultural identity. The concept of a national identity being formulated not in the centre, but at the margins, and not as a single strand but as a network of multiplying crossings is very persuasive in the Russian case; as Stoler and Cooper point out, ‘Europe was made by its imperial projects, as much as colonial encounters were shaped by conflicts within Europe itself.’41 The late teens and early 1820s, a key time period for Russian political unrest set off by dissatisfaction with the lack of government reform following the defeat of Napoleon and awareness of the Greek, Spanish, and French uprisings, combined with Russian military operations in the Caucasus and against Ottoman Turkey, brought together a volatile

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mix of politically active young noblemen who were creating a plan to defy the tsar. In Odessa and Moldavia, activists such as Pestel’ were interacting with figures like Ypsilantis, who spearheaded the beginning of the Greek war of independence, a project that interested all of Europe. Ermolov, a well-known general who used ruthless tactics in the Caucasus, was hailed as a potential leader of the Russian army contingent that pro-Greek officers hoped the tsar would authorize.42 Further, Russian Decembrist writers, looking for narodnost’ in literature, felt all writers – Karamzin, Zhukovskii, and many others – were merely derivative of Western models, and wanted to find heroes and a sense of history they could claim as their own.43 Writers who could depict, even among non-Russians, figures who were heroic and freedom loving in their own way were seized upon.44 An Eastern style, incorporating biblical figures and language, had already developed as a coded, politically charged poetic language; the Byronic/Near Eastern vocabulary was easily assimilated to this style and the toponyms and themes of the Caucasus came to carry political importance, alluding to desires for liberty and independence.45 These themes of freedom, however, did not conflict with the Russian elite’s support for imperial expansion; the two coexisted very comfortably. Pestel’, for example, while enthusiastically upholding the cause of the Greeks, felt that the Caucasus tribes had to be controlled for their own good, since only groups that can preserve their own power should be entitled to have it.46 Before and particularly after the Decembrist uprising in 1825, the Caucasus was filled with political exiles, many of them officers serving in the Russian army. Besides merely exiling politically unsavoury citizens to ordinary military service, the government could also pass a sort of death sentence on political offenders by sending them to serve in the most perilous areas of the Caucasus. Hence government action only solidified the associations of the Caucasus and resistance to autocracy expressed by many of the best minds, literary and otherwise, of the era. Siberia, too, served as a place of exile for many Decembrists, and there they played a role in Russia’s expansion and self-definition in and into Siberia.47 All of the major writers discussed in this study, except for one, Tolstoy, who ‘exiled himself,’48 were sent south by their government for political reasons. My point is that no small number of Russian literature’s most important, influential, and canonical texts were written not in European Russia, but on its periphery or even abroad. Though my

Introduction

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primary interest and analysis will focus on texts written in the Caucasus, whose status in so many ways became synonymous with important Russian writing, the implications of this issue are much broader. As Homi Bhabha has pointed out, the encounter with the colonized remakes the colonizer, the narrative of colonial self arises out of the encounter with the colonized other. John Stuart Mill developed his ideas about government by contemplating education in British India.49 Further, the grand narratives of the nineteenth century, such as evolution and utilitarianism, were techniques of colonial and imperialist governance.50 In the case of Russia, it seems that the writer needs the other to write a Russian national story. Susan Layton points out that the Westernized Russian writing elite looked for their Russianness in peasants and in borderlands, feeling themselves to be foreign both abroad and at home; ‘the elite’s concern with overcoming alienation by finding native roots would motivate much nineteenth-century Russian literature,’ she notes.51 In a work such as The Cossacks, for example, Tolstoy examines a wide range of others, from peasants to fellow noblemen, Cossacks to Chechens. In a long list of Russian writers and works that come from the periphery, Griboedov’s ‘Woe from Wit’ and Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin were partially or wholly written from Russia’s borderlands. Gogol was Ukrainian and wrote his Dead Souls in Italy. Dostoevsky solidified his career by publishing Notes from the House of the Dead, forged by his imprisonment and exile in Siberia. During this time he was imprisoned away from European Russia and came in contact not only with peasants but with foreigners and people from outlying border areas, including the Caucasus region. The denizens of Dostoevsky’s account were hence peripheralized in a multiplicity of ways. That this perspective is not necessarily a liberalizing view is clear from Dostoevsky’s example. Tolstoy, though a voluntary ‘exile’ in Russia’s southern borderlands, first made his name as a writer by publishing Childhood, which was written during his sojourn in the Caucasus. Hence many texts that we think of as being untouched by concerns outside the metropole are actually heavily informed by periphery; as Edward Said has noted, exile can serve to heighten and intensify one’s conception of the desired home and crystallize its components. Speaking of Auerbach’s Mimesis, Said notes that ‘the book owed its existence to the very fact of Oriental, non-Occidental exile and homelessness. And if this is so, then Mimesis itself is not, as it has so frequently been taken to be, only a massive reaffirmation of the Western cultural tradition, but also a work built upon a

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critically important alienation from it, a work whose conditions and circumstances of existence are not immediately derived from the culture it describes with such extraordinary insight and brilliance but built rather on an agonizing distance from it.’52 While my concern is not primarily with the issue of exile, the distance from, or escape from (or the question of whether there can be an escape from) Russia’s massive, sprawling confines, they have nonetheless played a major role in the existence of many important works of Russian literature. Peripheral areas, as sites of ongoing reconstitution of Russia’s imperial, cultural, and military identity, were actually very central to Russia’s history, identity as an empire, and cultural production in the early nineteenth century. Cultural and geographical differences served as a catalyst to the creation of Russian national culture and literature. Important cultural developments led to linkages between Russia’s geography and history that allowed a new understanding of Russian national culture to arise. I should note further that this study is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather to provide a set of readings that tries to steer a different course and raise new questions about the role of the periphery in the creation of Russian literature. In chapter 1, I describe changes in the discourse of narodnost’ during the 1820s and the role of Pushkin’s ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ (‘The Captive of the Caucasus’) and its reception in embodying and bringing about those changes. The chapter analyses Pushkin’s poem and the circumstances of its special status as a breakthrough poem for Pushkin and for Russian literature, its context, both literary and historical, and the debates and reception surrounding it. In so many ways, it set the standard for future works treating the Caucasus, and it set forth characters and a plot that would have many future permutations. The chapter also traces the development of the discourse of narodnost’ and its meaning for Russian literature, as well as the special political and social status of the southern territories, which were sites of exile, unrest, political rebellion, and Russian imperial expansion, and constituted a highly charged and topical theatre of activity. Narodnost,’ a complex term that evolved over time to mean both ‘national’ and ‘popular,’ started out as a term that implied a kind of folk Russianness. Chapter 2 analyses Pushkin’s ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ and ‘The Gypsies,’ which express the relationship between the poet and the empire. ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ weighs the contradictions of Russian imperial power, history, and poetics. In it, Russia is potrayed as both a victim of the Crimean khans and a victor over them. ‘The Gyp-

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sies’ addresses similar contradictions, depicting gypsies as free, but recognizing that this freedom is threatened by the encroaching Russian Empire. The poem plays upon the irony of Bessarabia as the site of Ovid’s northern exile and Pushkin’s southern exile. Chapter 3, which addresses the interrelated texts Eugene Onegin, ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ and ‘A Journey to Arzrum,’ shows how important the periphery is to the Russian construction of self, since the condition of possibility of the character ‘Onegin’ is predicated on the author’s absence from the metropole, while the trajectory of the novel is greatly influenced by Onegin’s journey to the south, not to mention earlier, more complete drafts of that journey. This travel relates closely to Pushkin’s treatment of the ‘imagined community’ of Russian readers in the novel, which focuses closely on the process of reading and the status of the Russian countryside. Onegin’s journey, like the focus on a provincial setting, similarly demarcates and defines the boundaries of Russia and the locations of its literary creation. ‘Journey to Arzrum’ is a complementary piece of the puzzle, similarly testing limits of different kinds, both literary and geographic, and providing a new kind of travel narrative as rival to European versions. In terms of plot and phrasing, it is related to both ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ and Eugene Onegin. In chapter 4, the exploration of periphery, narodnost’, and national literature shifts to literary representations of the view of the soldier responsible for the expansion of the empire and the assimilation of others to the empire. Bestuzhev’s story of Ammalat-Bek creates a justification for the ‘pacification’ of the Caucasus, while Lermontov’s Maksim Maksimych reassures the reader of the benignity of imperial representatives. Narodnost’ is explored in the idealized camp setting of Ammalat-Bek, while the hybrid native (whether Ammalat as re-educated warrior or Bela as native ‘bride’ of Pechorin) re-establishes the need to control the male other while co-opting the female. As with earlier works, epistolary metonymy connects the periphery to the metropole in significant ways, indicating the importance of the metropolitan reader to the project of Russian expansion in the periphery, and vice versa. In the fifth and final chapter, Tolstoy’s The Cossacks is examined both as a highly self-conscious, realist treatment of the archetypal ‘Caucasian tale’ and as an examination of the perspectival split between the narrator and the main character. As the narration very subtly moves between third-person narration and narration or thoughts expressed by the main character, the very way in which perspective is constituted is

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brought into focus. Narodnost’ continues as an issue, although now it is a group of Russians – the Terek Cossacks – who constitute a complex mix of both self and other, and bring together the two categories of peasant and noble savage as the subjects to be portrayed by Russian writers. Because no complete translation of ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ has as yet been published, I have provided my prose translation of the narrative poem, which I prefer to translate ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ although its typical translated title is ‘The Prisoner of the Caucasus,’ as an appendix.

1 Pushkin, ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ and Russia’s Entry into History

The status of Pushkin in Russian literature and culture and the voluminous, frequently politicized critical literature about his work make it complicated to disentangle the various layers of interpretation surrounding any of his works. Yet the appearance of his narrative poem ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ (The Captive of the Caucasus), written in 1821 and published in 1822, was, for many contemporaries and later scholars, an undisputed turning point in Pushkin’s career and in the history of Russian literature. A unique group of factors led to the perception that ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ was the first truly national work of Russian literature and that Pushkin was the premier Russian poet; although some critics, contemporaneous and later, felt that ‘Ruslan and Liudmila’ was the main turning point in Pushkin’s career, its appearance was accompanied by a great deal of dissension and was better received by the ‘classicists’ than by the Karamzinists. ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ on the other hand, was far more universally praised, and expressed the central tenet that a broad understanding of romanticism, such as Pushkin favoured, insisted upon: that the poet was to enjoy complete freedom in his choice of material. ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ is a thoroughly intertextual work, inscribed with multiple references to the work of other poets and with popular discourses stemming from vostochnyi stil’ (Eastern style) to civic and Byronic themes, as Oleg Proskurin reminds us, and is an amalgam of ‘northern’ prisoner tales with ‘southern’ themes, as Paul Austin points out.1 While ‘of’ the south, it is shot through with ‘central’ quotations and discourses, and its addressees are primarily in the north; the northern readers in turn are ‘transported’ to the south by their reading and understand that this new, southern work is also first and foremost an important work of Russian poetry.

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Many factors played a role in the reception of Pushkin’s southern works, including the discourse of nationalism, the timing of Pushkin’s own arrival in the Caucasus, and the state of Russians’ self-perceptions in the first decades of the nineteenth century. ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ was greeted as new because it combined innovative form and language, utilizing an already established poetic language of biblical/Oriental style to describe a real place, associated with real people (known friends and exiles, Pushkin’s own biography) and with entirely plausible events. Monika Greenleaf reminds us that we must not disregard fashion; Pushkin’s embracing of Romanticism allowed Russian literature to be grouped among other European literatures, and following a Byronic formula not only freed Pushkin from heretofore strictly defined genres, it also enabled him to be associated with the famous English poet.2 As Greenleaf notes, Byron’s tales might speak of political rebellion, exotic sexual and moral crimes, and unspeakable wounds, but their annotations offer a very different perspective and persona: that of the chatty, expert, insatiably curious and intrepid European, penetrator and describer of other cultures’ secrets. As a result, from Portugal to St. Petersburg, from Albania to Asia Minor, Byronic verses became the inscriptions that humanized, Europeanized, the foreign landscape, inscribing indelibly on the traveler’s and reader’s map as a ‘Byronic place.’ Pushkin’s own Southern Poems had performed this same inscribing function for the territories on the southern border of the Russian empire.3

Karamzin had established a narrative of Russian history, hence bringing Russians’ sense of history into being; so Pushkin in similar authoritative fashion established the Caucasian frontier as the first site of national literature. This poetry of imperial expansion, uniting the Karamzinist literary school’s concern for the individual and his rights with the ‘Slavonic school’s’ call for narodnost’ and originality, brought together the chief watchwords of multiple literary factions. The Russian south, under Pushkin’s pen, grew to encompass the sweep of Russian history, an association with antiquity and biblical lands, a contemporary and soul-stirring fight for Greek national independence (with accompanying Romantic heroes like Ypsilantis), along with youthful Russian dissatisfaction with autocratic rule after the defeat of Napoleon. Added to this was a combination of potential Russian glory attained by defeating Caucasian mountaineers (in their overwhelming,

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threatening, and exciting mountain backdrop) and those same mountaineers’ presentation of an alternate society, a different way of approaching life that did not depend on European models. The whole was a syncretic mix of multiple strands of domestic and world politics and literary and cultural associations. The Russian situation in the Caucasus alone could not have provided the impetus for this change, but the Caucasus as contemporary theatre of war, providing the element of ‘real life’ in a potent mix of other literary and political associations, made Pushkin’s poems resonate powerfully, just as Byron’s travel to the hotspots of European war in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage had linked a recognizable individual, a privileged, young figure who nevertheless felt an extreme sorrow and alienation not usually associated with youth, to an ongoing political situation, bringing it to life for Byron’s readers.4 Neither Byron nor Pushkin was the first to traverse his respective poetic real estate, but both were felt to be the first who really made an impression. Pushkin’s exile to the south, at a moment of intense European interest in the Greek struggles for national self-definition and liberation, caused a displacement in vision that took contemporaries by storm. The romantic passion of Byron and Pushkin, Maria Todorova writes, cannot be understood without the influence of Greek nationalism.5 Pushkin, allying himself with Ovid, contemplates distant St Petersburg as Ovid did Rome, yet unlike Ovid, who felt himself amidst barbarians, Pushkin rubbed shoulders with Ypsilantis and future Decembrists, and saw in the local ‘barbarians’ people who, though they would and should be made to submit to the Russian Empire, were nonetheless examples of people who wanted to determine their own fate:6 ‘In the Caucasus, then partly in Bessarabia, [Pushkin] with his own eyes saw and was convinced that there were people who possessed in their own way high culture and thoughts, and civic morality, bravely battling for their homeland and freedom in the Caucasus, having their own ancient customs, their norms of beauty and so on, but not suspecting the existence either of Molière, Voltaire or Lomonosov. The influence of literature and life coincided.’7 One of the most important factors in the success of ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ is that Pushkin’s poem appeared three years after the publication of the first eight volumes of Karamzin’s History. Russian readers were primed for texts that would appeal to their newly awakened sense of Russia’s legitimate place in history. In Karamzinian, no less than Byronic, style, Pushkin appends lengthy footnotes to his narrative

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poem. Karamzin’s History, after all, was famous for the fact that its accompanying notes were approximately the same length as the History itself. Undoubtedly, Pushkin’s use of a confident, self-assured Russian poetic style tells half the story of the success of ‘The Captive of the Caucasus.’ But the way in which Pushkin reclaims the Caucasus as a location for Russian history and national Russian literature plays just as large a role, I believe. Pushkin seizes upon Karamzin’s establishment of historical Russian events in the Caucasus, continuing Karamzin’s ‘deperipheralizing’ thrust. Following Karamzin, the Caucasus was a place that had a solid foundation in History with a capital ‘H’: a place associated with Ovid, described in Roman history, perceived as biblical. Karamzin wrote in the first paragraph of the first chapter of his History: This great part of Europe and Asia, bearing now the name of Russia, in its moderate climates, was from time immemorial inhabited, but by wild peoples burdened by the depths of ignorance, who did not mark their existence with any of their own historical monuments. Only in the histories of the Greeks and Romans have been preserved information about our ancient fatherland. The first discovered very early the road through the Hellespont and the Thracian Bosphorus to the Black Sea, if one can believe the famous travels of the Argonauts to Colchis, sung as it were by Orpheus himself, a participant in it, twelve centuries before the birth of Christ. In this curious poem, founded, at least, on ancient legend, are named the Caucasus (famous in fables for the tortures of the unlucky Prometheus), the river Fazis (now Rion), the Meotis or Sea of Azov, the Bosphorus, the Caspian people, Taurides and Cimmerians, dwellers of southern Russia. The singer of the Odyssey also names these last. ‘There is a Cimmerian people,’ (he says) ‘and a city Cimmerion, covered in clouds and fog: for the sun doesn’t light this sad country, where deep night reigns constantly.’ The contemporaries of Homer also had such a false understanding of the countries of southeastern Europe; but the fable about the gloom of the Cimmerians turned into a commonplace of centuries, and the Black Sea, most likely, received its name for this reason.8

This was the point at which the Russians could trump even the Europeans, with their connection to the centre of the Mediterranean world. Noah’s ark was said to have come ashore on the peak of Ararat, Prometheus had been chained to the Caucasus mountains, Herodotus, Strabo and others had written of the area, and the ancient, Christian civilizations in Armenia and Georgia, far predating Russia’s own con-

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version to Christianity, could be perceived as a sort of second Holy Land. Further solidifying this connection, which was one of metonymy as well as metaphor, was the powerful presence of Islam in the region. Playing into the reading public’s new expectations of historically based works and their newfound sense of Russia as a storied land, well connected to the rest of the world, Pushkin used ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ and particularly its epilogue, to place Russia into a position of historical power broker. Быть может, повторит она Преданья грозного Кавказа; Расскажет повесть дальних стран, Мстислава древний поединок. [Perhaps [the muse] will repeat the legends of the formidable Caucasus; Will tell the tale of faraway lands, Of the ancient single combat of Mstislav.]9

An elite reading public primed by Karamzin’s History of the Russian State, as well as contemporary discussions of Romantic nationalism, to expect works on Russian historical themes was both frustrated and satisfied by Pushkin’s approach. Promising to write a poem on Mstislav, he instead writes a poem about Mstislav’s opponents, the Kosogs, ‘in all probability, the present-day Circassians’ as Pushkin points out in his footnote, citing Karamzin’s description of the battle in which Mstislav ‘conquered their prince Rededia in single combat’ (4:117, note 12). But in updating the terms of the ancient combat between the son of Vladimir, the famous Kievan ruler who chose Christianity for his subjects in 988, and the leader of the Kosogs, Pushkin both reminds his readers that the Caucasus region is embedded in Russian history and builds a context for the contemporaneous struggle to overtake the Caucasus, a struggle populated by such major figures as General Ermolov. Not only does Pushkin suggest that Ermolov should be thought of as a modern-day Mstislav, but he asserts that the Russians will be victorious just as Mstislav was. Further, at this crucial textual moment establishing the Russians’ past and future control of the Caucasus and the Circassians, as well as Russian literature’s claim to world status, Pushkin places a footnote directing the reader to Karamzin’s History of the Russian State, vol. 2, which narrates the story of Mstislav, whose con-

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quering of Rededia occurred in 1022.10 Crucially, Mstislav overcomes Rededia with the help of Christianity: ‘Mstislav, having thrown his weapons on the ground, seized the giant. The strength of the Russian Prince began to falter: he called upon the help of the Mother of God – threw down his enemy and cut his throat with a knife.’11 Like Zhukovskii in his epistle to Voeikov, Pushkin in his epilogue also refers to Batu and the ultimate Russian independence from the Mongols; as they also came from the ‘Orient’ they are tied to Russia’s future dominance over the Caucasus. For good measure, Pushkin invokes Tsitsianov and Kotliarevskii, two warriors of the Persian campaign of 1796, the former of whom helped to betray the Georgian royal family in Russia’s successful bid to annex Georgia at the turn of the nineteenth century. These two men were unequivocally on the Russian side, continuing the tradition of Mstislav in his slaying of the Kosog leader and bringing the Russian history of the Caucasus up to date; the crowning reference of the epilogue, of course, is to Ermolov, who upholds the glory of Russian arms without partaking of the Karamzinian zeal for absolute monarchy. In Search of Narodnost’ Russian literati of the early nineteenth century were not expecting what many of them considered to be the first definitively original work of Russian literature to emerge from the setting of Russia’s mountainous southern borderlands, written primarily about a group of people who were not even Russian. And yet, perhaps it was not surprising that Pushkin’s 1821 narrative poem ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ was hailed so decisively by contemporaries. Its powerful combination of spectacular scenery, unfamiliar but dramatic ‘local colour’ and a main character who observes and anticipates the coming Russian subjugation of the area was flattering to notions of Russian military might and status as ‘civilizers.’ The young man is deliberately understood primarily as a contemporary young man of the time (with not a few of Pushkin’s own features) more so than a literary hero, bringing the poem topicality à la Byron. This poem, which was not set in Russia and introduced many foreign words, place names, and concepts, was of immense appeal to contemporaneous readers, instantly ‘traditional,’ codifying the way in which Russian literature on the ‘Caucasian theme’ was to be written henceforward. Pushkin went far in canonizing a literary portrait of the Caucasian scenery. The Caucasus can be said to be as much of a ‘character’ in the

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poem as is any other. In fact, the poem was originally entitled ‘Kavkaz’ (Caucasus). Contemporaries appreciated Pushkin’s poetic description of the scenery and praised it greatly. Izmailov, for example, the publisher of the journal Blagonamerennyi (The Well-Intentioned One), wrote of ‘Most gorgeous (prekrasneishie) pictures, copied from nature by a masterful hand.’12 While Pushkin’s ‘Captive of the Caucasus’ was received by the Russian reading public in 1822 as a phenomenon of belles-lettres, a publication that caused a stir on the Russian literary scene and brought about the discussion of cultural questions, such as the definition of ‘Russianness’ in literature, Pushkin’s narrative poem was also a part of the cultural narrative of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. Russian expansion in the Caucasus went back to the seventeenth century, but the annexation of Georgia in 1801 gave Russia a formally established power in the Caucasus region. At the time of Pushkin’s first visit to the Caucasus in 1820, General A.P. Ermolov was the commander of the Russian army in the region. Although Ermolov probably had anti-autocratic sympathies (and was therefore replaced with Prince I.F. Paskevich by the new tsar after the Decembrist uprising), he was completely committed to the Russification of the Caucasian peoples, and his tactics were extremely brutal, probably actually contributing to the strength of the Murids, an Islamic sect that began to be influential in the 1820s and to propagate a Holy War against the Russians.13 The Russian conquest of the Caucasus contained all the essential ingredients for drama: action, battle, an ‘exotic’ locale imbued with incredible natural beauty, and peoples whose language, way of life and manner of dress were thought of as ‘alien.’ Besides holding the ingredients for drama, the war in the Caucasus was a forum for praising Russia’s military might and status as a colonizing empire, in the wake of Russia’s great success in defeating Napoleon. As Susan Layton has noted ‘the encounter between the Russian and the Circassians in “The Prisoner of the Caucasus” was an early instance of the recurrent tension between tame European and wild non-European identities in Pushkin’s writings [...] While the author’s own cultural allegiances were decidedly mixed in this poem, his romantic enhancement of the Muslim mountaineers allowed Russian readers to conceptualize an orient satisfying to the imperfectly westernized national self.’14 Layton’s comments bring us to an interesting issue in the history of the reception of ‘Kavkazskii plennik.’ Partly as a result of some contemporaneous political views and very much as a result of a fair amount of idealization of

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Pushkin, the poem has been thought of as portraying a conflict of interest on the part of the poet. Viazemskii was very disturbed by the epilogue, which he felt ‘bloodied’ the poem, and many commentators have pointed to an apparent conflict between praise and admiration for the ‘svoboda’ (freedom) and ‘vol’nost’ (freedom with political overtones) of the captives (both terms that were highly significant, politically speaking, but which were nonetheless passed by the censor) and a clear desire that the Russian Empire nonetheless prevail over the entire territory. Did the poem really portray a conflict of sympathies for Pushkin? Tomashevskii, Tynianov, and Gukovskii, along with many recent scholars who have examined the Decembrists’ views along with those of their circle, argue that for Pushkin and for others like him, anti-autocratic feelings could coexist without any difficulty with pro-imperial sentiments; the might of the Russian Empire and its colonizing movement bringing Christianity and enlightenment was a necessary prerequisite for a European identity and did not stand in the way of a desire to limit the power of the monarchy. As Layton herself points out, de Tocqueville endorsed American democracy and simultaneously upheld France’s right to control Algeria.15 Harsha Ram argues that given a choice between identifying with the powers that stifled the metropolitan poet and the peripheral enemy who seeks freedom, Pushkin chooses the latter. However, it is unclear whether any choice really has to be made – though we may see a contradiction, Pushkin did not. After all, admiring a wild animal in a zoo does not mean that we wish the animal to be set free. Orientalism was, after all, a language to be used, a mode of vision to be employed. For example, S.S. Uvarov, then a young nobleman working as an attaché in Vienna, wrote in 1810 his ‘Projet d’une Académie asiatique’ (Project for an Asiatic/Oriental academy) in which he proclaimed that, since the Orient had been recognized as the cradle of human civilization, and since Russia, by virtue of geography, was in contact with ‘all the peoples of the Orient,’ she should rise to the occasion and to her properly lofty station as mediatrix between Europe and the Orient, and as a sign of this, Tsar Alexander should found an academy dedicated to, among other things, the study of Oriental languages and the providing of translations of important Oriental works.16 The twenty-four–year-old Uvarov’s ‘Projet’ achieved stunning success: having been received by Mme de Staël and the brothers Schlegel, Uvarov was able to distribute his work to well-known people and he became

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immediately famous; such notables as Napoleon and Goethe (with whom he corresponded) praised his work.17 Uvarov, who did not actually pursue any Oriental studies, went on to become president of the Academy of Sciences (1818–55) and minister of education (1833–49) under Nicholas I.18 One of the most important contexts in which Pushkin’s early works were received revolved around the debate about narodnost’. ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ like ‘Ruslan and Liudmila,’ was published amid discussions of narodnost’ and a demand for a Russian ‘national-historical’ work. The interest in narodnost’, a newly created term whose meaning was to be debated and redefined during the course of the nineteenth century, was part of a nationalist dynamic in Russian literature, a response to Western European works of literature that centred on the age of chivalry, great founding legends, and mythic figures. Russians wished to create works that would have a similar effect on their own culture: constituting pride in the cultural heritage and founding myths of their society. The term narodnost’ was coined by Prince P.A. Viazemskii in an 1819 letter to his friend A.I. Turgenev, in which he described to his friend some of his own poetry: Here there is a Russian tint [kraska], which is lacking in almost all our verses. You cannot recognize a Russian poet by his physiognomy [...] the matter is not about merit, but about imprint; not about smooth-spokenness, but about pronunciation; not about the harmony of movement, but about the narodnost’ of a few native manners. Why not translate nationalité – narodnost’? After all, the Poles said: narodowosc´! The Poles are not as fastidious as we are, and words that do not voluntarily jump over to them, they drag over by the hair, and the matter is done. Excellent!19

Thus, for Viazemskii, the term narodnost’ was meant only to apply to ‘Russianness,’ and was an attempt to translate the French nationalité by example of the Polish narodowosc’. In an answer to M.A. Dmitriev’s critique of Viazemskii’s introduction to Pushkin’s narrative poem ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ in which Dmitriev said that Viazemskii had confused the terms narodnyi and natsional’nyi, Viazemskii said that the word natsional’nyi did not exist in Russian, and that ‘with us the word “narodnyi” alone answers to two French words, “populaire” and “national,” that we say “narodnyie pesni” and “dukh narodnyi,” where the French would say “chanson populaire” and “esprit national.”’20 Viazemskii’s coinage, then, created a word that was to refer to the ‘Russianness’

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of something, and effectively broadened the use of the adjective ‘narodnyi’ to include the French senses of both ‘national’ and ‘popular.’21 Melissa Frazier points out that the problem of narodnost’ both predated Viazemskii’s coinage and was related to a similar political dilemma: ‘The problem that Russian writers faced ... was how to determine the most proper and most productive relationship between Russian literature and its Western counterparts.’22 Zhukovskii had been the flashpoint of the debate about narodnost’, and the ballad was the genre in question. When Zhukovskii wrote ‘Liudmila,’ a Russian version of Bürger’s ‘Lenore,’ there was a debate about whether this was now a truly Russian ballad or still a copy of a German ballad. Gnedich felt it was Russian, while Katenin said it was not. When Pushkin published ‘Ruslan and Liudmila,’ he combined Karamzin’s demands for the refinement of Russian language with the opponents’ demands for ‘prostonarodnye’ (folk/common people) themes. Still, ‘Ruslan and Liudmila’ was accompanied by numerous critiques and satisfied neither side. On the other hand, ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ achieved much greater approbation as a result of numerous factors, not least of which was that it seemed to have a toehold in reality: ‘The literary novelty and social topicality of “Kavkazskii plennik” consisted in the fact that Pushkin for the first time in Russian poetry set and in his own way solved the problem of the creation of a generalized, typical image in which were given the “characteristic features of the youth of the nineteenth century’ [...] The novelty of the problem set by Pushkin was brought about by the generic and artistic peculiarities of his poem.’23 Not only was the poem about ‘the youth of the day,’ but it corresponded with Pushkin’s assertion that ‘inspiration alone’24 was the province of Romanticism, and that Russian Romanticism should be understood in the context of European Romanticism.25 When Pushkin published ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ the ‘classicists’ had been urging Zhukovskii to write a national-historical epic; as one critic relates, Pushkin effectively referred to this ‘demand’ by quoting a section of Zhukovskii’s 1814 ‘To Voeikov’ (as well as a section of Derzhavin’s ‘Ode to Count Zubov’) in his notes to the narrative poem: ‘Both these fragments, dedicated to the description of the Caucasus, Pushkin as it were offered to the readers to compare with his own poetic description. Having entered into competition with Zhukovskii in the representation of the Caucasus, Pushkin reminded the readers about Zhukovskii’s plan for a national-historical narrative poem, a project that had been made known a long time before in Zhukovskii’s epistle to Voeikov.’26

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Although Pushkin might have wished to settle this issue by casting Ermolov in the role of a modern-day Mstislav (the call for narodnost’ included a demand for the depiction of contemporary heroes), and although Pushkin asserted that narodnost’ was not in rules, but in feelings, Kiukhel’beker nonetheless renewed his call for works on native subjects in his 1824 article, ‘On the Direction of our Poetry, Especially Lyric, in the Last Decade,’ calling for ‘true Russian poetry,’ and singling out parts of Pushkin’s ‘Ruslan and Liudmila’ for special praise, as being especially Russian.27 Thus there was a ‘theoretical demand’ for narodnost’ in the new, Romantic literature, and narodnost’ was being understood as a term that corresponded only to Russian subject matter and themes.28 The appearance of ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ though it did not fully satisfy Kiukhel’beker, was a major part of a turn of events that caused a broadening of the definition of narodnost’, as well as a concomitant broadening of the definition of great and ‘truly Russian’ poetry. Though Pushkin himself stressed the possible writing of a work on a Russian historical theme (‘Mstislav’) in ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ he also placed himself in the company of Zhukovskii and Voeikov by stressing their common efforts in describing Caucasian scenery. Pushkin proclaimed, in effect, that to describe Caucasian scenery was already something of a tradition in Russian poetry. And indeed it was; as Harsha Ram argues, Pushkin both added to and revised a long tradition of odic poetry, which utilized a poetics of the sublime and was a major mode in which Russia’s imperial expansion was imagined and told.29 We will return to this point during our discussion of ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ below. But Pushkin capitalized upon and expanded this tradition in a way that seized the imaginations of his contemporaries; as Ram notes, Pushkin’s references to the earlier odes ‘camouflage’ his break with tradition.30 The critic and writer Orest Somov also contributed to the redefinition of narodnost’ in his 1823 article ‘On Romantic Poetry,’ in which he stressed that the great diversity of peoples, languages, and geography in the Russian Empire could serve as material for Russian poets to create uniquely Russian works. What really counted in determining the ‘national’ character of a work, Somov argued, was not its subject matter per se, but the way in which it was written: ‘The novelty of poetry, the qualities which distinguish the poetry of one people from that of other tribes, does not consist in the names of its genres; but in the spirit of the language, in its method of expressing itself, in the freshness of thoughts;

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its morals, tendencies, and customs of the people, the qualities of the subjects surrounding and acting most upon the imagination.’31 Somov’s article put the question of what was ‘national’ in a completely different light, first by deflecting the issue of ‘Russianness’ onto the Russian language itself and onto the quality of the depiction of ‘morals, tendencies and customs of the people.’ For Somov, the Russian language itself speaks, and its sanctity is secure, so that it may be used to portray or describe anything, and yet still remain Russian. It should be pointed out that Somov’s notion of the Russianness of the Russian language was not for the purpose of claiming, à la Bestuzhev and Shishkov, that the Russian language should be kept ‘pure’ as a guarantor of Russianness, but rather that it need not be bound to Russian subject matter alone. The language was appropriate for describing any place, any person, and the range of peoples it could describe also widened. Somov’s more fundamental alteration of the concept of narodnost’ was his expansion of ‘proper’ subject matter for a Russian poet. His article stressed the new, imperial nature of Russian literature, and the new peoples and places that were now fitting subjects for the Russian pen, just as they were becoming fitting subjects for Russian colonization: But how many diverse peoples merged under the single name of Russians, or depend on Russia, separated neither by the expanse of alien lands nor by wide seas! [...] Not one country on the earth has been so rich in variegated beliefs, legends, and mythologies as Russia. A poet can choose in [Russia] with luxury what he likes, and sweep away what he doesn’t like. [...] Russian poets, without leaving the boundaries of their motherland, can fly across from the stern and somber legends of the North to the opulent and brilliant fancies of the East; from the educated mind and taste of Europeans to the crude and unaffected mores of hunting and nomadic peoples; from the physiognomy of society people to the appearance of some half-wild tribe, imprinted with one common feature of distinction.32

Somov now declared a huge territory to be the province of the Russian poet, a veritable empire of narodnost’. All was diverse, yet imprinted with a common feature – no matter what its characteristics, it belonged to the Russian imagination. In fact, this was the literary equivalent of colonization, with all peoples appropriated for Russian literary representation subject to the Russian poet-tsar. For the poet was placed, in no uncertain terms, in a position of power vis-à-vis the poet-

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ical peoples and places. The new imperial subjects were coming under the wide-ranging imagination and representation of the Russian poet. Iurii Tynianov remarked on the effect of Somov’s article in finding a place for Pushkin’s southern narrative poems (beginning with ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’), and in placing the poems in the category of national works:33 ‘In this way, the question of the exoticism of the southern narrative poems changes: these are ‘national’ poems. The political consciousness of the epoch of the 20s, to which the literary series is correlated, considered them to be such to a greater extent than narrative poems on Russian everyday-life material.’34 The conflation of Pushkin’s exile, Romanticism, Byronism, anti-autocratism, and Russian imperial pride, among other factors, worked in the Russian case to define this first Russian national literature (as it was understood) in a very specific way: the periphery became, for a time, more important to Russian literature than Russia itself. The category of Romanticism, broadly understood, offered a framework that allowed Russian works to take on a ‘national’ character even if they were not ‘national-historical.’ It was also a way to put Russian works into a broader European context; Somov emphasized that the category of the Romantic was an overarching one, able to encompass works from different countries. To Somov, this meant that two goals could be achieved: first, works demonstrating the excellence of Russian writers – i.e., works that were conceived as original and wholly Russian – could be created using whatever material within the Russian Empire the poet chose; and second, these works could be considered comparable to the very best that European writers (the only ones who mattered to Russians at the time) had to offer. Further, there was value in describing the customs and mores of others – mestnost’ or couleur locale (local colour), a favoured part of Pushkin’s southern poems. Indeed, both Pushkin and Viazemskii also held Somov’s view; both wrote at different points that just as the use of non-national themes did not disqualify a work from being ‘national,’ likewise purely national subject matter could not guarantee its narodnost’.35 Pushkin wrote: One of our critics, I think, considers that a national spirit consists in choosing subjects from our country’s history; others see the national spirit in the vocabulary [which the authors use], i.e. are pleased that writing in Russian they make use of Russian expressions. But can one deny a strong national spirit to Shakespeare’s Othello, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, etc.; Vega and Calderon are constantly shifting

36

Writing at Russia’s Border their action to all corners of the world and take the plots of their tragedies from Italian novelle and French lays. Ariosto sings the praises of Charlemagne, of French knights, and of a Chinese princess. Racine based his tragedies on ancient history. Can one deny that all these writers have a strong national quality? On the other hand, as Vyazemsky rightly remarked, ‘what national spirit is there in a Russiad and a Petriad except for the proper names?’ What national spirit is there in Xenia, who in the middle of Dimitri’s encampment discusses parental authority with a confidante, in iambic pentameters? National spirit in a writer is a quality which can only be fully appreciated by his fellow countrymen – for others it either does not exist or might even seem to be a fault.36

Viazemskii commented at length on the issue in his foreword to Pushkin’s ‘Bakhchisaraiskii fontan,’ which is discussed in chapter 2 below, noting that narodnost’ is ‘not in rules, but in feelings.’ Further, for Russia, the national and the imperial were intertwined, ‘joined in a common project and could not be divorced,’ as Mark Bassin puts it.37 Hence literature that explored and depicted Russian colonization was national, and brought Russians’ self-representations into line with expansionist and orientalist narratives (whether promotional or critical) of other European countries. Byron is certainly the obvious example, but Chateaubriand, Hugo, Goethe, Rousseau, and many others had created works based on European colonialist supremacy and experience in or of ‘the Orient’; the creation of a similarly situated Russian literature of empire would only heighten similarities between Russian literature and other already accepted national literatures. As Melissa Frazier describes it, Russian anxiety about national character and national literature was a trait it actually shared with Europe at the time: Sure that their inner lack was theirs alone, Russian Romantics could only express their originality as uniquely imitative; even here, though, they were hardly original. The whole question of national identity, while certainly grounded in the exigencies of the Russian past, was also one which Russian Romantics derived mainly from their avid reading of the works of Western European Romantics, especially Mme de Staël’s De l’Allemagne (1813). What the Russians seem to have missed in their reading, however, is the unsteadiness of national identity which Romanticism actually offers

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[...] what Russian Romantics in fact borrowed from the West was not only the question of national identity but also its apparently paradoxical answer.38

Russia’s role as an imperial power, however, clearly provided a more stable identity. Hence the quest for a poet who wrote works that were unquestionably Russian and yet could be read with respect by all of Europe was effectively fulfilled by Russia’s colonization of the Caucasus. Poetic works chronicling events in the Caucasus were not only an obvious outcome of Russian colonization but also, in effect, a requirement of it. As Belinskii, who had himself been to the Caucasus, wrote: ‘The grandiose image of the Caucasus, with its warlike inhabitants, for the first time was reproduced by Russian poetry – and only in Pushkin’s narrative poem for the first time was Russian society acquainted with the Caucasus, already known in Russia by arms.’39 The process of colonization could be made comprehensible and assimilable to Russians because the literature that portrayed it (and thus actually provided the narration of this process, in the minds of Russian readers) could be subsumed under the category of Russian narodnost’, which was capable of rendering both the Russian and the non-Russian with equal ‘authenticity.’ Narodnost’, never a term that could be fully pinned down or made to define the same quality for everyone, was very useful in its flexibility as the Russian literati were trying to be many contradictory things at the same time: similar to Europeans, yet completely independent and individual, able to be ‘national’ and yet also to be ‘universal.’40 Much as ‘Romanticism’ was defined differently by different writers of the time, so that each had his own version of it, so narodnost’ had varying qualities, but debates of the time clearly led to a particular linkage of Russian narodnost’ with universality. That the widening and redefinition of the ‘national’ to include works on non-Russian topics became a component of ‘Russianness’ can be shown by some of the remarks that Gogol made about Pushkin as a national poet (‘Neskol’ko slov o Pushkine,’ 1832) and about the character of Russian poetry (‘V chem zhe nakonets sushchestvo russkoi poezii i v chem ee osobennost’,’ 1846).41 While opinions expressed in the two articles differ to some extent, there is an underlying message about Pushkin that remains the same: Pushkin’s peculiarly Russian genius lies in being able to portray so many diverse sentiments and people, in being able to adapt his (Pushkin’s) understanding. In ‘A Few Words

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about Pushkin,’ Gogol describes Pushkin’s virtuosity in portraying foreign places as a facet of his ability to describe things perfectly, but as a Russian would see them, thus retaining his Russianness: ‘From the very beginning he was national [natsionalen], because true nationality [natsional’nost’] consists not in the description of a sarafan [traditional Russian garment for women], but in the very soul of a people. A poet can even be national when he is describing a completely strange world, but looks at it with the eyes of his national element, with the eyes of the whole people, when he feels and speaks so that it seems to his fellowcountrymen as if they are themselves feeling and speaking.42 By contrast, when Gogol writes of Pushkin’s genius in the later essay, he emphasizes Pushkin’s utter Proteanness, his ability to become the subject of his poetry: ‘And how faithful his response, how sensitive his ear! You inhale the smell, the colour of the earth, the time, the people. In Spain he is a Spaniard, with a Greek, a Greek – in the Caucasus – a free mountaineer, in the full sense of the term; with an older person he breathes the passage of time in olden days; should he glance toward a peasant in his hut – he is completely Russian from head to toe: all the features of our nature were echoed in him, and all was sometimes comprised in one word, in one sensitively found and aptly chosen adjective.’43 Here the extreme, but absolutely faithful, malleability of Pushkin is emphasized; as Gogol notes earlier in the essay, everything was the subject of Pushkin’s poetry. As the universality of Pushkin’s poetic creation is praised, so is the universality of Russian poetry itself: ‘Our poetry has tried all the chords, was nurtured by the poetry of all the peoples, listened to the lyres of all the poets, attained some sort of worldwide language, so that it could prepare everyone for a more meaningful service.’44 In these passages on the nature of the Russian language itself, and in some that follow, Gogol seems clearly to lay out the compromise solution that Russians had chosen: Russian poetry and the Russian language itself were to be understood as malleable and adaptable enough to faithfully portray any place, people, or nation. They were able to learn and receive poetic and linguistic sustenance elsewhere, but also would always embody the Russian viewpoint, character, and soul. As Gogol writes, ‘[Pushkin] feels and speaks so that it seems to his fellow-countrymen as if they are themselves feeling and speaking.’45 In this way, foreign subjects, foreign influences, could be adopted, embraced, while the essential Russianness of the whole could be preserved. Discussions of Zhukovskii’s translations of European poetry, so

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vital in the development of the Russian literary sensibility, often follow the same lines. Zhukovskii is seen as faithfully capturing the sense and sensibility of the original poem in its original language, and yet making of the poem a unique, Russian work of art, one that is faithful to, but also an improvement upon, the original. Following this line of argument in his article on Russian poetry, Gogol remarks that only among the Russians could such a poet as Zhukovskii have appeared: he likens Zhukovskii to a jeweller who does not himself discover the diamond but nonetheless knows how to set it to its utmost advantage. In the same manner, other countries produce poetry but do not know how to properly appreciate it or develop it to its fullest advantage; this becomes the role of the Russians. Nor should one neglect to remark upon Gogol’s own stake in the matter of the identity of the ‘truly Russian writer.’ Gogol made his name by representing an ‘authentic Ukrainian’ world to the Russian imagination, which became an indispensable part of Russian literature. Donald Fanger notes: ‘Romantic theory exalted ethnography and folk poetry as expressions of the Volksgeist, and the Ukraine was particularly appealing to a Russian audience in this respect, being, as Gippius observes, a country both “‘ours’ and ‘not ours,’ neighboring, related, and yet lending itself to presentation in the light of a semi-realistic romanticism, a sort of Slavic Ausonia.“ Gogol capitalized on this appeal as a mediator; by embracing his Ukrainian heritage, he became a Russian writer.’46 Dostoevsky also famously made the claim that only Russians were truly universal, and could truly put themselves into the shoes of others, as it were. Dostoevsky, following Gogol, praised Pushkin as the greatest practitioner of this art of mimetic simulation, but also extended the claim in a more general sense to all Russians: And in this very period of his work our poet represents something almost even miraculous, never heard of or seen anywhere or with anyone, until him. In fact, in European literatures there were artistic geniuses of immense magnitude – Shakespeares, Cervanteses, Schillers. But point to even one of these geniuses who could have possessed such an aptitude for universal responsiveness, as our Pushkin. And this very capability, the major capability of our nationality, he precisely shares with our people, and by virtue of this, he is pre-eminently a national [narodnyi] poet. Even the greatest of the European poets were never able to embody in themselves with such strength as Pushkin the genius of an alien [chuzhogo] [...] Pushkin

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Writing at Russia’s Border alone of all world poets has the virtue of reincarnating himself wholly into an alien nationality.47

In Dostoevsky’s opinion, Russians not only are capable of authentically representing others, but are in fact the only people who can do so; he calls it the ‘major capability of our nationality,’ ‘never heard of or seen anywhere or with anyone, until [Pushkin].’ Dostoevsky emphasizes the point that not only are Russians Europeans, they are even better Europeans than the Europeans themselves. Dostoevsky, too, encouraged Russia’s move to the east, writing approvingly of conquest in Central Asia in a famous passage from his Diary of a Writer: ‘With our push towards Asia we will have a renewed upsurge of spirit and strength [...] In Europe we were hangers-on and slaves, while in Asia we shall be the masters. In Europe we were Tatars, while in Asia we too are Europeans. Our mission, our civilizing mission in Asia will encourage our spirit and draw us on; the movement needs only to be started.’48 As Orlando Figes points out, Dostoevsky felt that ‘only in Asia could [Russia] find new energy to reassert its Europeanness.’49 In the analyses of Gogol and Dostoevsky, Russian writers’ (especially Pushkin’s) capacity to represent the other ‘authentically’ is a version of reincarnation – in other words, they do not merely represent, but actually embody, incarnate, the other. In this, Russian writers are also unique, Pushkin above all, Gogol and Dostoevsky hold. Such a capacity for mimetic simulation makes Russian writers not just equal to European writers, but actually superior to them. This superiority, in essence, excuses them, as Dostoevsky explains, from having to represent themselves: If [Pushkin] had lived longer, perhaps he might have revealed immortal and great images of the Russian soul, which would be intelligible to our European brethren; perhaps he might have attracted them to us far more, and more closely, than now; perhaps he might have managed to explain to them all the truth of our strivings, and they would already understand us more than now; they would divine us, they would stop looking at us so suspiciously and haughtily as they still do now. If Pushkin had lived longer, then perhaps among us there would have been less misunderstanding and strife than we see now.50

In Dostoevsky’s view, then, not only are Russians able to embody, per-

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fectly and authentically, ‘aliens’ in their writing, but also, except for Pushkin’s untimely death, they would have been so successful at embodying themselves that Europeans would have understood the ‘immortal and great images of the Russian soul,’ and would have recognized their own spiritual inferiority to Russians. But since, alas, Pushkin’s ‘most Russian’ works were never written, the universality of Russian writers must continue to stem precisely from their ability to ‘authentically represent’ the other in works of literature. Melissa Frazier phrases the issue similarly: ‘From West to East and back again, Romanticism suggests an original, national space whose borders, like those of its writer- and reader-inhabitants, are always in flux, made ever-expanding by a concomitant urge to universality and also porous by a deep-seated principle of imitation [...] this space does not really resemble a nation. It looks instead a great deal more like an empire.’51 ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ In ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ Pushkin capitalized on literary precedents that had been set by Byron, already notorious in 1812 after the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, but who was read by Pushkin only in 1820, at the behest of the Raevskii family. ‘Captive’ was also published in conjunction with Zhukovskii’s translation of Byron’s ‘Prisoner of Chillon,’ increasing its association with Byron both in proximity and by the theme of imprisonment. Byron in his famous first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, as well as in his Turkish tales, had not only taken the English-speaking world by storm with his persona, but had created new, authoritative models for writer, reader, and text. In these texts Byron had paradoxically both further strengthened a philhellenic, idealized Western Greece and also, in his Turkish tales, presented an exotic, Eastern Greece controlled by the Ottoman Empire.52 Though the plot of Pushkin’s ‘Captive’ is most closely based on that of ‘The Corsair,’ Byron’s ‘The Giaour,’ his bestknown Turkish tale, is important in that it paints a picture of klephts, or Greek brigands of the mountains who live beyond the control of the Ottomans.53 While these klephts are essentially robbers, they became idealized by readers as models of freedom, especially since many philhellenes, while avidly embracing the cause of a free Greece, nonetheless rejected actual Greeks (and images of Greeks) that seemed overly Westernized to them. The lawlessness of these brigands was seen as accept-

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able because the established authority was despotic, and for readers, these brigands became an integral and admired part of the ‘Grèce de Byron’ even if Byron’s own view of them, and of the prospects for Greek self-rule, was less sanguine.54 These klephts are clearly related, in a literary sense, to Pushkin’s Circassians in ‘Kavkazskii plennik.’ In ‘The Giaour,’ the title character, a Venetian ‘gone native,’ along with a robber clan, ambushes his enemy Hassan’s party in a defile in the mountains. Byron knew and depicted this mountainous Greece (hitherto imagined in literature as a gently sloping, temperate land) because he had actually been there. The fact that Byron had actually been to the places that he wrote about in Childe Harold and the Turkish tales was of utmost importance to his readers, and is greatly in evidence in his notes to these texts. Indeed, he had himself come close to being ambushed just as he described in ‘The Giaour,’ and these personal experiences lent much of the piquancy, and the notoriety, to the texts. 55 Pushkin, of course, used both his own presence in the Caucasus and similar notes authenticating his information to perform the same functions, no less important to his own Russian readers. Byron’s implicit and explicit politics were also important to his reception. The love affairs of his characters were often described using political terminology. Hence the ‘tyranny’ of the Turkish Hassan’s love of Leila in ‘The Giaour,’ for example, linked Leila’s personal freedom to the political freedom of Greece.56 Byron’s poems, then, set up a very enticing model for Pushkin, offering a newly created vision of Parnassus as mountainous, treacherous, and contemporary. Parnassus, which had been for so many years a mere metaphor (as Nietzsche said, well-used metaphors were like coins that have lost their pictures and become mere lumps of metal), is now realized as an actual, physical mountain, which Byron himself has visited; by realizing the metaphor of Parnassus Byron reinvigorates it as a poetic topos: The foremost Tartar’s in the gap, Conspicuous by his yellow cap, The rest in lengthening line the while Wind slowly through the long defile; Above, the mountain rears a peak, Where vultures whet the thirsty beak, And theirs may be a feast to-night, Shall tempt them down ere morrow’s light.

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Beneath, a river’s wintry stream Has shrunk before the summer beam, And left a channel bleak and bare, Save shrubs that spring to perish there. Each side the midway path there lay Small broken crags of granite grey, By time or mountain lightning riven, From summits clad in mists of heaven; For where is he that hath beheld The peak of Liakura unveil’d?57

Here Byron shows off his intimate knowledge of the actual area; Parnassus is actually the name of the mountain range, while Liocura (Liakura) is one of twin peaks, the highest in the range.58 Further, it is a real place, with a dried-up stream and broken crags of granite, and is rarely revealed to its viewers because of its frequent cloud cover. It is not gentle and Arcadian. It is Romantic, not classical. In ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ Pushkin creates the Caucasus as both a refuge of similar ‘wild brigands’ and also as a stand-in for Greece, making use of its newly told mountainous nature and its status as a haven for wild but free people. As he writes in his dedication: Во дни печальные разлуки Мои задумчивые звуки Напоминали мне Кавказ, Где пасмурный Бешту, пустынник величавый, Аулов и полей властитель пятиглавый, Был новый для меня Парнас. Забуду ли его кремнистые вершины, Гремучие ключи, увядшие равнины, Пустыни знойные, края, где ты со мной Делил души младые впечатленья; Где рыскает в горах воинственный разбой, И дикой гений вдохновенья Таится в тишине глухой? [In the days of sad separation My thoughtful sounds Reminded me of the Caucasus, Where the overcast Beshtu, the mighty hermit,

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Writing at Russia’s Border The five-headed ruler of auls and fields, Was for me a new Parnassus. Will I forget its stony peaks, Thundering springs, withered ravines, Sultry deserts, places where you and I Shared the young impressions of the soul; Where warlike brigandage roams the mountains And the wild genius of inspiration Hides in the deaf stillness?] (4:91)

His analogy of Beshtu and Parnassus works on many levels. Parnassus was, according to Byron, a mountain with more than one peak, and it was often covered in clouds. Pushkin’s first of twelve footnotes is appended to the mention of Beshtu, noting that the mountain, besides being located near Georgievsk, is ‘famous in our history’ (4:115). In this way Pushkin affirmed that Beshtu, the ‘new Parnassus,’ was already the site of Russian history, both a foreign place, and yet also a familiar one. These simultaneously Byronic and Karamzinian footnotes (‘Ruslan and Liudmila,’ Pushkin’s first narrative poem, had none), referring the reader to ‘our history,’ show that Pushkin was expecting (and creating) a reader who viewed Russia as a land with a long and complex history, of which the story to be told formed only one chapter. The Caucasus is already ‘famous in our history,’ and therefore Pushkin, like Karamzin, is expanding upon historically legitimated topics. The very locution ‘our history’ refers directly to Karamzin and his style of celebrating and creating Russians’ sense of history. And like Byron, Pushkin is also demonstrating to the reader that he was ‘really there,’ and knows what he is talking about. Just as Byron’s Greece was simultaneously historico-literary and politically and sociologically present day, Pushkin asserts these qualities for the Caucasus as well. After all, ‘auls’ is also glossed by Pushkin – it is both a foreign term and also a term denoting a dwelling place of politically situated peoples. The Caucasus, like Byron’s Greece, was also a dividing line between Christianity and Islam, lending Pushkin’s southern narrative poems further similarity to Byron’s themes. One should remark as well that neither Byron’s Greece nor Pushkin’s Caucasus was new to their readers – but each writer became the canonizer of the space: In many respects, and this is particularly true for Canto II of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Byron’s Greece differed little from the picture of the country

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provided by his predecessors and contemporaries. Terence Spencer, in his admirable study of literary philhellenism before Byron, said, ‘One important source of his [Byron’s] success was the fact that the feelings he described, and aroused, were authentic [...]’ (293). The Grèce de Byron was already familiar ground to his readers; for forty years they had pondered, like Chateaubriand had in 1806, Greece’s glorious past, its degraded present, and its possible future.59

For various reasons, it was Byron’s version of Greece, and Pushkin’s version of the Caucasus, that stuck in readers’ minds, and superseded what had gone before. By assimilating the Caucasus to Greece, Pushkin not only made use of typical poetic tropes and references to Hellenism, creating a continuum between the Orient and antiquity, he also challenged the usual centre/periphery dynamic, making Beshtu a central cultural location rather than a peripheral one. Rather than Pushkin being placed far from ‘the centre of things,’ it is St Petersburg that is located far away from the new Parnassus. That which is of interest is happening not in the north, but in the south, just as Byron’s travels, his own physical placement, lent interest to the locales he sang of and made of them places where others wanted to go. Pushkin further challenges the discourse of the ‘centre’ by using ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ as a framework to display both beautiful descriptive passages and elegiac monologues, as Oleg Proskurin has argued. Proskurin finds many intertextual references to descriptive poetry by Zhukovskii and Voeikov and elegiac poetry by Pushkin’s contemporaries, most often Batiushkov, which he alters to fit into his ‘southern’ schema. Proskurin contends that the overall plot, very similar to Karamzin’s ‘Bednaia Liza,’ is kept to a minimum in order to showcase these passages and monologues.60 Pushkin’s dedication of the narrative poem to his friend Nikolai Raevskii, with whose family he first visited the Caucasus, made of the place a locus of shared remembrance, friendship – a setting whose importance was constituted in great part by the emotional and experiential connections made between the two young Russians. The Caucasus, then, was a place of inspiration for the poet not only on its own terms, but also because it had been established as such by the shared experience of the two young men.61 As Byron had travelled with his friend Hobhouse while writing Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and their dialogic friendship had affected Byron’s perceptions of Greece and other

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places, as well as his writings, an allusion to a fellow traveller was very fitting. Byron’s own dedications to his friends ranged from brief to lengthy, and are very much part of the necessary structure of the Byronic ‘Turkish tale.’ As Monika Greenleaf has pointed out, Pushkin’s and Byron’s narrative poems always have a title, subtitle, dedication, prologue, narrative poem with interruptions and interpolations, a epilogue, and prose annotations, making the poem appear to be a collage of separate parts addressed to different audiences, with the different metric styles and discontinuities flaunted. Byron’s inscriptions humanize and Europeanize the foreign landscape, with each place becoming a ‘Byronic place.’62 The allusions to the Raevskii family were certainly ‘real,’ as Pushkin met and spent time with the Raevskiis, an important and very cultured family, early on during his time in the south; it was the Raevskii children who introduced Pushkin to the poetry of Byron. Alluding to the Raevskiis also brought the poem into contact with current political realities; General Raevskii was a critic of the Russian incursion, and was later relieved of his duties for having opposed Russian methods of ‘pacification.’ In the epilogue, Pushkin returns once again to Greek imagery, and by turns promotes the poetic qualities of the Caucasus, the ancient battles that have occurred there, as well as the more recent Russian conquest. The Caucasus will fall to the Russians, he predicts, and travellers will ride with impunity into areas that now pose a danger. The reception of the epilogue has been a thorny issue – in particular, its odic qualities have been debated as both a way to explain the change in tone and its powerful avowing of Russian might.63 The epilogue, like the dedication, has strong Byronic echoes, as well as Karamzinian ones. Towards the end of the second Canto of Childe Harold, Byron describes the bloody battle of Marathon (the Greeks versus the Persians, the paradigmatic East versus West): The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow; The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear; Mountains above, Earth’s, Ocean’s plain below; Death in the front, Destruction in the rear! Such was the scene – what now remaineth here? What sacred trophy marks the hallow’d ground, Recording Freedom’s smile and Asia’s tear? The rifled urn, the violated mound,

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The dust thy courser’s hoof, rude stranger! spurns around. Yet to the remnants of thy splendour past Shall pilgrims, pensive, but unwearied, throng; Long shall the voyager, with th’Ionian blast, Hail the bright clime of battle and of song; Long shall thine annals and immortal tongue Fill with thy fame the youth of many a shore; Boast of the aged! Lesson of the young! What sages venerate and bards adore, As Pallas and the Muse unveil their awful lore. [................................................................................] Let such approach this consecrated land, And pass in peace along the magic waste: But spare its relics – let no busy hand Deface the scenes, already how defac’d! (Canto II, ll. 846–76)64

A scene of terrible battle is evoked, and the writer wonders what now marks the ‘hallow’d ground’ where the battle occurred. By contrast, present-day ‘pilgrims’ visit the ‘consecrated land’ and ‘pass in peace.’ Byron, in keeping with his own earlier, horrified descriptions of Lord Elgin and other Englishmen despoiling Greece’s greatest monuments, pleads with his countrymen to ‘spare its relics.’ Pushkin, of course, is not addressing a bygone war between two other nations, but insofar as ‘Greek’ and ‘Persian’ clearly stand for ‘West’ and ‘East,’ he tells the same tale, coming down on the side of the Western power. И воспoю тот славный час, Когда, почуя бой кровавый, На негодующий Кавказ Подъялся наш орел двуглавый; Когда на Тереке седом Впервые грянул битвы гром И грохот русских барабанов, И в сече, с дерзостным челом, Явился пылкий Цицианов; Тебя я воспою, герой, О Котляревский, бич Кавказа! Куда ни мчался ты грозой –

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Writing at Russia’s Border Твой ход, как черная зараза, Губил, ничтожил племена... Ты днесь покинул саблю мести, Тебя не радует война; Скучая миром, в язвах чести, Вкушаешь праздный ты покой И тишину домашних долов... Но се – Восток подъемлет вой! ... Поникни снежною главой, Смирись, Кавказ: идет Ермолов! И смолкнул ярый крик войны, Всё русскому мечу подвластно. Кавказа гордые сыны, Сражались, гибли вы ужасно; Но не спасла вас наша кровь, Ни очарованные брони, Ни горы, ни лихие кони, Ни дикой вольности любовь! Подобно племени Батыя, Изменит прадедам Кавказ, Забудет алчной брани глас, Оставит стрелы боевые. К ущельям, где гнездились вы, Подъедет путник без боязни, И возвестят о вашей казни Преданья темные молвы. [And I will celebrate that glorious hour, When, having felt the bloody attack, Upon the indignant Caucasus Our double-headed eagle raised itself; When on the grey-haired Terek For the first time burst forth the thunder of battle And the roll of Russian drums, And in battle, with a bold brow, There appeared the ardent Tsitsianov; You I glorify, hero, O Kotliarevskii, the scourge of the Caucasus! Wherever you rushed, a terror – Your speed, like a black plague,

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Destroyed, annihilated tribes ... Now you have forsaken your sword of vengeance, War does not gladden you; Bored with the world, in the wounds of honour, You taste idle rest And the quiet of domestic dales ... But look – the Orient raises a howl! ... Hang your snowy head, Resign yourself, Caucasus: Ermolov is coming! And the violent cry of war fell silent: All is subject to the Russian sword. Proud sons of the Caucasus, You have fought, you have perished terribly; But our blood did not save you, Nor charmed armour, Nor mountains, nor valiant steeds, Nor the love of wild freedom! Like the tribe of Baty, The Caucasus will betray its forefathers, Will forget the voice of the greedy field of battle, Will abandon the battle arrows. To the canyons, where you used to nestle, A traveller will ride up without fear, And dark rumours of legend Will announce your execution.] (4:113–14)

The ultimate focus here is on the quiet travellers who will visit the former scenes of battle; just as Childe Harold was very much about historically ‘sacred ground’ consecrated by the remembrance and visitation of the Oriental traveller, so too the Caucasus is destined to be such a place, where only the memory of battle will one day reside: Where’er we tread ’tis haunted, holy ground; No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, But one vast realm of wonder spreads around, And all the Muse’s tales seem truly told. (Canto II, ll. 828–31)65

Byron takes the part of the Greeks, but Pushkin takes the part of the Russians, both present-day warriors and present and future travellers. Both split the described group into Oriental males and Western females, but

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Pushkin reverses Byron overall; he does not set up the reader to rescue the Caucasus, as Byron sets up his reader to want to rescue the Greeks. Rather, he uses the Caucasus to affirm, ultimately, Russian superiority. Pushkin takes Byron’s images of the Greeks (among other models) and uses them for Circassians, but he retains Western status only for Russians, unlike Byron who acknowledges at least the Greeks’ glorious past, if he still casts doubt on their present and future. While Byron’s Greek muse, neglected for centuries, is difficult to find, along with her vanished culture, Pushkin’s is vigorous, at times epic: Так муза, легкой друг Мечты, К пределам Азии летала И для венка себе срывала Кавказа дикие цветы. Ее пленял наряд суровый Племен, возросших на войне, И часто в сей одежде новой Волшебница являлась мне; Вокруг аулов опустелых Одна бродила по скалам И к песням дев осиротелых Она прислушивалась там; Любила бранные станицы, Тревоги смелых казаков, Курганы, тихие гробницы, И шум, и ржанье табунов. Богиня песен и рассказа, Воспоминания полна, Быть может, повторит она Преданья грозного Кавказа; Расскажет повесть дальних стран, Мстислава древний поединок, Измены, гибель россиян На лоне мсительных грузинок. [Thus the muse, the light friend of daydream, Flew to the borders of Asia And plucked herself for a crown The wild flowers of the Caucasus. The severe apparel of the tribes, Brought up on war, captivated her,

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And often in this new clothing The enchantress appeared to me; Around the emptied auls She wandered alone along the crags And to the songs of the orphaned girls She lent there an attentive ear; She loved the warlike Cossack villages, The cares of the brave Cossacks, The burial mounds, quiet tombs, And the noise and neighing of the herds. The goddess of songs and stories, Full of memories, Perhaps will repeat The legends of the formidable Caucasus; Will tell the tale of faraway countries, Of the ancient single combat of Mstislav, Betrayals, the deaths of Russians On the laps of treacherous Georgian girls.] (4:113)

She seems fascinated by war, like a muse of the bold and bloody scenes of battle in the Iliad – that most ancient and authoritative of epics, that wellspring of canonized Western literature. The references to Mstislav and the ‘legends of the formidable Caucasus’ assure the reader that Russia, indeed Russian culture and letters, already has a history in the Caucasus, a history of which the poem at hand forms only the most recent link. By implication, then, not only does Caucasian literature find its beginning in the Greeks, but also, the saga of the Caucasus is the saga of the Russians, the Beshtu is Russia’s Parnassus, Pushkin, of course, her Homer. This tactic was an effective one, perhaps learned in part from Karamzin, who begins his History by comparing Russian history and historians to those of Greece and Rome, and includes in ancients’ references to Russia Homer’s naming of the Cimmerians and classical historians’ references to Black Sea peoples, as we have seen quoted above. Bestuzhev, writing in his ‘Glance at Old and New Literature in Russia,’ plays up both the age of the Caucasus and the poem’s classical allusions: ‘Two narrative poems of this young poet: “Ruslan and Liudmila” and “The Captive of the Caucasus,” filled with marvellous, virgin beauties; especially the latter, written in the view of the grey-haired Caucasus and on the grave of Ovid, gleams with the splendour of imagination and all the life of the local beauties of nature.’66

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The narrator begins the poem proper by describing the ‘idle Circassians,’ who are in their aul at night, talking among themselves. They are called ‘sons of the Caucasus,’ and could therefore potentially be linked with ‘sons of Hellas’ and other, similar ‘sons,’ whose connotations are those of a struggle for freedom. Speaking of another poem by Pushkin, Gukovskii writes: the poetic terminology of Pushkin – host, sons, vengance, tyrant, warrior, conquer or fall, revenge, glory, rapture, sword, arrows, and blood spurting on the shield – this is specifically suggestive terminology; behind it stand images of battle for freedom, the images of the Romans, Brutus and Cato, and behind them – the images of the warriors of Val’ma, – and in perspective such images, which covered with greatness the future exploit of the Decembrists, made easier for the Russian officers to commit their tragic deed of the fourteenth of December.67

Here the terminology is in some cases transposed – sabres (shashki) instead of swords (duly footnoted by Pushkin as ‘Circassian sabre’); leaders rather than warriors, disastrous alarms rather than a fall, but the motifs are similar nonetheless, allowing contemporaries to interpret the phraseology as ‘suggestive,’ as Gukovskii puts it. Furthermore, in the epilogue, these same connotations are made even clearer in the lines: Кавказа гордые сыны, Сражались, гибли вы ужасно; Но не спасла вас наша кровь, Ни очарованные брони, Ни горы, ни лихие кони, Ни дикой вольности любовь! [Proud sons of the Caucasus, You have fought, you have perished terribly; But our blood did not save you, Nor charmed armour, Nor mountains, nor valiant steeds, Nor the love of wild freedom!] (4:114, my italics)

The politically charged, anti-autocratic ‘suggestive terminology’ of the later lines could not be more obvious – many of the catchwords Gukovskii identifies are present. Returning to the opening lines:

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В ауле, на своих порогах, Черкесы праздные сидят. Сыны Кавказа говорят О бранных, гибельных тревогах, О красоте своих коней, О наслажденьях дикой неги; Воспоминают прежних дней Неотразимые набеги, Обманы хитрых узденей, Удары шашек их жестоких, И меткость неизбежных стрел, И пепел разоренных сел, И ласки пленниц чернооких. [In the aul, on their thresholds, The idle Circassians sit. The sons of the Caucasus speak Of martial alarms, disastrous, Of the beauty of their horses, Of the enjoyments of wild bliss; They recall the former days Of raids that could not be repulsed, Of the treachery of sly leaders, Of the blows of their cruel sabres, And of the accuracy of their arrows that could not be outrun, And of the ash of destroyed villages, And of the caresses of black-eyed woman prisoners.] (4:93)

The stanza clearly follows Zhukovskii’s own description, in ‘To Voeikov,’ of a very similar scene, but what is for Zhukovskii the warriors’ note of praise for their grandfathers’ excellent weaponry becomes in Pushkin’s scene a declaration that the Circassians’ best days are behind them, as they speak elegiacally of raids and arrows that could not be repulsed or outrun, of ‘sly leaders’ and ‘destroyed villages,’ and not least of ‘the caresses of black-eyed woman prisoners.’ Already in the first stanza of the poem, Pushkin’s narrator sets the scene for the eventuality of the demise of the Circassians’ way of life. As Harsha Ram points out, Pushkin is very pointed in his acknowlegment of both Derzhavin’s and Zhukovskii’s odes, but creates a different kind of poem altogether, one that ultimately leaves the captive as an

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individual, not a political figure, although the framing of the poem has political implications.68 It is worth pointing out that the captive is in many ways like Childe Harold, who is placed by Byron in a political frame but whose own experiences are individual. Although many plot elements of Pushkin’s southern poems are taken from Byron’s Turkish tales, these usually feature a European who has ‘gone native,’ like the Giaour who has adopted local ways, or become a pirate like Conrad in ‘The Corsair.’ Harold, like Pushkin’s captive, is a European observing the scene around him, although of course Harold is not a captive. Like Pushkin’s captive, Harold observes warlike mountain tribes proclaiming their battle prowess, and listens to their song: On the smooth shore the night-fires brightly blaz’d, The feast was done, the red wine circling fast, And he that unawares had there ygaz’d With gaping wonderment had star’d aghast; For ere night’s midmost, stillest hour was past The native revels of the troop began; Each Palikar his sabre from him cast, And bounding hand in hand, man link’d to man, Yelling their uncouth dirge, long danc’d the kirtled clan. Childe Harold at a little distance stood And view’d, but not displeas’d, the revelrie, Nor hated harmless mirth, however rude: In sooth, it was no vulgar sight to see Their barbarous, yet their not indecent, glee, And, as the flames along their faces gleam’d, Their gestures nimble, dark eyes flashing free, The long wild locks that to their girdles stream’d, While thus in concert they this lay half sang, half scream’d: 1 Tambourgi! Tambourgi! thy ’larum afar Gives hope to the valiant, and promise of war; All the sons of the mountains arise at the note, Chimariot, Illyrian, and dark Suliote! 2 Oh! who is more brave than a dark Suliote,

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In his snowy camese and his shaggy capote? To the wolf and the vulture he leaves his wild flock, And descends to the plain like the stream from the rock. 3 Shall the sons of Chimari, who never forgive The fault of a friend, bid an enemy live? Let those guns so unerring such vengeance forgo? What mark is so fair as the breast of a foe? [.........................................................................] 7 I love the fair face of the maid in her youth, Her caresses shall lull me, her music shall soothe; Let her bring from the chamber her many-ton’d lyre, And sing us a song on the fall of her sire. 8 Remember the moment when Previsa fell, The shrieks of the conquer’d, the conquerors’ yell; The roofs that we fir’d, and the plunder we shar’d, The wealthy we slaughter’d, the lovely we spar’d. (Childe Harold, Canto II, ll. 631–80)69

Pushkin unites Byron’s conceit of having Harold observe the wild dances and songs with Zhukovskii’s style of description of the tribes in their auls, hence providing both ‘local colour’ and an overt European observer of it. The fact of the observation, as in Byron, allows an aesthetic appreciation of the Circassians while keeping the political implications, for the moment, at a remove. These must take their place at the level of the frame pieces and footnotes and the readership itself. The image of the girl entertaining the troops who bring down her culture is suggestive in itself: Но европейца всё вниманье Народ сей чудный привлекал. Меж горцев пленник наблюдал Их веру, нравы, воспитанье,

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Writing at Russia’s Border Любил их жизни простоту, Гостеприимство, жажду брани, Движений вольных быстроту, И легкость ног, и силу длани; Смотрел по целым он часам, Как иногда черкес проворный, Широкой степью, по горам, В косматой шапке, в бурке черной, К луке склонясь, на стремена Ногою стройной опираясь, Летал по воле скакуна, К войне заране приучаясь. Он любовался красотой Одежды бранной и простой. Черкес оружием обвешен; Он им гордится, им утешен; На нем броня, пищаль, колчан, Кубанский лук, кинжал, аркан И шашка, вечная подруга Его трудов, его досуга. Ничто его не тяготит, Ничто не брякнет; пеший, конный – Всё тот же он; всё тот же вид Непобедимый, непреклонный. [But all of the attention of the European Was attracted by this marvellous people. Among the mountain people the prisoner observed Their faith, customs, upbringing, Loved the simplicity of their life, Their hospitality, their thirst for battle, The swiftness of their free movements, And the lightness of their feet, and the strength of their fists: He watched for whole hours, As sometimes an agile Circassian, Along the wide steppe, along the mountains, In a shaggy hat, in a black burka, Bending to his bow, bracing his fine Leg against the stirrups, Flew according to the wishes of his steed,

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Accustoming himself ahead of time to war. He admired the beauty Of clothing both martial and simple. A Circassian is hung about with weapons; He is proud of them, is comforted by them: On him armour, musket, quiver Kuban’ bow, dagger, lasso, And sword, eternal friend Of his labours and his leisure. Nothing burdens him, Nothing clatters; on foot, on horseback – He is just the same; he has the same look Undefeatable, unbending.] (4:99–100)

For both Harold and Pushkin’s captive, the fact that they are placed in historical time and their targets of observation are in a kind of ahistoric timelessness is one of the main features that divides them. Their beauty, power, expressiveness and freedom are attractive, fascinating, but of a different order than the Europeans’ historically placed lives. Pushkin describes for his readers the practice of the mountaineers, in which even an unknown guest is offered safety and hospitality: Когда же с мирною семьей Черкес в отеческом жилище Сидит ненастною порой, И тлеют угли в пепелище; И, спрянув с верного коня, В горах пустынных запоздалый, К нему войдет пришлец усталый И робко сядет у огня: Тогда хозяин благосклонный С приветом, ласково, встает И гостю в чаше благовонной Чихирь отрадный подает. Под влажной буркой, в сакле дымной, Вкушает путник мирный сон, И утром оставляет он Ночлега кров гостеприимный. [When with his peaceful family

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Writing at Russia’s Border The Circassian in his father’s dwelling Sits during bad weather, And the coals in the hearth are smouldering; And, having leapt from his faithful horse, Delayed in the deserted mountains, Toward him comes an exhausted stranger And timidly sits by the fire: Then the benevolent host With a greeting, gently stands up And to the guest in a fragrant cup Offers comforting chikhir. Under a damp burka, in a smoky saklia, The traveller partakes of peaceful sleep, And in the morning he leaves The hospitable shelter of his lodging.] (4:101–2)

Childe Harold experiences this hospitality in Canto II, lines 604–12, and it is also glossed in ‘The Giaour.’ Bairam/Bairan, or Rhamazan/Rhamadan, are also referred to in both Byronic works, as well as in ‘Captive,’ as innocent games quickly turn into amoral violence. Interestingly, Pushkin places this passage immediately after the pleasant image of the kind host offering shelter to the passing traveller: Бывало, в светлый Баиран Сберутся юноши толпою; Игра сменяется игрою. То, полный разобрав колчан, Они крылатыми стрелами Пронзают в облаках орлов; То с высоты крутых холмов Нетерпеливыми рядами, При данном знаке, вдруг падут, Как лани землю поражают, Равнину пылью покрывают И с дружным топотом бегут. Но скучен мир однообразный Сердцам, рожденным для войны, И часто игры воли праздной Игрой жестокой смущены.

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Нередко шашки грозно блещут В безумной резвости пиров, И в прах летят главы рабов, И в радости младенцы плещут. [It used to happen, in bright Bairan The youths would gather in a crowd; One game would give way to another game: Either, having filled a quiver full, With winged arrows They pierce eagles in the skies; Or, from the height of steep hills In impatient rows At a given signal, they suddenly fall, Like does, strike the ground, Cover the plain with dust And run in a friendly clatter. But monotonous peace is boring To hearts that are born for war, And often the games of idle liberty Are troubled with a cruel game. At times the swords fiercely flash In the mad playfulness of feasts, And into the earth fly the heads of slaves, And the young children dance for joy.] (4:102)

The captive’s apparent bravery is not innate, as the mountaineers’ is; rather, it is brought about by his disillusionment and awareness that the pastimes of his own culture are no less bloody. He is the present-day visitor looking, in essence, back into the past, and the two forms of bravery are incommensurable. Но русский равнодушно зрел Сии кровавые забавы. Любил он прежде игры славы И жаждой гибели горел. Невольник чести безпощадной, Вблизи видал он свой конец, На поединках твердый, хладный,

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Writing at Russia’s Border Встречая гибельный свинец. Быть может, в думу погруженный, Он время то воспоминал, Когда, друзьями окруженный, Он с ними шумно пировал ... Жалел ли он о днях минувших, О днях, надежду обманувших, Иль, любопытный, созерцал Суровой простоты забавы И дикого народа нравы В сем верном зеркале читал – Таил в молчаньи он глубоком Движенья сердца своего, И на челе его высоком Не изменялось ничего; Везпечной смелости его Черкесы грозные дивились, Щадили век его младой И шепотом между собой Своей добычею гордились. [But the Russian watched with indifference These bloody pastimes. Before he had loved the games of glory And burned with thirst for destruction. A prisoner of merciless honour, From close up he saw his end, In duels, hard and cold Meeting the fatal bullet. Perhaps, weighted down in thought, He remembered that time, When, surrounded by friends, He would loudly feast with them... If he rued the waning days, The days that deceived hope, Or, curious, contemplated The pastimes of severe simplicity And in that truthful mirror read The customs of a wild people – He hid in deep silence

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The movements of his heart, And on his lofty brow Nothing changed at all. His careless boldness Amazed the formidable Circassians, They spared his young life And in a whisper among themselves Were proud of their catch.] (4:102–3)

This passage strongly identifies the Russian prisoner with his captors: he can be as stoic, and as warlike, as the Circassians, his ‘careless boldness’ is something to which they also aspire, and for which they respect him and are even proud of him. Their ‘pastimes of severe simplicity’ form for him a ‘truthful mirror’ of the ‘customs of a wild people’ – in other words, he can ‘read’ them and their society, understand them because of his observation of them – all this in spite of the fact that he apparently does not know their language. Susan Layton remarks that the implicit comparison between Circassian violence and Russian gentlemen’s duelling ‘destabilizes “civilized” identity.’70 However, the apparent sheer legibility of this group of people to the ‘European’ who can ‘study’ and thus fathom, and therefore control, the ‘Oriental’ cannot be lost to any reader of Edward Said. And much as Pushkin destabilizes certain presuppositions of civilization and freedom, the distinction is maintained between the captive and his captors. First having gained the love of the Circassian girl, by the end of the first part of the narrative poem he has also gained the admiration of the Circassian warriors. Not only can Pushkin, as an author, exhibit narodnost’ in his poem about the Caucasus, but his character, the Russian captive, can assimilate and understand the Circassians. Thus narodnost’ is played out both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the text. Interestingly, it was the description of the Circassians’ way of life that was among the most successful portions of the narrative poem; it was republished six times in Pushkin’s lifetime alone.71 It contains, of course, the seeds of the reasoning as to why conquest was necessary: Но скучен мир однообразный Сердцам, рожденным для войны, И часто игры воли праздной Игрой жестокой смущены. Нередко шашки грозно блещут

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Writing at Russia’s Border В безумной резвости пиров, И в прах летят главы рабов, И в радости младенцы плещут. [But monotonous peace is boring To hearts that are born for war, And often the games of idle liberty Are troubled with a cruel game. At times the swords fiercely flash In the mad playfulness of feasts, And into the earth fly the heads of slaves, And the young children dance for joy.] (4:102)

The Circassians, lovers of ‘wild freedom’ and profferers of impeccable hospitality, admired by the captive for their freedom and skill, nonetheless are ‘born for war.’ And only because the Russian himself is similarly ‘born for war,’ or rather, unafraid of war because of his experience with duelling and general indifference as to his own fate, do the Circassians identify with him and, therefore, spare him. While Pushkin, as many have noted, called the description of the Circassians the ‘hors d’oeuvre’72 of the story, the plot of the captive’s interaction with the Circassian girl, as well as the characterization of the captive himself, took up the significant space of the narrative poem. Much ink has been spilled characterizing both of them, and one issue that has been puzzling, or seen as discordant, is the extent of the girl’s refined manners and the way the captive speaks to her almost as if to a social equal.73 As Stephanie Sandler notes, ‘When the Russian captive describes this woman he is still describing himself,’ while she speaks ‘in the passionate and loving tones that are familiar from the conventions of European Romantic writing.’74 Her speaking, as many have noted, is more a reflection of the captive and his personality and mores than of anything else; meanwhile, the Circassian warriors are mute, as Layton notes. When the captive encounters the Circassian girl, her unheralded approach at first seems like that of a would-be killer: Но кто, в сиянии луны, Среди глубокой тишины Идет, украдкою ступая? [But who, in the shining of the moon,

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In the deep silence Is walking, stepping stealthily?] (4:96)

So begins the series of miscommunications and misunderstandings between the Russian and the Circassian girl: their meeting is itself a kind of non-meeting; the Circassian girl gives him the mares’ milk, is kind to him, tries to speak to him. To him, her physical self, which clearly attracts him and which is described in ‘society’ terms (sweet gaze, tender voice), is what tells him to ‘Live!’ – but what she attempts to say to him is never understood: Он ловит жадною душой Приятной речи звук волшебный И взоры девы молодой. Он чуждых слов не понимает; Но взор умильный, жар ланит, Но голос нежный говорит: Живи! и пленник оживает. [With a greedy heart he catches The magical sound of pleasant speech And the gaze of the young girl. He does not understand the strange words; But the sweet gaze, the heat of her cheeks, The tender voice says: Live! and the captive revives.] (4:96)

As the Circassian girl continues to care for the prisoner, bringing him food, singing him songs, it is she who learns Russian, rather than vice versa, she who begins to fall in love with him. She gradually comes to be under his power, although he, a Byronic figure, cannot summon any feelings of love for her. The Circassian girl is precisely the opposite of the captive’s duplicitous ‘friends’ – she is faithful, sympathetic, genuine, forgiving. In contradistinction to the falseness of society behaviour the captive has left behind in Russia, the Circassian maiden cries real tears and, as it later turns out, would rather kill herself than be sold in marriage to someone she does not love. Whereas the members of society had ‘double tongues,’ she can only be honest. She is very much a literary figure, essentially following the rules of European sentimentality, of the cult of romantic love – she is, in fact, a ‘better’ European than the society

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demoiselles that the captive has left behind, and her feelings and reactions are calibrated with precision and adherence to the rules of proper society – for example, as when she thanks the captive for not pretending to love her (4:107), although his lack of love for her breaks her heart.75 Certainly, the possibility of Circassian superiority to Russians is held out in the character of the Circassian girl, especially since the Russian cannot respond to her heartfelt love. However, it seems more likely that the Circassian girl is proof of the Russian’s superiority: she learns his language, cares for him, falls utterly under his spell. Like the heroine of ‘Poor Liza,’ she will suffer for her love – not the hero. Roessel points out that Byron’s klephts were seen very much as a group of men without women; whereas ‘literature resolved the perceived dichotomy between ancient/West and modern/East [in Greece] by making the first female and the second male. The former can be fully integrated, even “married,” into the European family.’76 In Byron’s ‘The Giaour,’ the main character is said to be a Venetian, while his lost love Leila, ‘a Circassian, is referred to as a swan, and her whiteness is stressed elsewhere (e.g., “thus rose fair Leila’s whiter neck,” 511).’77 In ‘The Corsair,’ Conrad, the European who has become a pirate, has both a Greek and a Turkish love, respectively Medora and Gulnare; Medora represents the West, while fiery Gulnare, who releases Conrad, is clearly a classic ‘Oriental woman.’78 Further, ‘Although consistently threatened by the harem, the modern Greek female was not portrayed with the exotic sexuality attributed to the truly Oriental women but rather with pure, austere, ‘classical’ characteristics [...] This construction of the Greek female continued in later philhellenic literature for more than a hundred years.’79 Pushkin’s Circassian girl seems to be constructed in this Greek mould, a being apart from the klepht-like male Circassians, and one who will virtuously die rather than be given to a man she does not love. When the captive meets her she is innocent, virginal, restrained, giving her love for the first time only to the captive. Even her ability to be stealthy and carry and use weapons assimilates her to the model of a Greek amazon, renouncing her sexuality, and in fact her life, rather than a female warrior in the style of the men of the aul. The second part of the poem begins with the narrator’s announcement of the Circassian girl’s loss of innocence, as it were: Ты их узнала, дева гор, Восторги сердца, жизни сладость;

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Твой огненный, невинный взор Высказывал любовь и радость. [You came to know them, girl of the mountains, The transports of the heart, the sweetness of life; Your fiery, innocent gaze Expressed love and happiness.] (4:104)

The narrator speaks to the girl familiarly, addressing her as ‘ты’ (thou) – the narrator, it is clear, is fully aware of the girl’s sexual desires. It is evident that the Russian’s hold over the Circassian girl is complete; she calls him ‘tsar of my soul.’ (4:104) In this small corner of the Circassian world, the Russian has complete control, a control that is echoed by the narrator’s own familiarity with the heroine. The interchange that follows, between the Circassian girl and the prisoner, based on the paradigm of ‘jaded male lover’ and ‘innocent but passionate’ young girl, is striking as a model of miscommunication. The girl pledges everything to the Russian captive, and tells him that she plans to kill herself rather than be forced to marry a man who will pay a bride price to her father and brother. The prisoner speaks only of his own troubles, his inability to love and memories of another lover, and admonishes her to behave like a fickle society demoiselle, to forget him and learn to love another. He casts her into the only woman’s role that he seems to be able to understand. In spite of the Circassian girl’s own unique situation and presumable lack of knowledge about society ways, she nevertheless responds to the captive as would a proud and dignified young society lady, thanking him for not taking advantage of her and even begging him not to laugh at her. The prisoner’s only response is to tell her that he, too, has suffered and will likely die far from home. The girl’s construction as a ‘Western’ figure also explains, it would seem, how she can understand the finely attuned, very Western sentiments of the captive. Having been told that he cannot love her, that she should go on to love someone else, she pours out her own delicately calibrated feelings: Раскрыв уста, без слез рыдая, Сидела дева молодая. Туманный, неподвижный взор Везмолвный выражал укор; Вледна как тень, она дрожала;

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Writing at Russia’s Border В руках любовника лежала Ее холодная рука; И наконец любви тоска В печальной речи излилася: ‘Ах, русской, русской, для чего, Не зная сердца твоего, Тебе навек я предалася! Не долго на груди твоей В забвеньи дева отдыхала; Не много радостных ночей Судьба на долю ей послала! Придут ли вновь когда-нибудь? Ужель навек погибла радость?... Ты мог бы, пленник, обмануть Мою неопытную младость, Хотя б из жалости одной, Молчаньем, ласкою притворной; Я услаждала б жребий твой Заботой нежной и покорной; Я стерегла б минуты сна, Покой тоскующего друга; Ты не хотел ... Но кто же она, Твоя прекрасная подруга? Ты любишь, русской? ты любим? ... Понятны мне твои страданья ... Прости ж и ты мои рыданья, Не смейся горестям моим.’ [Having closed her lips, sobbing without tears, The young girl sat: Her clouded, unmoving gaze Wordlessly expressed reproach; Pale as a shade, she trembled: In the hands of her lover lay Her own cold hand; And finally the melancholy of love Flowed out in a sad speech: ‘Ah, Russian, Russian, for what,

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Not knowing your heart, Did I give myself to you forever! Not for long on your breast Did a girl rest in forgetfulness; Not many joyful nights Did fate send her as her portion! Will they come again another time? Has happiness really perished forever? ... You could, captive, have deceived My inexperienced youth, Even if only out of compassion, With silence, an insincere caress; I would have sweetened your fate With humble and tender care; I would have watched over your moments of sleep, The rest of a suffering friend; You did not wish it ... But who is she, Your beautiful friend? You love, Russian? you are beloved?... Your sufferings are understood by me... Please, you also forgive my sobbing, Don’t laugh at my sorrows.’] (4:107)

Like the Greek woman in English literature, or the white-skinned Circassian Leila in ‘The Giaour,’ the Circassian girl had the option of marrying into the European family; her absence from the tribe now symbolized its readiness to be seen as an all-male enclave of enemies. After having rejected the girl’s love, the captive can only wait to be delivered from his captors. The Circassians leave on a raid, and the girl comes to the prisoner at night, once again as if she were a stealthy warrior: В одной руке блестит пила, В другой кинжал ее булатный; Казалось, будто дева шла На тайный бой, на подвиг ратный. [In one hand gleams a saw, In the other a damascene dagger; It seemed as if the girl were going

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Writing at Russia’s Border To a secret battle, to a feat of arms.] (4:110)

Armed with her weapons, prepared to do battle, the Circassian girl becomes both an equal of the duel-scarred captive and a full-fledged member of her Circassian warrior ‘tribe’: for the first time, the captive admires her, understands that she is also in some sense a captive, and offers to take her with him. But the spell of society-style expectations is still upon her; she refuses because he does not love her. His heart is ‘resurrected’ (4:111) but to no avail. It is too late, since he has already ‘killed’ her, in a sense, with his earlier rejection. As we know, she plunges into the water after he has crossed the river. Ironically, it is at this point the captive understands everything, including the depths of the girl’s desperation: ‘Всё понял он’ (He understood everything) (4:112). The Circassian girl gives her all in order to feed, clothe, and care for the captive Russian, and finally to help him make his escape, with no strings attached. Stephanie Sandler has noted that during the narrative, the Circassian girl gradually ‘absorbs the Russian man’s deadness’ – he begins nearly as a corpse and becomes increasingly restored to health, while she in turn gradually loses her vibrance, transferring her health to him until, finally, she dies and he goes free.80 This narrative, in which a ‘native girl’ softens the story of conquest by having a romantic or sexual attachment to the arriving imperialist/traveller, has a long pedigree.81 The story of the Caucasian girl who gave her life to save the captive was, significantly, encapsulated by an outer frame stressing the importance of Russian conquest – the dedication to Raevskii and the aggressively pro-Russian epilogue. Perhaps it is for this reason that the epilogue of the poem is so strident: Pushkin finds it incumbent upon himself to restore the feeling of the rebellious Caucasus that must be put down, since the second part of the poem has allowed the Russian prisoner to be so completely in control of his relationship with the Circassian girl, that is, in control of his primary relationship with the Caucasus. Also, since in the body of the poem the Circassian warriors admire the captive and do not prevent his escape, the epilogue restores, as well, their threat to Russia, or at least to Russian travellers: И воспою тот славный час, Когда, почуя бой кровавый, На негодующий Кавказ Подъялся наш орел двуглавый; Когда на Тереке седом

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Впервые грянул битвы гром И грохот русских барабанов, И в сече, с дерзостным челом, Явился пылкий Цицианов; Тебя я воспою, герой, О Котляревский, бич Кавказа! [.................................................] Но се – Восток подъемлет вой... Поникни снежною главой, Смирись, Кавказ: идет Ермолов! [And I will celebrate that glorious hour, When, having felt the bloody attack, Upon the indignant Caucasus Our double-headed eagle raised itself; When on the grey-haired Terek For the first time burst forth the thunder of battle And the roll of Russian drums, And in battle, with a bold brow, There appeared the ardent Tsitsianov; You I glorify, hero, O Kotliarevskii, the scourge of the Caucasus! [.............................................................................] But look – the Orient raises a howl! Hang your snowy head, Resign yourself, Caucasus: Ermolov is coming!] (4:113–14)

The call to imperial expansion is unmistakable (‘Our double-headed eagle raised itself’), the tone quite bloodthirsty (‘O Kotliarevskii, the scourge of the Caucasus!’), the Orient seen as an animal (‘the Orient raises a howl!’) who should immediately surrender (‘Hang your snowy head, / Resign yourself, Caucasus’). As Viazemskii well knew, and for that reason voiced a private objection, the outer frame of the epilogue imposed an entirely different meaning on the story proper.82 While some contemporaries found the epilogue overly warlike, as described above, the Decembrist sympathies of the poem did not conflict with the concept of Russian domination and pacification of the Caucasus region.83 Although the Decembrists sympathized with the cause of independence in the West, in the Caucasus they supported Russian territorial aims and were great

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supporters of Ermolov, whose policies in subjugating the Caucasus cannot be said to have been anything but ruthless.84 Ryleev’s ‘To Ermolov,’ written when there were rumours that Ermolov would be chosen to head the Russian army and go to free Greece, aptly expressed the secret society’s views: Confidant of Mars and Pallas, Hope of compatriots, the faithful son of Russia, Ermolov! rush to save the sons of Hellas, You, the genius of the northern troops!85

Evidence of the severity of Russian administrative policies was provided by General N.N. Raevskii, who headed the Black Sea line troops and was the father of the N.N. Raevskii to whom Pushkin’s ‘Captive of the Caucasus’ is dedicated. General Raevskii said of the Russian strategy of pacification in the Caucasus that it ‘resemble[d] all the criminality of the original conquest of America by the Spanish.’ Raevskii was subsequently dismissed for expressing his views on the matter.86 The importance of the role played by the mechanism of framing literary texts about Russia’s Orient cannot be sufficiently stressed, as a number of commentators have noted. The very words with which Belinskii, for example, discussed ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ were conditioned by Pushkin’s use of the trope of the muse to establish the Caucasus as a place fitting for Russian poetry (in the dedication and the epilogue), and the epilogue’s admiration for the Russian ‘heroes of the Caucasus’: ‘Pushkin’s muse in a way sanctified the kinship [rodstvo] of Russia with this area, already long-existing in reality, bought with the valuable blood of her sons and with the exploits of her heroes.’87 As will be seen in the following chapter, the device of framing, as Stephanie Sandler has noted, becomes sufficient on its own to mark the poem ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ as a work of Russian literature, in spite of the fact that the only Russian who appears in the poem is the narrator. Monika Greenleaf notes: It was the suturing of stylistically and perspectivally clashing fragments that made Pushkin’s Byronic poems so mystifying, not just to the uninitiated public but to his kruzhok (Viazemsky, Turgenev, Zhukovsky, Nikolai Karamzin). This was no longer ‘normative’ or even ‘aesthetic’ irony, but irony that brought together utterly different discursive perspectives within the same ostensible narrative framework and did not even begin to

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articulate a decision. The reader was left uncomfortably ‘holding the bag,’ which contained, in unresolvable admixture, a lively sympathy for a Cherkess girl and a peculiar indifference to her fate, a vivid love of nature and an admission of spiritual deadness, rebellious language and patriotic language, feminist sentiments and misogynist sentiments, and, quite probably, many different readers’ coexisting views.88

As Adrian Wanner points out, the epilogue has proven challenging to interpret satisfactorily and elicits varying and contradictory responses from readers and critics alike. In a thorough résumé of the research on the issue, Wanner concludes that the epilogue contains in it the parodic seeds that later become so evident in ‘Journey to Arzrum.’89 Any number of critics, including Boris Eikhenbaum, Susan Layton, and Harsha Ram, see in Pushkin’s call to arms a generic necessity or a pragmatic appeasing of the authorities that mitigates Pushkin’s own ‘responsibility.’90 But as Roman Timenchik pointed out in an oral commentary, ‘Est’ v Pushkine eta struia’ (There exists in Pushkin such a stream/current): this same ‘stream’ appears, for example, in ‘Klevetnikam Rossii,’ defending Russia’s interests in jingoistic terms, coexisting with other, far more subtle and sensitive elements in Pushkin’s oeuvre.91 Perhaps requiring of Pushkin a sustained, cohesive, and consistent view of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus is too much to ask; after all, we know he was capable of elegant and subtle love lyrics as well as crass, foulmouthed references to sex. We do not require ourselves to choose which is the ‘true Pushkin’ in the case of his varying approaches to love and sexuality, but consider that all the sides were part and parcel of his identity as a person and as a poet. Further, the status of the Russian poet’s relationship to the conquest is complex; as Harsha Ram points out, contemporary Chechens have used names and imagery from Lermontov and other Russian writers because they have never been completely one-sided in their portrayal of the conflict, or in any case, such powerful narratives can be interpreted differently by different readers and consumers, as Greenleaf notes above.92 Nonetheless, the whole endeavour is clearly a function of the Western writer’s ventriloquism: ventriloquism of the ‘East,’ of the Circassian warriors, of the Circassian girl – hence a ventriloquizing of both ethnicity and gender. The discourse of narodnost’ encompasses in its embrace an entire world; as Dostoevsky notes, Pushkin reincarnates himself in an alien nationality. Just as Childe Harold’s travels are about Byron, so Pushkin’s poem is about creating a familiar incarnation of the unfamil-

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iar. Critics, after all, took Pushkin to task for the captive’s cruel treatment of the Circassian girl; she was someone they recognized and cared about. The powerful investment of meaning in this narrative proved to be very important to Russian literature. A return to this narrative was always a return to familiar ground, a revisiting of well-known characters and settings, the evocation of a plot that was emblematic of the empire’s narrative about itself. Yet at the same time this plot also indicated a rootedness in the historical and in the contemporary; unlike ‘Ruslan and Liudmila,’ the story was about real people in a real place. The story is recognized as a Russian story, but one that fulfils the many roles and expectations described above – historical relevancy, topicality, innovation in form – which lends it immense staying power. The captive’s disillusioned, aimless persona, recognized as a contemporary figure by Pushkin’s readership, finds many echoes in Onegin, while the Circassian girl’s unrequited love, returned too late by the captive, may well prefigure Tatiana’s plight. Pushkin’s muse, as we learn at the end of Eugene Onegin, echoing back to the epilogue of ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ becomes herself by sojourning among the wild southern tribes. Pushkin was to further develop the interrelationship between the poet and the empire in ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ and ‘The Gypsies,’ which are examined in the next chapter of this study.

2 The Poetry of Empire: ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ and ‘The Gypsies’

Pushkin’s second published southern narrative poem, ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ and ‘The Gypsies,’ Pushkin’s last ‘southern’ work, which create largely non-Russian worlds in works of Russian literature, both utilize collapsed and blended frames of space and time to create poetic effects of presence and distance. ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ like ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ based on Byronic models, represents Russia in two registers: as historic victim of the Crimean khans and as contemporaneous victor over them. The Crimean palace is seen as a vibrant whole only by means of Russian poetry. The Russian conquest of the Crimea, militarily and poetically, is what gives the palace its ‘existence.’ ‘The Gypsies’ similarly creates gypsies who appear free but are ultimately surrounded by an ever-expanding Russian Empire. Bessarabia’s dual status as the site of Ovid’s northern exile and Pushkin’s southern exile is an irony legible only to Pushkin’s readers, just as only the reader of ‘Bakhchisarai’ can appreciate the depiction of the khanate in a Russian work of literature. While ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ inaugurates Russia’s historical connection to and representation of the Caucasus, ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ elaborates upon and strengthens Russia’s imperial and cultural claims upon her border regions. Taking Russia’s colonial control of the Crimea as its starting point, Pushkin invests this control with great historical and cultural significance, again imbuing a ‘southern narrative’ with meaning that has deep implications for the north. ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ written in the years 1821–3 and published in 1824, was Pushkin’s next published narrative poem after ‘The Captive of the Caucasus.’ In contrast to ‘Captive,’ which was also an

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Oriental/southern poem, Pushkin’s third published poem was geographically situated not in the Caucasus but in the Crimea, and temporally situated not in the present but in the past. Pushkin set the narrative poem during the time of the Tatar khanate, which held sway over the Crimea from 1427 until the late fifteenth century. From the late fifteenth century until 1783, when the Crimea became part of the Russian Empire, it was controlled by the Ottoman Empire; Pushkin, however, does not refer to Turkish rule in his poem, perhaps because he wishes to emphasize the historic Russian vulnerability to the khans and not the then-contemporaneous war with the Ottoman Empire. ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ is even more clearly foregrounded and circumscribed by the notion of narodnost’, and the debates surrounding it, than was ‘The Captive of the Caucasus.’ Beginning with its first edition, ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ was introduced with an article by Viazemskii, ‘A Conversation between a Publisher and a Classicist from the Vyborg Side or Vasilievskii Island,’ and followed by a travel writer’s description of the Bakhchisarai Palace, which will be discussed shortly. The telltale names of the participants in Viazemskii’s introductory article indicated that it was intended to take part in the ongoing dialogue about Romanticism and Classicism in the journals. The gist of the article is that the Publisher upholds the worth of the latest Romantic poetry (including ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’), while the Classicist argues against his view.1 In his article Viazemskii proclaims the importance of the narodnost’ of literature and indirectly asserts that ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ as a representative of Romantic poetry in Russia, exhibits narodnost’. Viazemskii firmly dismisses the notion that Russian themes or names make a work Russian. He writes, in the guise of the publisher: ‘We still do not have a Russian cut in literature; perhaps there will never be one, because one does not exist; but, in any case, the newest poetry, the socalled romantic, is no less akin to us than the poetry of Lomonosov or Kheraskov, which you attempt to advance as classical. What is there in the “Petriada” and “Rossiada” that is national [narodnyi], except for the names?’2 In other words, Viazemskii acknowledges the fact that narodnost’ and the question of ‘nationality’ are discursive constructs, susceptible to definition and change, and exerts his own powers to mould their definition. He exerts his energies towards further defining narodnost’ in poetry: not only need the poetry not be about Russians, its subject matter also need not necessarily be true in a historical sense:

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[Whether it is true or not] – this [Bakhchisarai] legend is worthy of poetry ... History must not be gullible; poetry the opposite. It often treasures that which the former repudiates with disdain, and our poet did very well, appropriating for poetry the Bakhchisarai legend and enriching it with plausible fancies; and even better than that, he used both one and the other with excellent art. The local colour is preserved in the storytelling with all possible freshness and brightness.There is an Oriental stamp in the pictures, in the very feelings, in the style. In the opinion of judges, whose verdict can be considered final in our literature, the poet showed in his new work the sign of a talent which is maturing more and more.3

Viazemskii thus forcefully dismisses any possibility of ‘testing’ the poet’s merit through examining the ‘truth’ or verisimilitude of the subject of his work. In fact, Viazemskii is far more concerned with the ‘plausible fancies’ that display the imaginative skill of the poet, that enhance or ‘enrich’ (as Viazemskii puts it) the story that the poet has inherited. The poet holds all the power, as it is up to him to put the ‘Oriental stamp’ on the work. Viazemskii speaks of ‘local colour’ (mestnost’) being ‘preserved’ in Pushkin’s storytelling, hence praising him for following Somov in depicting non-Russians in detail, and expanding the reach of the poet not only all over the empire but back into time as well. And in fact the poet engenders his own ‘local colour,’ defines it from the beginning. This is the Orient as the Russian writer sees it and establishes it for his readers. It did not exist before he created it; as one critic noted: ‘Bakhchisarai became famous only from 1824 on, when the poem about Maria and Zarema appeared in print. Until that time very few remembered that provincial little town of the Simferopol’ district of the Tauride province, whose name did not yet sound with the captivating music of a Pushkinian title.’4 Further, of course, the ‘local colour’ also came from Byron’s ‘Bride of Abydos,’ ‘The Corsair,’ ‘The Siege of Corinth,’ and Moore’s Lalla Rookh, to name only a few, although Pushkin’s story did not closely follow any of these works. 5 Viazemskii’s introductory article stressed the appropriateness of the Bakhchisarai legend for poetry, no matter its lack of historical ‘truth.’ Murav’ev-Apostol’s excerpt about the Bakhchisarai Palace, taken from ‘non-fictional’ travel notes and appearing after the poem, emphasized on the contrary the prosaic and everyday qualities of the ruined palace. It underscored the fact that, in spite of the information given in Push-

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kin’s poem, the memorial was a mausoleum and not a fountain, and was built not for the woman Pushkin designates, the Polish kidnap victim, but rather for a beloved Georgian beauty. Murav’ev-Apostol notes, in a moment of criticism, that ‘in the second half of the 18th century it was not that easy for Tatars to kidnap Polish girls.’6 It is, however, part of the historical record that the Crimean khan Mengli-Girei attacked Lithuania and Poland in the late fifteenth century, when Pushkin’s poem is set. Karamzin’s sources state that fifty thousand captives were taken when a number of cities were burned by the sons of Mengli-Girei.7 The major effect of Murav’ev-Apostol’s version of the story, besides providing a strong contrast to the ‘plausible fancies’ of the foregoing poem, is to remind the reader that Bakhchisarai is indeed a ruined remnant of a culture whose remains now belong solidly to the Russian Empire. Murav’ev-Apostol’s whole manner of address – he speaks to the reader in the second person – is that of a guide who now revels in exposing the already unveiled secrets of a former seat of power. Murav’ev-Apostol refers as well to the intervening years of Turkish rule, making note of the ‘iron doors, gaily decorated in Arabic taste, with a double-headed eagle over them, taking the place of the Ottoman moon’ (4:146) thus alluding to the Turkish rule but also reminding the reader that the double-headed eagle now rules the Bakhchisarai roost. Murav’ev’s description takes the reader from the world of the elegant, somewhat ethereal poem, to the quotidian, decaying palace itself, with its dirt, rust, and imperfections, much as Byron’s prose notes played up the prosaic features of his poetic landscapes. Byron, and Pushkin as well, created interest by contrasting the two types of accounts, and suggesting a ‘reality’ underpinning the poetry. Nor does Murav’ev-Apostol attempt to downplay the power of the Russian Empire. When he describes the palace rooms that had been redecorated for the visit of Catherine II, he refers directly to the moment when the Russian Empire acquired the Crimea. Murav’ev-Apostol’s tone is also distinctly European, and Orientalizing, when he mentions that the high tables installed for Catherine’s use are especially valuable ‘for us baptized ones’ (4:147). Finally, he refers repeatedly to the ruinous state of the palace, for good measure attributing this same ‘ruined’ quality to any remaining historical structures in the Crimea. He declares that although the gardens might have been marvellous at one time, they now had a degenerate look ‘like all monuments in the Tauride’ (4:148). It was between these two framing pieces that ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ first appeared; later, an excerpt from a letter by Pushkin was

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added, after the Murav’ev-Apostol quotation. In some ways, the original two framing pieces cancelled each other: Murav’ev-Apostol speaks of the ‘real story’ behind the monument, while Viazemskii declared historical truth to be unimportant in poetry. But each writer, in his own way, underscores a Pushkinian point: Viazemskii emphasizes that the poem is, above all else, a work of Russian Romantic literature, which is free to adopt any and every fancy it chooses, and Murav’ev-Apostol emphasizes the fact that the Crimea is a land that is firmly in Russian control, whose former foreignness, in spite of any poetic longings to the contrary, must now be relegated to the province of the imagination.8 As the travel writer notes: ‘It did not bother me to rush along the towers and courts of the Tauride Alhambra; and the less visible the objects became, the more vivid became the play of my imagination, filling itself with the rainbow colours of Oriental poetry’ (4:146). With ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ Pushkin creates entirely new possibilities for Russian literature and for the topics that Russian literature can address. For in ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ itself, excluding the framing pieces, the only overt Russian presence in the poem is that of the figure of the traveller-poet, whose elegiacally oriented remarks appear towards the end of the piece. This is in direct contrast to ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ in which a Russian is the main character of the narrative poem, and whose impressions remain always at the centre of the piece. In ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ Pushkin appears to remove Russians from center stage, and indeed from the stage altogether. Moreover, the very fact that the plot of the later narrative poem revolves around the tension between two captive women, a Pole and a Georgian, rather than focusing on the ostensible main character, Khan Girei, is a dramatic shift of focus from the earlier tale. This ‘woman-oriented’ specificity of ‘Bakhchisarai’ has been analysed in very interesting ways from the point of view of gender issues,9 but it is useful as well to analyse the shift in terms of politics.10 Before doing so, however, let us examine the plot of the narrative poem. As the poem, introduced by Saadi’s epigraph, opens, the khan ruler Girei sits downcast; none of his aides can determine what bothers him. A list of his ‘accomplishments’ is given: he has attacked Rus’ and Poland, and has tangled with the Genoese. Now, however, he is ‘bored of martial glory’ (4:132). The question is raised as to whether one of his wives has betrayed him; in a lengthy description of their lives, which are colourful, luxurious, and yet also monotonous, it is determined that Girei’s watchful eunuch guard has not allowed any of the wives to stray:

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Writing at Russia’s Border Его ревнивый взор и слух За всеми следует всечасно. Его стараньем заведен Порядок вечный. [His jealous eye and ear Follow after everyone at all times. His efforts maintain The eternal order.] (4:132)

As the narrator continues to describe the women of the harem, their baths, the way in which they drop earrings down to fish in a fountain, the answer to the question of why the khan is unhappy continues to be deferred. The women sing a song in praise of Zarema, ‘the star of love, the beauty of the harem’ (4:134); the reader learns, however, that Girei no longer loves her. In spite of Zarema’s beauty, it is revealed, Girei now feels unrequited love for a captured Polish princess, Maria. And so an answer is given as to the cause of his gloominess: though powerful, he is powerless to win over Maria’s affections. An encomium to young Maria now follows, a description of her happy, serene girlhood in Poland: Всё в ней пленяло: тихий нрав, Движенья стройные, живые И очи томно-голубые. Природы милые дары Она искусством украшала; Она домашние пиры Волшебной арфой оживляла; [Everything in her captivated: the quiet manner, The harmonious and lively movements, And the languorous blue eyes. The sweet gifts of nature She adorned with art; She enlivened domestic feasts With her enchanting harp;] (4:135–6)

Alas, however, the Tatars attacked Poland, killed her father, and took her prisoner, and she now pines in Girei’s harem. The khan is afraid to

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disturb her and accedes to her every wish: she bathes alone and lives alone, and even the severe eunuch guard is forbidden to come near her. Her room is an island of impenetrability in an otherwise panoptically observed harem.11 Descriptions of the Crimean surroundings, given in a different register and from a different point of view, are interspersed with accounts of the quiet harem watched over by the guard. Then the Georgian girl, Zarema, creeps at night into the Polish princess’s quarters, decorated with an image of the Virgin Mary. Zarema describes to the startled Polish girl the way in which she was herself kidnapped from her native Georgia, and her later happiness with the khan. But this happiness is now lost: Мария, ты пред ним явилась ... Увы, с тех пор его душа Преступной думой омрачилась! [.....................................................] Оставь Гирея мне: он мой; На мне горят его лобзанья, Он клятвы страшные мне дал, Давно все думы, все желанья Гирей с моими сочетал; Меня убьет его измена ... Я плачу; видишь, я колена Теперь склоняю пред тобой, Молю, винить тебя не смея, Отдай мне радость и покой, Отдай мне прежнего Гирея ... [Maria, you appeared before him ... Alas, since that time his soul Has clouded with criminal thoughts! [..............................................................] Leave Girei to me: he is mine; On me his kisses burn, He gave me terrible oaths, Long ago all his thoughts, all wishes Girei combined with mine; His treachery kills me ... I cry; you see, my knees

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Writing at Russia’s Border I now bend before you, I pray, I dare not blame you, Give me happiness and peace, Give me my former Girei ...] (4:140–1)

Zarema pleads with Maria to reject Girei, so that he will return to Zarema, and then threatens her: ‘I can use a dagger / I was born near the Caucasus’ (4:141). Maria disappears and Girei, as a result more bloodthirsty than ever, goes off on another round of attacks. The harem is forgotten, and it is revealed that Zarema was drowned by the harem guards on the same night that the Polish girl died. The khan then returns to the palace ‘Having ravaged by the fire of war / The countries near the Caucasus / And the peaceful villages of Russia’ (4:143). Girei erects a marble fountain from which constantly fall tear-like drops and that the people name ‘the fountain of tears’ (4:143). Thus the narrative returns full circle to the poem’s epitaph, written by the Persian poet Sa’di: ‘Many, just like myself, have visited this fountain; but some are already gone, others travel farther still’ (4:131). At this point the narrative abruptly shifts to focus on the narrator, who for the first time declares that he is from Russia, and who describes his visit to the now-ruined Bakhchisarai Palace. He visits the graveyard, ‘The final dwelling-place of sovereigns’ (4:144), and remarks on how dismal the ruins are. Suddenly, he sees a ghost, and wonders if it was Maria or Zarema. This reverie leads the narrator-traveller to ponder upon his own lost love, over whom he longs in exile. The narrative ends with a paean to the beauty of the Crimean landscape, to which the narrator is drawn as if to a lover. The final stanza is addressed to the reader not from the grounds of the ruined palace, but from Russia, whence the narrator hopes to return to the ‘enchanted land’ of the Crimea. How should one read the poem politically? Many scholars have remarked that the poem is a study of contrasts between women of two utterly different cultures, one European and one ‘Oriental,’ much as Byron gives his Conrad two loves in ‘The Corsair,’ the Greek Medora and the Turkish Gulnare. The Georgian Zarema is figured as the archetypally Oriental woman, dark-eyed, fiery, sexually experienced, and sexually jealous. And while the Polish Maria is figured as the archetypically ‘pure’ Western woman, virginal and averse to sexuality, the two are not necessarily polarized in the reader’s sympathies.12 Indeed, I would argue that their rival characterizations can be read as part of the two parallel filiations Pushkin draws in the poem, between Russians as

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Europeans and Russians as heirs to the Tatars. Maria, whose Catholic Christianity and Polish homeland ally her with Europe, contrasts with Zarema, whose passion for Girei, birth ‘near the Caucasus,’ and adoption of Islam align her with the Tatar Orient.13 Zarema’s murder of Maria further enhances her similarity to the sanguinary khans, but not before it has been established that Maria, though pious and pure, does not understand love (Zarema calls her a ‘cold beauty’ [4:141]), while Zarema’s recitations of her sorrow at losing Girei and pleas to Maria to reject him show that she is capable of real love, not merely blind passion. Even Zarema’s heartfelt remembrance of her native, though nearly forgotten, Christian religion is a factor in the reader’s sympathies. And while Maria is killed, the reader knows very well that she wanted to die and that her pure soul is assured a place in heaven. Zarema’s death by drowning, on the other hand, is horrifying retribution for her sin: ‘Whatever the guilt may have been, / The punishment was terrible!’ (4:143). The two women, though drawn as opposites, are nonetheless not mere caricatures; the reader’s sympathies do not fully gravitate to Maria. Both figures have literary links; Pushkin describes in the epilogue to ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ the ‘gibel’ Rossian / na lone mstitel’nykh gruzinok’ (the deaths of Russians / on the laps of treacherous Georgian girls) (4:113), while the Turkish Zuleika in ‘The Bride of Abydos’ (not to mention Giaffir, the ruler) suggests a similar name. There are certainly also many literary precedents for Maria, a name Pushkin used frequently in his works. This undecidability, as it were, between the two women leaves the second male figure of the poem, the poet-traveller, with the possibility of aligning himself with either of the women, or both at the same time. For it is the poet-traveller who narrates the poem, as the reader discovers, and his own attraction to the two women is no less evident than the khan’s.14 The harem women, too, are subject to his admiring and lascivious gaze: Раскинув легкие власы, Как идут пленницы младые Купаться в жаркие часы, И льются волны ключевые На их волшебные красы, [Having let loose the light tresses, Thus go the young captive maidens

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Writing at Russia’s Border To bathe in the hot hours, And the waves of the spring pour themselves On their enchanting beauties,] (4:133)

Nor is the poet’s attraction to the Crimean landscape, figured always as the feminine ‘Tavrida’ (rather than the masculine ‘Krym’) any less politically or poetically significant.15 The poet has his own harem, as it were, whose chief beauty/muse is the Tauride itself. This metaphorics of affiliation or attraction, given the politically marked nationalities of the figures and landscapes in question, can be seen as politically encoding the interpretation of the poem. Pushkin’s Poetic Alignments To enact his construction of a poetic linkage between Russian and ‘Oriental’ poetry of great venerability and distinction, Pushkin starts his poem with an epigraph from the Bustan (garden or orchard) of the famous thirteenth-century Persian poet Sa’di: Многие, так же как и я, посещали Сей фонтан; но иных уже нет, другие Странствуют далече. [Many, just like myself, have visited this fountain; but some are already gone, others travel farther still.]16 (4:131)

By using this epigraph, Pushkin self-consciously places his poem within a long and venerable line of ‘Oriental’ poetry, or to be precise, love poetry of the Arabic language or Arabic-inspired tradition.17 In the double-voiced epigraph, spoken by both Sa’di and Pushkin, the two poets become, for a moment, one and the same. Each writes, centuries apart, about the same subject: a much-visited fountain, which outlasts its visitors, including the poets who sing of it. We know, historically speaking, that Sa’di’s fountain was not that of Bakhchisarai, but by itself the epigraph, with its dual attribution, implies that the speaker of the poem visits the same fountain that Saadi did. Moreover, the epigraph, metonymically linked to the title of the narrative poem, ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ indeed arranged physically on the page in such close proximity to that title, could hardly be more strongly linked to the Bakhchisarai fountain.

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Some scholars believe that Pushkin took the epigraph quotation from a French translation of Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh.18 In Moore’s original text the quotation appears in the context of Lalla Rookh and Feramorz resting along their journey (Lalla Rookh is to be the bride of a prince, who is disguised as the poet, who wishes to win her love through his poetry along the way), and after defending the worth of poetry: ‘It was while they [Lalla Rookh and Feramorz, the poet] rested during the heat of noon near a fountain, on which some hand had rudely traced those well-known words from the Garden of Sadi – “Many, like me, have viewed this fountain, but they are gone, and their eyes are closed forever!” – that she took occasion, from the melancholy beauty of this passage, to dwell upon the charms of poetry in general.19 Lalla Rookh shows her affinity for poetry, while the citation is both apropos of the fountain, which refreshes travellers, and, of course, the longevity of poetry. The French translation from which it is suggested that Pushkin took his version of Moore’s quotation of Sa’di is somewhat different: the French translator substitutes ‘they are far away’ (‘ils sont loin’) for ‘they are gone’: ‘Plusieurs ont vu, comme moi, cette fontaine: mais ils sont loin et leurs yeux sont fermés à jamais’ (‘Many have seen, like me, this fountain: but they are far away and their eyes are closed forever’).20 Pushkin’s own version of the epigraph underscores his emphasis on travel and on the poet as a traveller with a difference, one who not only visits the fountain but also, in some sense, immortalizes it. Pushkin alters the emphasis of the French version of the quotation: he writes ‘visited’ rather than ‘viewed,’ and further underscores the notion of journeying by speaking of those who ‘travel still farther’ rather than those whose eyes are ‘closed forever.’ While ‘travelling farther’ retains the possibility of being a euphemism for death, Pushkin’s quotation is less straightforward about that possibility. Interestingly, when Pushkin uses a variation of the same quotation in the fifty-first stanza of the eighth chapter of Eugene Onegin – ‘Иных уж нет, а те далече / Как Саади некогда сказал’ (Some are no longer, and the others are far away / As Sa’di once said) – there is no ambiguity whatsoever. Whether the friends are dead or in exile, the meaning is ominous. Moreover, the quotation, rather than forming an epigraph as it does in ‘Bakhchisarai,’ appears in the final, rather melancholy stanza of the novel in verse. Though the two quotations are used in rather different ways, when Pushkin alludes to Sa’di in Eugene Onegin, his allusion is rich with texture: he refers to his former narrative poem, written before the Decembrist uprising; to the ‘fountain of tears’; to the Rus-

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sian south, where so many Decembrists were exiled; and to the notion of poets’ work outlasting any physical monument. To most Russians, a more immortal monument than Eugene Onegin can hardly be imagined. A second important effect of the quotation from Sa’di is to lend an aura of venerability to ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai.’ Though the plot of ‘Bakhchisarai’ takes place sometime in the fifteenth century, when the khanate ruled the Crimea, the Sa’di quotation has the effect of drawing the events back to an even earlier time. The Romantic poet, already able to use history freely, can also ally himself with poets of other traditions. Sa’di, who himself was exiled and travelled widely, is evoked by the exotic locale, but also by his fellowship as a poet and perhaps even as a writer who cautioned the powerful about the futility and brevity of the power of kings.21 In a sense, Pushkin avails himself of the opportunity to take his place, at least in terms of inspiration, at the contemporary end of a long genealogy of Oriental poets. If, however, Pushkin did not in fact take his quotation from Moore, but directly from Sa’di’s own Bustan, a translation of which appeared in 1796, then this would only heighten the connections the Russian poet draws between himself and the Persian poet in ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai.’22 The relevant stanza from Sa’di, which appears towards the end of the first tale of Bustan, entitled ‘A darvish becomes vizier and is vilified by his predecessor,’ is as follows: When territory can be taken by gentle means, Shed not blood by your strivings in conflict: By your manhood! All earth’s rule Is not worth one blood-drop’s trickling to earth! I’ve heard that Jamshid of blessed constitution Wrote thus upon a stone above a wellspring: ‘At this spring many like us have drawn breath, Then gone on as they closed their eyes: We’ve taken the world in manliness and force, But carried it not with us into the tomb!’23

Sa’di’s stanzas are part of a brief tale warning that the king’s subjects should be treated well, as they are the king’s treasure, like the fruit tree of his orchard, which must be treated well in order to give fruit. Sa’di critiques unnecessary suffering for short-lived earthly might. Moore and Sa’di make an important point in common: power does not last

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beyond life, but poetry does. Moore’s entire Lalla Rookh tells the story of an Indian princess who is to wed a rich and powerful prince; on the long journey to her wedding she is accompanied by the poet Feramorz, whose poetry charms her into falling in love with him. She is relieved to discover, at the end of her journey, that her betrothed was really Feramorz all along, a poet as well as a prince, and a man who wanted to gain his bride’s love in the guise of a poor and humble poet. The version of Sa’di’s quote used in Moore, however, removes it from its political context. Sa’di’s phrase, itself a quotation, is aimed at the conduct of kings, while Moore’s phrasing tames its political implications. A third important aspect of Pushkin’s version of the Sa’di quotation is its own emphasis on the passage of time: Sa’di places himself (in Pushkin’s version) as a visitor who comes after many other visitors, visitors who are long dead. Thus he emphasizes that the fountain itself remains, while its visitors pass away. This, of course, is also Pushkin’s point in the poem: the fountain, the monument to Maria, remains, whereas the khan and his retinue have passed on, and the poet himself is also destined to pass on even as the fountain remains. But, more importantly, the fountain stands as a substitute for the poetic work: in the end, not the fountain but the poem about the fountain will persevere, and, perhaps, even the name of the poet. The true affiliation between the Russian poet and the Persian poet consists in their joint appreciation of the passage of time and the strength of poetry (not military might) as a bulwark against the onslaught of change. And Sa’di’s poetry, already six hundred years old by Pushkin’s era, was proof that poetry could withstand time. Not insignificant in light of Pushkin’s devising of this poetic lineage with Sa’di is that ‘Bakhchisarai’ follows an old formula of Arabic poetry, the qasida, which is told from the point of view of a poet on a journey who stops at deserted places, which remind him of love and the sorrow of parting, and include many descriptions of nature, of the poet riding on his horse or camel, and of gallantry.24 Pushkin clearly utilizes the notion of stopping at ruins, the contemplation of which brings about remembrances of a past passion (in this case, both his own and that of Girei and Zarema). Though they appear briefly, the ‘natural descriptions’ are important and make up some of the most lyrical parts of the poem, while the poem ends with an image of the poet riding his ‘accustomed horse.’ Whatever differences exist between Pushkin’s poem and the ancient pre-Islamic Arabic model, whatever filters (Byronic or otherwise) the model may have been passed through, Push-

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kin follows an example that puts him squarely in the footsteps of the great poets of the Arabic tradition. In this poetic form, the concatenation of motifs of travel, poetry, and, by implication, warfare reinforce the linkages that Pushkin makes throughout the poem, linkages that strengthen the bond between the Russian poet and his illustrious Persian forebear, and between Russian and Oriental poetry. Sa’di spent many years travelling, in a kind of exile, which may have been another reason why Pushkin chose to create the linkage with his work – to emphasize their common status as exiles.25 He certainly felt a strong affinity to Ovid, the exiled Roman poet. By demonstrating his affinity to Sa’di, Pushkin attempts to bridge an otherwise unbridgeable distance. By means of the epigraph, Pushkin declares that he, a Russian poet, will tell a tale that in some sense would properly have been told by an ‘Oriental’ poet such as Sa’di. The khan’s story is told by a Russian poet, in the Russian language, and Pushkin, a Russian poet, puts himself in the position of being worthy to follow in Sa’di’s footsteps.26 Pushkin’s Geographic Alignments As Iurii Lotman has pointed out, in ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ Pushkin establishes the three ‘corners of the world’ as the Crimea/Caucasus (south), Poland (west), and Russia (north).27 This geographic alignment, along with that of Russia and the Caucasus in ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ assured the Crimea/Caucasus region its place as Russia’s Orient. Historically and geographically, there has been a strong, continuous connection between Russia and her Orient.28 As discussed above, Russians and their neighbours to the south and east have historically interacted and have consistently been within reach of each other, and Karamzin had made those links explicit to the reading public. While European countries were separated by large bodies of water and great distances from their Orient and their colonies, Russia was close by, contiguous with her Orient, sometimes in fact indistinguishable from it. There exists a long genealogy of the attempts to differentiate ‘Europe’ from ‘Asia’; many different borders have been put forward and adopted or rejected at different times.29 Geographically speaking, ‘Europe’ and ‘Asia’ are of course not separate; only history and convention have conferred their separate status upon them, and even then they have not been continuously considered separate entities.30 The fragility and ambiguity of this differentiation between Asia and Europe was empha-

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sized by Russian writers; the artificially constructed nature of the border has long been an important consideration for them. The flexibility of Russia’s borders, her ability to be a nation either close to or far away from the ‘Orient,’ is of great poetic advantage. This flexibility was demonstrated by Pushkin, as he altered Russia’s proximity to the Caucasus/Crimea from one poem to the next. In ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ Russia seemed to be a distant place, removed from the scene of action. To the eponymous Russian captive, his native land seemed far away, metonymized by a gloomy path leading into the distance. In ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ Russia also seemed to offer to both the Russian and his Circassian lover a potential safe haven. Although the Circassian girl did not choose to run away with the Russian captive, the possibility of their setting up household in faraway Russia was always implied. In the poem, danger existed only in the Caucasus. Russia itself was always removed, safe from conflict, indeed, guaranteed eventual hegemony over the Caucasus. In ‘The Gypsies,’ Aleko’s attempt to escape the strictures of restrictive, Europeanized Russian upper-crust society fails both as a result of his inability to drop his enculturated sense of morality and the futility of a life outside the reach of the Russian state, as we will see later in the chapter. In ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ midway, perhaps, between the two main southern poems that came before and after it, Pushkin uses the complex time frames in the narrative poem to show a Russia both vulnerable to the Tatars (in the time of the khanate) and, at the same time, a present-day conqueror of the Crimea. Because of the way in which the narrator moves back and forth in this many-faceted time frame, for a long stretch of the narrative poem it is as if Russia were holding both positions at once: that of conqueror and that of country in danger of being conquered.31 Certainly Pushkin’s contemporary reader would be well informed as to the status of Russia’s colonial holdings; why, then, does Pushkin emphasize Russia’s past (though ‘present,’ in terms of much of the poem) vulnerability to the Tatar khanate? In much of the poem, Russia is figured entirely differently from the way it was in ‘The Captive of the Caucasus.’ Russia is seen as vulnerable to the Tatars, not a refuge but a land with decidedly permeable borders. Indeed, ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ reminds the reader that Girei actually did attack Russia: Что движет гордою душою? Какою мыслью занят он?

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Some commentators have said that Pushkin, in these lines, merely conflates various episodes in history, referring to the time when the khans were embattled with the Genoese and a later time when one khan reached into Russia as far as Tula.32 But the threat to Russia was evident. As one source notes: ‘Never had the Lithuanian state suffered such horrible blows as from Mengli Girei, in whose day the Crimean Horde received that robber character which for three hundred years made it famous. It tormented specially Russian regions connected with Poland, by seizing great numbers of captives, who, forced into slavery, were taken as living wares to the markets of the Osmanli.’33 Other, less melodramatically inclined historians also attest to the frequent slave raids that were mounted into Russia and Poland; in fact, the Muscovite government had to spend heavily in order to ransom victims.34 Pushkin emphasizes what a threat the Tatars posed to both Russia and Western countries. Had matters gone differently, they might have ruled the known world. For the purposes of indicating how much at risk the West might have been (and thus, in the time frame of the poem itself, might still be), it is not surprising that Pushkin takes special care to emphasize over and over how treacherous and sanguinary the khan is: Дворец угрюмый опустел; Его Гирей опять оставил; С толпой татар в чужой предел Он злой набег опять направил; Он снова в бурях боевых Несется мрачный, кровожадный. [The dismal palace is empty; Girei has left it again; With a crowd of Tatars to a foreign land He has once again sent a wicked raid; Once again into battle storms He rushes, gloomy, bloodthirsty.] (4:142)

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In the poem, the most detailed description of a Tatar attack is that of the raid on Poland that results in Maria’s capture and her father’s death. The attack is portrayed as a vicious, even animalistic event, a terrible incursion into an idyllically innocent Arcadia. The description establishes, for the purposes of the poem, a very strong dividing line between the peaceful, productive West and the warlike, ruinous Orient. Poland is unwary, undeserving; the Tatars merciless: Тьмы татар На Польшу хлынули рекою: Не столь ужасной быстротою По жатве стелется пожар. Обезображенный войною, Цветущий край осиротел; Исчезли мирные забавы; Уныли села и дубравы, И пышный замок опустел. [Hosts of Tatars Gushed in a river to Poland: Not even with such terrible swiftness Does a fire spread along the harvest. Disfigured by war, The blossoming land was orphaned; The peaceful amusements disappeared; The villages and groves are despondent, And the splendid castle is empty.] (4:136)

A moral judgment is clearly indicated in the above lines, since the Tatar attack is said to be worse than a fire destroying a harvest; it ‘disfigures’ and ‘orphans’ the land. Just as Girei takes captive an innocent, virginal girl, Maria, so the Tatars rape the virginal Polish countryside, disfiguring it and destroying its innocence. A superior land has been ruined, destroyed by an ‘uncivilized’ force. There can be no question that the Tatar threat to the Polish West is also a threat to Russia, and that Russia is essentially in the same relation to the Tatars as is Poland. Pushkin’s lines, Опустошив огнем войны Кавказу близкие страны И села мирные России, В Тавриду возвратился хан

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are very similar to the lines about Poland. In particular, the words mirnye (peaceful) and sela (villages) are repeated, which emphasizes the tranquillity and the peaceful pastoral quality of the lands under attack by the Tatars. Within the poetically established world of the first part of the poem, Russia is vulnerable, as those who had read their Karamzin knew Russia once had been. This evocation of Russia’s wholly pastoral past thus obscures her recent imperial might and proffers a legitimate reason for Russia to be in control of the south. Another way in which Russia is accorded the status of ‘subject’ and ‘civilized nation’ as against the objectified and ‘uncivilized’ status of the Crimean Orient is by means of the feminized and sexualized descriptions of the Tauride landscape. That the Orient does not necessarily have to be objectified as ‘feminine’ is abundantly clear from ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ in which the landscape takes on distinctly ‘masculine’ attributes, but the feminization of the Crimea serves a distinct purpose: it strengthens the dominance of the masculine Russian narrative presence and identifies the Crimea as a place that has already been ‘conquered,’ in both the political and sexual meanings of the term. Interestingly, however, much as the harem is both a site of feminine passivity, luxury, and sensual excess (or threatened by such excess), but also a locus of male despotism and control, the feminized Tauride in the poem is also the site of a very powerful, clearly masculine khanate. Both the harem and the khanate, however, are breached by the visiting poet-narrator, who must reconstruct them to memorialize them. To read ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ after ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ is to be presented with a continuing narrative of Russian conquest in the Caucasus and the Crimea. While ‘Captive’ places events in the present and proffers a rather formidable landscape and a challenging foe, all of which requires a ringing call to arms in its epilogue, ‘Bakhchisarai’ is a completely different narrative poem in terms of immediate Russian military concerns. While the Tatars are especially bloodthirsty, the action takes place in the distant past and the Tatars’ power mainly threatens Poland. In part for that reason, the landscape of ‘Bakhchisarai’ is a completely different one from that of ‘Captive’: warm and welcoming, rather than menacing and overwhelming.

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It is especially interesting that although Khan Girei takes a far more hostile and aggressive towards Russia than do Pushkin’s Circassians of the earlier narrative poem, the epilogue of the earlier narrative poem displays an uncompromisingly violent attitude towards the Caucasian peoples, while the ending of ‘Bakhchisarai’ is emphatically non-military. The conquest it hints at is sexual, not martial. The rocky, ‘manly’ landscape that so closely mirrored both captive and Circassians in the earlier poem has no trace in ‘Bakhchisarai’: in accordance with the tradition of Pushkin’s Crimean poetry, the Tauride landscape carries connotations of love, and is characterized as ‘feminine,’ yielding.35 The harsh, snowy Caucasian crags harboured free, if doomed people. Crimea’s warmth is deceptive – it promises luxury and comfort, but in reality harbours only captives. Only the narrator is free to come and go as he chooses, a denizen, we recall, of the harsh northern climate. The Narrated Landscape It is most important, in terms of defining the lines of affiliation drawn in the poem between Europe, the Crimea, and Russia, to determine where the narrating poet-traveller figure locates himself in the poem. How does the narrator situate himself vis-à-vis the characters, the landscape, and the overall structure of the narrative poem? As the only overtly Russian presence in the poem, his stances must be examined. In ‘Bakhchisarai,’ it is significant that descriptions of the landscape appear only when the narrator chooses to describe it. The lines ‘Как сладко льются их часы / Для обожателей Пророка! (How sweetly do their hours flow / For the adorers of the Prophet!) (4:138) reveal most clearly that we are not to understand the narrator as an ‘adorer of the Prophet’; when he wishes, he can stand outside the narrative. It is in the first landscape description of the poem that we find the first overt mention of the narrator’s ‘I’: Настала ночь; покрылась тенью Тавриды сладостной поля; Вдали, под тихой лавров сенью Я слышу пенье соловья. [Night fell; with shadow were covered The fields of the delightful Tauride;

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It is notable that the narrator here speaks in the present tense, recalling himself in the present rather than in the distant past. From the location of this passage in the poem (between the description of Maria in her quarters in the harem and the eunuch’s patrolling of the palace), it should be contemporaneous with the distant past; however, the narrator’s interpolation of his own observations creates a doubling effect, both bringing himself into the past, into the plot of the poem, and bringing the action of the poem into the ‘present,’ as it were. The second overt mention of the narrating ‘I’ comes in the last section of the poem, which is given over explicitly to the traveller-poet’s point of view: Покинув север наконец Пиры надолго забывая, Я посетил Бахчисарая В забвенье дремлющий дворец. [Having left the north at last, Forgetting for a long time the feasts, I visited the dozing, forgotten, Palace of Bakhchisarai.] (4:143–4)

By using the word ‘north,’36 the narrator for the first time explicitly reveals the fact that he is from Russia. In these lines, the narrator, far from being involved, seems to view the Tauride only well after the events of the story. A transition between the two levels of the poem takes place. The narrator shifts from the generally present-tense narration of the Maria/Zarema story, in which he has a nearly omniscient view of the action and at moments takes part in the experience of the landscape, to a rather different narrative viewpoint: that of a Russian traveller visiting Bakhchisarai, narrating for the most part in the past tense, and viewing the palace as it stands in ruins hundreds of years after the story of Maria and Zarema. In fact, this narratival shift occurs even earlier, during the description of the marble fountain Girei erected to Maria: В Тавриду возвратился хан И в память горестной Марии

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Воздвигнул мраморный фонтан, В углу дворца уединенный. Над ним крестом осенена Магометанская луна (Символ, конечно, дерзновенный, Незнанья жалкая вина). Есть надпись: едкими годами Еще не сгладилась она. За чуджыми ее чертами Журчит во мраморе вода И каплет хладными слезами, Не умолкая никогда. Так плачет мать во дни печали О сыне, падшем на войне. Младые девы в той стране Преданье старины узнали, И мрачный памятник оне Фонтаном слез именовали. [The khan returned to the Tauride And in memory of mournful Maria Erected a marble fountain, By itself in the corner of the palace. Overshadowing it as a cross Was the Mohammedan moon (A daring symbol, of course, The unfortunate fault of ignorance). There is an inscription: with the caustic years It has not yet been smoothed away. Behind its foreign lines The water babbles in the marble And drops in cold tears, Never ever falling silent. Thus a mother weeps in days of sorrow Over her son, fallen in war. Young maidens in that land Found out about the legends of old, And they named the gloomy monument ‘The fountain of tears.’] (4:143)

In the quotation above, rather than being a participating figure in the

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narration, the narrator stands apart from what he speaks about. This is in direct contrast to the earlier, ‘loving’ description of the nightingale’s song and the moon’s radiance, in which the narrator viewed events from close at hand, and from a more sympathetic point of view. But here, the narrator distances himself, speaking of the ‘fault of ignorance’ of using an Islamic emblem to commemorate the Christian Maria, and referring to the ‘foreign lines’ of the inscription.37 The mention of the ‘caustic years’ and ‘legends of old’ also points to the fact that the narrator now stands many years distant from his earlier subject, as well. The later time and emotionally removed perspective of the narrator are made quite clear in the stanza. The narrator then launches into a description of the long-empty palace: Я посетил Бахчисарая В забвенье дремлющий дворец. Среди безмолвных переходов Бродил я там, где, бич народов, Татарин буйный пировал И после ужасов набега В роскошной лени утопал. [I visited the dozing, forgotten, Palace of Bakhchisarai. Among the wordless passages I wandered to where that scourge of peoples, The violent Tatar, feasted And after the horrors of the raid Wallowed in luxurious ease.] (4:144)

The phrase ‘bich narodov’ (scourge of peoples) is similar to ‘bich Kavkaza’ (scourge of the Caucasus) in the epilogue to ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ which described the Russian hero, Kotliarevskii. Here, however, the ‘scourge of peoples’ is cast in a negative light and refers to the khan. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the quotation above is its revelation that, among the ruins, the Russian poet-traveller is in control. He ‘wanders’ where the ‘scourge of peoples’ once reigned. In the guise of touristinvader, he reveals that he has all along been the mouthpiece of the ‘Oriental tale,’ and that he has bestowed life on what is in actuality a dead palace. He has provided the voice for what are now revealed to be ‘wordless passages.’ Khan Girei now no longer has a name, but has

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become, from the narrator’s now-distant perspective, ‘that scourge of peoples, the violent Tatar.’ This is a common motif in Byron’s ‘Turkish tales’ and in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Visiting the ruins, looking at them, the poet calls forth the history of the place, very often lamenting the loss of Greece’s greatness, but often evoking battles as well. Writing at the foot of Parnassus, Byron declares: Shall I unmov’d behold the hallow’d scene, Which others rave of, though they know it not? Though here no more Apollo haunts his grot, And thou, the Muses’ seat, art now their grave, Some gentle Spirit still pervades the spot, Sighs in the gale, keeps silence in the cave, And glides with glassy foot o’er yon melodious Wave. (Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 1, ll. 632–8)38

Stephen Cheeke comments: Ostensibly the stanzas record the commonplace of not knowing how to respond to the mountain sacred to Apollo and the muses, a place overburdened with meaning. They display an awareness that the significance of this place dwarfs the poet and cancels out the possibility of a spontaneous, original or entirely authentic response [...] Parnassus, ‘classic ground and consecrated most’ (II.413), produces anxiety in an English poet going over such ground again, an anxiety which is neither balked nor resolved but is recorded as a fracture between the classic past and the humbled present [...] while the place records difference and decline, it also, faintly, records continuity.’39

Cheeke notes also that ‘the tyranny of imperialist power might be suspended for a moment by meditating upon the physical landscape of Greece and its historical associates, and by recognizing an enduring spirit-of-place there.’40 Pushkin’s differences with Byron are of great interest here. While the notion of a ruined place emphasizing both the break with the past and its continuity provides great insight into Pushkin’s operation in ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ Pushkin’s emphasis is not in suspending imperialist power (Russian imperialist power, anyway), but in affirming it, and with it, the poet’s power, which he likewise seems to affirm rather than to doubt, as Byron does. Similarly to Byron, the Pushkinian narrator refrains from destroying

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the magic completely; he allows some of the former glory of the palace to remain: Еще поныне дышит нега В пустых покоях и садах; Играют воды, рдеют розы, И вьются виноградны лозы, И злато блещет на стенах. Even now the sweet bliss breathes [In the empty rooms and gardens; The waters play, the roses glow, And the grapevines climb, And gold glitters on the walls.] (4:144)

But such life as still remains in the palace relies greatly on the imagination of the narrator, and the narration quickly returns to the subject of the decrepitude and deadness of the palace: Я видел ветхие решетки, За коими, в своей весне, Янтарны разбирая четки, Вздыхали жены в тишине. Я видел ханское кладбище, Владык последнее жилище. Сии надгробные столбы, Венчанны мраморной чалмою, Казалось мне, завет судьбы Гласили внятною молвою. [I saw the tumbledown gratings, Behind which, in their spring, Counting amber beads, The wives sighed in quiet. I saw the khans’ graveyard, The final dwelling place of sovereigns. These grave pillars, Crowned with marble turbans, It seemed to me, spoke a legacy Of fate with a distinct prayer.] (4:144)

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Fittingly, the narrator ends his description with a Sa’di-like description of the graveyard, ‘the final dwelling place of sovereigns.’ The line between earthly power and poetic power is being drawn; without the poem itself, the graveyard would not even ‘exist.’ The narrator completes the thought, as it were, by remarking that everything is now completely different from what it was during the pinnacle of the khanate rule: Где скрылись ханы? Где гарем? Кругом все тихо, все уныло, Все изменилось ... [Where were the khans hiding? Where is the harem? All around everything is quiet, everything is dismal, Everything has changed ...] (4:144)

The implication, not difficult to understand, is that while the power of the khans is long gone, that of Russia has come into its own. Pushkin’s introduction of the traveller-poet at the end of his poem seems at first to emphasize the great distance between the time of Khan Girei and the time of the Russian poet’s visit to his now-ruined palace. The vast power of the khan seems also to have been far superior to the meagre power of the poet. But it soon becomes clear that the mighty khan owes his memorialization to the poet, who now alone has the power to evoke him. As Sa’di’s lines intimate, power and glory cannot pass with one into the grave, but poetry can survive. Because of the geographic proximity and involvement in history of Tatars with Russians, the fact that only ruins and graveyards remain of the former ‘scourge of peoples’ has a significance for the Russian reader that, for example, Byron’s mentions of turbanned headstones did not have for the British reader: A turban carved in coarsest stone, A pillar with rank weeds o’ergrown, Whereon can now be scarcely read The Koran verse that mourns the dead, Point out the spot where Hassan fell A victim in that lonely dell.41

For Byron, the headstone and almost illegible inscription indicate the

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way in which the story barely has been rescued from oblivion; as the tale ends, this is emphasized again: He pass’d – nor of his name and race Hath left a token or a trace, Save what the father must not say Who shrived him on his dying day: This broken tale was all we knew Of her he loved, or him he slew.42

Byron’s tale does not necessarily impinge on the daily life of the reader; in fact, its strength may well lie in the fact that it does not. The poet relies on his powers as an interpreter and teller of exotic and otherwise ‘lost’ or incomprehensible stories. He holds sway with his privileged knowledge and expertise. Indeed, although Hassan’s grave is marked and the giaour’s is not, it is the giaour’s tale that takes precedence and gives meaning to Hassan’s otherwise forgotten grave. Pushkin, on the other hand, utilizes these same tropes of the barely readable inscription, the old graveyard with headstones, missing information and ‘pastness,’ but these tropes have become symbols for an entire past culture that formerly threatened Russia, an extinguished threat. The fact that the khanate existed and was powerful is of direct importance and relevance to the Russian reader; the narrator, a Russian poet, visits the ruined palace and tells his tale precisely because the khanate no longer exists. As Somov had hinted, the poet has become the surrogate conqueror, the ruler of the empire of the imagination.43 Pushkin’s presence, his poem, establishes to the Russian reader the supremacy of the Russian state. If Pushkin’s ‘Captive of the Caucasus’ had assured the reader of Russia’s future victory in the Caucasus, his ‘Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ emphasized Russia’s already realized conquest of the Crimea. At this point in the poem, the narrator turns to his own thoughts about his far-off love, which are suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a ghost, which in turn entails a return to the story that has already been told. Thus a sudden conflation occurs, of the narrator’s now distanced time frame with the immediacy of the earlier Maria/ Zarema story. Given the common contemporary interpretation that the lyrical ‘I’ of a poem could be read as the ‘I’ of the author of a text, and that Pushkin apparently did indeed wish the poem to be read as autobiographical (if only in order to garner more readership),44 the contem-

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porary reader could interpret the narrator’s sudden vision of the flying shadow as a conflation of ‘art’ and ‘life’: the narrator, that is, the poet Pushkin, encounters in ‘real life’ a character he has created: И по дворцу летучей тенью Мелькала дева предо мной! .................................................... Чью тень, о други, видел я? Скажите мне: чей образ нежный Тогда преследовал меня, Неотразимый, неизбежный? Марии ль чистая душа Являлась мне, или Зарема Носилась, ревностью дыша, Средь опустелого гарема? [And along the palace with a flying shadow Flashed a maiden before me! .......................................................................... Whose shade, oh friends, did I see? Tell me: whose tender image Then followed me, Irresistible, inescapable? Was it the pure soul of Maria That appeared to me, or did Zarema Rush about, breathing with jealousy, Amidst the empty harem.] (4:144)

At this moment of seeing the ghost, then, the narrative levels combine: past and present, history and fiction, art and life. The past of the Maria/ Zarema story and the present of the ‘contemporary’ narration combine; the fictional Zarema and Maria ‘come to life’ in what is now portrayed as ‘truthful,’ ‘autobiographical’ narration, and ‘art’ in the guise of the poet’s characters meets Pushkin, the poet, in ‘life.’ The effective insertion of the Russian poet into the place formerly occupied by Khan Girei – ruler of the Tauride, pivotal male figure for Maria and Zarema – establishes the Russian poet as a successor to the khan. It is the Russian poet, not an heir of the Tatars, who is privileged to see the ghost. In this way the reader of Pushkin’s poem becomes the appropriate interpreter of the story of Maria and Zarema, of the pathos of murderer and murdered.

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The vision of the mysterious shade leads immediately to the narrator’s own, similar vision of a living woman over whom he ‘longs in exile’: Я помню столь же милый взгляд И красоту еще земную, Все думы сердца к ней летят, Об ней в изгнании тоску ... [I remember such a sweet glance And beauty still earthly, All the thoughts of my heart fly to her, Over her I long in exile ...] (4:145)

The narrator thus places himself in the role of Girei, who longed for Maria, although she would not have him. The narrator’s longing is similarly unrequited: Безумец! полно! перестань, Не ожидай тоски напрасной, Мятежным снам любви несчастной Заплачена тобою дань – Опомнись, долго ль, узник томный, Тебе оковы лобызать И в свете лирою нескромной Свое безумство разглашать? [Madman! enough! Stop it, Do not revive longing in vain, You have paid your tribute To troubled dreams of unhappy love – Come to your senses; will it be for long, languorous prisoner, That you will kiss your fetters And in the world with immodest lyre Trumpet your madness?] (4:145)

The poet’s ‘lyre,’ his poem, is a counterpart to Girei’s ‘fountain of tears’ – a monument erected to unrequited love. The poet declares himself to be a prisoner who kisses his fetters, glad to be captive to his love. Here again is an implied comparison to Girei, who loved two captives,

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Zarema and Maria, but who was himself captive to unrequited love. Pushkin’s use of the ghost and of references to the narrator’s own ‘lost love’ construct for ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ a quality of immediacy and an implication of continuation. Pushkin was quite successful in this regard, since the references to the narrator’s longed-for love proved so tantalizing to Russian readers and critics of the poem that they regarded her as the addressee of the poem and as a real woman, and have argued in endless detail about who that woman actually was.45 The narrator of the poem thus in a very real way ‘succeeds’ Girei to the position of the scorned lover; the speaker succeeds Girei both in luckless love and in a position of power over what he surveys (and narrates). The final move the narrator makes is to shift the reader’s attention away from the two stories, that is, the story of the khan and his two captives, and the story of the traveler-poet’s own ‘lost love,’ to the viewpoint of a narrator who, unlike the earlier one, is now away from the Tauride, presumably in Russia, and is longing to return. In this final, crowning stanza of the narrative poem, the poet’s true love is revealed to be not his faraway mistress, but the Tauride itself. The final stanza seems to stand by itself, as the poet emphasizes the revivifying and Elysian aspects of the Tauride scenery, and enters a new level of narration, from a new vantage point distant from the Tauride. The landscape of this stanza is, as some critics have also pointed out, the ultimate seductress of the story,46 but it is a different kind of seductress than the mournful, unwilling Maria or the vengeful Zarema: it is both willing and also under the control of the traveller-poet, an ideal combination of Maria and Zarema: Поклонник муз, поклонник мира, Забыв и славу и любовь, О, скоро вас увижу вновь, Брега веселые Салгира! Приду на склон приморских гор, Воспоминаний тайных полный, И вновь таврические волны Обрадуют мой жадный взор. Болшебный край, очей отрада! Все живо там; холмы, леса, Янтарь и яхонт винограда, Долин приютная краса, И струй и тополей прохлада –

102 Writing at Russia’s Border Все чувство путника манит, Когда, в час утра безмятежный, В горах, дорогою прибрежной, Привычный конь его бежит И зеленеющая влага Пред ним и блещет, и шумит Вокруг утесов Аю-дага ... [Worshipper of the muses, worshipper of the world, Having forgotten both glory and love, O, soon I will see you anew, Merry banks of Salgir! I will come to the slope of the seaside mountains, Full of secret memories, And anew the Tauride waves Will gladden my greedy gaze. Enchanted land, a comfort to the eyes! Everything is alive there: hills, woods, The amber and ruby of grapes, The sheltering beauty of the valleys, And the cool of streams and poplars – All feeling beckons to the traveller, When, in the serene hour of morning, In the mountains, along a coastal road, His accustomed horse rushes And the greening moisture Glitters and murmurs before him Around the crags of Aiu-dag ...] (4:145)

The landscape’s charms are the only ones that do not fade; the poettraveller’s fascination with them is the only one which does not diminish. This is the love story that has actually given rise to the others. The amber of beads gives way to the amber of grapes. Yet at the same time, the balance of power has not altered. The landscape is there for the pleasure of the male traveller, to ‘gladden [his] greedy gaze,’ to shelter him, cool him, beckon to him. He holds the landscape as securely in his power as the khan held Zarema or Maria; a female prisoner, the Crimean Tauride held captive to a Russian poet. The poet, as conqueror, secure in his dominance, is both seduced and renewed by the feminized landscape, in control of it and yet dependent

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upon it for inspiration. Interestingly, the poet’s relationship to the landscape is left as something that will continue into the future, even as the poem itself trails off into an ellipsis. Russia’s relationship to the Crimea is also in an ongoing state, Pushkin seems to be declaring. Its future has yet to be decided. Yet one might also interpret this stance as an illusion of eternal recurrence, as the many returns, repeats, revisits, recyclings all lead to one inexorable conclusion: the poet has become sovereign of all he surveys. Powerful as the khanate once was, now only art can create the illusion of the khans’ former power. As real as that power was, it is now possible only in poetry – indeed, in the poetry of the conquerors. Much as there is an emphasis on returns – as the travellers visit the fountain and the palace of Bakhchisarai, Girei returns to the harem and then to war, the ghost of Maria or Zarema returns to the palace, and the poetlover to the Crimea – these returns are staged by the conquering poet, who makes of them his poetry. Indeed, in the final stanza the poet reveals that he does not even have to be in the Crimea in order to evoke it. While ‘Captive’ strongly associated Russians with Europeans and northerners, making Russia a supposedly ‘civilized’ intruder into ‘uncivilized’ space, in ‘Bakhchisarai’ Russians are allied with Poles as the Tatars’ potential victims. But at the same time, the poem also aligns the Russians with the Tatars, as well as with the whole Arabic/Oriental strain of poets and warriors, presenting the Russians as the inevitable and proper heirs of the Tatars in both military might and poetry. While the Tatars were speakers of a Turkic language, whereas Sa’di represents Arabia and Persia, their common link is the Islamic religion, the use of the Arabic script, and of course the common proximity to the Crimea. Beginning with the epigraph and ending with the poet’s rejuvenation by the landscape of the Crimea, Pushkin indicates that Russians are worthy enough poets to take on the mantle of Sa’di, and that they are the rightful military successors to the khans. Russians, the poem indicates, are European, but they have absorbed the strength and poetic prowess of the Orient, putting them in an enviable position of superiority over both East and West. And the Crimean landscape, with all of its powers and delights, now exists only for the purposes of Russian poetry. ‘The Gypsies’ Pushkin’s last ‘Byronic’ poem, by general critical agreement, was ‘The Gypsies,’ written mostly in Odessa in conjunction with chapter 3 of

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Eugene Onegin. Many commentators have pointed out that both Onegin and Aleko can be understood as connected to Pushkin’s captive of ‘Kavkazskii plennik’;47 Stephanie Sandler sees ‘The Gypsies’ as Pushkin’s acknowledgment that exile has become just one more episode in the poet’s life, a recognition that the space of exile is not so dissimilar from the space of home.48 As Tomashevskii points out, the vocabulary of the earlier southern poems is there – nega (bliss), len′ (indolence), and similar terms – but it is interspersed with more colloquial vocabulary and has a different flavour than the earlier southern poems.49 A major section of the poem retells the story of Ovid, from the point of view of the gypsies, to whom his distress at being cut off from a particular place was not comprehensible; to them, there could no ‘centre’ except for their own people, wherever they may be; to be parted from a particular place as punishment, to acknowledge one part of the world as completely indispensable, another part as wholly inadequate, was not part of their world view. The gypsies cannot understand why Ovid could not come to terms with the landscape in which he was located; this is mirrored in the poem by Aleko’s inability to cast off the shackles of society’s rules, much as he wants and believes in liberty. That Ovid and Aleko (thought by many readers to be a name significantly similar to Pushkin’s own first name)50 share the same treatment by the empire/emperor is made clear by the lines: Так вот судьба твоих сынов, О Рим, о громкая держава! ... Певец любви, певец богов, Скажи мне, что такое слава? Могильный гул, хвалебный глас, Из рода в роды звук бегущий? Или под сенью дымной кущи Цыгана дикого рассказ? [This, then, is the fate of your sons, Oh Rome, oh celebrated power! ... Singer of love, singer of the gods, Tell me, what is glory? A hollow rumbling from the grave, a praising voice, A sound speeding from generation to generation? Or under the shade of a smoky shelter The tale of a wild gypsy?]51

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Rome clearly stands both for Rome and for St Petersburg, each a gromkaia derzhava (celebrated power). Ovid’s north is Pushkin’s south, Ovid’s famous old age glosses Pushkin’s up-and-coming youthful poet. Both are in thrall to ‘Rome,’ but whereas Aleko, both beglets and izgnannik (fugitive and exile),52 critiques the society whose values he ultimately cannot leave behind, Ovid merely (in this version of the story) mourns his lost city, maintaining his Roman values by being helpless in what is to him a wilderness. Firmly caught up in a Roman view of the world, Ovid cannot recentre himself in Tomis. Ovid upholds empire in the way that poets do: by affirming the importance and power of the centre, the way in which its hold cannot be escaped, by upholding its language. Aleko, on the other hand, embraces his departure from civilized society, tries to adopt the gypsies’ viewpoint of seeing the center of things in the place where he is. Is it more meaningful, the stanza asks, addressing Ovid himself, to be remembered as a canonized writer, whom bookish readers automatically praise but whose poetry sounds like a mogil’nyi gul (a rumbling from the grave), or is it better to be remembered by a wild gypsy who tells the poet’s story motivated only by his interest in it, to listeners presumably equally enthralled? Of course, Pushkin is one of those who learned about Ovid in school, and his ‘wild gypsy tale’ is an image created in poetry. Pushkin creates this folk status for Ovid, and creates as well a situation in which he can be compared to Ovid, brought into the same sphere as the great Roman poet. Bessarabia is the place where Ovid’s and Pushkin’s exiles meet, complete periphery and wasteland to Ovid, but close to sophisticated Odessa and centred by the Greek uprising for Pushkin. This is explicitly stated in the earlier ‘K Ovidiiu’ (To Ovid), in which Pushkin mentions the Greek uprising and notes that while Ovid had described the landscape as freezing and cold (a typical trope of Scythia in classical poetry), in fact it was warm, golden, and pleasant – it is actually Russia that is the land of eternal snow, not Bessarabia. Hence Russia stands in for Ovid’s Scythia, his Tomis becoming Pushkin’s Italy. Bessarabia creates for Pushkin a place of identification, a way to compare himself to Ovid. As the presence of Ovid puts Bessarabia on the map, cannot Pushkin’s presence do the same for his readers? Pushkin wishes to emulate Ovid’s skill and fame, but hopes to evade his fate of eternal exile. The epilogue of ‘The Gypsies,’ much like Pushkin’s epilogue to ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ pulls back like a wide camera shot to reveal that the gypsies have been living amidst a Russian military presence all

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along, overseen by the double-headed eagle. This situation is alluded to when Zemfira’s father mentions that he loved her mother, Mariula, before the ‘Moskal’ threatened these lands, hence long ago, but not until the epilogue is the Russian Empire felt as a palpable presence. Gypsy freedom, Aleko’s freedom/exile, is therefore bounded by Russian military control, much as later Pushkin will try to cross the river Arpachai in ‘Puteshestvie v Arzrum’ (‘Journey to Arzrum’) and realize that the far bank is already under Russian control. The final stanza can certainly be read, not only as a declaration of the futility of finding freedom and happiness in nature à la Rousseau, but as the inevitable march of ‘civilization,’ which will infiltrate, like Aleko, any ‘wild’ places left. Both Ovid and Aleko are on the imperial frontier, with Ovid enduring barbarian raids in his Roman outpost, while Aleko is a representative (as the captive had been) of the encroaching power of the Russian Empire. Aleko’s gypsies, however, are passive, encroached upon by the Russian Empire. Ovid is the civilized man fighting off the barbarians, whereas it is Aleko’s ‘barbarians’ who are the civilized ones, and he is ultimately one of them. Ovid writes in Tristia, They carry on their relations by means of their common language While I am reduced to communication by making signs. Here I am the barbarian, and I’m understood by no one, And the stupid Getae make fun of the Latin words which I speak; And openly often they speak ill of me and with perfect freedom, Perhaps even holding against me the fact that I’m exiled from Rome. And as it happens, they think I am crazy when to their jabber I nod my head to say ‘yes’ and shake it to signify ‘no.’53

‘Here I am the barbarian’ reads in the original ‘barbarus hic ego sum.’54 In Tristia, Ovid constantly disavows any power and status he has as a Roman, emphasizing instead the backwardness of the Tomitans, the cold weather, the distance from civilization, and his complete helplessness. He emphasizes his own civility, his knowledge of the Latin language, of literature, of dancing, of cultivating a lovely garden, and how this is all of no use to him in his exile. To be thought the barbarian is perhaps the ultimate punishment for Ovid, for whom Rome is the unshakeable centre. Pushkin’s natives, on the other hand, as figured both in ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ and ‘Tsygany,’ are noble savages, as are the Tomitans in Ovid’s story as told in ‘Tsygany.’ While gypsy freedom is

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found to be ultimately illusory, imperial civilization is nevertheless not the only repository of social values. Both writers construct the local people via established literary conventions. Ovid draws upon a very long tradition of painting the ‘Scythians’ (as he called the Tomitans, with poetic licence) as living in a frozen, hellish north, drawing specifically on Virgil’s descriptions of both Scythians and inhabitants of the underworld in Georgics 3 and the Aeneid. The idea that the landscape moulded its inhabitants, while reinvigorated by Herder, de Staël, and others, had very ancient roots that long pre-existed Ovid.55 Hence Ovid places much focus on showing the Tomitans as rugged, unlettered, moulded by their rough landscape much as the Romans were made cultured and reasonable by their temperate, agriculturalized surroundings. Gareth Williams points out that for Ovid, the epistolary form of the letters from exile keeps alive the sense of his distance from Rome; unlike typical figurations of Rome as a temperate middle between cold Scythia and hot Libya, there are only two points on the map for Ovid – Rome and Tomis. Their point of convergence, Williams notes, is in Ovid’s awareness of his Roman past and Pontic present, his former literary fame and now ‘declining’ muse.56 For Pushkin’s southern works the imagined point of convergence is in the text itself, expressing both the tension between writing at the periphery and reading at the centre – the process of reading itself bringing to the fore the distant writer – as well as the unhappily ‘civilized’ figure attempting to mesh with or observe the free and unfettered natives, whose only convergence again occurs at the level of text where this encounter is played out. The text, meaningless to the unlettered savages – noble or otherwise – can thus unite the two sides only for the metropolitan audience, hence binding the writer to that audience. The relationship between Ovid and Pushkin, of course, has a similar character. Pushkin must construct and make relevant their convergence in Bessarabia, separated by many centuries, by culture, by language, by age and reputation, and the only audience available is his own, educated readership, to whom the history and circumstances are well known, who can make meaning of the linkages between the two poets.57

3 Centring the Periphery: Eugene Onegin, ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ and ‘A Journey to Arzrum’

Eugene Onegin, arguably the most central text in the history of Russian literature, is heavily marked by Pushkin’s two southern experiences and by motifs of exile, whether Oriental or provincial. In three important and interrelated texts, Eugene Onegin, ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ and ‘A Journey to Arzrum,’ Pushkin treats Russian self-representation in terms of the interrelation between place and the written word. Eugene Onegin and the character of Onegin are in great part constituted by Russia’s relationship to its periphery and to its countryside, and in turn ‘Onegin’s Journey’ and ‘Journey to Arzrum’ are closely connected to the character of Onegin. Pushkin correlates literary development to the ongoing tension between centre and periphery, which he frequently compares to that of the Romans. The Roman Empire, which also dealt with narodnost’ and the geographic construction of literature and the poet, lends special relevance to Pushkin’s evocations of Horace and Ovid. Pushkin thought of using ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ which was to be the eighth of nine chapters of Eugene Onegin, to politicize the novel and explain aspects of Onegin that otherwise go unexplained in the novel. This journey related to his treatment of the process of reading and the Russian countryside by similarly demarcating and defining the boundaries of Russia and the settings of its literary creation. ‘Journey to Arzrum’ is a complementary piece of the puzzle, similarly testing limits of different kinds, both literary and geographic, evoking and in some sense replacing Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveller – by means of travel through Russia’s southernmost territories. As discussed in the introduction to this study, Edward Said has described the way in which exile can serve to heighten and intensify one’s conception of the desired home and crystallize its components,

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leading the exiled person to insights gained from its ‘agonizing distance.’1 It is just this agonizing distance that, as Stephanie Sandler points out, made Pushkin ‘acutely aware of his Russian-ness’ and that he also turned to his advantage.2 In fact, Pushkin’s exile to the south, while it was an exile from the centre of Russian culture, was also a trip to the political centre. It was a hotbed of activity relating to the Greek uprising and to other movements for revolution in southern Europe, and Pushkin encountered many southern Decembrists, himself prepared to go to war for the Greeks, and was, during Ypsilantis’s visit to Moldavia in 1821, in ‘the very centre of events,’ as Lotman phrased it.3 He was in the centre politically while he was on the periphery as a Russian poet, but during his absence his poetic fame grew. Stephanie Sandler writes that Pushkin ‘became Pushkin during his exile,’ working out relationships to his readers and interlocutors, aware of the politicized nature of his very existence, refining his poetic voice as a result of an experience that meant he had to rely greatly on his own internal resources.4 Nabokov noted that exile made Pushkin write ‘more and better than he would, had he remained in St. Petersburg.’5 Pushkin’s Caucasus, a large proportion of his ‘south,’ is in no way peripheral to his life or work. It was as the writer of ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ and ‘Bakhchisaraiskii fontan’ that Pushkin introduced his Onegin, pointedly noting that he could not be in the north himself. Onegin follows Pushkin’s own trajectory south, while the Pushkinian narrator’s muse takes part in Pushkin’s southern sojourns, grows wild, ‘forgetting the capital’ [позабыв столицы дальной]6 and then shades into Tatiana. Would Onegin even exist had Pushkin not been far away from the capital, remembering his delightful life there? No further than the second stanza of the novel, the Pushkinian narrator addresses the ‘friends of Ruslan and Liudmila,’ introducing to them his new hero, Onegin, who was born on the banks of the Neva, now off-limits to the narrator, but presumably familiar to the reader (‘Where, perhaps, you were born / Or sparkled, my reader’ [‘Где, может быть родились вы/ Или блистали, мой читатель’]) (EO1:2). Onegin and the reader, then, are constructed as the cosmopolitan city dwellers, while the Pushkinian narrator is absent from the metropole, a fact he underscores by alluding to Ovid’s banishment from Rome. Although the reference is made by comparing Onegin’s skills in the art of love with Ovid’s banishment for having written the Ars amatoria, the reader knows that Pushkin, too, is a poet languishing in Bessarabian exile after angering the emperor (EO1:8). The reader, in fact, gets placed in an interesting position here – a pre-

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sumed denizen of the capital (which certainly Pushkin’s closest circle were), someone who might even ‘sparkle’ (as James Falen translates it) there. The narrator makes it clear that he is separated not only from his main character, Onegin, but from his readers, who are simultaneously associated with Onegin and given the status of metropolitan dwellers, hence also associated with Onegin’s wealth, sophistication, and social prominence. At the same time, the narrator reaffirms his/Pushkin’s hold over the reader, calling him ‘moi chitatel’ (my reader). The reader will be allowed a certain intimacy with Onegin, but will always remain Pushkin’s reader. This doubled structure, which gives Eugene Onegin so much of its life and vitality, is made all the more compelling by the Pushkinian narrator’s position of exile, and allows Onegin to be read as both a past Pushkinian self (Pushkin, too, was famed for his conquests) and a contemporaneous metropolitan counterpart who is almost inevitably less wise and knowing, not understanding the exile’s acute appreciation of the most mundane details of the homeland. Onegin’s very existence points to Russia’s imperial role; fine foods and furnishings, imported from elsewhere, are reminders that he benefits from the commerce carried on by Russia, of Petersburg’s links with London and Paris: Все, чем для прихоти обильной Торгует Лондон щепетильный И по Балтическим волнам За лес и сало возит нам, Все, что в Париже вкус голодный, Полезный промысел избрав, Изобретает для забав, Для роскоши, для неги модной, – Все украшало кабинет Философа в осьмнадцать лет. Янтарь на трубках Цареграда, Фарфор и бронза на столе, И, чувств изнеженных отрада, Духи в граненом хрустале; Гребенки, пилочки стальные, Прямые ножницы, кривые И щетки тридцати родов И для ногтей и для зубов. (EO1:23–4)

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[Whatever clever London offers To those with lavish whims and coffers, And ships to us by Baltic seas In trade for tallow and for trees; Whatever Paris, seeking treasure, Devises to attract the sight, Or manufactures for delight, For luxury, for modish pleasure – All this adorned his dressing room, Our sage of eighteen summers’ bloom. Imported pipes of Turkish amber, Fine china, bronzes – all displayed; And purely to delight and pamper, Perfumes in crystal jars arrayed; Steel files and combs in many guises, Straight scissors, curved ones, thirty sizes Of brushes for the modern male – For hair and teeth and fingernail.7

We know, too, of his ‘pantalony, frak, zhilet’ (EO1:26), as well as his partaking of such foreign delicacies as ‘roast-beef’ (English in the original), truffles, Strasbourg pie, Limburger cheese, and ‘golden pineapple’ (EO1:16). While Onegin can fret at leisure over his fingernails, the poet cannot even do his most important work in Petersburg. In the final lines, he sends his first chapter in his stead to the banks of the Neva, there to earn him praise and abuse: Иди же к невским берегам, Новорожденное творенье, И заслужи мне славы дань Кривые толки, шум и брань! (EO1:60) [Fly to the Neva’s water then, My spirit’s own newborn creation! And earn me tribute paid to fame: Distorted readings, noise, and blame!]8

This ‘newborn creation’ is to stand in for the poet; the distance is bridged by a chapter mostly about Russia’s premier metropole that is written in the south, with that separation between north and south con-

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stituting the very reason that Onegin and the narrator can be such separate beings – one a poet, one not, one loving the countryside, one finding it dull, one appreciating Tatiana, one appreciating her only too late, one finding inspiration in the Caucasus and the Crimea, the other encountering there, at least by the final drafts of what was originally to be the eighth chapter, only ‘toska, toska’ (ennui, ennui). The distance makes Onegin Pushkin’s emissary, his metropolitan double, who uncannily affirms the thrill and importance of the capital while underscoring the poet’s absence from it, while the poet’s absence is simultaneously the condition of his poetry, the ‘new Parnassus’ of the nation’s poetry located now in the south. The reader is invited to be associated both with Onegin and with the narrator, to enjoy vicariously Onegin’s luxurious life and yet to side with the narrator on the important things – love of the countryside, appreciation for Tatiana. Pushkin derives the trope of the book going to the city without its author from Ovid’s Tristia: Parve (nec invideo) sine me, liber, ibis in urbem: ei mihi, quod domino non licet ire tuo! vade, sed incultus, qualem decet exulis esse: infelix habitum temporis huius habe. [Little book, you go to Rome without me (I don’t begrudge you that). But alas, your master cannot go, too! Make your way, but shabbily, as befits the book of an exile, keeping the sad appearance of my situation.]9

As Stephanie Sandler points out, Pushkin had used these lines in 1821, quoting them in Latin, in a letter to Gnedich, alluding in this instance to his ‘Kavkazskii plennik.’10 Commentators on Ovid point out that much of this section of the Tristia, although alluding to the difficulties of Ovid’s exile, is nevertheless also playful and that Ovid expects his little book to do well and join his ‘brothers’ on the bookcase. The Roman poet Horace provided the main model for Ovid (though this tradition of addressing one’s book long predates even Horace), addressing his ‘liber’ in Epistle 1.20.11 Horace’s example compares the book to a slave who receives his freedom, and who will be ‘thumbed’ and ‘soiled’ (the sexual overtones were clear to contemporaries) after his first gloss has worn off. Ovid’s poem, on the other hand, makes the book his representative,

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who must plead his cause (his desire to return to Rome) in lawyerly fashion; Horace’s trope points more to the author’s inability to control his creation once it has been liberated to the prostitution of the marketplace. Horace’s caution that the book will wind up worse for wear after being handled by so many becomes, in Ovid’s version, a book made shabby by exile, whose author has left blots on it caused by his tears. Onegin and Onegin, then, are the poet’s creations who both represent the author in his exile, reminding readers about his existence and importance, while they must also endure a transition from being new and shiny to being soiled, mishandled, and shoved about. Perhaps, as Ovid also hoped, they would make a good impression on the current ‘Caesar,’ whom both Ovid and Pushkin had crossed; undoubtedly, the marketplace, the uncaring readers, will scar them. In the narrative, Onegin is separated from Pushkin by time as well as space; this allows Pushkin to look back at their sojourn together in St Petersburg from a temporal as well as spatial distance; indeed, the metaphor for movement through space, when speaking of empire, normally also conveys a sense of movement backward through time, as those whom one encounters appear to be less developed, living in an earlier, less ‘sophisticated’ and technologically advanced time.12 The tendency to interpret Onegin as an early version of Pushkin himself is underscored by the Horatian reference. Unlike both Horace’s and Ovid’s examples, in which Rome is the undisputed and singular centre, there is in Eugene Onegin an evocation not just of one sophisticated metropolitan place, but two, as Odessa in Onegin’s Journey completes a chiastic relationship to Petersburg. Pushkin writes in Kishinev of the remembered urban delights of Petersburg in chapter 1, just as he describes Odessa’s opera, oysters, champagne, and ‘Italianate’ nights in Onegin’s Journey, now from the vantage point of provincial Mikhailovskoe. Lorgnettes, the ballet, the loge, a fine restaurant (Talon in Petersburg, Automne in Odessa) – as published, these evocations form the bookends of Eugene Onegin, with the poet first exiled to the south, then to his estate, with the Italianate nights of Odessa not only evoking the Italian nights mentioned in 1:49, but also, in a sense, replacing them. Odessa both substitutes for Italy and mirrors St Petersburg, a warm-weather metropole on the periphery.13 What is the status of the southern metropole? On the one hand, it is equated to Petersburg, the very capital itself. On the other hand, it is a substitute for Petersburg, experienced only as a result of exile, and it is at the same time a substitute for Italy, for European travel that he

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desired but was ultimately thwarted. It is also potentially Pushkin’s answer to Byron, another exile, whose sojourn in Italy Pushkin could not replicate, although Pushkin made of Odessa his own Italy. Odessa, of course, also figured prominently in the Greek uprising. In fact, having crossed paths with Ypsilanti, Pushkin came even closer to Byron, in a sense, than he would have had he gone to Italy. Pushkin’s trip south coincided with preparations for the Greek uprising, in which Byron intended to participate and which led to his losing his life (due to illness) in Greece. From the beginning, Pushkin makes it clear that he does not intend for his audience to confuse him with Onegin in the way that readers confused Byron with his heroes (EO1:56), yet with his multifarious references to Byron he also expects his readers to ‘read’ him in a Byronic register. Pushkin’s foils hence include, at a minimum, Onegin, Ovid, Horace, and Byron. While chapter 1 has the Pushkinian narrator in exile, absent from the metropole, in chapter 2 the major players are absent in a different way, in the Russian countryside. While the characters are physically there (and many of the novel’s characters are introduced in the chapter), we hear many echoes of the narrator’s own experiences as well. Pushkin starts the chapter with an epigraph: O rus! ... Hor. О Русь!14

The first line, a quotation from Horace’s Satires 2.6, Hoc erat in votis, suggests both the amusing homonymy of the Latin word for countryside (rus) corresponding with the older, poetic name of Russia (Rus’) and the clear implication that Russia is entirely made up of countryside, of provinces. The quotation also cements Pushkin’s similarity to Horace; just as Horace dreams of his rus, Pushkin dreams of his own Rus’. The epigraph also begs the question: whence is the speaker dreaming of rus/Rus’? Pushkin writes from distant exile, while Horace feels stuck in the metropolis. Hence to what should rus/Rus’ be opposed, to city or to exile? In this way Pushkin cleverly sets up his second chapter about Onegin on his country estate, and the introduction of Lensky and the Larins on neighbouring estates. It is worth mentioning as well that Horace warns his escaping book, in Epistles 1.20, that he may end up ‘in the city’s outskirts’ being used to teach grammar to schoolboys or ‘be sent to the

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provinces.’15 Monika Greenleaf notes that the punning can be understood as triple, with ‘Hor.’ being another echo of the phonemes in ‘O rus’ and ‘O Rus’.’ Notes Greenleaf: ‘It seems to me that the macaronic echo effect sets off complex associated and intonational dissonances, the relatively simple, domestic sigh of relief and plenitude contrasting with the various tones of voice in which the archaic phrase “O Rus’” might be uttered, from tones of epic pride or historic pathos to a more modern wry bemusement.’16 While concurring with Greenleaf that the epigraph is complex, the ‘simple, domestic sigh of relief’ was perhaps more fraught with complexity than one might think at first glance, while the multiple references to Horace in chapter 2 show that his presence is not limited only to the amusing homonym. Horace, no less than Ovid, had a complex relationship to his patron, and his Sabine farm was a very literary place. Hoc erat in votis, section 6 of Horace’s second Satire (a term that in Horace’s time meant miscellany rather than the Greek sense of satire), thanks Maecenas, Horace’s patron, for his Sabine farm, and contrasts the rushed, politicized, gossipy life of the capital with its superficial concerns and jockeying for power to Horace’s calm and pleasant farm where friends dine simply but well and talk about more meaningful subjects. ‘O rus, quando ego te aspiciam?’ (Oh rural home: when shall I behold you!) is the second line of the third stanza, which turns the satire from a discussion of city to country life, for which the speaker longs. In an earlier line Horace notes that he has removed himself from the city to his castle in the hills, and asks, ‘what sooner should I celebrate with my satiric and pedestrian Muse?’17 Hoc erat in votis contains as well a telling of the fable of the city mouse and the country mouse, and comes down firmly on the side of country life. It deals with Horace’s debt to his patron, Maecenas, who gave him the farm, and in it Horace protests that he is not able to grant special favours nor is he privy to important information as a result of his relationship to his patron. It is also a place, according to P. Lowell Bowditch, ‘undergoing the transformation from real locale to textual space and as a pastoral refuge from the hazards of the city.’18 For Horace, as Bowditch argues, the farm is a place that makes literary production possible and pleasant but also brings up complex issues of patronage. The poem also contains the phrase ‘ante Larem’ (before the hearth) in a section in which Horace describes the feasts that will be held for his friends on his farm, suggestive of a possible source for the name Larin. The opening stanza of chapter 2,

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describing Onegin’s estate, is very like Horace’s description of his farm, which opens Satires 2.6, and both point towards (in Pushkin’s case much more explicitly) the pastoral: Hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus, hortus ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aquae fons et paulum silvae super his foret. Auctius atque di melius fecere. Bene est. nil amplius oro, Maia nate, nisi ut propria haec mihi munera faxis. [This was in my prayers: a measure of land not so large, with a garden and near the house a spring of pure water and above this [in addition] a little patch of woods. The gods have given me more and better. It is good. I ask for nothing more, son of Maia, except that you make these gifts lasting [truly mine]].19

Eugene Onegin 2:1 reads: Деревня, где скучал Евгений, Была прелестный уголок; Там друг невинных наслаждений Благословить бы небо мог. Господский дом уединенный, Горой от ветров огражденный, Стоял над речкою. Вдали Пред ним пестрели и цвели Луга и нивы золотые, Мелькали сёлы; здесь и там Стада бродили по лугам, И сени расширял густые Огромный, запущенный сад, Приют задумчивых Дриад. [The place Eugene found so confining Was quite a lovely country nest, Where one who favoured soft reclining Would thank his stars to be so blest. The manor house, in proud seclusion, Screened by a hill from wind’s intrusion, Stood by a river. Far away

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Green meads and golden cornfields lay, Lit by the sun as it paraded; Small hamlets too the eye could see And cattle wand’ring o’er the lea; While near at hand, all dense and shaded, A vast neglected garden made A nook where pensive dryads played.]20

As Nabokov points out, this estate was not in Pskov or Tver province, but in Arcadia.21 Is everything in Russia ‘country’? Or is it rather that Russia is primarily to be found in the country, as opposed to the city, just as Horace claims that the best living to be done is in the country, that the country, in the form of a locus amoenus, leads to poetry?22 In exile, Pushkin is cut off not only from the metropole but also from the Russian countryside, and hence alludes to Horace as he longs, from Rome, to be on his farm. For Horace, moreover, as Bowditch makes clear, the leisure time with which his farm is associated itself enables poetry.23 The interplay between city and country occurs on many levels in chapter 2, of course. Onegin moves from Petersburg to his uncle’s estate, Lensky arrives in the ‘desert’ (пустыне, EO2:11) from misty but poetic and philosophical Germany, and we learn of Mrs Larin’s youthful move from city to country (and from naive, girlish flights of literary fancy to prosaic, housewifely mushroom-pickling). And of course Tatiana is introduced, a character clearly attuned to both nature and literature, while uninterested in fashionable clothes and ‘city news’ (EO2:27). The senior Larins are the salt of the earth, following all the Russian customs, oriented towards the bounty of nature – but also provincial in the negative sense of lacking sophistication. Variants of ‘пустыне’ occur in three forms: 2:4 has ‘мудрец пустынный’ (‘the sage of the desert’ i.e., Onegin), 2:11 has ‘в пустыне’ (‘in the desert,’ referring to Lensky’s arrival), and 2:17 has ‘пустынников’ (‘[desert] hermits’), referring to Onegin and Lensky. This ‘desert’ was precisely what Horace yearned for, finding the city’s sophistication and proximity to ‘the gods’ (a euphemism, in Satires 2.6, for those in political power) to be a tiresome burden. He longed for prosaic beans, just as Pushkin evokes a longing for Mme Larin’s prosaic, but no doubt tasty, pickled mushrooms. The ‘desert’ is allied as well, we know, to Pushkin’s affinity to Ovid as a fellow exile, who described Tomis as a wasteland, and desert imagery appears in many of Pushkin’s Ovidian

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works.24 The ‘desert’ provides not only a potential source of inspiration – the Russian countryside, Russian customs – but also a serious reader in Tatiana. Readership is after all very important both to Horace and to Pushkin. At the end of chapter 2 there is a return to Horace, here Epistles 1.20, in which the Roman poet describes himself as prematurely grey, small of stature, but as someone who has pleased those higher up with his poetry. Pushkin, writing in his early twenties, was some twenty years younger than the forty-four-year-old, prematurely grey Horace of Epistles 1.20, and compensates by imagining a future reader tousling the laurels of his old poet self, years in the future. A deleted fifty-first stanza even more closely followed Horace, as Pushkin’s book is seen as becoming torn and dilapidated, finishing up like last year’s calendar or an old primer, no longer assured of an aristocratic audience: Но может быть – и это даже Правдоподобнее сто раз Изорванный, в пыли и в саже Мой [напечтанный] рассказ Служанкой изгнан из уборной В передней кончит век позорный Как Инвалид иль Календарь Или затасканный букварь Но что ж: в гостиной иль в передней Равно читатели [черны] Над книгой их права равны Не я первой не я последний Их суд услышу над собой Ревнивый, строгой и тупой. – [But possibly, and this is even More verisimilar a hundred times, All torn, covered with dust and soot, My story [not read to the end], Banned by the housemaid from the dressing room, Will finish in the servants’ hall Its shameful life, like last year’s calendar Or a dilapidated [primer]. Well, what? In drawing room or servants’ hall Readers are equally [plebeian]:

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Over a book their rights are equal; Not I the first, not I the last Shall hear their judgment over me, Captious, stern and obtuse.25

Horace, then, is clearly not a throwaway reference, but one of Pushkin’s poetic interlocutors in chapter 2. Pushkin raises multiple issues here: the longing for the countryside when it is forbidden or unattainable, the tendency for writers to appreciate it where others do not, its construction as a literary space, whether an Arcadia or a place empty of meaning, and as a place where the effects of reading are heightened. Chapter 3, which deals primarily with Tatiana, raises many more questions about readership. Tatiana wanders with a ‘dangerous book’ (EO3:10), making foreign literary representations – ‘чужой восторr, чужую грусть’ (others’ rapture, others’ sorrow) – her own. This very basic function of the reader – is not Pushkin making Ovid, Horace, and Byron his own? – begs the question as well as to whether we, the readers, are in the process of making Tatiana’s rapture and sorrow our own. Books, for many reasons, are ‘dangerous,’ as Pushkin reminds us, and the dangers of the perfidious ‘роман’ (novel) and the insidious romantic expectations taken from books, of Byron and his ‘романтизм’ (Romanticism) and ‘эгоизм’ (egoism) (EO3:12), are not just moral but political. The narrator suggests (EO3:13) that he will perhaps stop being a poet and will stoop to write prose, a novel ‘in the old style’ about the Russian family. The chapter returns again and again to the issue of Russian ways, the Russian language, the influence of foreign (чужой) language, literature, literary models and literary characters. Plots of older literature that stressed virtue rather than vice are evoked approvingly, while young women’s charmingly faulty Russian not only alienates them from what should be their native language (which is actually French, in practice) (EO3:27) but also implies that men are more ‘Russian’ in language, culture, and education. A lack of Russian means young ladies don’t read the journals, for example, which puts men like the narrator in the position of translating for the ladies. Hence the narrator translates Tatiana’s letter into Russian, and finds good Russian unfeminine. This gendering of Russian culture is presented as charming, but in the background lie Karamzin’s arguments about the necessity of luring women, mothers of the next generation and arbiters of taste in society, away from their French novels in favour of Russian literature in order to create a truly educated Russian society.

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Male writers sought women’s amusement, approval, and appreciation, which they often regarded as the measure of literary success. Furthermore, female hostesses could be appealed to in order to decide, as judges, matters of literary taste. Women, who were highly influential in the oral ‘high culture’ of polite society, exercised influence over the written language by means of the literary forms that became a part of salon discourse. Many of the salonières, or salon hostesses, while not themselves writers, shone in spoken repartée and were sought as ‘lawgivers’ of literary and social culture, as Pushkin termed it.26 This is the complication of Tatiana; though steeped in foreign literature and models that, lacking the knowledge (and to some extent, existence) of Russian ones, she makes her own, unable to write well in Russian, or (at this juncture) see how she is placing Onegin into the role of her literary heroes (and herself in the role of the heroines), she is in other ways more ‘Russian’ than he is, more closely associated with the countryside, with Russian customs. This is perhaps why, after he realizes that she is worth having in chapter 8, she refuses to yield. The models of illicit lovers remained literary, while the mature Tatiana, aware of social and literary foibles, followed the models of her mother and her nanny in real life. Tatiana and her reading, seen through the lens of Eugene Onegin as a novel for the emerging Russian reading public, indicate what Pushkin’s job was: to take those readers like Tatiana whose ‘imagined community’ made them part of a francophone culture based in France that did not recognize or value their existence, and turn them into an imagined community of Russian readers, whose language and culture would become separate and independent. Tatiana as reader takes part in a community in which Russia plays second fiddle to France; Pushkin’s readers, however, create an imagined community of Russian literature that plays second fiddle to no one. Pushkin, having crossed paths during his exile with the young Greeks who were envisioning themselves as a nation, whose newspaper was based in Odessa, could likewise use Russian to create the readership that might eventually act similarly on its own behalf.27 Pushkin makes it clear that it is his responsibility to create Russian literary models and a Russian readership. Even if fractured Russian is charming for women, it is manly for men, and while boring journals may not entice the ladies to read Russian, surely Eugene Onegin will. Pushkin also points throughout the chapter to the constructed nature of literary and other traditions. Noting his affection for women’s frac-

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tured Russian, the narrator quips ‘Я верен буду старине’ (I will be true to the old ways) (EO3:28), rather than accepting the thought of good Russian spoken by women. Yet this ‘старина’ (old days), already ironized by being mentioned as something archaic that exists in the present tense, cannot be more stable than Tatiana’s ideas about romantic love, which are undercut by her nurse’s complete failure to understand the source of her feelings – ‘Мы не слыхали про любовь’ (We never heard a word about love) (EO3:18) – which are themselves revealed to be of recent, foreign, and aristocratic derivation. Tatiana’s mother, of course, also survives the loss of her ‘Grandison’ and adjusts to country life in a pronouncedly non-novelistic way. If starina and love can become unstable terms, then clearly skill in reading is paramount, as Onegin reads Tatiana, Tatiana Onegin, the reader the text, and the narrator his readers. Conventions of writing also change; since Tatiana reads epistolary novels, she is shocked when her letter to Onegin is answered, not by another letter, which she expects, but by a verbal answer. Nabokov notes: ‘Casual reality impinges here upon ordered romance.’28 Pushkin has already referred to changes in taste for types of heroes, and prose versus poetry, in styles of coquetry, and, of course, literary language, both French and Russian. Further, the narrator declares he’s not up to completing the scene, leaving Tatiana panting and embarrassed on her bench, waiting to hear Onegin’s answer, creating anew a reminder of literary conventions and the imagined space of literature. Again, the distance seems to render literary convention more legible, laying it bare with ease. Chapter 4 gives us Onegin’s spoken answer; he, as we know, thinks well of himself for letting her down gently. Many oppositions are drawn – the freedom of country ways, which would not find their strolling arm-in-arm improper, the contrast between happy Lensky and brooding Onegin, between fading Tatiana and blooming Ol’ga, as well as life in the country during the fall and winter months, when there is little to do – and while the Pushkinian narrator reads and recites poetry, finding no fault with the weather, Onegin is merely bored. The theme of women’s albums and their implicit praise or scorn for the male writer (depending on whether the albums belong to nice girls or society harpies), as well as fashions in writing – Kiukhel’beker’s demand for odes in 4:32 – continue the theme of female readership (or lack thereof – Ol’ga does not read Lensky’s poems describing his love for her) and city versus country life. The invitation to Tatiana’s name-

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day party is the only other element of plot besides Onegin’s response to Tatiana and her reaction to it. Chapter 5 expands upon the fully Russian setting of the action, celebrating the Russian winter and Tatiana’s love for it, showing her foretelling the future and performing superstitious rituals, narrating Tatiana’s dream, which combines folkloric images with Boschian nightmares and frankly sexual imagery and foreshadows the name-day party, the duel and the death of Lensky. The name-day party’s guests and ways of eating, drinking, and making merry further underline the creativity of the Russian language, the humour found in descriptions of country life, and a liveliness that no Petersburg ball ever equalled. ‘Evil fashion’ has tamed the mazurka in the capital, made it effeminate, while in the country it continues to be a resounding affair that rattles the windows (EO5:42). The happy scene is ruined, of course, by Onegin’s turn as a society roué who pays court to Ol’ga out of revenge for having to attend the party against his will. City and country cannot remain separate fields, semantically or societally. Chapter 6 is the turning point of the novel, when Onegin and Lensky fight their duel and Lensky dies. While Lensky’s character is quite cardboard, Onegin’s manipulations and lack of ability to call off the duel because he fears society’s jibes, Lensky’s youth and naivety, and Tatiana’s reaction to the duel lend the event its gravity. Onegin’s status changes; he is now known to be flawed and becomes vulnerable to Tatiana’s own reading of him. Chapter 7 pulls together the various strands of the foregoing chapters; the pastoral of the countryside is specifically Russian, with peasants plaiting bast shoes near Lensky’s grave; the city folk flock to the country to enjoy the spring, while Tatiana leaves the country for Moscow. Tatiana gains access to Onegin’s secrets – in textual variants, even to his diary; in the final draft, only to his study with its decor, choice of books, and marginalia. Just as Tatiana has had her literary examples, he has had his, but her life quickly turns out not to be like literature, when Onegin does not respond with a letter, or return her love. She now reads with caution, and furthermore reads the weather, the seasons, the woods, just as avidly as books. Onegin’s natural element, however, is society, the thought of whose tyranny drives him to continue his duel rather than make amends. The arrival in Moscow is not only Tatiana’s but the narrator’s; Moscow, of course, is the more ‘Russian’ of the two capitals, the site of the last stand against Napoleon, but still clearly a metropole of an empire,

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with its Kalmyks and Bokharans, its ancient Kremlin. It was Muscovy that consolidated land and power into what became the Russian Empire, whose rise had been chronicled by Karamzin. Pushkin alludes to his exile in 7:36 and in a variant makes it even more explicit that he longed for Moscow in exile. The theme of the bifurcated capitals, one having consolidated its power over time, the other built ex nihilo on a swamp, clearly figures here, as Tatiana’s city is Moscow, while Eugene’s is St Petersburg. The Pushkinian narrator, aligning himself once again with Tatiana, claims Moscow as his own and as emblematic for any Russian. An epigraph taken from Woe from Wit, written by Griboedov on his diplomatic mission in Persia, links Pushkin to Griboedov and their experiences in the south, as well as implicitly linking Chatsky to Onegin. Further, the disquisition on the poor roads, bedbugs, slovenly inns, and the pitfalls of travelling with one’s own horses rather than with postal ones not only critiques the vicissitudes of travelling, but underlines the connections of empire and the challenge of navigating Russia, where broken-down light foreign carriages are ‘cured’ by the massive hammer blows of Russian blacksmiths (EO7:34). Tatiana, having survived her trip, now faces Eugene’s milieu, feeling as uncomfortable and foreign in the city and the grand monde as Eugene did in the countryside. Just as he felt compelled to go through with the duel, so Tatiana submits herself to the marriage market. Chapter 8 very explicitly starts out with a résumé of Pushkin’s career, beginning with the lyceum and continuing with his travels to the south. His muse, too, travels with him and takes on the various guises and languages of the places she visits, including Tatiana’s (the muse’s?) garden and high society, where together they spot Onegin. The invitation in chapter 8 to recall Pushkin’s exile and earlier works clearly invokes the imagined community of Pushkin’s readers, who are asked to be charmed by the ‘прелести ея степныя’ (rustic charms) (EO8:6) of the farflung, half-wild muse; indeed, they have travelled with her, and with him. Just as his works set in wild areas have become part of Russian literature, so Tatiana’s past ‘из глуши степных селений’ (‘from backwoods steppe villages,’ EO8:17) has become part of her magnificence in high society. Because she would rather be at home, with her shelf of books and in her ‘wild garden’ (дикий сад, 8:46) – a phrase that combines the image of the muse who has ‘grown wild’ (одичала; 8:5) during her southern travels with the image of Tatiana’s garden, as well as Onegin’s ‘huge, neglected garden’ (огромный, запущенный сад, 2:1) – Tatiana’s success

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in society seems effortless: she does not care about it. Just as Pushkin’s muse needed wild wanderings in the Caucasus and Moldavia to inspire the poet to greatness, so Tatiana’s society lady achieves her sophistication by starting as a country girl steeped in books. All of these features are brought together in chapter 8 – Pushkin, his muse, Tatiana, and Onegin all appear in the same space, while what is most charming, most sophisticated, partakes of, indeed is predicated upon, geographical and cultural peripheries. Just as Pushkin receives recognition as a poet for works written in and about the southern border regions, so Eugene Onegin balances varying components – the metropole, the countryside, Odessa – to create a whole that depends upon its constituent parts. Indeed, chapter 8 seems to provide a résumé of the entire novel and of Pushkin’s role. Starting out with his youth, it describes him sojourning south with his muse, who seems to become Tatiana in her garden. They go together into high society, we hear that Onegin has travelled (something we might have guessed from chapters 6 and 7, when Onegin leaves his estate under unpleasant circumstances; for a Byronic figure a departure/escape à la Byron seems appropriate) – the countryside is evoked in Onegin’s shock at the sophisticated salonière Tatiana has become – and Onegin now writes his own letter. When he receives no response to it or others, he resumes his reading, which has played such an important role in the novel, almost becomes a poet, and recalls his duel with Lensky. As Tatiana takes her own turn sermonizing, we leave Onegin, and Pushkin addresses once again his ‘little book.’ A quotation from Sa’di – ‘иных уж нет, а те далече, как Саади некогда сказал’ (Some are no longer here, others are far away, as Sa’di once said) – reminds us that the author of ‘Bakhchisaraiskii fontan’ has lost many friends, ‘contemporaries’ of Onegin, in the Decembrist uprising, without whom Onegin’s story can go no further, and so the novel concludes. Chapter 8 circles back, then, to Pushkin’s literary career and to the Sa’di quote, reminding the reader just as at the beginning that Onegin is merely a literary creation, who can be abandoned just as quickly and lightly as he was inaugurated. Further, the recitation of the muse’s journey indicates clearly that her understanding of the salon is refracted through her experience of various feasts, revels, and travels, and the understanding of multiple kinds of speech, stories, songs, and poetry. The codes of metropolitan high society are only one set of codes, the salon only one kind of social gathering. Further, this knowledge of other codes comes about because of Russia’s imperial status, the

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diverse holdings of the periphery attesting to the value and importance of the centre, yet also constituting it, framing it, a condition of the existence of a centre. Although Eugene Onegin is a text whose existence is predicated upon Pushkin’s absence from the capital and his readership, its most thorough engagement with the periphery comes in the form of ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ originally slated to be the eighth of nine chapters of Eugene Onegin, and a chapter whose absence, or relegation to an appendix, complicates an understanding of the whole. The original eighth chapter of Eugene Onegin, ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ which was never included in the final version of the novel and instead ‘exiled’ and published separately, with many elisions, as ‘Otryvki iz Puteshestviia Onegina’ (Fragments of Onegin’s Journey), is an outgrowth of Pushkin’s trip in 1829 to the Caucasus and beyond through Georgia, Armenia and into Turkey. Many signs point to Pushkin’s preoccupation in the closing of Eugene Onegin with themes and issues of his early years that were once again evoked by his 1829 journey. The summarization of Pushkin’s life at the beginning of the (final) eighth chapter, as well as the quotation from Sa’di at the end (a reference to Pushkin’s exiled Decembrist friends, whom he had visited in the Caucasus, as well as an echo of the epigraph to ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’) are in concert with the reevaluation of Pushkin’s identity that seems to be such a preoccupation in the later Journey to Arzrum. Ian Helfant argues that the prose and lyrics that were written as a result of the 1829 journey south can be thought of as representing three Pushkinian personae: ‘his self-representation in the journal, the more developed persona of his parodic Journey [to Arzrum], and a third persona rooted in a lyric vision.’29 Helfant shows that Pushkin significantly altered the journal of the trip he published in 1830 in Literaturnaia gazeta, there entitled ‘Voennaia Gruzinskaia doroga’ (Georgian Military Highway), when he later reworked it as ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ personalizing many of the more generalized remarks, adding detail, and following more closely the convention of letters written to (mostly male) friends with concomitant assumptions of easy familiarity and shared values.30 I will discuss ‘Journey to Arzrum below.’ There is, however, a fourth version of that journey south, a set of impressions that echo through ‘Onegin’s Journey’ and the final, eighth chapter of Eugene Onegin. Hence Pushkin created multiple versions of this journey, one of the most laconic of which is his journal and one of the most expressive of which is ‘Onegin’s Journey.’ ‘Onegin’s Journey,’

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much abbreviated and sketchy as it was published, was more fleshed out in drafts. In drafts, Onegin left on a certain date (July 3rd), went to Novgorod, passed quickly by Valdai, Torzhok, and Tver’, and woke up in Moscow on Tverskoi Boulevard. There he is greeted by her ‘Oriental bustle,’ goes to the English Club, is dubbed a Mason, and seen as an eligible bachelor. Then, accompanied by a constant refrain of ‘toska, toska’ (ennui, ennui), he is driven on to Nizhnyi, where the published version begins; he goes to the market and sees the wares of the Indian, wines offered by Europeans, animals for sale by steppe breeders, and in a similar vein, girls brought to be married off by their fathers. Again – toska – and in drafts Eugene travels along the Volga, with haulers singing of Stenka Razin, and comes to Astrakhan, where he is weighed down by his memories, but then swiftly driven away by heat and attacking mosquitoes. Toska – he goes to the Caucasus. While in the published version there is one stanza containing in compressed form allusions to Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ including allusions to Zhukovskii and Derzhavin, in the draft Onegin’s trip through the Caucasus takes up several stanzas, during one of which he is ‘тронут в первый раз’ by the magnificence of the mountains – ‘touched for the first time.’ In the final version Onegin next visits some healing waters that flow from Mount Mashuk, and rues his lack of any ailments, and is then overtaken again by his usual ennui. The refrain of toska occurs constantly throughout. Onegin continues to the Crimea, where Pushkin’s voice overtakes the narrative, evoking his own visit in 1820, as well as classical echoes of Orestes, Mithridates, and the contemporary Polish poet Mickiewicz. He compares his previous feelings, his ‘vaulting schemes / Of youthful springtime’s vast ambition’ with his present circumstances: ‘And in this poet’s cup of mine / I now mix water with my wine.’ Какие б чувства ни таились Тогда во мне – теперь их нет: Они прошли иль изменились ... Мир вам, тревоги прошлих лет! В ту пору мне казались нужны Пустыни, волн края жемчужны, И моря шум, и груды скал, И гордой девы идеал, И безыменные страданья ...

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Другие дни, другие сны; Смирились вы, моей весны Высокопарные мечтанья, И в поетический бокал Воды я много подмешал.31 [Whatever feelings then lay hidden – Within me now they are now more: They’ve passed away or changed unbidden ... So peace to you, you woes of yore! Back then it seemed that I required Those desert wastes and waves inspired, Those massive cliffs and pounding sea, The vision too of ‘maiden free,’ And nameless pangs and sweet perdition ... But other days bring other dreams; You’re now subdued, you vaulting schemes Of youthful springtime’s vast ambition, And in this poet’s cup of mine I now mix water with my wine.]32

A variant noted ‘И в поэтическии бокал / Я много прозы подмешал’ (And in the poetic cup / I’ve mixed a lot of prose) (6:489). The Pushkinian narrator continues in this vein, noting that he now has developed a liking for country scenes and peasant dances, then interrupts himself: Порой дождливою намедни Я, завернув на скотный двор ... Тьфу! прозаические бредни, Фламандской школы пестрый сор! Таков ли был я, расцветая? Скажи, Фонтан Бахчисарая! Такие ль мысли мне на ум Навел твой бесконечный шум, Когда безмолвно пред тобою Зарему я воображал Средь пышных, опустелых зал ... Спустя три года, вслед за мною, Скитаясь в той же стороне, Онегин вспомнил обо мне.

128 Writing at Russia’s Border [The other day, in rainy weather, As I approached the farm ... Enough! What prosy ravings strung together, The Flemish painter’s motley stuff! Was I like that when I was tender, Bakhchisarai, you fount of splendour! Were these the thoughts that crossed my mind When, ’neath your endless chant I pined And then in silence meditated And pondered my Zarema’s fate? ... Within those empty halls ornate, Upon my trail, three years belated, While travelling near that selfsame sea, Onegin, pausing, thought of me.]33

This tension between past and present selves, poetry and prose, Onegin and Pushkin is brought into relief by this literary and actual retracing of steps along Russia’s southern borders. The Russian countryside seems both comforting and yet ultimately too dull. The Crimean and Caucasian past, both personal and poetic, seems both high-flown and yet somewhat immature. The rhyme pair ‘rastsvetaia/Bakhchisaraia’ (flowering/Bakhchisarai) expresses both the youthful flowering of Pushkin’s talents in his southern poems, as well as the distance he has travelled, literally and figuratively, since then. After a description of Odessa and its gastronomic and theatrical pleasures that is much like the description of St Petersburg’s attractions in chapter 1, the narrator meets up again with Onegin. Soon Onegin heads back to the capital, while the narrator goes to Mikhailovskoe: От жирных устриц черноморских От оперы от темных лож И слава богу от вельмож Уехал в тень лесов Тригорских В далекий северный уезд И был печален мой приезд. [From plump Black Sea oysters From the opera and dark loges And thank God from grandees I departed to the shade of the Trigorsk woods

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To the distant northern district And my arrival was sad.]34

The draft of ‘Onegin’s Journey’ ends by echoing Virgil, who hung his pipe on a sacred pine: Там ветру в дар, на темну ель Повесил звонкую свирель. [There, as an offering to the wind, On a dark fir I’ve hung my vibrant pipe.]35

Had ‘Onegin’s Journey’ been included in the narrative as chapter 8, with the present chapter 8 become chapter 9, there might have been some greater sense that Onegin had seen more of the world and hence was more able to appreciate that his ennui was not a function of where he happened to be located. The journey itself, however, seemed to do a better job of showcasing Pushkin’s development than of Onegin’s; hence perhaps the opening stanzas to the final chapter 8 were enough of a review of Pushkin’s earlier works to fulfil the requirements of the novel. Nonetheless, a careful examination of ‘Onegin’s Journey’ reveals trajectories that could have been followed by Pushkin in characterizing Onegin, and whose residual traces seem to have played a role in the novel. In particular, three variant stanzas that were written about the Caucasus during Pushkin’s composition of the original chapter 8, ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ tell a kind of mini-narrative of Pushkin’s journey in 1829, but a narrative that is not exclusively confined to the events of 1829 but rather coalesces with Pushkin’s earlier experience of the south, in the form of both autobiography and poetic production. Before turning to a discussion of the variant stanzas, however, let us look at the twelfth stanza of ‘Fragments of Onegin’s Journey,’ which appeared in Pushkin’s original chapter 8 and is the only ‘Caucasian’ stanza that ultimately remained after a number of other variations and reworkings of it were discarded and relegated to the status of palimpsests. The reworkings of the twelfth stanza of ‘Onegin’s Journey’ were by far the most numerous of Pushkin’s revisions and variations on any stanza in the chapter. The final version of the twelfth stanza reads: Он видит: Терек своенравный –

130 Writing at Russia’s Border Крутые роет берега Над ним сидит орел державный Олень стоит склонив рога – Верблюд лежит в тени утеса, Меж холмов мчится конь черкеса, И вдруг дымящихся шатров Стада белеют калмыков Он видит горные громады Славян естественную грань, Но уж давно пробилась брань Чрез иx упорные преграды Чтоб на брега седой Куры Раскинут русские шатры.36 [He sees the wayward Terek Eroding its steep banks; Before him soars a majestic eagle, A deer stands, having inclined its horns; A camel lies in the shade of a cliff, In the meadows gallops the Circassian’s steed, And around the nomadic tents The Kalmyks’ sheep graze, In the distance are the Caucasian masses The path is open to them. War penetrated Beyond their natural border, Through their dangerous barriers; The banks of the Aragva and the Kura Have seen Russian tents.]

Pushkin cites the poetic motifs of the Caucasus already familiar to his readers: the eagles, deer, and other animals, the cliffs, the Terek, Aragva, and Kura rivers. He explicitly refers to his first narrative poem about the Caucasus, ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ which had brought him such fame, by including the Circassian and his horse, as well as the distant ‘Kavkazskie gromady’ (Caucasian masses) and the path leading to them. The stanza also contains paraphrases of poetic evocations of the Caucasus by Pushkin’s predecessors, Derzhavin and Zhukovskii, whose lines he had both paraphrased and footnoted in his early narrative poem. Pushkin manages to fit all these allusions into one stanza, as if in shorthand, creating a kind of compressed chain of references. He

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even uses the adjective ‘derzhavnyi’ (majestic, stately) as if to make sure the reference to Derzhavin would not be overlooked. In ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ Pushkin had quoted in his footnotes stanzas by Derzhavin and Zhukovskii depicting the Caucasus that he found particularly beautiful and influential, and upon which he based, in part, his own poetic imagery.37 Derzhavin’s ‘Ode to Count Zubov’ and Zhukovskii’s ‘Epistle to Voeikov’ were expressly situated by Pushkin as literary precursors to ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ and he used many details, ideas, images and terminology from the two poems in his narrative poema.38 Interestingly, in the stanza from ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ written in 1829, Pushkin paraphrased Derzhavin’s and Zhukovsky’s lines much more closely than he did in ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ written in 1821. Pushkin paraphrases Derzhavin’s line ‘Как серны, вниз склонив рога’ (How chamois, having lowered their horns) in his own line ‘Стоит олень, склонив рога’ (A deer stands, having inclined its horns). And Zhukovskii’s ‘Ты зрел, как Терек в быстром беге’ (You saw how the Terek in its quick run) is closely mirrored in Pushkin’s line ‘Он видит: Терек своенравный’39 (He sees: the wayward Terek). Hence the notion that Pushkin was revisiting his earlier work seems to find very strong evidence in the text, for Pushkin does not merely repeat the earlier allusions but paraphrases even more closely, again as if compressing and condensing his famous narrative poem. Furthermore, in an operation similar to that used in ‘Journey to Arzrum’ and its predecessor, ‘The Georgian Military Highway,’ there is an acknowledgment of changes that have altered a landscape at first glance eternal and inalterable: this landscape is now marked by the Russian military presence in a way in which it was not at the time of ‘The Captive of the Caucasus.’40 I speak here not of a historical marking but of a poetic marking: while Pushkin wrote at length about Ermolov and his predecessors in the epilogue of ‘Captive,’ the captive’s own experience appeared relatively unmediated by such considerations.41 But Onegin’s introduction to the mountainous scenery is marked by Russia’s military presence from the beginning. Along with the Kalmyk tents there are Russian military tents. In the drafts of ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ Onegin progresses gradually through Russia to the south, through a clearly historicized and imperial space, with many allusions to rebellion and unrest, from Novgorod’s ‘half-wild plain’ (the Novgorodians rebelled against Moscow) to the Volga, where Stenka Razin fomented rebellion, to Astrakhan, where, Nabokov argues, ‘memories of former days’ refers to ‘civil and military

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rebellion in Astra[k]han in the reign of Peter the Great; the insurrection, starting as a protest against harsh taxes, lasted from July 30, 1705, to March 12, 1706, and more than two thousand people were executed after it had been quenched.’42 Besides the 1705 rebellion, Astrakhan had been a part of Stenka Razin’s rebellion as well.43 Natan Eidel’man has argued that Pushkin originally included in ‘Onegin’s Journey’ stanzas about Arakcheev’s military settlements, which stanzas he then destroyed, since the combination of such subject matter along with the apparent time frame of the travels, set just before 1825, was simply too explosive.44 The Decembrists had hoped to foment rebellion in the settlements, which were created by Alexander I in an attempt to organize and make orderly the Russian countryside by using troops as settlers and farmers.45 ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ then, at points during its composition, was very politically oriented; what Pushkin ultimately published in his ‘Fragments’ were the least political portions. The politicization of journeys through Russia had an important precedent in Radishchev, of course; did Pushkin want Onegin to become more politically aware, or involved, by sending him on such a journey? This is not to say that all of Pushkin’s writings about the Caucasus in this period were created from an overtly politically charged viewpoint. A number of the lyric poems of 1829, such as ‘Na kholmakh Gruzii’ (On the Hills of Georgia), ‘Kavkaz’ (Caucasus), ‘Obval’ (Avalanche), and ‘Monastyr’ na Kazbeke’ (Monastery on the Kazbek) tended to paint a view of the Caucasian landscape as untouched by human hands, in which the viewer is alone with the awesome power of natural forces.46 Even if human or animal figures are present, they are tiny and powerless compared to the titanic natural forces. While the very presence of the Russian speaker, as well as his commanding placement above or in front of the object laid out for his view, for example, in the lines ‘Кавказ подо мною’ (The Caucasus is below me) and ‘Шумит Арагва предо мною’ (Aragva murmurs before me), surely still partake of what Mary Pratt calls ‘standard elements of the imperial trope [...]: the mastery of the landscape, the estheticizing adjectives, the broad panorama anchored in the seer,’ there is not the overt politicization and militarization that figures in ‘Onegin’s Journey.’47 And indeed, some of these texts are clearly at least covertly political; Druzhnikov points out that Pushkin’s poem ‘Mezh gornykh sten nesetsia Terek’ (Between Mountain Walls Rushes the Terek), by describing the writhing, turbulent river attempting to escape its banks, is in coded terms describing the way in

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which the poet feels constrained by his surveillance, unable to escape abroad.48 Pushkin very clearly emphasizes the history of wars in the Caucasus in his depiction of Onegin. One variant of the twelfth stanza, in fact, presents the mountain chain as the Slavs’ natural border, through which the Russians have nevertheless broken, as war penetrates all natural barriers in Russia’s quest for imperial glory: Он видит горные громады Славян естественную грань, Но уж давно пробилась брань Чрез их упорные преграды Чтоб на брега седой Куры Раскинут русские шатры.49 [He sees the mountainous masses The natural border of the Slavs, But already long ago battle breached Through their stubborn barriers In order, on the banks of the grey Kura To pitch Russian tents.]

Another possible line that Pushkin considered in this stanza, ‘Поправ естественную грань’50 (Having corrected the natural border) was a far stronger statement of the matter: the ‘natural’ border was in need of human and governmental ‘correction.’ Another variant line went so far as to name an enemy: ‘Враждебной Грузии места’51 (The areas of hostile Georgia). As Georgia had been annexed by 1802, this would have made the breaching of the border relatively old news. Nonetheless, the terminology highlights the political terms under which the natural mountain border was understood. There was also a variant stanza describing a more up-to-date military experience: Onegin is accompanied into the mountains by a cannon, an experience that Pushkin, who travelled in this manner in 1829, described in both his travel notes and ‘Journey to Arzrum.’ The partial stanza reads as follows: Вдали Кавказские громады К ним путь открыть чрез их преграды За их естественную грань

134 Writing at Russia’s Border с копьем промчалась брань Авось их дикою красой Случайно тронут будет он И вот конвоем окружен Во след за пушкою степною – ступил Онегин врдруг В предверье гор, в их мрачный круг.52 [In the distance lie the Caucasian masses To them a path is open through their barriers Beyond their natural border Battle tears through with a spear Perhaps by their wild beauty He will by chance be touched And thus surrounded by a convoy Following the steppe cannon – suddenly Onegin stepped Into the threshold of the mountains, into their mournful circle.]

This stanza makes explicit reference to Russian convoys travelling through the mountains, characterizing Onegin’s entry into the forbidding beauty of the mountains as an incursion into enemy territory. Onegin hopes to be touched not only by the beauty of the Caucasus but also by the excitement lent to the scene by military activity and potential danger. As Pushkin describes his own trip in both his travel notes and ‘Puteshestvie v Arzrum,’ he is at first excited by the theatrical effect of travelling amidst the five hundred or so people who are accompanied by the cannon, with different groups taking different roles and travelling in particular formations, but the slow pace of the undertaking gradually leaves him bored. Nonetheless, soon after being ‘received into the sanctuary’53 of the mountains, Pushkin is warned by a soldier that he must not wander off because travellers are often shot at. These variant stanzas, following as they do in the wake of Derzhavin, Zhukovskii, and Pushkin’s earlier work, give rise to the question of whether the Caucasus and its beauty could by this point even be perceived by Russian readers separately from the Russian military presence in the area. And in fact, in the poems by both Derzhavin and Zhukovskii, the region is explicitly linked with war. Derzhavin’s 1797 ‘Na vozvrashchenie Grafa Zubova iz Persii’ (On the Return of Count Zubov from Persia) emphasizes the military con-

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nection to the Caucasus region and its propensity to be wild, stormy, and untameable: О юный вождь! сверша походы, Прошел ты с воинством Кавказ, Зрел ужасы, красы природы: Как, с ребр там страшных гор лиясь, Ревут в мрак бездн сердиты реки; Как с чел их с грохотом снега Падут, лежавши целы веки; Как серны, вниз склонив рога, Зрят в мгле спокойно под собою Рожденье молний и громов.54 [Oh young leader! Having completed your campains, You passed with your host through the Caucasus, Saw the horrors, the beauties of nature: How, flowing from the edges of the awful mountains, Angry rivers roar into the gloom of abysses; How from their brows with thunder snows Fall, having lain there for whole centuries; How chamois, having lowered their horns, Look in the shadows quietly below At the birth of lightning and thunder.]

The ode was written to a man who was ordered back to Russia during a military campaign and subjected to police surveillance, and unlike earlier ceremonial odes, was not read at court or even published at the time.55 Though Derzhavin’s imagery was influential, the ode as a whole emphasizes that true happiness in life is a middle road without great heights or depths. Ram notes: ‘The poem thus begins by denying philosophically what would be its greatest poetic innovation: its vivid description, the first in Russian literature, of the Caucasus as a privileged locus of the sublime.’56 Zhukovskii’s 1814 ‘K Voeikovu’ (To Voeikov) depended heavily on Derzhavin’s ode for its own imagery of the Caucasus.57 After the opening salutation to the returning Voeikov, the poem reads: Ты был под знаменами славы; Ты видел, друг, следы кровавы

136 Writing at Russia’s Border На Русь наслынувших врагов, Их казнь и ужас их побега.58 [You were under the banners of glory; You saw, friend, the bloody trails Of the enemies that had rushed against Rus’ Their execution and the horror of their flight.]

These lines may refer to the War of 1812, but they blend seamlessly into the lines describing the Caucasus, which, like Derzhavin’s ode, frequently begin ‘ты зрел’ or ‘ты видел’ (you saw), a hallmark that Pushkin echoed. The investment of the Caucasus with military significance is thus part and parcel of its poetic constitution, the rule rather than the exception. And indeed, we know from the 1830 Boldino manuscript that ‘Onegin’s Journey’ was precipitated by the fact that ‘проснулся раз он Патриотом’59 (he awoke a patriot), even if patriot was only one of Onegin’s many roles and masks. It is striking how often the same words and phrases are used in the Caucasian stanza and its variants in ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ written in 1830, and in Pushkin’s travel notes, written in 1829. Consider, for example, this excerpt from the latter: Пушка оставила нас, мы отправились с пехотой и казаками. Кавказ принял нас в свое святилище [variant: в свое широкое предверие]. Мы услышали глухой рев и скоро увидели Терек разливающийся в разных направлениях – Мы поехали по его левому берегу – чем далее углублялись мы в горы, тем уже становилось ущелие. Стесненный Терек с ужасным ревом бросал свои аспидные воды через камни преграждающие ему путь и поминутно – Погода была пасмурная, облако тянулось около черных вершин, туманное ущелие извивалось под течению Терека. Каменные подошвы гор обточены были его волнами – Я шел пешком и поминутно останавливался пораженный дикими красотами природы.60 [The cannon left us, we set out with the infantry and Cossacks. The Caucasus received us into its sanctuary [variant: into its broad threshold]. We heard the dull roar and quickly caught sight of the Terek pouring forth in various directions – We rode along its left bank – the further we delved into the mountains, the narrower the gorge became. The constrained Terek with a terrible roar threw its slate waves through rocks blocking its way and at every moment – The weather was gloomy, a cloud stretched itself

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near the black peaks, the foggy gorge wound along the flow of the Terek. The rocky feet of the mountains were ground down by its waves – I walked on foot and stopped at every moment, struck by the wild beauties of nature.]

The expression ‘широкое предверие’ (broad threshold), for example, is also used in the final lines of the variant stanza about Onegin travelling with the cannon: – ступил Онегин врдруг В предверье гор, в их мрачный круг – suddenly Onegin stepped Into the threshold of the mountains, into their mournful circle.]

The expression ‘пораженный дикими красотами природы’ (struck by the wild beauties of nature) is also very similar to the lines ‘Авось их дикою красой / Случайно тронут будет он’ (Perhaps by their wild beauty / He will by chance be touched) in the same stanza. The use of Pushkin’s experiences as a model for Onegin’s is quite evident. The variant stanza describing Onegin with the cannon was originally followed by two others that seemed to continue ‘Onegin’s Journey’ into the Caucasus. They were also not included in Pushkin’s final draft in the fall of 1830. The first of these following stanzas, while similar to the ultimate twelfth stanza in some respects, can easily be interpreted as a sequel to Onegin’s entrance ‘to the threshold of the mountains.’ It also closely follows the trajectory of Pushkin’s 1829 diary: Он видит: Терек разъяренный Трясет и точит берега, Над ним с чела скалы нагбенной Висит олень, склонив рога; Обвалы сыплются и блещут; Вдоль скал прямых потоки хлещут. Меж гор, меж двух высоких стен Идет ущелие; стеснен Опасный путь все уже, уже; Вверху чуть видны небеса; Природы мрачная краса Везде являет дикость ту же.

138 Writing at Russia’s Border Хвала тебе, седой Кавказ, Онегин тронут в первый раз.61 [He sees: The infuriated Terek Shakes and corrodes its banks, Above it from the overhanging brow of the cliff A deer is suspended, having lowered its horns; Avalanches sweep down and shine; Along the sheer cliffs streams gush. Between the mountains, between two tall walls The gorge wends; constrained, The dangerous path becomes narrower, narrower Above the skies are barely seen; The gloomy beauty of nature Everywhere shows the same wildness. Glory to you, grey Caucasus, Onegin is touched for the first time.]

The description of passing between narrow cliffs closely follows Pushkin’s description quoted above, and has similarities as well to the 1829 poems ‘Obval’ and ‘Kavkaz.’ As in the final version of the stanza which was published in ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ the phrase ‘висит олень, склонив рога’ (A deer is suspended, having lowered its horns) appears, evoking the lines in ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ that also alluded to Derzhavin: ‘Уже приюта между скал / Елень испуганный искал’ (Already shelter between the crags / A frightened deer seeks).62 Interestingly, Pushkin’s paraphrase of Derzhavin’s line ‘Как серны, вниз склонив рога’ (How chamois, having lowered their horns) follows Derzhavin far more closely in the Onegin stanzas than in ‘Captive’ itself, suggesting that Pushkin was actually rereading or recalling Derzhavin’s ode. This rereading or reconsidering of Derzhavin’s ode may also have affected other parts of Eugene Onegin, including the beginning of the final chapter 8. I will come back to this possibility shortly. This stanza in which Onegin is ‘touched for the first time,’ which is so closely intertwined with other Pushkinian texts of the same time period, seems to put an end to Onegin’s ennui: like Pushkin on his first trip to the Caucasus, he has been touched. The Pushkin of the travel notes has much the same reaction: ‘– I walked on foot and stopped at every moment, struck by the wild beauties of nature.’63 Pushkin altered the same section in ‘Journey to Arzrum’ to show a far less impressed

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persona, in the operation Helfant so interestingly describes. In ‘Journey to Arzrum’ the same line reads instead: Я шел пешком и поминутно останавливался, пораженный мрачною прелестию природы’ (I walked on foot and stopped at every moment, struck by the gloomy charm of nature).64 The ‘wild beauties’ of nature become the ‘gloomy charm’ of nature – a rather more subdued emotional response. Both phrases belong to the terminology of the sublime, the ‘mountain gloom and mountain glory,’ which was so prevalent, but ‘gloomy charm’ presents a more world-weary perspective.65 The variant stanza which followed the above stanza specifically addresses the author/narrator’s youthful infatuation with the Caucasus, as if to continue the narrative begun by the final line in the previous stanza, ‘Onegin was touched for the first time.’ Furthermore, the narration shifts to the first person, now describing the Pushkinian narrator rather than Onegin: Во время оное былое! ... В те дни ты знал меня, Кавказ, В свое святилище глухое, Ты призывал меня не раз. В тебя влюблен я был безумно. Меня приветствовал ты шумно Могучим гласом бурь своих, Я слышал рев ручьев твоих, И снеговых обвалов грохот, И клик орлов, и пенье дев, И терека свирепый рев, И эха дальнозвучный хохот, И зрел я, слабый твой певец, Казбека царственный венец.66 [Such times were those! ... In those days you knew me, Caucasus, In your still sanctuary You called upon me more than once. I was madly in love with you. You noisily greeted me With the mighty voice of your storms, I heard the roar of your streams, And the thunder of the snowy avalanches,

140 Writing at Russia’s Border And call of the eagles, and singing of the girls, And the fierce roar of the Terek, And the far-sounding laughter of the echo, And I saw, your weak singer, The kingly wreath of Kazbek.]

Here Pushkin again combines the imagery and terminology of ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ (the storms, the singing of the girls, the imagery of the mountains as tsars) and the motifs of the 1829 trip: the avalanche, the emphasis on the Terek, the retrospective look backward. What ultimately remained of this three-stanza mini-narrative in ‘Fragments of Onegin’s Journey’ was only the middle section, in a version that betrayed no particular inspiration on the part of Onegin, but retained the syncretism of features from ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ and ‘The Georgian Military Highway,’ or Pushkin’s travel notes. The three stanzas together, however, weave an interesting tale: Onegin travels into the mountains much as Pushkin did in 1829, and is affected by them in the manner of the youthful Pushkin, as well as in his style. The narrator then announces his own past infatuation, with the ‘не раз’ (more than once) referring to his 1829 journey as well as his 1820 one.67 The final couplet, ‘И зрел я, слабый твой певец / Казбека царственный венец’ (And I saw, your weak singer / The kingly wreath of Kazbek), obviously evokes ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ but avers as well that the narrator’s poetic talents have matured, that he is now known for many more works than the early poem with which he created such a sensation. But the author/narrator has not given up his desire to create poetic works about the Caucasus, which continues to stand as a benchmark of the poet’s own personal development and of the ultimate goal of poets: the creation of art that rivals nature in its claim on the human imagination. Pushkin underscores the stationary quality of the mountains, against which he measures his own life and work, in the travel notes: ‘В Ставрополе увидел я на краю неба белую недвижную массу облаков поразившую мне взоры тому ровно 9 лет – Они всё те же, всё на том же месте – Это были снежные вершины Кавказа’ (In Stavropol I saw on the edge of the sky the white, unmoving mass of clouds that had struck my sight exactly nine years before – They are still the same, still in the same place – These were the snowy peaks of the Caucasus).68 Though he himself points to the cultural constructedness of the mountains as changeless objects, and shows in his own works how human events such as wars are entangled in their representation, the

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mountains nonetheless comprise a focal point for Pushkin’s work. From his trip south in 1820 to ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ from the 1829 lyrics and prose and ‘Onegin’s Journey’ to the 1836 publication of ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ Pushkin revisits the Caucasus again and again. Situated far from St Petersburg, the Caucasus was the ‘new Parnassus’ for young Pushkin, as well as the meeting place for old friends and the locus of both the power and limitations of the Russian imperial agenda. Attempting to cross a border that continually recedes from him, Pushkin remains within the Russian Empire, even while enumerating the landmarks of a territory that only yesterday was foreign. The south was crucial for Pushkin, influencing his composition, his reception, his viewpoint, his position as a poet. He went there as an exile, but returned of his own volition, in fact against the wishes of the government. The variant stanzas I have discussed show that Pushkin toyed with the possibility of breaking down the constant refrain of ‘toska, toska’ (ennui, ennui) upon Onegin’s entry into the mountains, that he considered bestowing upon Onegin a similar rapturous appreciation for the Caucasus that was so evident in ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ and which clearly remained in the 1829 lyrics, the 1829 diary, and the ‘expunged stanzas’ (as Nabokov calls them) of ‘Onegin’s Journey.’ It seems that in Pushkin’s mind, only one place could have broken through to banish Onegin’s splenetic disposition: the mountains of the Caucasus. That Pushkin ultimately chose to leave Onegin untouched by his sojourn in the mountains points to his decision to characterize Onegin as a persona separate from Pushkin, a character who, as many critics have pointed out, was left behind while the narrator and Tatiana continued to evolve.69 Perhaps when the characterization of Onegin came uncomfortably close to Pushkin himself in these variant stanzas, Pushkin relegated him to arm’s length. Onegin partakes of a trip through the Caucasus, but is not destined to so closely share his creator’s biography and interior development. Furthermore, the highly politicized nature of Onegin’s travels seems to be something that Pushkin tried out, but then decided to abandon. Onegin has numerous references to politically charged issues, but most are elliptical rather than overt. Onegin’s toska apparently did not mesh well with Pushkin’s interest in rebellion. Nonetheless, the omitted stanzas may help explain why some scholars have held that view that Onegin, upon his return to Moscow, was receptive to love. Caryl Emerson has argued, for example, that ‘there has been this genuine, inexplicable change in him brought about by – who knows? – the passage of time, or love.’70 Although the stanza in

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which Onegin is ‘touched for the first time’ was no longer a part of the final narrative, either in the first draft or in the published ‘Fragments of Onegin’s Journey,’ the residue of this change still seems to subtly resonate in Onegin’s character upon his return to Moscow. Leslie O’Bell notes: The commonplace has been that Pushkin does not sufficiently prepare the reader for Tatiana’s transformation from provincial girl to mistress of Petersburg salon, although he does motivate her changed view of Onegin through the library episode. Yet, without the Journey, we realize that Onegin’s life from the duel to the moment when he amazedly recognizes Tatiana is a total blank. His transformation in Chapter VIII is equally abrupt. But we must admit that whatever Pushkin sacrificed in the Journey, its remaining drafts and fragments do not serve to advance the plot. The Journey, punctuated by the refrain ‘toska, toska,’ simply returns Onegin to his point of departure.71

Pushkin was, however, considering giving Onegin a ‘breakthrough,’ a moment in which he would be touched for the first time, a moment that might make him one of those travellers whose view and understanding of ‘home’ is put into perspective by a journey, and whose understanding of the world is coloured by his experience of the spectacular and politically charged Caucasus Mountains. The original draft of ‘Onegin’s Journey’ ended with an encomium to home, friends, one’s native surroundings. Thus Onegin might logically also have come to an understanding of Tatiana’s ‘mature’ appreciation for the Russian countryside, and therefore be in a position to appreciate her on two levels: her original status as a country girl and her new status as mistress of societal construction and convention. In fact, Pushkin’s rereading or reconsideration of Derzhavin’s ‘Ode to Count Zubov,’ which seems apparent in his close paraphrase of Derzhavin’s line and in his use of the adjective ‘derzhavnyi,’ may shed some light on this issue. In the ode, there is much attention given to the matter of how one should live one’s life: Но тот блажен, кто не боится Фортуны потерять своей, За ней на высоту не мчится, Идет середнею стезей И след во всяком состояньи

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Цветами усыпает свой. Кто при конце своих ристаний Вдали зреть может за собой Аллею подвигов прекрасных; Дав совести своей отчет В минутах светлых и ненастных С улыбкою часы же чтет, Как сам благими насладился, Как спас других от бед, от нужд, Как быть всем добрым торопился, Раскаянья и вздохов чужд.72 [But he is blessed, who does not fear To lose his fortune, Who does not speed after her onto the heights, Who follows along the middle way And his path in any situation Strews with flowers. Who at the end of his exertions Can see far behind himself Along an allée of marvellous feats; And having given his conscience a reckoning In the bright and rainy minutes Counts the hours with a smile How he himself enjoyed blessings How he saved others from poverty, from need, How he hurried to be good to all, Foreign to despair and sighs.]

Certainly Pushkin’s lines on a similar subject are not foreign to Derzhavin’s: Блажен, кто смолоду был молод, Блажен, кто вовремя созрел, Кто постепенно жизни холод С летами вытерпеть умел; Кто странным снам не предавался, Кто черни светской не чуждался. (EO8:10)

144 Writing at Russia’s Border [Oh, blest who in his youth was tender; And blest who ripened in his prime; Who learned to bear, without surrender, The chill of life with passing time; Who never knew exotic visions, Nor scorned the social mob’s decisions.]73

Pushkin, of course, gives the remainder of his stanza a mocking twist that is quite absent in Derzhavin: Кто в двадцать лет был франт иль хват, А в тридцать выгодно женат; Кто в пятьдесят освободился От частных и других долгов, Кто славы, денег, и чинов Спокойно в очередь добился, О ком твердили целый век: N. N. прекрасный человек. (EO8:10) [Who was at twenty fop or swell, And then at thirty, married well, At fifty shed all obligation For private and for other debts; Who gained in turn, without regrets, Great wealth and rank and reputation; Of whom lifelong the verdict ran: ‘Old X is quite a splendid man.’]74

Derzhavin’s encomium to the middle way is for Pushkin an evocation of a proper, but boring and politically tame, life. Nevertheless, as many critics have noted, the theme of poor timing and missed opportunities is frequently raised in Eugene Onegin, and the original version of chapter 8, ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ began with this same stanza, while Pushkin elaborated further on the issue in stanzas that followed.75 It seems clear that Pushkin, in his works pertaining to the Caucasus, at first situated his work in relation to that of others – Byron, Moore, Sa’di, Derzhavin, Zhukovskii. Later, it was Pushkin’s own Caucasus with which he contended; the models, references, and allusions increasingly refer not to the work of others but to his own poetic construction of the Caucasus, which comes to stand for many things – youth, exile,

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political disillusionment, anti-autocratic feelings, Decembrism, poetic debut and poetic success, Russia’s imperial power, ‘foreignness’ and potential escape from the confines of the empire. In later work, allusions to and paraphrases of Derzhavin and Zhukovskii appear not ‘independently,’ but through the filter of ‘The Captive of the Caucasus.’ Old models have been used, assimilated, made Pushkin’s own, and the most challenging model that remains is Pushkin himself. Literature and biography mix together: Onegin, the captive, the Pushkin of the early trip to the Caucaus, and the Pushkin of the later trip all become at points indistinguishable from one another. This process points to the fact that the Caucasus is a highly privileged poetic and political space, a point of reference both transformative of the poet’s viewpoint and oeuvre, and transformed by biography, history, and poetry. A similar operation, then, may also account for the differences between the early, Byronic version of Onegin and the later, more Pushkinian Onegin. The ‘expunged stanzas’ of ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ I believe, provide important insight into Pushkin’s and Onegin’s multiple, shifting personas, and they also indicate that Eugene Onegin should be read as a text that owes much to Russia’s margins, both provincial and imperial, and whose denouement can be far better understood in light of the residue of Onegin’s offstage transformation in the Caucasus. ‘A Journey to Arzrum’ The exploration of identity that occurs in ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ with its syncretic fusions of various personas, time periods, and events, is continued in ‘A Journey to Arzrum,’ one of the most critically contested of Pushkin’s texts. That ‘Journey to Arzrum’ is neither a casual, virtually unedited text nor ‘all that I have written about the campaign of 1829’ is well understood by now, although it is a text that continues to puzzle many scholars. By turns serious, satirical, self-mocking, and ironic, it refuses to fall into any easily categorized form. It has been hailed as a masterpiece and vilified as a poor example of Pushkin’s writing; one critic calls it ‘one of Pushkin’s weakest works’ in which ‘every other note rings false.’76 Significantly, Pushkin’s journey begins and ends in Russia’s borderlands, being framed by Pushkin’s visit to General A.P. Ermolov at the beginning and by the satirical performative reading of an article critical of Pushkin’s ‘Poltava’ at the end. In between Pushkin crosses through the Caucasus into Georgia, Armenia, and Turkey, strives to catch up

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with his friends, many of them Decembrists, in the army campaign against Turkey, and meets Paskevich, Ermolov’s replacement as commander of the Caucasus. Pushkin has many encounters along the road, some as strange as crossing paths with the body of Griboedov, slain by a Persian mob, on its way back to Russia; others as banal as attempts to get food or water from locals. Opinion as to whether Pushkin might have been trying to escape Russia via Turkey is mixed; some critics point to the ‘illicitness’ of the trip, while others feel that Pushkin knew that he would not be severely punished for flouting the rules (all travel beyond Moscow was to be pre-approved by Benkendorff – Pushkin had only partial approval for the trip), and moreover knew that he would be subject to surveillance at all times anyway.77 ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ published in 1836 in Pushkin’s Sovremennik, was a reworking of some travel notes he wrote during the trip in 1829 and published in 1830 as ‘The Georgian Military Highway (Excerpts from Travel Notes).’ ‘Journey to Arzrum’ frequently emphasizes the constructedness of identity in the realm of culture, politics, social standing, gender, and language.78 Pushkin plays with literary conventions, painting as ironic and off-putting a meeting with a Kalmyk girl elsewhere memorialized in more typical ‘Oriental beauty’ fashion in a lyric poem.79 He employs conventions of the travel narrative, the Oriental journey, and the military account. Throughout the narrative, Pushkin’s status as a Russian aristocrat, gentleman, poet, and even male is put into question as he encounters people who mistake him for a ‘Frank’ (a non-Russian European), a doctor, a potential criminal. His meetings with poets occur several times, in the guise of the Persian court poet who embarrasses him with his European sophistication, a dervish who is ‘brother to the poet,’ and the dead Griboedov, who is carried by men who designate him as ‘Griboed,’ a famous Russian writer whose name, though well known in Georgia, is truncated along the journey back to Russia, a circumstance that clearly warns of the potential for the poet’s work to be forgotten or unknown. Once with the army, Pushkin is with old friends on the one hand, but on the other hand also under the eye of both his surveillance tail and Paskevich, the commander whom he considers to be less than the equal of Ermolov. Not a military man, he is confused at times by the action but also keenly aware of the vulnerabilities of the Russian army. Hardly a ladykiller on this trip, as Pushkin tells it, he is first mystified by the masculine and matter-of-fact behaviour of a Kalmyk girl, then ignored by Tiflis women as they nonchalantly bathe in his presence.

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Further figures imply a contrast to typical Russian male sexuality: he encounters a noseless bath attendant, eunuchs, and a hermaphrodite, whose appearance he describes in Latin. In Arzrum he visits a harem, that archetypal Orientalist experience; following the Orientalist convention of the fallen, debased Orient, he finds in it little mystery, with ‘not a single beauty’ – although perhaps a worthy subject for an Oriental novel. There are also several mentions of homosexual relationships, among non-Russians to be sure, but the location and nature of the travelogue along border regions seem to allow greater freedom in describing these relationships as well as providing an ‘appropriate’ venue for them. Though Pushkin famously cannot escape the confines of Russia, travelling fruitlessly across the Arpachai, the adventures and misadventures of a traveller journeying through the ever-expanding borderlands of the empire indicate that Russian writing constantly comes up against its limits, while the experiences themselves, whose descriptions and parameters shift through various retellings, are never fixed and concrete. The opening of the first chapter, describing Pushkin’s visit to Ermolov, brings Russian policy and politics into question, since Ermolov was officially in disgrace. (Pushkin comments ironically, ‘Of government and politics there was not a word.’)80 Ermolov makes fun of his successor, Paskevich, ridiculing his accomplishments, and calling him ‘Graf Erikhonskii’ rather than ‘Graf Erevanskii’: ‘On the walls of his study hung swords and daggers, mementoes of his rule in the Caucasus. It is obvious that he finds it hard to endure his inactivity. A few times he took to speaking of Paskevich and always scathingly; he would speak of his easy victories and compare him to Joshua, before whom the walls fell at the sound of a trumpet.’81 Pushkin’s clearly approving description of the tough, soldierly mien of Ermolov contrasts with his descriptions of Paskevich, who expresses himself primarily in French and is given to rather inappropriate phrases, such as ‘That’s enough of their foolishness’ when ordering a military attack on a Turkish battery.82 During the visit with Ermolov comes the first hint of the instability of identity that occurs on the margins: Ermolov does not remember Pushkin’s full name, for which he apologizes several times over. But as will often happen in the narrative, what first seems unstable or in jeopardy (here Pushkin’s full name) is ultimately reiterated and strengthened. Pushkin not only meets the famous Ermolov, he establishes his identity with him in person.

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After reaching the Voronezh steppes and then Novocherkassk, Pushkin joins up with Count Musin-Pushkin, who had been punished in connection with the Decembrist uprising. The joining with Musin-Pushkin begins a motif in the journey that is encountered over and over: on the one hand, travelling in the Caucasus and beyond is done in the company of others, often with protection and/or guidance needed; on the other hand, Pushkin often expresses or enacts a desire to travel by himself, without anyone accompanying him, which loosens his identity from its tethers and allows for more improvisation and free interpretation. Helfant notes, for example, that in revising his notes to ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ Pushkin changed a number of pronouns from the first-person plural to the first-person singular, implying that only he was present or only he was experiencing the condition being described.83 Yet, this lessening of Pushkin’s fixed identity also destabilizes it and leads to confusion, miscommunication, and frustration. Upon joining up with MusinPushkin, the journey proper can be said to begin: The transition from Europe to Asia is more perceptible with every hour: the forests disappear, the hills level out, the grass gets thicker and the vegetation richer; birds appear which are unknown in our forests; eagles sit on the hillocks that line the main road, as if on guard, and look proudly at the traveler; over lush pastures Herds of indomitable mares Wander proudly.84

The fuzzy dividing line between ‘Europe’ and ‘Asia’ is evident here, as is the already military character of the excursion; the travel-notes version is even more concrete about this, noting that the eagles are ‘like sentries on pickets’.85 The phrase seems to recall the ending of ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ in which the captive knows he is free when he sees Russian bayonets and hears Cossack sentries calling to each other. Pushkin quotes the poet Ryleev, whose name was not allowed to appear under the quotation since he had been hanged for participating in the Decembrist uprising.86 Every figure thus far mentioned in the text, including Pushkin himself, has Decembrist sympathies. Unlike the poetic version of the Caucasus, this prosaic Caucasian journey describes a territory powerfully marked as both a theatre of war and as post-Decembrist; the travellers are themselves perhaps the indomitable ones, those who are persevering despite their disappointment. In the travel notes, Pushkin adds here that ‘roaming carts of half-wild tribes

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begin to appear, enlivening the boundless monotony of the steppe’ (8:2, 1028). After his comical anecdote about the Kalmyk girl, which seems to underline the first disjunction between identity and communication, Pushkin’s serious tone returns: ‘In Stavropol I saw on the horizon the clouds that had so impressed me exactly nine years before. They were still the same, still in the same spot. These are the snowcapped peaks of the Caucasian chain.’87 The first glimpse of the mountains, which are ‘still the same, still in the same spot,’ underscores the fact that, in fact, except for the mountains, everything in Russia has changed between 1820, the time of Pushkin’s first trip south, and 1829. The political situation has changed drastically, as have the lives of the narrator and his friends. The travel notes, as Ian Helfant has remarked, are less detached here; there is more description given to the mountains. Pushkin remarks, for example, ‘They embraced the entire right side of the horizon and brightly traced themselves against the clear morning sky. I saw the sharp-pointed Beshtu, surrounded by Mashuk, Snake and Bald mountain – [like a tsar surrounded by his Vassals]’ (8:2, 1029). Further notes that were crossed out reveal a relatively emotional response to the mountains: ‘The desire to greet these mountains, where I spent several’ is the first variant, followed by ‘The desire to again visit [these familiar] mountains [was] made itself felt in me so strongly that in spite of my intention to travel to Georgia I decided to visit them (8:2, 1029–30). The third variant notes that he ‘set off in a cart to Goryachye Vody’ (8:2, 1030). This emotional response to revisiting the mountains was cut out of ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ in a move perhaps much like Pushkin’s decision to make ‘Onegin’s Journey’ a fruitless one, in spite of the fact that Pushkin at one point entertained making ‘Onegin’s Journey’ one of epiphany in the Caucasus Mountains. In both ‘Onegin’s Journey’ and ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ Pushkin ultimately downplays the emotional attachment he feels to the mountains. The conscious decision to downplay the significance of emotions makes both texts more laconic, more distant; it also tends to isolate ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ as a text of youthful enthusiasm. In regard to scenery itself, although not in regard to other aspects of the text, the narrator thus evinces a mastery and detachment that emphasizes Russian power. The visit to Goryachie Vody underscores the fact that Pushkin cannot return to the same Caucasus he left years before: From Georgievsk I went by to visit Goryachie Vody. Here I found great change: in my time the baths were in hastily built shacks. The springs, for

150 Writing at Russia’s Border the most part in their primitive state, gushed out, steamed and flowed down the mountains in various directions, leaving white and reddish traces behind them. We scooped up the seething water with a ladle made of bark or the bottom of a broken bottle. Now magnificent baths and buildings have been erected. A boulevard lined by young lindens runs along the slope of Mount Mashuk. Everywhere there are neatly kept pathways, green benches, rectangular flowerbeds, little bridges, pavilions. The springs have been refined, lined with stone; nailed up on the walls of the bathhouses are lists of instructions from the police; everything is orderly, neat, prettified ... I confess: the Caucasus spas offer more conveniences nowadays; but I missed their former wild state; I missed the steep stone paths, the bushes and the unfenced cliffs over which I used to clamber. With sadness I left the spas, and set out on my way back to Georgievsk.88

The prettification of the Caucasus indicates the increasing difficulty of ‘getting away’ from civilization; the Russian Empire encroaches culturally and legally (the instructions from the police) as well as politically; Pushkin puts the reader on notice that to escape Russia may be impossible now. In his travel notes, Pushkin gives more detail: he spends three hours at the resort, where he converses with ‘dear Zhe ... and Zhi ... and tried to explain to them my sad feelings. They understood me and parted with me in a friendly way’ (8:2, 1031). The pain and loss of returning to a familiar place that has changed, that marks the changes in one’s own life, are very vivid in the extended version, reminding the reader of such descriptions in Eugene Onegin, for example. In ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ the next few lines hold out a certain amount of promise that some of the experiences of the past can be regained or remembered without great regret: ‘Soon night fell. The clear sky was studded with millions of stars. I was riding along the bank of the Podkumok. Here A. Raevsky used to sit with me, listening to the melody of the waters. The majestic Beshtu stood outlined blacker and blacker in the distance, surrounded by mountains, its vassals, and finally it disappeared in the darkness.’89 The passage is clearly a powerful allusion to ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ (which was dedicated to Aleksandr Raevskii’s brother, Nikolai Nikolaevich) and recalls Pushkin’s youthful stay in the Caucasus with the Raevskiis. In contrast to the passage before it, it holds out the possibility of a return to the same Caucasus that formed his youthful, idealistic impressions. The final line, ‘The majestic Beshtu stood blacker and blacker in the distance,’ links the two

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time periods, for, grammatically speaking, it can be understood either as pertaining to the present experience, or the past one with Aleksandr Raevskii, or both. The passage is very different in the notes, as the reference is to Nikolai Raevskii (one variant calls him ‘general’). Pushkin writes: ‘I sat on the coachman’s seat and did not take my eyes from the majestic Beshtu already covered in evening shadow. Soon it was night – The sky was strewn with millions of stars – Beshtu was outlined blacker and blacker in the distance, surrounded by its mountain Vassals. Finally it disappeared in the darkness. I returned to Georgievsk late and found Count Pushkin already sleeping’ (8:2, 1031). In its original form, the experience of watching Beshtu disappear was all Pushkin’s, and again served to indicate the depth of his attachment to the place. The reference is to the Raevskii brother who was Pushkin’s close friend and whom he was, by most accounts, en route to see. Pushkin’s ‘Journey to Arzrum’ version, unlike his original version, indicates that some parts of the landscape did not change after all, like Beshtu, and some experiences could be re-experienced. In the original passage, part of the loss stems from the fact that Pushkin once experienced these things with Nikolai Raevskii; the second version truncates this by naming Aleksandr Raevskii instead. Nonetheless, the autocratic or Orientalist metaphor of Beshtu and its ‘vassals’ retains the sense that the landscape is very much imbued with human power relations. The next passages describe the beginning of the Georgian Military Highway and Pushkin’s passage along it. As Ian Helfant has noted, Pushkin changes the references to boredom at slow travel from collective to individual ones, de-emphasizing his fellow travellers.90 Fortresses, graves, and ruins take precedence while the mountains appear ever larger; Pushkin also comments on the Circassians, admitting that the Russians have decimated their numbers and their way of life, but declaring as well that they must be pacified, whether by the trappings of civilization or by the force of Christianity. These musings are far lengthier in the travel notes, which make it clear that Pushkin felt the Circassians should fall under complete Russian control, preferably by means of conversion to Christianity. He is pessimistic, however, about the ‘Christian’ behaviour of Russian missionaries and officials.91 Pushkin describes the appearance of a shepherd who ‘might have been a Russian and who, once taken prisoner, had grown old in his captivity.’92 The cruel treatment of the Circassians’ prisoners is also lamented, apparently as a way to justify the necessity of ‘pacifying’ them.

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These references to ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ indicate both an alternative ending to the poem (if the captive had stayed with the Circassian girl instead of escaping, or perhaps never had the opportunity to escape) and a reminder that Circassian captivity is an ill that must be eradicated or tamed. At the same time, however, the ‘spirit of their wild chivalry has declined noticeably’;93 although less than ten years have passed, the Circassians are now constituted differently, far less ideally, than in the narrative poem, while the trip to the Caucasus is now not so much poetic as prosaic.94 Perhaps Pushkin is pointing to the dangers of poetry when negotiating this borderland, where the stakes for Russian imperial power have become much higher than they were some years before. References to Tatartub and to an Ossetian burial rite point to another parallel poetic text, Pushkin’s unfinished ‘Tazit’ of 1829. Although the narrator of ‘Journey to Arzrum’ claims not to understand the burial rites, they are explained in ‘Tazit’: the dead warrior is buried with his weapons so that his ‘grave will be strong’ and so that he can be resurrected as a warrior. ‘Tazit’ is told from an internal point of view, with no Russian narrator present, while ‘Journey to Arzrum’ foregrounds the narrator’s distance and estrangement from the rites. Pushkin here seems to foreground the constructedness of these literary possibilities, playing with the fact that he either fabricated the meaning of the burial rite in ‘Tazit’ or feigns ignorance about it in ‘Journey to Arzrum.’ As has been noted by many critics, many of Pushkin’s prose passages also appeared as poems, for which the prose passages do not so much explain or textualize as provide alternative, competing narratives, such as the triply narrated scene with the Kalmyk girl. As Helfant notes, Pushkin assuredly constructs various personae in this regard, but by providing multiple versions of the same episodes, he also points to the constructedness of these texts, their status precisely as texts rather than works, as Barthes would have it.95 These competing texts, which have served to characterize the Caucasus and Russians’ relationship to it, multiply the potential meanings of that relationship. A knowledgeable and careful observer in ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ and ‘Tazit,’ Pushkin is detached and ignorant of Ossetian rites in ‘Journey,’ challenging the notion of a unitary poet and of a uniformly unknown border region. The next major section of the narrative, in fact, is just such an example, and it was rewritten by Pushkin in a number of different forms: The cannon left us. We set out with the infantry and the Cossacks. The Caucasus received us into its sanctuary. We heard the muffled roar and

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caught sight of the Terek, which was pouring forth in several directions. We traveled along its left bank. Its noisy waves move the wheels of the low little Ossetian mills which look like dog kennels. The farther we penetrated into the mountains, the narrower the pass became. The confined Terek throws its turbid waves with a roar over the cliffs which block its path. The pass winds along its course. At their rocky base the mountains have been ground smooth by its waves. I went along on foot and kept stopping, overwhelmed by the gloomy beauty of nature.96

In ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ Pushkin has emphasized the picturesque, with its focus on rustic elements of human culture and jagged and awesome features of nature; the Ossetian mills are an added detail. In ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ the original chapter 8 of Eugene Onegin, Pushkin worked over the stanzas that described this sequence of events, declaring in one variant, as we have seen above, that as a result of this passage along the banks of the Terek, ‘Onegin is touched for the first time.’ This ‘sanctuary’ of the Caucasus, or in some variants, the ‘threshold’ of the mountains is a crucial point in the various narratives Pushkin created: ‘The Georgian Military Highway,’ ‘A Journey to Arzrum,’ ‘Onegin’s Journey.’ It seems to mark the epiphanic moment of the Caucasian journey, the first time that nature overpowers culture. Engulfed by the mountains and the turbulent river, the traveller undergoes a transformation of sorts. As I have noted above, in one of Pushkin’s drafts for ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ this passage into the sanctuary of the Caucasus leads to an enraptured declaration of Pushkin’s love for the Caucasus and its role in forming him as a poet in the form of an apostrophe to the Caucasus: Во время оное былое! ... В те дни ты знал меня, Кавказ, В свое святилище глухое, Ты призывал меня не раз. В тебя влюблен я был безумно. Меня приветствовал ты шумно Могучим гласом бурь своих, Я слышал рев ручьев твоих, И снеговых обвалов грохот, И клик орлов, и пенье дев, И Терека свирепый рев, И эха дальнозвучный хохот, И зрел я, слабый твой певец,

154 Writing at Russia’s Border Казбека царственный венец.97 [Such times were those! ... In those days you knew me, Caucasus, In your still sanctuary You called upon me more than once. I was madly in love with you. You noisily greeted me With the mighty voice of your storms, I heard the roar of your streams, And the thunder of the snowy avalanches, And call of the eagles, and singing of the girls, And the fierce roar of the Terek, And the far-sounding laughter of the echo, And I saw, your weak singer, The kingly wreath of Kazbek.]

The Caucasus knows the poet, calls to him; he is in love, is spoken to by the Caucasian rivers and the thunder of its avalanches; he calls himself merely a ‘weak singer,’ whereas the Kazbek is a crowned head. There is no question of who has the upper hand, who is more powerful, or what a vast debt he owes to this overpowering landscape. At this very point of poetic climax, Pushkin faces the first real danger of his trip: he is warned not to stray from the group, since Ossetians sometimes shoot at travellers across the Terek. He is now officially regarded as one of ‘the enemy,’ the Russian military apparatus. At Lars, the first stopping-point after this episode, Pushkin finds a ‘soiled copy’ (измарaнный список) of his ‘Captive of the Caucasus,’ which he rereads ‘with great pleasure’ even though he finds it ‘weak, young, incomplete; but a great deal was intuited and expressed aptly.’98 Here for the first time he explicitly names the text whose existence seems to underlie not only ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ but his maturation as a poet. His reading public reads him, reads the Caucasus, through the lens of this narrative poem. The discovery of a copy of the poem is not accidental; it seems to perform a multitude of functions: it reaffirms Pushkin’s identity as a Russian poet, as well as his popularity. The travel notes mention only a ‘rukopis’’ (hand-written copy) of the poem, while ‘Journey’ calls it a soiled copy, emphasizing the fact that it has existed for some time and implying that it has been read by many people, perhaps as a travel

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guide or affirmation of their impressions of the mountains. Perhaps, then, the ‘Journey’ is intended to perform a similar function: to serve as Pushkin’s statement about the state of the Caucasus. The narrative poem’s appearance also indicates that things have changed since it was published: Pushkin’s age, of course, his poetic sophistication, the political situation in the country. Further, it is Nikolai Raevskii, now an officer serving in the Russian military campaign against Turkey, and the dedicatee of ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ whom Pushkin is seeking. Just as the experience of being in the Caucasus with the Raevskiis, and the resulting narrative poem, declared the significance of the Caucasus in 1820–1, ‘Journey to Arzrum’ declares it for 1829. Texts are the measure of the distance travelled and, as in ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ the Caucasus is now clearly a place marked by a Russian military presence and Russian imperial aims. In fact, the very next paragraph describes Turkish prisoners working on the road, a clear indication of the power and success of the Russian military. The prisoners do not like the Russian black bread given to them to eat; Pushkin cites a friend’s visit to Paris, where one cannot obtain black bread and therefore ‘there’s nothing to eat.’99 The disjuncture of this analogy is jarring: prisoners who do not like Russian black bread are compared with an aristocrat who missed black bread on a pleasure trip to Paris. Russian cultural and military superiority seems to take the foreground in this startling comparison. Of course, Pushkin is taking this trip precisely because he cannot take one to Paris, to Europe; hence, although Paris lacks black bread, it is available at this outpost of the Russian empire in the Caucasus – even if it is not appreciated by the Turkish prisoners. Pushkin is the one able to appreciate such convoluted irony. In the next passage, Pushkin’s sense of humour is evident as he compares steep splashing streams to a Rembrandt painting in which the young Ganymede urinates in fear as he is snatched up by Zeus.100 Besides high art, the Terek is also associated with simple, picturesque craft: ‘Not far from the post a little bridge is boldly thrown across the river. When you stand on it, it is as if you were in a mill. The whole bridge shakes, and the Terek roars like the wheels that move the millstones.’101 Pushkin includes some obligatory récit de voyage information about Queen Daria and the Darial Gate, along with information about other gates and geographical names. His studied indifference, however, soon takes over: ‘Soon one’s impressions are dulled. Hardly a day had gone by, and the roar of the Terek and its monstrous waterfalls, its cliffs and precipices no longer attracted my attention. An impatience to

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reach Tiflis completely overpowered me. I went past Kazbek as indifferently as I once sailed past Chatyrdag. It is also true that the rainy and foggy weather prevented me from seeing its snowy mass, which in the expression of a poet ‘holds up the horizon.’102 Here Pushkin affects the pose of the world-weary traveller, perhaps because for him this trip south had to serve as a substitute, at least in retrospect, for what he truly wanted to do: travel to Europe. As Indira Ghose notes, the picturesque defuses the power of the other by arranging it into an aesthetic frame, whereas the sublime overwhelms, surprises, and threatens the viewer.103 Pushkin here seems to wrest the power away from the sublimely powerful landscape and to place it instead in the hands (or eye) of the traveller, who is now overpowered not by scenery but by an impatience to reach Tiflis. Andreas Schönle argues that ‘Journey to Arzrum’ is a polemic on Karamzin, with Pushkin’s indifference to the scenery in direct contrast to Karamzin’s pronounced exhilaration when faced with similar experiences, to the point that he actually falls down while contemplating the enormous power of the Rehenbach falls.104 The tension between what is impressive and overwhelming and what is already known and experienced makes itself felt here; further, the pressure to be sophisticated and worldly-wise makes itself known. If he downplays the scenery too much, there will be no point in making the journey or writing the descriptions; if he makes too much of it, he seems naive and there is no discernible difference in the Caucasian texts. In lieu of the foreign dignitaries that Karamzin met, Pushkin avails himself of similar, local opportunities when his convoy passes a Persian prince and the court poet (travelling, although this is not mentioned, to bring apologies for the death of Griboedov at the hands of a Tehran mob). Upon meeting the poet, Pushkin notes: I was about to start a bombastic Oriental greeting; but how humiliated I felt, when Fazil-Khan answered my inappropriate inventiveness with the simple, intelligent courtesy of a gentleman! ‘He hoped to see me in St. Petersburg; he was sorry that our acquaintance would be of short duration, and so on.’ With shame I was forced to abandon my pompously jocular tone and come down to ordinary European phrases. That was a lesson for our Russian tendency to make fun of others. In the future I shall not judge a person by his sheep-skin papakha and painted nails.105

Pushkin is made to look foolish because he misjudges the social sophistication of an ‘Oriental,’ but he relays a parting shot about the (presum-

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ably odd-looking) hat and effeminate painted nails. There is a kind of dual operation going on, as Pushkin is both caught in (and displays) his prejudices and wrong-headed expectations, not to mention misplaced sense of rhetorical style, and yet is reaffirmed in the fact of the superiority of Western customs, which prevail when a Persian poet meets a Russian. The reach of Russian/European acculturation is emphasized, while the traveller/reader is warned to be aware of this process, which may catch him unawares. European mores have travelled far and made the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’ less pronounced; yet, one cannot assume the Other is unfamiliar with one’s culture and hence, more liable to fall victim to it. After describing avalanches past and present, one of which was memorialized in ‘Obval,’ Pushkin and his new travelling companion, an inspector of roads, pass the Krestovaya on horseback: ‘The instantaneous transition from awesome Caucasus to lovely Georgia is enchanting. The air of the South suddenly starts to waft over the traveler. From the height of Mount Gut the Kaishaur Valley opens up with its inhabited cliffs, its orchards, and its bright Aragva, which winds like a silver ribbon – and all of this in a reduced scale, at the bottom of a threeverst-high precipice along which the dangerous road goes.’106 One can easily imagine this vista enframed as a photograph or sketch. Pushkin draws a clear line between the Caucasus (land as yet untamed, not under full Russian control) – and Georgia (comfortably annexed three decades before). (In the travel notes, Pushkin adds the adjective ‘dikii’ (wild) to ‘groznyi’ (terrible, formidable) when describing the Caucasus, and adds ‘prelestnaia’ (charming) to ‘milovidnaia’ (pretty) when describing Georgia, hence intensifying their differences.) That Georgia is understood as feminized, sexualized, as opposed to the masculinized Caucasus peaks, is evident. The traveller’s view of Georgia is, from the beginning, commanding, all-encompassing. Pushkin’s view down on the Aragva through the ‘blue blue clear sky’ (8:2, 1042) is nearly the polar opposite of his nearly futile attempts to see the narrow ribbon of sky from the rocky banks of the Caucasus rivers. Georgia is warm, fertile, fecund: ‘Instead of bare cliffs I saw green mountains and fruit-trees around me. Aqueducts gave evidence of the presence of civilization.’107 Georgia is ultimately a far more familiar place than the Caucasus, being Christian and a site of Roman (and Russian) colonization. Georgia is figured as a veritable promised land, a reward for journeying through the dark and terrifying mountains. Here the travel notes break off until an entry written from Arzrum; the

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remainder of the first chapter is Pushkin’s text in its ‘Journey to Arzrum’ form. Not wanting to wait for horses at a posting station, Pushkin sets out on foot, discovering that he has misjudged the difficulty of getting to the next station. He hears jackals barking and, upon arriving in the nearest village, demands shelter at the mayor’s house, ‘who did not know how to receive me’ until he produces the proper paperwork, upon which his demands are met. Here in Georgia, Pushkin’s name no longer functions as a sign, but his Russian bureaucratic paperwork does so, achieving its desired end. Pushkin’s status as a poet is now superseded by his status as a citizen of the Russian Empire. Pushkin notes: ‘I threw myself down on the sofa, hoping to fall into a bogatyr’s sleep after my deed: but there was no chance of that! Fleas, far more dangerous than jackals, attacked me and gave me no peace the whole night.’108 Here Pushkin mocks his own pride at having slogged through the many versts of mud to get to the village. Fleas attack the great hero who has so handily survived the jackals. In an inversion of Pushkin’s commanding view from the heights of Mount Gut into the valleys of Georgia, tiny fleas prevent the comparably gigantic human traveller from sleeping. Scale is a flexible tool, serving to alter perspective in a whimsical fashion. The chapter ends on a note that indicates that Pushkin is again approaching civilization: he joins his travelling companions, crosses over an ancient Roman bridge, and finds the road ‘pleasant and picturesque.’109 The first chapter, then, takes the reader from civilization in the form of Ermolov through the dangerous Caucasus Mountains and back into civilization in the form of Georgia, albeit one in which he will have to show his papers in order to be granted the privileges to which he is accustomed. Indeed, as chapter 2 opens, Pushkin greets Tiflis as a centre of civilization, remarking upon the cosmopolitan diversity of the population; he also heads for the ‘celebrated Tiflis baths’: ‘Never in my life have I encountered either in Russia or in Turkey anything more luxurious than the Tiflis baths.’110 First, however, he has an unusual experience: he is let into the baths on ‘women’s day’ and sees ‘more than fifty women, young and old, half-dressed and completely undressed.’111 ‘The appearance of men produced no impression. They continued to laugh and talk among themselves. Not one hurried to cover herself with her yashmak; not one stopped undressing. It seemed that I had entered like an invisible being [nevidimkoi]. Many of them were genuinely beautiful, and jus-

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tified the imagination of T. Moore.’112 Pushkin’s status as a male is unsettled. His appearance produces no impression at all on the undressed women; it is as if he were not there. Indeed, he is rendered ‘nevidimkoi,’ a noun of feminine gender, thus suggesting that he does not even retain, in this circumstance, his masculine gender designation. He is invisible; he is not male. However, at the end of the passage he declares his masculine gender identity and reasserts the hegemony of the male gaze: ‘On the other hand I know nothing more repulsive than the old women in Georgia – they are witches.’113 He then shifts into an account of his noseless Tatar bath attendant, who is ‘a master of his trade,’ emphasizing a relationship that affirms his superior status as a master attended by a servant. The man’s lack of a nose, probably due to syphilis, points to the dangers of sexual excess. In ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ a distinct pattern emerges: episodes that undercut, or appear to undercut, Pushkin’s status and authority are followed by episodes, or statements, in which these are reaffirmed or declared anew. While ultimately this process does not lead to a conclusive undermining of Pushkin’s status, it portrays his cultural and gender identity as a matter of constant negotiation and renegotiation, periodically needing to be renewed or recreated. The first episode of this kind seems to be the Kalmyk girl episode, in which the fact that the girl is not responsive to his advances leads to his calling her ‘the Circe of the Steppes’ and declaring that in any case she will never read the poem he writes to her. Pushkin describes Tiflis as a place in which Russian social organization is preserved, a place with a newspaper (in which Pushkin himself appeared in notices), cabs, and the like. Indeed, Russian social order is at times perhaps too closely observed in Tiflis: ‘General Strekalov, a famous epicure, once invited me to dinner; unfortunately they served the dishes according to rank at his house, and there were English officers wearing general’s epaulettes at the table. The servants passed me by with such zeal that I got up from the table hungry. The Devil take that Tiflis epicure!’114 Pushkin notes: ‘Russians do not consider themselves local residents. Military men, obedient to orders, live in Georgia because they have been so directed. Young titular councilors come here in pursuit of the coveted rank of assessor. The former and the latter look upon Georgia as exile.’115 Pushkin’s very tone asserts the opposite, of course: the Russians have a local presence, and in fact they advance their careers by coming to Tiflis and come willingly. This is a place that makes them what they are, that is essential to their status as citizens of a European empire.

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While in Tiflis Pushkin receives his long-awaited note from Raevskii, telling him where the army is. He sets off, noting: ‘From afar the Georgian villages seemed to me to be beautiful gardens, but as I rode up to them I saw a few poor saklyas lying in the shade of dusty poplars.’116 It is clear that perspective is everything; appearances can be deceiving. The renegotiation of perspective occurs constantly in Pushkin’s text. Desiring water, Pushkin tries to demand it of the owner of the first saklya (hut) he comes to, but ‘Thirty versts from Tiflis on the road to both Persia and Turkey, he did not know a word either of Russian or Tartar.’117 Schönle believes this is a kind of parody of a Swiss peasant who offers Karamzin his water, as well as a deconstruction of Karamzin’s idealized peasants; it also, however, reveals the vulnerability of a traveller whose qualities and language are unknown in a strange land.118 The same traveller who can pass judgment on the beauty of the landscape is not capable of obtaining drinking water at will: ‘The next change is the transition from Georgia to Armenia: I [...] found myself on the natural border of Georgia. New mountains rose before me, a new horizon; below me spread fertile green wheatfields. I glanced once more at scorched Georgia, and began to descend: along the sloping side of the mountain toward the fresh plains of Armenia. With indescribable pleasure I noticed that the heat had suddenly decreased: the climate was already different.’119 Georgia, which seems so green and fertile, upon closer inspection is scorched; now Armenia holds the promise of an earthly paradise. In Armenia he crosses paths with the dead body of Griboedov, being transported to Tiflis after having been killed by a mob in Tehran. The Georgians accompanying the cart call the dead poet ‘Griboed,’ truncating his name. It is an eerie moment: Griboedov’s name and patronymic were also Aleksandr Sergeevich: he too was a Russian poet. Pushkin laments the lack of recognition accorded to Griboedov and the unachieved potential; one has the impression he is commenting on his own life, or on the life of any reasonably talented man in Russia who is held back by circumstances beyond his control. Pushkin remarks that ‘our remarkable people disappear without leaving a trace. We are lazy and have no curiosity.’120 In this liminal space (from the Russians’ point of view), where Russian letters have no meaning, the threat of the disintegration of meaning is heightened. Of course, Pushkin may well also be referring to the fact that Griboedov, unlike himself, had a serious engagement with the world; hence his loss is especially deplorable. Pushkin notes in the first chapter of ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ when

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speaking of his desire that Russians should Christianize the Caucasus region, that ‘it is easier for our lassitude to pour forth dead letters and send mute books to people who are illiterate.’121 The abyss of cultural meaninglessness hence seems greater than any military threat. As if to counter the experience of meeting ‘Griboed’ as an unknown, unintelligible figure, Pushkin next dines with the officer Buturlin ‘as if we were in Petersburg.’122 Buturlin has been assigned to keep him under surveillance. Without mentioning that he wished to escape surveillance, Pushkin notes: ‘We decided to travel together; but the demon of impatience again possessed me ... I set out alone even without a guide.’123 Travelling along the next day, Pushkin writes: It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining. We rode along a wide meadow, through thick green grass, sprinkled with dew and drops of yesterday’s rain. Before us, a small river glittered, over which we were supposed to cross. And there is the Arpachai, the Cossack told me. Arpachai! Our border! This was as good as Ararat. I galloped toward the river with an inexpressible feeling [с чувством неизъяснимым]. I had never before seen foreign soil. [Никогда еще не видал я чужой земли.] The border held for me something mysterious/secret [таинственное]; from my childhood years, travels were my favorite daydream. For a long time later, then, I led a nomadic life, wandering now around the south, now the north, and never before had I broken away from the borders of unembraceable [необъятной] Russia. I happily rode into the sacred [заветную] river, and my good horse carried me out on the Turkish bank. But this bank had already been conquered. I was still in Russia.124

The narrator sets the scene for an epiphany, a final escape from Russia, but it never comes. Not only is Pushkin in a race to catch up with the Russian army, he is in a race to reach land not already engulfed by the constantly enlarging Russian Empire. On the one hand, he is a representative of that empire, taking pride in its accomplishments; on the other, he is its subject, engulfed and controlled by it, unable to escape its ‘all-seeing eye and all-hearing ears,’ as Lermontov put it in the second stanza of ‘Proshchai, nemytaia Rossiia’ (‘Farewell, Unwashed Russia’): Быть может, за стеной Кавказа Сокроюсь от твоих пашей, От их всевидящего глаза, От их всеслышащих ушей.

162 Writing at Russia’s Border [Perhaps, beyond the wall of the Caucasus I will conceal myself from your pashas, From their all-seeing eye, From their all-hearing ears.]125

Anne McClintock discusses the phenomenon of doubling in male imperialist discourse: a dread of catastrophic boundary loss in the form of impotence and infantilization paired with an insistence on an excess of boundary order and fantasies of unlimited power – paranoia combined with megalomania. The fear of being engulfed by the unknown, she writes, is projected onto the colonized people as their determination to devour the intruder whole.126 Here it is not the colonized territory but the colonizing empire that threatens to engulf her subject and emasculate him. Pushkin continues to make progress towards Kars, the location of the Russian army, accompanied by a Turkish guide, who takes him for a European and criticizes the Russians, an attitude Pushkin puts up with until he hears that the army has progressed yet further beyond Kars. Frustrated, he demands a horse at the next village, which is refused him until ‘I got the idea of showing them money (with which I ought to have started). A horse was brought at once, and they gave me a guide.’127 Again the pattern is followed in which Pushkin allows others to have the upper hand for only so long, until he reasserts his ‘superiority’ – in this case, by demanding something and displaying his material means. At the next stop he sends a young Armenian boy to get horses; when a written order is demanded, Pushkin writes; ‘[I] did not deem it necessary to rummage around in my papers, but took out of my pocket the first piece of paper that I found. The officer scrutinized it with a selfimportant air and immediately ordered that his Excellency be brought horses according to the instructions, and gave me back my paper: this was a missive to the Kalmyk girl which I had scribbled off at one of the Cossack stations.’128 One doubts, of course, that Pushkin would have to do much ‘rummaging’ to locate such vital papers. The ‘fraudulent’ use of the poem, since it will have no effect on the illiterate official, is meant for Pushkin himself and for his readers, affirming their superior cultural status. The flip side of having one’s identity lose its meaning in this frontier space is that one can create a new identity, using the written word in unexpected and improvisational ways. Pushkin foregrounds the fact that the poem now means both more and less than

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what it would mean in Russia: it means less because it is not recognized as a poem, but more because any kind of writing takes on authority in this context. Soon enough, Pushkin reaches the Russian camp and ends the chapter ‘already in Raevskii’s tent.’129 Chapter 3 finds Pushkin in the Russian military camp among his old cronies from the Lycée and other periods of his youth, including Nikolai Raevskii, Mikhail Pushchin (brother of his friend Ivan Pushchin), and many Decembrists, among them Volkhovskii (also a Lycée comrade), Burtsov, and others. Here, on the edge of empire, engaged in a war with Turkey, are many of Russia’s finest young men, and as much as Pushkin might be attempting to escape the surveillance and constrictions of the metropole – or perhaps Russia itself – he was also joining with those who were at the centre of his life and that of Russia. Paradoxically, while being banished or serving away from the centre, they were also defining Russia’s role as an empire. Furthermore, the bureaucratic links were surprisingly tight; Druzhnikov avers that many of the former Decembrists were in fact reporting to the Third Section (the secret police), while Paskevich was tasked by his superiors with keeping a close eye on Pushkin.130 In a veiled reference to the Decembrist uprising (and perhaps not only that), Pushkin notes: ‘Many of my old friends surrounded me. How they had changed! How fast time goes by!’131 One commentator remarks that ‘One would have had to have the bravery of Pushkin to describe, in spite of the strictest interdiction against even mentioning the names of the “government criminals,” their role and service in the war.’132 But of course, the government and the Decembrists had no disagreement on southern imperial expansion; in this enterprise they were all on the same page. Pushkin meets Paskevich and the next day the army begins to advance, with Pushkin accompanying Raevskii, now a general. The worthiness of the Turks as enemies is not in doubt: Their high turbans, beautiful dolmans and glittering trappings of their horses were in sharp contrast with the blue uniforms and simple harness of the Cossacks. About fifteen of our men were already wounded. Lieutenant-Colonel Basov had sent for assistance. At the time he himself was wounded in the leg. The Cossacks were on the verge of panic. But Basov got back on his horse and remained in command. The reinforcements arrived in time. The Turks caught sight of them and disappeared at once, leaving behind them on the mountain the naked corpse of a Cossack, who

164 Writing at Russia’s Border had been decapitated and hacked to pieces. The Turks send severed heads to Constantinople, but the hands they dip in blood and then leave their imprint on their banners.133

Not only are the Cossacks on the verge of panic, saved only by their brave commander, but the Turks are both elegant and frighteningly bloodthirsty at the same time. Nothing is lacking in this adventure. Furthermore, camp life is far from primitive and agrees with Pushkin: ‘The cannon got us up at sunrise. Sleep in a tent is surprisingly sound. At dinner we washed down Asian shishkebab with English beer and champagne chilled in the Tauris snows. Our company was varied. The beks of the Moslem regiments gathered in General Paskevich’s tent; and conversation was conducted through an interpreter. In our army there were also people from our own Transcaucasian territories, as well as some inhabitants from regions that had recently been annexed.’134 In this microcosm of the empire, the Russians appear sophisticated, cosmopolitan. They are smoothly at the helm of empire, aided by their colonials, enjoying, as the Romans did, beverages chilled by snow, and enjoying the fruits of their own empire (shishkebab) and their international trade (English beer). Pushkin soon undercuts this pleasant image of military life with another, however, when he describes the camp being thrown into commotion and himself into confusion a few days later. ‘I met General Burtsov, who summoned me to the left flank. What’s the left flank? I thought and continued on.’135 Soon, however, he describes the operations of the Russian attack, which his spirited horse joins in. It is his horse who ‘stopped before the corpse of a young Turk which was lying across the road. He was about eighteen, I think; his pale girlish face had not been disfigured. His turban was lying in the dust; the nape of his neck, which was shaved clean, had been pierced by a bullet.’136 Again the attractiveness and, in effect, effeminacy of the enemy is emphasized here, as well as the Orientalist stylization of the victim. The very girlishness, even maidenliness (‘devicheskoe litso’), of the young Turk’s face renders him an aesthetically pleasing and therefore lamented casualty. One can again imagine a frame drawn around this picture, presented for view to the reader. While Pushkin mentions Russian dead and wounded, they are not individualized or described. Pushkin foregrounds Russian vulnerabilities once more when a saklya in which Paskevich had been interrogating prisoners blew up shortly after he, as well as Pushkin and others,

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had left it on a tip that gunpowder was being stored nearby. Pushkin, who barely escaped death himself, notes laconically: ‘The shower of rocks crushed several Cossacks.’137 Those deaths, however, were apparently not as aesthetically appealing as that of the pale young Turk with the girlish features. The final paragraph of the chapter indicates that the Russians are defeating the Turks and that Paskevich intends to retain the upper hand; each chapter ends with Pushkin’s situation or military side in firm control. At the beginning of chapter 4, Pushkin meets Paskevich early in the morning, who asks in French whether he is fatigued. Pushkin intends to ride with Raevskii’s Nizhegorod Regiment but his horse limps, so once again he is afforded an individual experience, riding through the woods alone until he learns from a soldier that the woods are full of enemy troops. ‘As I approached the depression, I saw an extraordinary scene. Under a tree lay one of our Tartar beks, mortally wounded. Beside him his favorite was sobbing. A mullah, on his knees, was citing prayers. The dying bek was extremely calm and looked fixedly at his young friend. About five hundred prisoners had been gathered in the depression. Some wounded Turks were beckoning to me with signs, they probably took me for a doctor, and were begging for help which I could not give them.’138 Pushkin treats this scene theatrically, presenting the spectacle of the Oriental Other who is homosexual, Muslim, and also dying – hence a magnet for European curiosity. Yet the dying man has great dignity and is very calm, and the scene does not present the circumstances as perverse. Indeed, this scene seems to bring out Pushkin’s sympathies, since he next prevents some Russian soldiers from killing a wounded Turkish prisoner, and seems perturbed that he cannot offer the other prisoners any medical help. Pushkin next describes Colonel Anrep ‘smoking in a friendly fashion from their pipes, despite the fact that there were rumors that the plague had broken out in the Turkish camp. The prisoners were sitting, quietly conversing among themselves. Almost all were young.’139 The enemy, once encountered face to face, is quite unthreatening, it seems, while smoking a pipe can be just as brave an act as attacking the enemy. As if, however, to undercut this scene of companionable pipe smoking, Pushkin asks to examine a Turkish prisoner who is a hermaphrodite, rather coyly describing his physical characteristics in Latin. Hermaphrodites, Pushkin declares, are not uncommon among the Tatars and the Turks. Once again, as

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soon as the enemy is brought closer and found to be human, it is distanced once again, made Other; Pushkin and the Russians’ status as ‘normal’ males is emphasized. The Russian army, however, is not immune to appearing ridiculous. Pushkin describes a miscommunication that leads him, along with many others, on a lengthy wild goose chase that results only in ‘sav[ing] the life of some Armenian chickens, which did not seem at all amusing to me.’140 The taking of Arzrum soon follows, on the same day, Pushkin notes, as the Battle of Poltava. Whether this is an ironic coincidence is difficult to discern. It is not, however, an epic battle, since the Turks essentially surrender to the Russians. Indeed, Pushkin triumphantly enters the city with Raevskii only to find that his servant, Artemy, is already there. One of the captured Turkish pashas tells him: ‘Blessed be the hour when we meet a poet. The poet is brother to the dervish. He has neither a fatherland, nor earthly blessings; and while we, poor ones, worry about glory, about power, about treasures, he stands equal with our rulers of the earth and they bow to him.’141 Soon after this greeting Pushkin meets the dervish: ‘I saw a young man, half naked, in a sheepskin cap, with a club in his hand and a wineskin (outre) over his shoulders. He was shouting at the top of his voice. I was told that this was my brother, the dervish, who had come to greet the victors. They had a difficult time driving him away.’142 Pushkin thus undercuts the pasha’s ‘oriental greeting’ and exalted description of the poet with a rather offputting depiction of the dervish, who appears to be an outcast rather than a revered figure, or as one critic notes, ‘is quite probably shouting anathema, not greetings.’143 The fact that poets are more highly regarded in Turkey is perhaps a stark contrast to their relative official status in Russia; on the other hand, the visit of the poet Pushkin is occasioned by military victory, perhaps meaning that high status in a defeated culture is not ultimately desirable. In the final, fifth chapter of ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ Pushkin changes course to some extent, rarely emphasizing the negotiation of identity, which instead seems far more fixed and definitive. The chapter begins with a travel book-like description of Arzrum and all of its attributes, while many sentences are declarative: ‘I know of no expression more nonsensical than the words: ‘Asian luxury’ [...] Nowadays one can say: Asian poverty, Asian swinishness, etc., but luxury is, of course, an attribute of Europe. In Arzrum you cannot buy for any money what you can find in a general store in any district town of Pskov Prov-

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ince.’144 Pushkin provides his own ‘satirical poem’ by the ‘janissary Amin-Oglu,’ which praises the religious strictness of the citizens of Arzrum compared to their fallen compatriots in Constantinople. This strictness, of course, is not necessarily so obvious in his descriptions of Arzrum. He stays in the Seraskir’s former harem quarters; Paskevich, rather in the style of a pasha himself, receives reports, distributes pashalics, and discusses new novels ‘where the sullen pasha used to smoke silently among his wives and shameless boys.’145 Pushkin and a compatriot go to visit Osman-Pasha’s harem, to check on its inhabitants, taking with them as an interpreter a Russian who had been captured and emasculated by the Persians. Pushkin glimpses the women of the harem through a high, small window: ‘They were all pleasant to look at, but there was not a single beauty; the one at the door, conversing with Mr. A *****, was probably the Sovereign of the harem, the treasury of hearts – the Rose of love – at least, that is what I imagined.’146 Here Pushkin, Orientalist-European hat firmly on his head, jocularly quotes typical Oriental poetic metaphors while declaring that the women of the harem are, in essence, nothing special. He notes that among the attendants (contrary to his own harem poem, ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ ‘there was not one eunuch.’147 To underscore the contention that the experience rates only as typical Orientalist literary fodder Pushkin adds: ‘It was in this way that I got to see a harem: very few Europeans have managed to do this. There you have the beginning for an Oriental novel.’148 Or the beginning of an Oriental romance, since ‘roman’ can mean either novel or romance. Having witnessed the taking of Arzrum and having breached the holy of holies, the harem, Pushkin seems to have completed his mission. ‘The war seemed to be over. I began to prepare for the return trip. On the fourteenth of July I went to the public baths and was not very happy with life. I cursed the filth of the linen, the vile service, etc. How can one compare the baths in Arzrum with those in Tiflis!’149 The jaded traveller seems to have had enough. Upon hearing that plague has broken out, he goes to the bazaar to calm his nerves. Someone taps him on the back: ‘I looked around: behind me stood a horrible beggar. He was as pale as death; from his red festered eyes tears were streaming. The thought of the plague again flashed in my mind. I pushed the beggar away with a feeling of repugnance that is impossible to describe and returned home very displeased with my outing.’150 As Indira Ghose and others have noted, ‘colonial anxieties were often displaced onto the fear of infectious disease.’151 Now that the project is

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no longer military advancement but occupation, the implications of administering the taken lands acquire sobering meaning. In spite of his fear of disease, the next day Pushkin goes with the doctor to see patients stricken with plague and even examines one man, playing the role of doctor. Perhaps, with so many locals taking him for a doctor, he has come to think he can be one. In a move that is contrary to earlier ones in which Pushkin’s apparent loss of face is compensated for by a biting remark that turns the tables, here the final remark apparently turns the tables on him: two Turks touch the afflicted man ‘as though the plague were nothing more than a head cold. I confess I was ashamed of my European timidity in the presence of such equanimity and hastened back to the city.’152 And yet, perhaps the final twist is still evident: the word ‘European’ after all functions here as a reminder of Pushkin’s different status – he is a European, hence not used to rampant disease as the Turks apparently are. Upon taking his leave of Paskevich Pushkin discovers that victory was not quite as resounding as it had appeared. Burtsov had been killed, and ‘this incident could as well prove disastrous for the whole of our undermanned army, which had penetrated so deeply into foreign territory and was surrounded by hostile populations that were ready to rebel at the rumor of the first defeat. And so the war recommenced! The Count proposed that I witness the subsequent engagements. But I was in a hurry to get back to Russia.’153 The status of the Russian army now seems far more precarious, and Paskevich’s campaign is subject to question: is he a great general or is he, in reality, putting the troops in danger? Some commentators believe that it is Paskevich who asked Pushkin to leave.154 After receiving a Turkish sabre as a memento from Paskevich, Pushkin departs. His return to Russia is ‘along the route which was already familiar to me.’155 The landscape without troops is ‘silent and sad,’ but the view of Kazbek this time is both clear and moving, with Pushkin’s attention engaged rather than indifferent as on the way south. The Furious Gorge is also now as advertised, ‘surpass[ing] in its ferocity the Terek itself.’156 On reaching Vladikavkaz, called earlier ‘the threshold of the mountains,’157 Pushkin joins up with Dorokhov and Pushchin, both heading to mountain spas to recover from their wounds of battle. Here Pushkin’s full identity is restored, as they come upon a magazine with a review of ‘Poltava’ by Nadezhdin, written as a comedy. At first frustrated by the negative review, Pushkin is encouraged by Pushchin to read it aloud ‘with greater mimetic artistry.’158

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Pushchin’s suggestion struck me as so amusing that the vexation which reading the article had produced in me completely disappeared and we burst out laughing in all sincerity. Such was my first greeting in our beloved fatherland.159

Pushkin’s trip, with its twists and turns of negotiation and renegotiation with identity, ends with yet another twist: a phrase susceptible of being understood either ironically or straightforwardly. Having gone through such roles as camp follower, doctor, invisible man, bemused potential suitor, harem inspector, potential road brigand, Oriental traveller, diarist, and so on, perhaps he returns to and reaffirms the life in which he is recognized as a poet, known and loved by his friends, and subject to the injustices of the critics and the powerful. Yet, he returns to his critics, his censors, his philistine-minded detractors – rather than returning to praise for ‘Poltava,’ he returns to facile criticism of it. The identity perhaps in most need of constant renegotiation, then, is his own, in his own country, and no distance from home or foreign travelling can accomplish that.

4 The Future of Russia in the Mirror of the Caspian: Hybridity and Narodnost’ in Ammalat-bek and A Hero of Our Time

This chapter shifts the exploration of narodnost’ and national literature to the view of the soldier, exploring the expansion of the empire and the assimilation of others into the empire. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s story of Ammalat-bek creates a justification for the ‘pacification’ of the Caucasus, while Lermontov’s Maksim Maksimych in A Hero of Our Time reassures the reader of the benignity of imperial representatives. Narodnost’ is explored in the idealized camp setting of Ammalat-bek, while the hybrid native (whether Ammalat as re-educated warrior or Bela as native ‘bride’ of Pechorin) re-establishes the need to control the male other while co-opting the female. As with the case of Onegin/Pushkin, the epistolary metonymy connecting the periphery to the metropole is significant, indicating the importance of the metropolitan reader to the project of Russian expansion in the periphery, and vice versa. As the nineteenth century progressed and Russia’s presence in the Caucasus became more entrenched, literary works began to explore the experience of those who ‘encountered’ the Caucasus not briefly, but at length, and not as civilians, but as members of the military, representatives of the Russian Empire. Further, the ideology of the Russian Empire began to be asserted more openly and also questioned more openly. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s Ammalat-bek and Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time are two examples of texts that involve military characters and events, and the action in them takes place in a Caucasus occupied but not fully controlled by the Russian army, and having within it areas of varying Russian domination. In both texts, distinctions are drawn. There are areas that are quite embattled, and at the same time there are relatively safe areas such as the spas of the northern Caucasus to which even ladies may safely travel. The ‘Princess Mary’ section of A Hero of Our Time is set in such a spa. In Ammalat-bek, protagonist Verkhovskii’s

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fiancée Maria plans to visit a north Caucausus spa, which means to Verkhovskii that ‘only the icy chain of the Caucasus will remain between two ardent hearts.’1 In the novel, that icy chain is never bridged. Increasingly, these borderlands of the Russian Empire were inhabited by Russians who were themselves in some sense peripheral, aware of the power of the empire and also of its limits. Bestuzhev’s and Lermontov’s prose works were written when the Russian presence in the Caucasus was already of long-standing, and a kind of Russian subculture within the Caucasus had already grown up, populated with people who had spent long years away from Russia. The experiences of war and of Russians’ increasing contact with foreign peoples in a theatre of war was a way for national identity to be explored not only in ‘high literature,’ but also in such ‘low literature’ as lubok (popular prints), which featured tales of capture, conversion, and the experiences of Russians among foreign border peoples. The message in the popular prints, according to Jeffrey Brooks, was that Russians had to learn to remain Russian in spite of their encounters with outsiders, and indeed the fact that they learned to think of themselves as a nationality at all stemmed from these encounters – until then, national identity had not been an issue to most non-gentry Russians.2 To consumers of ‘high culture,’ of course, national identity had been problematic for much longer, although it too expressed itself in great part through encounters, military and cultural, with outsiders in the periphery. In particular, literary figures from ‘high culture,’ BestuzhevMarlinskii’s Verkhovskii (Ammalat-bek, 1832) and Lermontov’s Maksim Maksimych (A Hero of Our Time, 1840) were part of the Russian representation of the border, of meetings and meshing between Russia and Asia, peace and war, languages and value systems, present and past, ‘culture’ and ‘non-culture,’ Christian and Muslim, Russianness and Orientalism. It was also a meeting place of something far more universal, as Lewis Bagby notes: ‘In effect, life [in the Caucasus] confirmed Bestuzhev’s belief in the connection between literature and reality. Obvious in all the Caucasian tales is the interdependence of life and literature, for in the two most significant works in this genre Bestuzhev took his characters and plot from local legends and from authentic, historical personages.’3 But the various historical claims, Bagby warns, ‘have obscured the cardinal feature of “Ammalat-bek” – that it is fiction.’4 It was, of course, this very border, both real and fictional, that gave meaning to the Russian Empire as something apart from its Oriental neighbours. As always, the spectre of the potential of fraud in Russians’ claims to be ‘European’ was present; for that reason, peripheral

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figures can be seen as figures who helped to legitimize or ‘make sense of’ the role of the Russians, to ‘stand in’ for the Russian reader/civilian. Furthermore, in these texts the question of whose version of the world would prevail is an underlying subtext. While these texts raise questions about the prevailing world view, they also, in the end, uphold it. In the Caucasus, Russia’s status as colonizer was explored and constructed, while its gaps and fault lines were also revealed. But the two texts focus on different issues and eras and take place in different locations, and were written several years apart. Ammalat-bek depicts separate societies that meet in an orderly way, or least appear to, while A Hero of Our Time shows, in the ‘Bela’ and ‘Princess Mary’ sections, a Prattian ‘contact zone,’ with an intermixing of mores, languages, and social levels. As Robert Reid points out, in Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time ‘[a] picture emerges of a frontier region in which the usual rules of formality and social differentiation are relaxed or suspended; similarly the distinction between friend, acquaintance and stranger becomes flexible and blurred. From an anthropological point of view this is a similar process in the intra-Russian context to what was discussed in the foregoing chapter concerning the erosion of the native kunachestvo through Russian interaction.’5 Maksim Maksimych, while officially a kunak (sworn friend or adopted brother) of both Kazbich and the father of Bela and Azamat, does not avenge the wrongs done to them (a Russian transculturation of the system of kunachestvo, which in its ‘original’ form would require Maksim Maksimych to seek revenge).6 Similarly, Pechorin and Maksim Maksimych enter into a relationship brought about by the frontier, where rank and social class mixed as they did not in the metropole. Maksim Maksimych is powerless over Pechorin in part because Pechorin’s higher social rank and persuasive linguistic abilities eclipse Maksim Maksimych’s military rank; the real difference is his lack of education and low social class. Similarly, Grushnitsky’s unusual proximity to society women at the spa (the kind of mixed-class setting capitalized upon for similar reasons by Tolstoy in Anna Karenina and Mann in The Magic Mountain) allows him to make the acquaintance of Princess Mary, and further allows her to believe he is an officer reduced to the ranks for duelling. This transculturation, however, is not benign; the deaths of Bela, Verkhovskii, and Grushnitskii reassert the cultural and social divides that only seemed to have become permeable. Each method of mixing the two sides – the depiction of Ermolov’s pageantry of narodnost’ in

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Ammalat-Bek, Lermontov’s hybrid army and mixed spa town – is tested, but ultimately the plot of each test separates the transculturated groups from one another. Maksim Maksimych puts on his uniform (a formality previously dispensed with) to tell Pechorin he has done wrong, and says of Bela after her death, ‘After all, she was not a Christian.’7 Pechorin treats Maksim Maksimych coldly when he encounters him en route to Persia, his superior status made manifest by his supercilious servant. In Ammalat-bek, both Verkhovskii and Ammalat die in circumstances that clearly reassert the necessity of separating Russians from their colonial counterparts, while in Hero’s ‘Princess Mary,’ the free and easy ways of the spa are at least temporarily abolished by Grushnitskii’s death as Pechorin establishes his superior social standing and superior mastery of social codes. Lermontov’s ‘old soldier’ Maksim Maksimych and BestuzhevMarlinskii’s officer Verkhovskii are different versions of the Russian figure on the periphery of empire, but each serves a similar purpose. One of the major differences between them is the attitude of the narrator towards each. Verkhovskii is treated in a very direct, unselfreflexive fashion by the narrator, and he is a highly idealized character. His name, ‘Verkhovskii,’ is itself revealing, implying by its meaning of ‘above’ Verkhovskii’s status as spokesman of the civilizing mission. Maksim Maksimych is viewed by the narrator (and by other characters) from a faintly ironic distance, and his weaknesses are made just as evident as his strengths. Studies have shown that this distance and irony are in great part due to Maksim Maksimych’s treatment by the narrator/travel writer, but in terms of reception, Maksim Maksimych has clearly been interpreted as a deeply sympathetic but at times comically sad and vulnerable character, such as when, for example, he rushes joyfully to greet the justarrived Pechorin, who for his part shows very little interest in Maksim Maksimych.8 As Bakhtin has noted, Maksim Maksimych does not grasp Pechorin’s ‘Byronic language and Byronic pathos’; the failure, however, seems ascribable to Byronism rather than to Maksim Maksimych himself.9 Pechorin is the figure in A Hero of Our Time who most logically corresponds to Verkhovskii, but the already post-Romantic stance of the narrator of A Hero of Our Time contrasts with the ‘high Marlinism’ (high-flown Romantic style) of Ammalat-bek. Many critics, in fact, find that A Hero of Our Time is explicitly anti-Marlinist in style and thematics.10 However, each text has its conservative aspects. Certainly, the difference in the ranks of the two characters is not

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insignificant: Verkhovskii, a colonel, is personally very close to General Ermolov, while Maksim Maksimych prefers not to discuss his rank (that of junior captain) with a fellow traveller who indirectly enquires. Verkhovskii is educated, a chinovnik (someone who has achieved bureaucratic rank); Maksim Maksimych almost certainly is not. Indeed, the cultural differences between Pechorin and Maksim Maksimych probably closely resemble those between Verkhovskii and Maksim Maksimych. These differences play a role in the way in which each character operates as a figure on the periphery: Verkhovskii expresses ideology explicitly, explaining, in effect, Russia’s role in the Caucasus from Peter’s time onward; he sees himself as a follower of Peter, and just as Peter linked Russia to Europe, Verkhovskii wishes to link Dagestan to Russia. Like Peter, Verkhovskii is on a ‘civilizing mission’; as Peter rescued the Russian people from their non-European oblivion, so, too, Verkhovskii plans to rescue Ammalat and his people from their ignorance. Verkhovskii’s life itself, however, becomes a lesson in the futility of such attempts at civilizing the ‘Oriental Other.’ The proximity of periphery is illusory; it provides contact and interpenetration, but without any real possibility of merging with the centre. Lermontov’s Maksim Maksimych, rather than being an ideologist, is more of an apologist. Maksim Maksimych mediates between Pechorin’s colonialist excesses (the kidnapping of the Circassian girl Bela) and the wiles of the ‘Asiatics,’ as he calls the local people. The traveller-narrator’s initial description of Maksim Maksimych veers between the description of a Caucasian native and a Russian, and the remainder of his identity is similarly ambiguous; he acts both as a masculine father and a feminine nanny (which is in Russian a feminine noun, nianka) to the captured Circassian girl Bela. His relations with Pechorin are uncomfortable; he wishes to be a father or friend to Pechorin, but the latter is unreceptive. He is an indeterminate, borderline figure, neither completely Russian nor completely Caucasian, dressing neither as a civilian nor as a soldier, fulfilling neither a man’s nor a woman’s role, and distant from the notions of both family and sexuality (he considers marriage for a man his age ‘improper’ [ne k litsu]). He is aware that the Russian colonization, especially in the person of Pechorin, is causing pain and injustice among the local Circassians, but his misgivings are private and personal, and for the most part, he tries to explain away Pechorin’s behaviour. Indeed, one can view Maksim Maksimych’s role as that of a kind of midwife of imperialist expansion, neither father nor mother, yet instrumental in helping along the process. His very name is

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indicative of this; while being at once a common sort of name, only a step or two removed from the generic Ivan Ivanovich, the name Maksim Maksimych indicates almost a sort of sterility, a doubled name which is self-referential and self-begetting. Maksim Maksimych’s personality is voyeuristic and reactive: he does not create, but reacts against and facilitates the actions of others, the very figure of mediation and liminality. He is, of course, not the only voyeur in the novel; Pechorin in particular spends much time in the secret observation of others, but while Pechorin uses his observations to act, often with rather painful results for himself and others, Maksim Maksimych is usually passive. Maksim Maksimych is very much a ‘Kavkazets’ in the mode of Lermontov’s short piece by that name which was to have been published in 1841 in the almanac Nashi, spisannye s natury russkimi, but which was not permitted by the censor and hence was not published until many years later. The editors of the 1981 Nauka edition of Lermontov11 conclude that the Kavakazets is a continuation or further elaboration of the character of Maksim Maksimych.12 The ‘Kavkazets,’ Lermontov makes it clear, is half-Russian, half-‘Asiatic,’ tends towards ‘Eastern customs,’ and is embarrassed in front of people from Russia (4:466). Although he started out in typical fashion, he was transformed as a cadet by reading ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ and dreamed of single-handedly capturing dozens of mountaineers, and of ‘terrible battles, rivers of blood, a general’s epaulettes’ (4:315). He prepares his Caucasus-style clothes even before leaving St Petersburg, and after time passes in the Caucasus without much change in rank, and after reading Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, he develops a new passion for all things Circassian. He loves the burka, praised by Pushkin and Bestuzhev-Marlinskii and shown in the famous portrait of Ermolov by Dawe, in spite of its shortcomings, and wears it day and night and in all weather (4:317). He rarely marries, and usually dies in infidel (basurmanskii) territory (4:317). Tolstoy, who described similar characters in his early Caucasian stories, apparently never read Lermontov’s ‘Kavkazets,’ but the model was well known both in literature and in real life. The ethnographer A.L. Zisserman experienced similar motivation through his reading of Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, and also dressed according to local style (4:467). Like Lermontov, Aleksandr Bestuzhev-Marlinskii was personally very familiar with the Caucasus. The author of many prose tales about the Caucasus besides Ammalat-bek, Bestuzhev-Marlinskii was a Decembrist who was exiled to Siberia, then went to the Caucasus as a common soldier. He was an extremely popular writer in the 1830s, when prose

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tales were much in vogue. Perhaps his most admired story was his fictionalization of the historical story of Ammalat-bek, a Tatar bey (lord) who was captured by the Russians in 1819 and sentenced to death. A Russian colonel, Verkhovskii, requested that Ammalat’s life be spared and that he become Ammalat’s sponsor. Ammalat repaid Verkhovskii by murdering him and later digging up and decapitating his corpse, possibly because the father of an Avarian girl, Seltaneta, had demanded Verkhovskii’s head as ‘dowry’ for his daughter. Ammalat-bek, who apparently did not marry Seltaneta in spite of his grisly efforts, became an abrek,13 and was killed in 1828 in battle against the Russians. Seltaneta attained fame because of the story, and lived for a long time afterward. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii was apparently acquainted with her.14 Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s 1832 version of the story, Ammalat-bek, was very widely read, and it, along with Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s other Caucasian tales, apparently convinced any number of young Russian men to seek fame and fortune in the Caucasus, among them the young Lev Tolstoy.15 Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s stories, with their excitement and high-flown rhetoric, gave rise to the term ‘Marlinism,’ which denoted Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s high Romantic style. Marlinism was later harshly criticized and became the term that epitomized the ‘overdone’ Romanticism of Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s Caucasian themes and stories. Thus, as we will see in chapter 5, Tolstoy’s reactions against ‘Ammalatbeks, Circassian girls, mountains, precipices, terrible torrents, and dangers’16 in his anti-Romantic novella The Cossacks was very much an indictment of Marlinism. Nevertheless, Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s style, as well as his most important Caucasian tale, Ammalat-bek, continued to influence Russian Caucasian writing greatly, and even those who decried it depended on their audience’s knowledge of his characters and plots. Verkhovskii: Spokesman for Imperial Ideology Ammalat-bek’s eponymous protagonist is ostensibly the main character of the novella, although, as some critics have noted, Verkhovskii is in many ways a co-protagonist, and more of the story is from his point of view than from Ammalat’s.17 One critic has argued that the character of Ammalat is in fact introduced twice, and that Ammalat is clearly ‘Oriental’ in the first few chapters of the story, but later becomes a more ‘European,’ Romantic hero.18 One can view the tale as a microcosm of the conflict in the Caucasus, as many critics have done, with Verkhov-

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skii both aware of his duties and yet also sympathetic to the position of Ammalat, whose good qualities are evident. According to this view, Verkhovskii performs his duties as a colonizer reluctantly, only because he is obligated to carry out Russian military policy. This interpretation is illuminating, but it does not tell the entire story, especially since it seems to ignore Verkhovskii’s own enthusiasm for Peter the Great and Ermolov. Furthermore, there is a distinction drawn between Verkhovskii’s characterization as a Russian officer and that of his younger brother, also an officer, who ultimately fires the shot that kills Ammalat. The younger Verkhovskii, unlike the elder, betrays no contradictory emotions, but fulfils his duties unquestioningly, discovering only after the man is dead that he is Ammalat, killer of the elder Verkhovskii. Perhaps most importantly, Ermolov’s frequent dire warnings about the impossibility of trusting ‘Asiatics’ are borne out in the tale, rendering Verkhovskii’s many good intentions ultimately suspect. It is indicative of the elder Verkhovskii’s cultural status in Ammalatbek that his very entry into the text is by way of a letter. In BestuzhevMarlinskii’s text, as in many other ‘Caucasian’ texts, writing and literacy separate the Russians from the dwellers of the Caucasus and TransCaucasus; Russian power is metonymized by writing. Indeed, the very existence of ‘native’ or local writing is mostly denied or ignored, although in fact Dagestan under Shamil was administered by communications sent through a swift postal service and schools for both children and adults were set up in mosques.19 There are mentions of letters sent amongst the Avars, but Ammalat’s ‘re-education’ by Verkhovskii implies, at least, that he has never before been literate, although as a male of princely rank this would have been unlikely, historically speaking. Once Ammalat has been ‘educated,’ his anguished diary entry is contrasted with Verkhovskii’s letters to Maria. The epistolary aspects of Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s text play a large role in the novella by implicitly bringing in the Russian reader at home. They also construct, as we have seen with Pushkin, a textual meeting place of centre and periphery, with Verkhovskii’s fiancée Maria ‘meeting,’ in a sense, and ‘sponsoring’ Ammalat. Lermontov’s novel also relies heavily on first-person written narrative, in the form of the traveller’s account and Pechorin’s journal, with quoted letters. However, that is not the only function of the epistolary connection. The metonymy of writing that joins the metropolitan reader (textual and actual) to the peripheral space is one that operates in all the main texts discussed in his study. In his letters, Ovid bridges the distance

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between himself and Rome, imagining his friends and their reactions as he describes himself and his life in exile. Pushkin uses frames to establish links between the south and the readers of ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ and ‘Bakhchisaraiskii fontan.’ In ‘The Gypsies,’ the story of Ovid is explicitly spelled out, while in Eugene Onegin Pushkin sends his ‘little book’ to the Neva in his place, and creates Onegin to stand in his stead. ‘A Journey to Arzrum’ is a travelogue, explicitly using writing to metonymically link place and reader, and foregrounding the status of written texts at frequent intervals. Lermontov’s 1840 poem ‘Son’ (‘Dream’) compresses this connection into twenty lines, in which a young soldier dying in Dagestan imagines his friends at home talking merrily about him. But one young woman sits quietly away from the others and dreams of a valley in Dagestan where a ‘familiar corpse’ is dying, his blood cooling. The woman appears as part of his dream, then it is as if the dream is hers as she imagines him dying. Each constitutes the other in his/her imagination; their shared dream links the center to periphery, and the poem, written in the first person in the first three stanzas and in the third person in the second, is the space of that linkage. To return to Ammalat-bek, Verkhovskii’s first appearance in the text is in the form of a letter written by him to his fiancée. He writes: ‘My existence is the trail of a chain on the barren sand ... Thrown into a climate that is murderous to the health, into a society that stifles the soul, I do not find among my companions people who could understand my thoughts, nor do I find among the Asiatics anyone who could share my feelings ... One could sooner make fire by striking ice on stone than one could make diversion out of everyday life here’ (1:471). In this passage the usual dichotomy between European rationality and Oriental emotion is problematized and exemplified by Verkhovskii. He is too ‘emotional’ for his Russian companions, yet too rational to fit in with the ‘Asiatics’ – a borderline figure who unites the two sides, to some extent, in himself. Nevertheless, via his letters to Maria, Verkhovskii establishes the pre-eminence of the Russian written word, as well as the ultimate addressee of the Russian actions in Dagestan: the Russian civilian in Russia, the ladies and gentlemen for whom this ‘wilderness’ is being ‘tamed’ and ‘civilized.’ His letters are from the peripheral regions to the metropolitan centre. His characterization as torn between reason and emotion, and his differences with Ermolov, presiding and powerful general of the Caucasus army, indicate that a hybridity of characteristics is required for the conquest, just as Maksim Maksymich is a hybrid.

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Interestingly, even before the appearance of Verkhovskii’s letter, the remote written words of Russian military authority, as opposed to the raw blood of the dwellers of Dagestan, are contrasted in the following passage spoken by Sultan Akhmet-khan, Ammalat’s uncle and sometime Russian general. Akhmet-khan addresses his speech to a Russian captain whom he is about to kill: ‘I refused Russian friendship, but I was still not their enemy, and what was the reward for my benevolence, for my kind advice? I was personally, grievously offended by a letter from one of your generals, when I cautioned him ... His audacity cost him dearly at Bashli ... I spilled a river of blood over a few drops of quarrelsome ink, and that river divides me forever from you’ (1:435). Besides the contrast between the lifeless, dry ink and the living, flowing Dagestani blood, there is also the question of the relative value of the two liquids, under the circumstances of the Russian encroachment – a mere few drops of Russian ink have the power to elicit a river of ‘native’ blood. The incompatibility between the two liquids, the inappropriateness of offering blood in return for a few drops of ink, show as well the utter incommensurability of the relationship. The Russians’ supremacy is proven, as their written words hold an authority that prevails in everyday life. Further, it appears that while Russians can externalize themselves in ink, Dagestanis can only provide blood, a part of themselves. Things remain at the literal, rather than symbolic, level. A similar distrust of the practice of writing is made evident by Tolstoy’s old Cossack Eroshka in The Cossacks. In one scene, the old man convinces young Olenin to stop writing and to start enjoying an evening of fun. The narrator comments: ‘No other conception of writing could fit in his head except for that of malicious slander.’20 For Verkhovskii, however, literary ability is a mark of civilization, of enlightenment, which is why, at General Ermolov’s camp, he admires Ermolov’s interest in reading and discussing military history. Verkhovskii describes a scene in which an orderly reads aloud an account of Napoleon’s march on Italy, which Ermolov calls ‘a poem of military art,’ and makes remarks concerning it that Verkhovskii finds, in an archaic-sounding adjective, ‘svetozarny’ (illuminating) (1:473). Verkhovskii’s description of the Russian commander of the Caucasus overflows with extravagant praise; he proclaims that Ermolov is godlike in his wisdom, personal strength, and abilities. Verkhovskii, for example, describes the way in which Ermolov can see through the evil plans of the ‘Asiatics’ when he is in the process of officially receiving them: ‘(in vain they hide their sly intentions in the most secret compart-

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ments of their hearts; his eye follows, tears them apart like worms, and guesses their thoughts and deeds twenty years ahead)’ (1:472). Verkhovskii describes Ermolov as fatherly, friendly, a kind of teacher; Verkhovskii even compares him to Odysseus, who owns a bow that he alone can bend – Ermolov wields a sword that he alone can use – a sword of which it is said, in an epic vein, that it ‘never strikes twice’ (1:474). Ermolov’s blows never fail to hit the mark. As discussed above in chapter 1, Ermolov was a complex figure. Seen as a great leader and a man who would be a good candidate to lead a Russian force to liberate Greece, he was lionized by the Decembrists. However, he unquestionably also implemented extremely cruel tactics against the Caucasian mountaineers, burning villages and chopping down forests, and showing no mercy to his opponents. In the late teens and early 1820s, he built the forts of Groznaia, Vnezapnaia, and Burnaia, and he frequently executed his opponents and slaughtered all the inhabitants of villages. Many Russians, notes Moshe Gammer, thought that the inhabitants of the Caucasus could understand only force; hence Ermolov was ‘well within the existing consensus,’ but the severity of his tactics united his opposition and made the local people feel they had already experienced the worst, and hence they became ‘immune to terror.’21 Though his name and tactics were well known in the Caucasus, in the final analysis his severe methods backfired, although this was not generally understood by the Russian side until much later. In an idealizing description of Ermolov and his camp, which is a utopia of brotherly equality and harmony, Verkhovskii sets up a kind of ideal Russian Empire in microcosm: But if it is interesting to see him at work, how pleasant it is to be with him simply in conversation, to which every day, among people who are distinguished by rank, bravery, or intelligence, there is free access; here there are no ranks, nothing sacred: everyone says and does what he wishes, because only those who think and do as they should compose society. Aleksei Petrovich jokes with everyone like a comrade, teaches like a father: he does not fear people seeing him up close. According to habit, at tea time one of the adjutants read, this time aloud, the notes of Napoleon’s campaign in Italy – that poem of military art, as the commanding officer calls it. They were surprised, they discussed it, they argued. The remarks of Aleksei Petrovich were illuminating, striking in their truth. Then came gymnastic games: running, jumping through fire, tests of strength by various means. The view and the evening were delightful: the camp was laid out next to the Tark Mountains. Over them

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hangs the fortress Stormy, beyond which the sun was dipping; below the cliff was the house of the shamkhal [a type of local ruler], then along the steep slope the city, surrounding the camp, and towards the east the vast steppe of the Caspian Sea. Tatar beks, Circassian princes, Cossacks from various rivers of boundless Russia, hostages from various mountains flashed among the officers. Uniforms, caftans, and chain armor were picturesquely mixed together; pesel’niki [songs], music rang out among the camp, and soldiers, having proudly cocked their hats askew, strolled in crowds in the distance. Everything captivated with multiple colours, amazed with variety, made one joyful with the freshness and strength of the warrior life. (1:473)

Here, there is a view to the ‘vast steppe’ and an evocation of ‘boundless Russia,’ while different groups and ranks, Russians and non-Russians, mingle together under the aegis of Ermolov’s ‘Roman greatness’ (1:472). Verkhovskii’s description to Maria of the company’s engagement in weighty discussions, as well as playful games of military prowess, portrays an idealized warrior society in the mode of The Iliad, with a multinational empire that was like that of the Romans. But the model for Ermolov’s camp is also Western in a more recently historical sense: Ermolov, in the process of conquering the Caucasus, reads Napoleon’s notes on conquering Italy. Ermolov becomes the follower, perhaps the equal of Napoleon, and the Caucasus takes on the significance of Italy. France, once a supreme empire, must now be surpassed by Russia’s territorial ambitions. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii here continues the invention of the tradition of Ermolov, which makes him out, from Pushkin on, as we have seen, to be no ordinary general, but rather a veritable superhuman hero. Pushkin wrote ‘Resign yourself, Caucasus! Ermolov is coming!’ and so Bestuzhev-Marlinskii continues the tradition, sculpting for Ermolov epic Greek proportions as well as the statuesque majesty of the portrait of a Roman general. The tenets of narodnost’, too, are at work, as Verkhovskii emphasizes the ease with which the varying groups of soldiers blend, along with the freshness and multitude of colours in the mixture of people. This, too, is an idealization of Russia as a multinational empire, smoothly coordinated by the Napoleon-like brilliance of her commanding officers. The idealized Russian empire is diverse, but harmoniously so, everything mixing together to form a beautiful picture composed of bright, fascinating hues, each in its proper place. The mixing of cultures at the periphery does not result in chaos but in pageantry. It should be noted as well that the settings of the novella are fre-

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quently homosocial; Ermolov’s harmoniously beautiful camp of men is paralleled by Ammalat’s own suite of handsomely clothed horsemen, encountered at the beginning of the novella, Sultan Akhmet-Khan’s court and retainers, and the various close male friendships, such as between Ammalat and his emdzhek [foster-brother], Safir-Ali, and Ammalat and Verkhovskii. It is into this sort of epic Greek and Western European idealized warrior society, with a multicultural dollop of narodnost’, that Verkhovskii wishes to initiate Ammalat, thus bringing him, and all of his passions, into the fold of benevolent Russian imperial harmony in diversity. The ultimate goal of an empire of narodnost’, it would seem, is to compose it of elements that are diverse, and yet are ‘imprinted with one common feature of distinction,’ as Somov puts it in his 1823 article ‘On Romantic Poetry.’22 All must be educated to be part of this empire, just as Verkhovskii goes about ‘re-educating’ Ammalat. As Verkhovskii recounts to his fiancée in a letter, Ermolov grudgingly permits Ammalat’s life to be spared at Verkhovskii’s request, even though Ermolov believes that Ammalat is an untrustworthy traitor. Ermolov warns Verkhovskii not to ‘warm a snake on your heart’ (1:478). Verkhovskii, on the other hand, tells Ammalat that he will live with him ‘as a friend, as my own brother’ (‘kak drug, kak brat rodnoi’) (1:479) and comforts himself with the thought that Maria will praise him for saving Ammalat and for believing that he can indeed become a true friend of Russia. Not surprisingly, Verkhovskii undertakes Ammalat’s ‘civilization’ via literary means: I read with him, give him a taste of writing, and with joy I see that he has given himself up to reading and to composition. I say ‘given himself up to’ [pristrastilsia], because each of his wishes, whim, will is a spirited passion [strast’], an impatient one. It is hard for the European to imagine, even harder for him to understand, the hot temper of unrestrained or, rather, unruly passions of an Asiatic, for whom from his very babyhood free will alone was the border of desires. Our desires are domesticated animals or perhaps even wild animals, but tamed, peaceful, having learned to dance along the tightrope of propriety, with a ring in its nose, with nails cut short; in the Orient they are free, like tigers and lions. (1:480)

Ammalat, although he learns to read and write, takes to it not ‘rationally,’ according to Verkhovskii, but with unbridled Oriental passion. ‘Real’ or ‘rational’ writing thus remains the province of the European

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Russians, especially in view of the final outcome of the story, in which Ammalat essentially forgets everything that Verkhovskii has taught him. The very metaphor of the tiger itself is also realized in an episode in which Ammalat kills a tiger that threatens to kill Verkhovskii. From the very beginning of Verkhovskii’s decision to attempt to ‘reeducate’ (perevospityvat’) (1:479) Ammalat’s soul, presumably to take him from his childlike state to the state of being an enlightened European-style man, Verkhovskii attributes all of his motivation, all of his inspiration for this undertaking, to Maria. Verkhovskii asks Maria to save for him ‘one of your sweetest kisses’ (1:479) as a reward for saving Ammalat. Verkhovskii, in his own mind, becomes an agent of Maria, who through her influence and good offices is able to tame even the draconian-minded Ermolov, who tells Verkhovskii, ‘Thank you for helping me to decide to be kind, so as not to say “weak”’ (1:478). It is one of the lessons of the tale that Verkhovskii, who appears as a civilized colonizer wishing only to bring to Ammalat the fruits of Western civilization and idealized male friendship, unwittingly proves too naive to cope with the realities of the Caucasus. Verkhovskii acts in good faith, carrying out, as he believes, the wishes of the kind Maria, who plays the role of the ultimate addressee of the colonization project, the reader at home. Maria is thus the reader of Verkhovskii’s letters and a stand-in for the general ‘reader at home.’ Maria, however, chooses incorrectly: according to the outcome of the tale, it is really Ermolov’s unrelenting policies that should be followed in the Caucasus. Kindhearted souls such as Verkhovskii have no place there. As Ermolov says, ‘One execution will save hundreds of Russians from death and thousands of Muslims from treachery’ (1:477).23 The tale thus affirms Maria’s inadequacy as a kind-hearted armchair general, demonstrating that any civilian reader cannot understand ‘what is really going on’ and should leave policy matters to military authorities. The tale also affirms the Russian army’s need to use draconian means to subdue the Caucasians, regrettable as this decision might be. In the final scene of the story, the moral of the story becomes clear. It is, after all, Verkhovskii’s own younger brother who finally kills Ammalat – he is neither afraid to kill him as an enemy, nor a heartless monster, because he comforts the dying Ammalat until the end. He combines the quality of compassion, which he shares with his brother, with cold-eyed practicality: Ammalat was the enemy, and therefore had to be shot. Yet a suffering man should also be comforted, even if he is an enemy. The younger Verkhovskii is a Russian soldier who properly ful-

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fils his duties in the Caucasus, carrying out the will of the Russian government without any attempt to get personally involved, and without any attempt at ‘re-educating the natives.’ Only after he kills Ammalat, which is his duty, does he discover that he has also avenged his brother. Ammalat’s crime does not pay, although this had already been made manifestly clear in the story, because Ammalat was filled with remorse after killing Verkhovskii, and the sultan is horrified by the murder and decapitation. Yet for all that Verkhovskii insists that he is attempting to ‘re-educate’ Ammalat for Maria’s sake, one might reasonably pose the question as to the real object of Verkhovskii’s passion. In Eve Sedgwick’s coining of the notion of ‘homosociality,’ she notes that females frequently serve only to mediate desire between men, even though that desire may not be acted out.24 Is Verkhovskii’s goal in saving Ammalat, ‘whom I love disinterestedly, who himself loves without hope,’ as ‘disinterested’ as he claims it is (1:500)? After all, Verkhovskii is first moved to rescue Ammalat from imminent execution when he notices that Ammalat is ‘of unusual beauty, shapely like the Apollo Belvedere’ (‘krasoty neobyknovennoi, stroen, kak Apollon Bel’vederskii’) (1:475). Additionally, Verkhovskii offers to give up his precious leave, which he would have used to visit his fiancée, in order to be able to prevent Ammalat’s death. In contrast to Verkhovskii’s fiancée, who is described in very immaterial, non-sexual terms (she is his ‘angel,’ his ‘priceless one’), Ammalat is described by Verkhovskii in terms of lusts, desires, passions. Those terms are typically Orientalist, to be sure (that Europeans are rational, while ‘Orientals’ are lustful, is a primary tenet of the discourse of Orientalism), but the matter goes further than that: Verkhovskii shows more interest in Ammalat than in his fiancée, and greatly admires Ammalat’s passion. When Ammalat tells his childhood friend, SafirAli, about Verkhovskii’s disciplined habits and the way in which Verkhovskii sacrifices his love life for duty, his friend remarks: ‘A rare man!’ And Ammalat retorts: ‘But to make up for it, an icy lover!’ (1:490). An icy lover, however, only in regard to Maria; in regard to Ammalat, Verkhovskii is considerably warmer. At one point, describing to Maria Ammalat’s suffering over the princess Seltaneta, Verkhovskii remarks: ‘Attracted, touched myself, I take upon my breast my youth, who is fainting from ecstasy, and for a long time, he breathes slow sighs and then, closing his eyes, lowering his head, as if embarrassed to look at the world, not only at me, he presses my hand, and with unsteady step, goes out, and after that you can’t get a word out of him for a whole day’ (1:524). In this homoerotically tinged passage, it becomes clear that

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Ammalat restores and revivifies Verkhovskii with his own passion, and that the apple of Verkhovskii’s eye is not really Maria, but Ammalat. Even though Ammalat is, practically speaking, Verkhovskii’s captive, it is Verkhovskii who is truly captivated by Ammalat. One can, then, read the excessive affection Verkhovskii has for Ammalat as a way to underscore that this excess leads inevitably to betrayal and death – and to a reaffirmation of imperial military policy as well as the heterosexual status quo. It may also reveal that the Caucasian Other provided as much a mirror for the Russian imperialist, a masculine object of desire, as anything else. Verkhovskii’s admiration and love for Ammalat pave the way for other literary treatments of the Caucasian hero, a figure who is usually admired and loved, but also envied. Tolstoy’s Olenin is drawn to the handsome young Cossack man Lukashka in The Cossacks, who has both looks and skill, and also, not surprisingly, the love of Mariana, the beautiful Cossack girl. Olenin himself loves Mariana, but tries to win the affection of both of them. Olenin’s triangulated fascination with the two young Cossacks leads to mistrust and unhappiness, and he departs from the village a thoroughly unwelcome guest. In both his relationship to Ammalat and to Ermolov, and his evocation of Peter I, Verkhovskii’s function in the text is to make Russian policy in the Caucasus understandable on a human scale. As a close associate of Ermolov and an admirer and follower of Peter the Great, Verkhovskii provides insight into both their characters, and makes their policies intelligible on a day-to-day basis. In his dealings with Ammalat, he humanizes and gives voice to an ‘Asiatic.’ In general, Verkhovskii mirrors the ideological leanings of Peter the Great, and he quite literally follows in his footsteps. In a lengthy letter to Maria, Verkhovskii describes riding along and contemplating the remains of a wall that was said (falsely, according to Verkhovskii) to have linked the Caspian to the Black Sea, and to have been built by Alexander the Great. In contemplating this wall, Verkhovskii marvels at ‘the grandeur of the ancients’ to which the ‘effeminate rulers of the East cannot aspire,’ and this leads him to thoughts of Peter I: I wandered along the tracks of the great Peter, I imagined him, the founder, the transformer of a young empire, on these ruins of the crumbling empire of Asia, from whose surroundings he pulled Rus’ and with a mighty right hand rolled toward Europe. What fire glittered then in his eagle gaze, thrown down from the heights of the Caucasus! What genius-inspired thoughts were like stars in his mind, with what

186 Writing at Russia’s Border sacred feelings heaved the heroic breast! The great fate of the fatherland unfolded before his eyes, along with the horizon; in the mirror of the Caspian appeared to him the pictures of the future prosperity of Russia, sown by him, sprinkled with his bloody sweat. Not empty conquests, but victory over barbarism, but the happiness of humanity, were his goals. Derbent, Baka, Astrabat – these were the links of the chain, with which he wanted to enmesh the Caucasus and connect the trade of India with Russian trade. Demigod of the North! You, whom nature created, so as to flatter human pride and bring it to despair with inaccessible greatness! your shadow appeared before me, huge and radiant, and the waterfall of centuries, it seemed, fell apart into foam at your feet. Pensively and wordlessly, I continued further. (1:495)

In this passage, Verkhovskii avers that he, like Peter, wants only the worthwhile goal of linking Russia with India, rather than desiring ugly conquest for its own sake. Peter, a veritable Titan, justifies Russia’s place in history, codifies Russia’s goals as victory over barbarism and human happiness, and defines the Caucasus as both the origin of Russia and the mirror in which her future can be seen. Verkhovskii is struck speechless by this huge, larger-than-life figure, who ‘rolls’ Rus’ towards Europe. The wordlessness indicates, perhaps, that Verkhovskii is a pawn to Peter’s plans, and that he subordinates himself to them, much like Pushkin’s Evgenii will be subdued (and in his case, maddened) by the onward-galloping Peter in ‘The Bronze Horseman.’ Verkhovskii, as faithful successor to Peter, as present-day striver for Peter’s goals, is in his rightful place – the Caucasus; and from the Caucasus he continues Peter’s policies. Peter insisted that ‘barbarian’ Russia could be torn from Asia and sutured onto Europe, and Verkhovskii’s own hopes for Ammalat’s ‘re-education’ fall into the same category of Europeanization. Verkhovskii, like Peter, believes that Asia can be attached to Europe, that ‘Orientals’ can become Europeans. In Ammalatbek, Verkhovskii also admires Ermolov, but he resists him, insisting against Ermolov’s better judgment that Ammalat can become a ‘true friend of Russia.’ The two competing philosophies, Peter’s policy of Europeanization and Ermolov’s policy of inflexible domination, even cruelty, are thus held up for scrutiny in Ammalat-bek, and Ermolov’s policy wins. Even so, it is evident that Peter was necessary in order to formulate the overall picture of Russia’s future greatness – he is portrayed on a much more gigantic, superhuman scale than Ermolov, who is only an Odysseus to Peter’s Titanic Prometheus, bringing civilization

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to Russians as Prometheus brought fire to humans. Peter prepared the way, but the ‘dirty work’ must be done by Ermolov. Moreover, Peter’s grandiose plan is much like Ermolov’s: each sees Russia’s destiny writ large, and neither can permit history to be seen in terms of individuals. Rather, a large and overarching policy must be instituted. Verkhovskii’s role is to make Russian policy real, but his ‘mistake’ is to become attached to the individuals who make up the grand sweep of policy. Unlike his heroes, Verkhovskii is caught up in the day-to-day events of the colonizing process, and these ultimately cloud his vision, from the point of view of the visionaries. The grand, black-and-white distinctions can only be made from a distance, not up close. Another of Verkhovskii’s ‘roles’ is to clarify what the conquest of the Caucasus means to the ordinary ‘reader at home.’ One of the most striking aspects of Verkhovskii’s characterization in the novella is the enumeration of what he has lost or given up in order to fulfil his duties in the Caucasus: Yes, Ammalat! – he said – I have become tired of your almost always angry, empty sea, your land, inhabitated by diseases and by people, who are worse than any diseases on the earth; I am sick of the war itself with its invisible enemies, sick of service with unfriendly companions. That’s nothing, that they interfered, spoiled what I ordered to be done ... but they discredited what I thought of doing, and gossiped about what I had done. I served the sovereign with faith and truth, unselfishly served the fatherland and this region; I denied myself, voluntary exile, all the comforts of life, all the joys of society, condemned my mind to immobility, without books; buried my heart in solitude, without my dear one ... And what was my reward? Oh, may the moment soon come, when I will throw myself into the embrace of my fiancée, when I, exhausted from service, will relax under the canopy of my native hut on the verdant bank of the Dnepr...when, as a peaceful villager and tender father of a family, in the circle of my dear ones and my kind peasants, I will fear only heavenly volleys because of my harvest, and will join battle only with wild animals over my flocks! My heart sings of that hour! My leave is in my pocket, my retirement is promised ... so that in the summer I can fly to my fiancée ... (1:534)

Verkhovskii’s wished-for transformation from warrior of Dagestan to bucolic warrior against crop damage reveals precisely why he believes in the Caucasian conquest: it is to ensure the continuation of the patriarchal way of life of the Russian landowner, surrounded by his smiling

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serfs and children. In this sense, Verkhovskii’s ideology meshes nicely with the government’s. Yet, at the same time, Verkhovskii’s lament underscores another important aspect of the Russian enterprise: to carry it out did exact a certain cost from Russian soldiers and citizenry. Despite the novella’s implicit criticism of the destruction of Ammalat’s family, friends, and personal well-being, it also clearly criticizes the fact that Verkhovskii leads a life in the Caucasus that is devoid of love and pleasure. Ermolov and Peter the Great loom large, Titan-like in their foresight and planning of the grand scheme of things, but Verkhovskii, the foot-soldier of the Caucasian enterprise, bears the costs and endures the contradictions. The ‘great ones’ view the situation from afar, Peter in terms of Russia’s future history, Ermolov in black-and-white terms of Russians vs Asiatics (with their well-known wiles). But Verkhovskii comes to know and love Ammalat, and he must pay the price of knowing firsthand the effect of the Russian conquest on Ammalat’s people, and of course he also pays the ultimate price, his life, for Ammalat’s own Russian/Caucasian dilemma. Verkhovskii’s younger brother, while he is shown to be a more ‘ideologically correct’ soldier, willing to kill the enemy rather than to spare him, nonetheless pays the heavy price of the loss of his older brother. Further, the Caucasus, a place of mere space, must be joined to time by the civilizing mission, while the seductively pleasant nature of the Caucasus must be resisted: Today I parted with the mountains here for a long time, I would wish forever. I am very glad that I am leaving Asia, that cradle of the human race, in which the mind until now has remained in swaddling clothes. The immobility of Asiatic life is astonishing over the course of so many centuries. All attempts at improvement and education have broken against Asia; it belongs decidedly not to time, but to place. The Indian Brahmin, the Chinese Mandarin, the Persian bek, the mountain brave are changeless, the same as they have been for two thousand years. Sad truth! ... I am leaving the land of fruit to return to the land of labor, that great inventor of everything useful, the suggester of everything great, that awakener of the human soul, here having fallen asleep in languor, on the bosom of the charmer, nature. (1:525–6)

The classic Orientalist claims of an unchanging past, impervious to progress and the passage of time, indeed outside of European time, are

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repeated here. Verkhovskii feels he must return to Russia in order not to be trapped in a beautiful, enticing timelessness, an Eden of fruit, unenlightened by the virtues of labour. The pure but ahistorical nature encountered by the Caucasian soldier is encountered again later in different form. Tolstoy’s 1850s Caucasian sketches and his 1901 Khadzhi Murat also show how the common soldier pays the price of the colonizing mission. In Khadzhi Murat in particular, war is is shown to be like a chess game for the tsar, but like living death for the soldiers, who in their twenty-five-year service stints are like severed branches of a tree, broken off and withering. Maksim Maksimych: The Russian Kavkazets From the beginning, Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time was seen as a text more sophisticated than Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s tales. For example, when Lermontov’s story ‘Bela’ first appeared, in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland) in 1839, Belinskii wrote: ‘Bela,’ a story of Mr Lermontov, a young poet with unusual talent, is located in the third number. Here for the first time Mr Lermontov appears with a prose experiment – and this experiment is worthy of his lofty poetic gift. The simplicity and unaffectedness of this story are inexpressible, and every word, just as it is in its place, is rich with meaning. We are prepared to read such stories about the Caucasus, about the wild mountaineers and the relations towards them of our troops, because such stories acquaint us with the subject, but don’t slander it. The reading of the marvellous story of Mr Lermontov can be useful also as an antidote to the reading of the stories of Marlinskii.25

There is indeed a large disparity between the ironically self-conscious narration of Lermontov’s traveller-narrator, with his dismissal of the boring travel statistics ‘which certainly no one will ever read’ (4:216), and the unself-consciously over-the-top ‘extravagant prose’ (as Leighton terms it) of Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s Caucasian stories. Pechorin, himself a self-conscious narrator, certainly regards the hapless Grushnitskii as a man who is overly influenced by florid Caucasian prose such as Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s. As Vatsuro puts it, any reader of the 1840s would have well understood Lermontov’s story ‘Princess Mary’ as a polemic against Marlinism, in which passions, moral dilemmas, and exalted friendships played such an important role.26 Pechorin

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exists in part simply as a device to reject all that Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s heroes hold sacred. However, I would argue that similarities in the texts and characters are often overlooked. The character of Maksim Maksimych, for example, does not necessarily figure easily into the polemical scheme of things. Maksim Maksimych is part foil for Pechorin, and part narrative device, allowing the reader to learn about Pechorin from another viewpoint besides Pechorin’s or the traveller-narrator’s and linking the series of tales together. Verkhovsksii, on the other hand, exists in a complete story, and therefore is not burdened with as many narratival functions as Maksim Maksimych. As Eikhenbaum points out, Maksim Maksimych must bridge the gap between Pechorin’s journal, written from the first person, and the traveller-narrator’s third-person perspective of Pechorin, with whom he is unfamiliar. The chain tale thus manages to succeed.27 Maksim Maksimych, unlike Verkhovskii, is not in any way an overt ‘spokesman’ for imperial ideology. The disparity between the sensibilities of the traveller-narrator and those of Maksim Maksimych is apparent; Maksim Maksimych’s speech has a slightly substandard, skaz-like ring. The reader, we understand, is meant to identify with the traveller-narrator and with Pechorin, but to feel in some sense superior to Maksim Maksimych on a cultural level. Nonetheless, Maksim Maksimych is clearly an intelligent man, and like Verkhovskii he bridges the divide between the Russian and the mountaineer, often providing an alternative viewpoint of non-Russians and their ways. As Lidiia Ginzburg shows, A Hero of Our Time works in no small part because Maksim Maksimych is not a mere ‘tupoumyi’ (obtuse) simpleton, but has his own kind of wisdom, his own merits as a character. Furthermore, Pechorin’s shortcomings are often highlighted in relation to Maksim Maksimych. Ginzburg cites in particular the scene of the meeting at the post station between Pechorin and Maksim Maksimych, in which Pechorin snubs Maksim Maksimych, whose feelings in turn are badly hurt, as the traveller-narrator observes. The critic finds this to be a negative judgment of Pechorin’s egoism.28 Other critics have noted that Maksim Maksimych is perceived as somewhat pathetic by the traveller-narrator, who chooses to portray the ignominious moment of Pechorin’s snubbing of Maksim Maksimych perhaps in order to assert his own superiority over him. Maksim Maksimych’s role, rather than to state ideology baldly as Verkhovskii does, is to experience its effects, to express misgivings, and yet also to resign himself to the situation. His role seems to reassure the

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reading public that, although there are morally suspect Pechorins in the Caucasus, there are also decent Maksim Maksimyches; homey, kindly sorts who attempt to make things right when they can. In his own way, he reassures the reader that there are alternatives to Pechorin. Ammalat-bek is set during Ermolov’s term of command over the Caucasus, and Verkhovskii’s relationship to both Ermolov and Peter the Great are explored in the story. Although the action of A Hero of Our Time takes place later than that of Ammalat-bek, Lermontov also establishes a marked link between Maksim Maksimych and Ermolov: ‘Have you served here long?’ [asks the traveller-narrator of Maksim Maksimych] ‘Yes, I already served here under Aleksei Petrovich,’ he said, assuming a dignified air. ‘When he came to the Line, I was a second lieutenant,’ he added, ‘and under him I was promoted twice for actions against the hillmen.’ ‘And now you’re ...?’ ‘Now I’m with the Third Frontier [Line] Battalion. And what about you, if I may ask?’ (4:186)29

From this passage, it is evident that Maksim Maksimych’s best days, his most successful days, were spent under Ermolov, whom he obviously admires. The ‘reign’ of Ermolov is something of a Golden Age to Maksim Maksimych, on which he already looks back in longing. Apparently his promotions also occurred under Ermolov, and he has not been promoted since. The question ‘And now you’re ... ?’ most likely refers to Maksim Maksimych’s rank, but as it is not exalted, Maksim Maksimych prefers to understand the question as a question about his unit affiliation. Nor is Peter the Great, such an important figure for Verkhovskii, left out of Lermontov’s novel. A few pages later, after his conversation with Maksim Maksimych about his youthful days, the traveller-narrator discusses the black stone cross on the peak of the Krestovaia mountain: ‘By the way, there exists a strange, but universal legend about the cross, that it had been put up by the emperor Peter the First, as he travelled through the Caucasus; but, first of all, Peter was only in Dagestan, and secondly, on the cross it is written in big letters that it was put up by order of General Ermolov, in 1824 to be exact. But the legend, in spite of the inscription, has so taken root, that you don’t really know which to believe, all the more since we are not accustomed to believing inscrip-

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tions’ (4:205). Once again the identities and deeds of Peter and Ermolov converge, as Ermolov either enhances or usurps Peter’s act of placing the cross on the mountain. The two larger-than-life figures, both keys to understanding Russian national identity, loom over the Caucasian landscape and force a confrontation with Russia’s ultimate goals for the region. The cross, symbolic of both Christianity and Russia’s control (or desire for control) over the Caucasus, is also unmistakeably similar to a gravestone: a solemn marker of all that has been sacrificed in its name. Indeed, it foreshadows the circumstances of Bela’s burial, standing in for Bela’s missing grave marker, an all-encompassing Christian cross for the numerous non-Christian dead. It may even refer to a passage from Lermontov’s ‘Kavkazets’ (The Caucasian): ‘But alas, for the greater part he will lay down his little bones in Muslim land.’ (4:317) Lermontov himself was very interested in Ermolov, to the point of planning to write a novel about him.30 And Ermolov, much as he appears in Pushkin’s epilogue to ‘A Captive of the Caucasus’ (Resign yourself, Caucasus, Ermolov is coming!), makes a saviour-like entrance as well in Lermontov’s 1841 poem ‘Spor’ (Quarrel). Lermontov’s Maksim Maksimych, like Verkhovskii, serves to endure the costs and contradictions of Russian policy in the Caucasus. Unlike Verkhovskii, however, whose thoughts and convictions are clear, and who is a man of action in spite of his mistakes, Maksim Maksimych is a passive, ambiguous character, albeit a good-hearted one. From the beginning, Maksim Maksimych’s role is unclear, slippery; he is neither young nor old, neither quite Russian nor quite Caucasian, an able translator but a poor composer of speech. From the beginning, he is difficult to place: ‘Behind [the cart] walked its master, smoking a small Kabardian pipe worked with silver. He wore an officer’s tunic without epaulettes and a shaggy Circassian cap. He seemed to be about fifty; the swarthy colour of his face showed that it had long been acquainted with the trans-Caucasian sun, and his prematurely grey mustache did not correspond to his firm step or his hale appearance’ (4:185).31 The description of Maksim Maksimych indicates that he wears a mixture of a Russian uniform and Caucasian hat and pipe, that his epaulettes are missing, and that he has clearly been in the Caucasus a long time, although his step and appearance are youthful. Maksim Maksimych appears straightforward enough, but the facts about him always seem to remain shadowy. We discover very little about him; he has not been in contact with his family for many years, he has no last name that we know of, unlike Pechorin, and his name and patronymic, as we have

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noted, are oddly repetitive, as if self-reflexive and sterile. Lacking ties to Russia, without family, Maksim Maksimych has to some extent ‘gone native,’ existing outside the typical Russian notions of time so dear to Verkhovskii and unlike his epistolary connectedness to the homeland. When Pechorin arranges the kidnapping of Bela, setting a whole string of events in motion that causes a man, his son, and his daughter to be utterly destroyed, the chain of events brings Pechorin himself only renewed boredom.32 Pechorin cannot really identify with any of the people whose lives he profoundly alters, and he cannot even muster much sadness over Bela’s death. It seems to be Maksim Maksimych’s role, on the other hand, to identify with all of the others, and to express concern not only for Bela but also for her father, Azamat, and Kazbich, all of whom were wronged by Pechorin. Maksim Maksimych, much like Verkhovskii, gets personally involved in the lives of others. Most of all, Maksim Maksimych develops the feelings of a father for Bela. To Pechorin, Bela is like the beautiful horse Karagyoz (to whose eyes her eyes are compared more than once) – she catches his fancy, but cannot hold it. Pechorin enjoys getting Azamat to do what he wants him to do – to steal Bela – and he enjoys taking the horse from Kazbich. But once the manipulation is finished, Pechorin’s interest in Bela quickly dissipates. Pechorin enjoys only the game itself, not the results of his manipulations. Pechorin is so removed from the consequences of his actions that Maksim Maksimych not only must attempt to repair the damage his cruelty causes, but must even tell Pechorin what to feel, since Pechorin has no discernible emotions other than ennui. ‘In his place, I would have died of grief,’ remarks Maksim Maksimych after he, himself overcome with sorrow, notices that Pechorin sheds no tears over Bela’s death (4:214). In the story, Maksim Maksimych consistently stands in for Pechorin, experiencing the emotions Pechorin should experience, doing the things he should do, facing the consequences of Pechorin’s actions. He mediates, or attempts to mediate, between an unfeeling, uncaring, and irresponsible Pechorin and the ‘real world.’ At the same time, however, Maksim Maksimych can be faulted for failing ever to act to stop Pechorin. He always allows Pechorin to talk him into permitting him to do whatever he, Pechorin, wishes to do. Thus Maksim Maksimych does not force Pechorin to return Bela to her father, as Maksim Maksimych has the duty to do. He is powerless in the face of Pechorin’s irresponsibility, unable to stop him or discipline him. It is perhaps the case that Maksim Maksimych does not really wish to

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stop Pechorin’s actions. After all, Maksim Maksimych lives vicariously, one might say voyeuristically, through Pechorin, experiencing love, joy, sorrow, and all manner of human emotions through Pechorin’s shortlived attachments. Both Verkhovskii and Maksim Maksimych experience a morbid fascination with the love lives of those closest to them, envying the love and pleasure (or passion, in Verkhovskii’s case) that they see close at hand, but which is absent in their own lives. Both want to intervene and ‘help’ in the love lives of their friends, and an interest in these friends and their lives is what helps to make up for their own lack of love or passion. On one occasion, Maksim Maksimych quite literally becomes a voyeur, hiding behind a door. Naturally, this is a narrative device, included so that Maksim Maksimych can witness a ‘private’ scene and yet retell it – a scene the narration would otherwise have to forgo. Nonetheless, its voyeuristic elements are fully developed. In the scene, Pechorin has decided, as a way of winning Bela over, to pretend that he is going to leave her forever: ‘He turned away and offered his hand in parting. She didn’t take it or say anything. But from where I was behind the door I could see her face through the crack. I pitied her to see how deathly pale that sweet little face had gone. Hearing no answer, Pechorin took a few steps towards the door. He was trembling, and I might say I think he was fit to do what he’d threatened as a joke. That’s the sort of man he was, there was no knowing him. But he’d hardly touched the door when she sprang up sobbing and threw her arms around his neck. Believe it or not, but I wept myself as I stood there behind the door. Well, not exactly wept, you know – oh, just an old man’s silliness!’ The captain was silent. ‘Yes,’ he said, tugging at his whiskers, ‘I confess I was upset that no woman had ever loved me like that.’ (4:200–1)33

Here, Maksim Maksimych envies Pechorin, yet voyeuristically enjoys the scene between the two lovers. His observation of the scene is the closest he comes to experiencing a similar scene himself. Verkhovskii, too, observes Ammalat closely, hawklike, and pays special attention to him when he is sleeping: ‘Last night, finally, he thrashed about in restless sleep, and the word “Seltanet, Seltanet” (power, power)! burst often from his lips. Could lust for power so torture a youthful heart? No, no, another passion is disturbing his soul,

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troubling the mind of Ammalat ... Can I doubt the signs of that heavenly illness – love! He is in love; he is passionately in love; but with whom? O, I will find out! ... Friendship is curious, like a woman’ (1:481). Both Verkhovskii and Maksim Maksimych want to know everything about their friends; certainly, this furthers the goal of narration, but it is also an indication of the extent of their voyeuristic interests. With Verkhovskii, the desire to know about Ammalat’s desires is also overlaid with his own apparent homoerotic desire for Ammalat. Though no overt hint of such is given in Bestuzhev’s tale, many readers would have been aware of the fact that homosexuality was less hidden in many Islamic cultures than in European ones. Pushkin, for example, in his ‘Journey to Arzrum’ (published 1836), makes a number of references to homosexuality on the part of Turks and Tatars. Verkhovskii’s and Maksim Maksimych’s voyeuristic attachments, it seems, emphasize their liminality. They find themselves mediating between the attachments of others, playing the role of cupid or admonishing or indulgent elder. Verkhovskii’s homoerotic leanings, if acknowledged as such, would have made him liminal, peripheral, in ‘proper’ Russian society; constrasted with the excesses of Ammalat’s (heterosexual) passions, however, Verkhovskii’s feelings seem tame, controlled. On the periphery of empire, leading barren, empty lives, both Verkhovskii and Maksim Maksimych seize the opportunity to add life to their self-sacrificing existence on the margins. Verkhovskii becomes a kind of admirer of Ammalat, captivated by his captive, while Maksim Maksimych becomes a kind of nanny, looking after Pechorin’s stolen Bela. Both Verkhovskii and Maksim Maksimych enjoy, and in a sense voyeuristically experience, the relationships between Ammalat and Seltaneta, on the one hand, and between Pechorin and Bela, on the other. If Verkhovskii’s failure is to do too much, to act when circumstances might not warrant action, then Maksim Maksimych’s failure is to act too little and too late. He is often at a loss for words. When Pechorin tells him he is going to keep Bela, Maksim Maksimych can say nothing. ‘Well, what could I do? there are people with whom you simply have to agree,’ Maksim Maksimych tells the traveller-narrator (4:199). Often, Maksim Maksimych’s response to Pechorin’s irresponsible and cruel decisions is ‘Ia stal vtupik’ – ‘I was nonplussed,’ ‘up a blind alley,’ ‘at an impasse.’ Maksim Maksimych’s moral impotence at crucial moments speaks volumes about his ambiguous position in the story. He can interpret, understand, put himself in another’s shoes – but for those same

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reasons he cannot act decisively, but remains ‘at an impasse,’ liminal, in between the multiple perspectives. He is a voyeur, always an outsider or ‘in-betweener,’ in between cultures, sexes, military and civilian life, and in between various historical codes and styles – the Byronic aristocrat, the local Circassians, the traveller-writer. Verkhovskii, on the other hand, may be guilty of too much action, too much narratival exposition. But each in his own ways makes the border experience comprehensible to readers. While A Hero of Our Time met with great success among the reading public, the character of Pechorin was greeted by many conservatives with suspicion, as being too negative, even evil.34 Maksim Maksimych’s character, on the other hand, was hailed by Belinskii as a ‘pure Russian type,’ and extravagantly praised by the Slavophile Shevyrev in the following terms: ‘What an integral/whole character of a fundamental Russian good soul (dobriak), into which the subtle infection of a Western education has not penetrated.’35 Tsar Nicholas I, in a letter to his wife, famously praised the character of Maksim Maksimych, finding that he would have been a more appropriate ‘hero of our time’: The Captain’s character is nicely sketched. In beginning to read the story I had hoped, and was rejoicing, that he was the Hero of Our times. In his class there are indeed many more truly worthy of this title than those too commonly dignified with it. The (Independent) Caucasian Corps must surely number many of them, whom one gets to know only too rarely, but such a hope is not to be fulfilled in this book, and M. Lermontov was unable to develop the noble and simple character (of the Captain). He is replaced by wretched and uninteresting people, who – proving to be tiresome – would have been far better ignored and thus not provoke one’s disgust.36

The tsar even goes on to say, ‘Bon voyage à M. Lermontov. He can go and – if that were possible – brainwash himself [se purifier la tête] in a world where he can put the finishing touches to his character of the Captain always assuming he is capable of painting him in depth.’37 As commentators have noted, the Tsar did not recognize the effects of his own policies on characters like Pechorin; in any case he clearly locates desirable Russian types in the Caucasus, and by sending Lermontov there, reduced to the ranks for duelling, he believes he might be able to ‘purify his head.’38 Yet Maksim Maksimych is not, after all, the ‘hero of our time.’ Rather,

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it is the cynical Pechorin, whose travels beyond Russia, to the Caucasus and Persia, reveal a more complete understanding of Russia’s position in the world. Maksim Maksimych’s passivity tempered with decency is not enough, his limited world a dead end. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii’s and Lermontov’s texts indicate that those who inhabit the margins of Russia, whose world view focuses on the local conflict, inevitably become caught up in situations they cannot master or alter. Verkhovskii’s infatuation with Ammalat reveals and constructs Ammalat’s humanity, but ultimately Ermolov’s conviction that Asiatics are wholly ‘other,’ not to be trusted but subjugated, rules the day. Likewise, Maksim Maksimych’s solicitude in regard to Bela is in the end fruitless. As she lies dying, she does not think of him at all, but has eyes only for Pechorin, the man who neglected and destroyed her. In these Caucasian texts, only those who ignore the narratives of individuals to view the grander narrative of Russia in her role as empire, stretching outward in all directions, only those who can see the future of Russia reflected in the mirror of the Caspian, are granted the role of hero.39

5 Tolstoy on the Margins

In The Cossacks, Tolstoy explores among other things the limits of the Russian word, of literacy. The epistolary connection linking centre and periphery is snapped in two metaphorically, as Olenin feels that his interlocutors in the metropole cannot understand him, even though the novella itself is surely written for that same audience. Tolstoy defamiliarizes narodnost’, portraying the Russian Cossacks as unfamiliar and unassimilable, yet intimately tied to Russian history and identity. The Russian self is the terra incognita, territory to be travelled and discovered. Tolstoy’s The Cossacks is a novella in which no conflict of identity seems to be left unexamined. Tolstoy, who ‘exiled himself’ to the Caucasus, found surroundings that seemed to heighten his ability to examine his own identity.1 He wrote his first published work, ‘Childhood,’ in the Caucasus and worked as well on a number of other texts, among them one that would become The Cossacks, a text in which certain themes and characters are very similar to those in ‘Childhood.’ How did the border setting of the writing of The Cossacks refine Tolstoy’s understanding of Russian identity? In The Cossacks the Russian soldiers who occupy a Cossack village on the Terek and the Chechen highlanders who live on the opposite side of the river appear to compose opposing ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ identities in the novella; the Orthodox, but unenserfed, Cossacks make up a complicated mix of the two. The Russians are also divided among themselves, comprising nobles and peasants, officers and men, and the Cossack attitude towards each type is varied. There are also differences of generation and of gender among each ethnic group. Further, the narration does not come from a univocal voice.

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Tolstoy not only takes on previous writers’ versions of the Caucasus, but tracks historical change; Olenin’s sense of being a ‘belated traveller’ is brought out in many different ways, while the elegiac musings of Eroshka create a timeline of responses to Russian conquest. The story as a whole is played out in a highly segmented class and group-marked set of territories: the Cossack village with its huts of different sizes and socially determined values, the river as guarded border, the Cossack fields, the woods, the opposite, ‘wild’ side of the river, and the Nogai steppe. Russia itself is the space of the journey south. In the village there is an awkward jockeying of positions of the officers quartered in the Cossack households, and there are literary and epistolary connections to the metropole. The people are also highly differentiated: there are Chechens, male Cossacks, female Cossacks, young people, older adults, the Russian rank and file, Russian officers, and Eroshka, the lone, elder Cossack. As in most Caucasian narratives of this type, Russian women are also present, either as the addressees of letters or merely imagined in their metropolitan setting. ‘Childhood,’ like The Cossacks, contains a major, self-consciously narrated journey as a core moment in the maturation of the main character. Olenin, striving to begin his life anew, very consciously attempts to leave behind what he considers to be all of his failings as he departs from Moscow on his long journey south, dwelling at each stage on various aspects of the old life he wishes to overcome. Nikolai, the hero of ‘Childhood,’ leaves his country estate to go to Moscow, in effect leaving behind the idealized unity of the family and early childhood innocence. Another journey acquaints him with the reality that the world does not revolve around him and brings out sharp class differences of which he had previously been unaware. Uneven success with love, older ‘tutor’ figures who are social inferiors but know more about life than the young hero, dissatisfaction about the inconsistency of being noble and well off, yet immature and naive, figure into both narratives. The death of Nikolai’s mother is a central point of ‘Childhood,’ while the death of the Chechen brave shot by Lukashka crystallizes the plot of The Cossacks. Both stories focus on maturation, on conflict between a person’s official social standing and their actual meaning and worth in society. Lev Tolstoy’s novella The Cossacks, published in 1863 but begun more than a decade earlier, is often read as a summing up and crystallization of the issues at stake in the Russian, and especially the Russian Romantic, conception of the Caucasus.2 A number of battles were raging over Russianness and Russia’s destiny in Russia while Tolstoy was engaged

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in writing The Cossacks (i.e., from 1852 to 1863). After a period of intense Russian admiration of Europe, the failed revolutions of 1848 had led to a realization that Europe’s future was not as bright as once had been hoped, and even many Westernizers had begun to wax lyrical about the value of the Russian obshchina (commune), noting that Russian peasants had always had a kind of commune, whereas in Europe, the birthplace of socialism, peasants had had no such communal tradition. Another important event during this period was Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War (1853–6) by England, France, and Turkey, which dealt a serious blow to Russian national self-esteem and stirred up a wave of nationalism against Europe and a further questioning of European values. Russians were particularly upset that England and France would side with Islamic Turkey against their fellow Christians, the Russians. Tolstoy’s own Sevastopol Stories were written during the Crimean War. The tenor of the times, as so many novels and works of the period demonstrate, had changed drastically between the more overtly pro-European 1840s and the late 1850s and early 1860s. The issue of the Russian peasant was one of the foremost topics of the period, especially towards the latter half of the 1850s. Since the debate over the emancipation of the Russian serfs was strongly linked to notions of Russianness and of economic models to be followed, it served as a point of confluence for the writers and literary discussions of the day. Joseph Frank, for example, points out that Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky each chronicled encounters with the peasants by members of the gentry at this time, Turgenev in his Sketches from a Hunter’s Album, Tolstoy in his Sevastopol Stories, and Dostoevsky in his Notes from the House of the Dead.3 These writers’ different approaches to the issue of the gentry’s relation to the peasants can be compared. More useful for our purposes is the clear link in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky between the Caucasus/south and the peasants. Most of Tolstoy’s works dealing with the Caucasus, as well as his Sevastopol stories, are concerned in great part (though certainly not exclusively) with portraying peasants and non-nobles. While Dostoevsky, in House of the Dead, concerned himself mainly with depicting peasant convicts from Russia, a number of the convicts described are from the Caucasus. The existence of the Russian army in the Caucasus also plays a role in the work, as one of the nobleman convicts portrayed in the House of the Dead had been a decorated officer serving in the Caucasus. The Caucasus was at the time an integral part of the Russian intellectual scene and figured prominently in what might be called a ‘poetics of

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marginalization.’ In an era when issues of Russianness and Russian values were the topic of debate, the gentry writers encountered peasants, common soldiers, Jews, Caucasians, and Polish revolutionaries on the margins of society, in situations where all the classes were thrown together and where conventional hierarchies broke down – situations such as prison camps and army camps. These hierarchical breakdowns were of course relative; in the most extreme case, the prison camp, the narrator of House of the Dead makes it clear that even in prison the twain cannot meet: a nobleman will never be accepted as an equal by a peasant, and indeed, the peasants expected certain proprieties of class to obtain even in prison. Social hierarchies persisted to a much greater degree in Tolstoy’s Caucasus, of course; nonetheless, the master-servant relationship was no longer the definition of relations between the classes, and Tolstoy stressed in particular that the challenges of battle had a way of transcending class barriers. Many commentators have discussed the fact that Tolstoy set out to ‘overcome’ Romanticism in The Cossacks. Susan Layton writes: ‘The Cossacks was Tolstoy’s most concerted effort to dissipate “poetry” understood in the comprehensive sense outlined in [Tolstoy’s] “Notes on the Caucasus” ... parody in fiction is the main instrument he wields to demystify Russian experience in the territory.’4 Layton also notes that in spite of the vast wealth of ethnographic, geographic, and historical texts that had been written by the 1850s, and in spite of the newspaper Kavkaz, which had begun publication in Tiflis in 1846, Russian readers still based their ideas about the Caucasus on Romantic-era literature, a tendency Arnold Zisserman deplored in his memoirs and one also repeatedly alluded to by Tolstoy in The Cossacks and other stories of the period.5 In writing The Cossacks, Tolstoy went against the well-known generic conventions of the ‘Caucasian tale’: dramatic events are few and far between, the main character Olenin cuts a less-than-dashing figure, the Chechens are rarely glimpsed, and (perhaps most shocking) the hero does not even prove a successful suitor. What bothered some contemporaries most about the novella was that Tolstoy used it to strongly criticize his own class, the gentry, while he portrayed Cossack peasants in a flattering light.6 Tolstoy used The Cossacks both to refute and to ‘round off’ a well-established generic tradition. It is instructive to read The Cossacks along with Tolstoy’s Caucasian military stories of the same period, including ‘The Raid’ (‘Nabeg,’ 1853), ‘The Wood-felling’ (‘Rubka lesa,’ 1855), and ‘A Man Reduced to the Ranks’ (‘Iz kavkazskikh vospominanii. Razzhalovannyi,’ 1856). Tolstoy’s contemporaries found The Cos-

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sacks outdated and anachronistic, believing that one of Tolstoy’s major flaws was that he could not decide how to regard his protagonist Olenin. No doubt it was not helpful that Tolstoy conceived of the novella as only the first of three parts; he abandoned it for good after the unfavourable remarks.7 Eikhenbaum’s remarks on Tolstoy’s Caucasian writings are well known: ‘Tolstoy follows in the footsteps of the romantics with the conscious intention of thoroughly destroying their poetics. He happens in the Caucasus for the apparent purpose of confronting Marlinsky and Lermontov, exposing their ‘untruth’ and liquidating the romantic contrivance.’8 In a response to Eikhenbaum’s work, Carol Anschuetz argued convincingly for recognizing Tolstoy’s preoccupation with Rousseauian sentimentalism in The Cossacks: When Tolstoy parodies the romantic situation of the European among savages, he merely disguises his ideological affinity, if not for the individual romantics he parodies, at least for the myth of exile to which the traditional romantic situation corresponds. It is true, as Eikhenbaum observes, that ‘... Tolstoy enters battle with romanticism not only to overthrow it and put his veto on all its conventions, but also to oppose it with something different, something new.’ Yet inasmuch as the romanticism of Tolstoy’s fathers, no less than the sentimentalism of his grandfathers, derives from Rousseau, Tolstoy attempts, in his parody of the Byronic hero and his tragedy, to refute romanticism in its own terms. The attempt results in an internal conflict which prevents Tolstoy from putting his veto on the ideas behind the romantic conventions. Those ideas inevitably trap Tolstoy and his heroes in a vicious circle of romantic opposition to romanticism. In The Cossacks Tolstoy proves unable to oppose Marlinskii and Lermontov with anything newer than an appeal to the old ideas of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality.9

Tolstoy does add something new, however, which is a tension and variation between Olenin himself and the implied author. The two start out quite far from each other, and though the distance between them narrows throughout the novella, it is never entirely closed. Many readers seem to mistake the style indirect libre, in which Olenin’s thoughts are mirrored or unmarked, for a Tolstoyan implied author. The naivety of Olenin, however, is not shared by the implied author. The ongoing play between the narrator’s view and that of Olenin is complex, and has been noticed and explored by many commentators.10 Donna Orwin finds that a complex dialectic occurs in Olenin’s

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waverings between the Cossacks’ ‘natural state’ and the civilization from which Olenin emerges. According to Orwin, Tolstoy presents as the Cossacks’ advantage the fact they they live naturally, but as their disadvantage the fact they they are not self-conscious and therefore cannot have true morality or real freedom. Civilization, in spite of its many faults, succeeds in conferring both morality and meaningful freedom.11 As I will argue below, however, there is not just one opposition in the novella, not merely a choice between ‘nature’ and ‘civilization,’ but rather multiple gradations between and among ‘civilizations’ and ‘natures,’ and these are the variables within which Olenin, and Tolstoy, operate. In a work within the tradition of the Caucasian text, Russia is rarely so easily categorized as ‘civilization,’ nor a Russian as a ‘civilized man.’ When Olenin feels sorry for Lukashka’s ‘neobrazovanie’ (lack of education) because he is gleeful over having killed an ‘abrek’ (brave), Olenin’s sensation of pity occurs after he has himself just overcome a strong sense of panic at being lost in the woods. There are different kinds of education, clearly. Layton points to Olenin as a ‘blundering ethnocentric hero’ who completely misunderstands the social rules obtaining as the Chechen men ransom their comrade and brother; in particular he misunderstands ‘non-verbal messages and unspoken cultural codes’ that the narrator is well aware of.12 Tolstoy’s novella is set in a Cossack stanitsa (settlement) along the Terek River, but the form and formula most closely follow Caucasian stories such as have already been discussed above, rather than Cossack stories such as Gogol’s Taras Bul’ba, as scholars of literary Cossacks attest.13 The Cossacks also contains numerous allusions to Pushkin’s ‘Kapitanskaia dochka’ (The Captain’s Daughter). Because the Caucasian tale was so highly codified, Tolstoy had many ways in which to create his own variations, one of which was to combine an examination of social class with the genre. While Olenin constantly imagines himself as free of, or overcoming, social status, others do not share his feelings, of course, or even know of them. In The Cossacks, Tolstoy’s main method of playing on the literary conventions (something Pushkin and Lermontov had, of course, already done, and, no doubt, Tolstoy’s main method of making Olenin something more than a misguided Romantic) is to contrast Olenin’s wideeyed, gradually maturing point of view with the implied author’s more sophisticated, sometimes bemused view. For example: ‘Leaving Moscow, [Olenin] was in that happy, youthful mood when, having acknowledged previous mistakes, a youth suddenly will say to himself, “That

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was not quite right,” that all that had gone before had been accidental and unimportant, that until then he had not wished really to live, but that now with his departure from Moscow, a new life was beginning, in which there would no longer be those mistakes, in which there would be no remorse, but probably only happiness.’14 The phrasing ‘until then he had not wished really to live’ [он прежде не хотел жить хорошенько] indicates that the paragraph is in part style indirect libre, as ‘wishing really to live’ is characteristic of Olenin’s sophomoric, immaturely youthful speaking style; certainly the ideas that there would be no mistakes and that there would be ‘only happiness’ [одно счастье] are Olenin’s, too. But it is the implied author who paints the overall picture, exposing Olenin’s naivety to the reader. The contrast in views is also evident a few pages later, as the narrator describes Olenin imagining his future adventures in the Caucasus: ‘It was clear that there among the mountains, torrents, Circassian girls, and dangers, such mistakes could not repeat themselves’ (6:11) This opinion is not that of the implied author, but that of Olenin, who naively believes that a change of scenery will result in a concomitant change in himself. Changes do occur, of course, but they are not the ones that Olenin expects. Although Anschuetz, among others, believes that Tolstoy (or, as it would be better termed, Tolstoy’s implied author) depicts the Cossacks as Rousseauian noble savages, numerous subtle touches deny any completely univocal view of any group in the novella. The servant Vaniusha’s ironic commentary peppers the story, satirizing the behaviour of his master and of the Cossacks; his view of the Cossacks is far less idealizing than Olenin’s. Unsurprisingly for a work by Tolstoy, the peasant can see things in a defamiliarized way, and can see things his master is blind to. A number of criticisms of the Cossacks are made, some of them voiced by Vaniusha and some pointed out by the implied author: the old Cossack Eroshka’s greediness, Olenin’s Cossack host’s mediocrity, his doubling of the rent, and his hopes of getting the best price for his daughter’s hand, as well as the young Cossack men’s laziness and drunkenness. And most Cossacks, it is clear, are largely unaware of the rest of the world; whether this is a disadvantage is left to the reader to decide. Indicative of the realist genre, of course, is that the Cossacks are now characters in their own right, rather than shadowy cardboard figures, and that they are able to display their own, rather critical, view of Russians. The old Cossack Eroshka calls Olenin ‘Durak!’ (idiot) for not knowing the Tatar language, and informs him: ‘Я тебя всему научу’ (I

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will teach you everything) (6:45). Eroshka calls Olenin’s servant ‘Ivan,’ because, as he says, all Russians are Ivans. (Of course, ironically enough Ivan is the name of Olenin’s servant.) After this same Ivan makes a joke in fractured French, Eroshka tells him: ‘Ты не наш! не по-нашему лопочешь, чорт!’ (You are not one of us! You don’t talk like us, you devil!) (6:67). Yet, at the same time, the Cossacks don’t stray far from the tried and true Caucasian role as ‘lovers of freedom’ and war. As the narrator tells us: ‘Еще до сих пор казацкие роды считаются родством с чеченскими, и любовь к свободе, праздности, грабежу и войне составляет главные черты их характера’ (Even now the Cossacks consider themselves kin with the Chechens, and love of freedom, idleness, plunder, and war make up the main features of their character) (6:16). Although The Cossacks is most clearly a new kind of Caucasian tale, it also relates closely to Pushkin’s ‘The Captain’s Daughter,’ in which a military post is run, at times to humorous effect, by a virile woman, Captain Mironov’s wife (who, like Tolstoy’s Cossack women, is described in rather masculine terms). Grinev starts out as a naive young man travelling to take his position as an officer; like Olenin, he must learn and mature along the way. Grinev unknowingly meets Pugachev, and admires his enemy much as Olenin admires the Chechen braves. The settings are very much the same: a military outpost in the borderlands along a river. Savelich, Grinev’s faithful but complaining servant, has many similarities (age is not one of them, however) to Vanya, Olenin’s loving but grumpy servant boy, and both Savelich and Vanya provide many instances of humour. Grinev is not called upon to drill, train, or patrol, much as Olenin has almost all his time free, and so spends his time writing and translating. Grinev gives the inappropriate gift of a hareskin jacket to Pugachev, just as Olenin gives an inappropriately valuable gift, a horse, to Lukashka. Grinev’s gift, of course, enables him to be protected by Pugachev later, whereas Olenin’s gift only sets him further apart from the Cossacks he emulates. There is even an Ustinya in Mironov’s fort, a name Tolstoy also uses for one of the Cossack girls in the village. At the outpost, Grinev encounters Shvabrin, a nobleman like himself who prefers to speak French with him, much as Beletskii does with Olenin. Shvabrin, however, becomes the villain of the story, a traitorous ally of Pugachev, while Tolstoy denudes his own story of villains or heroes. Nonetheless, Pushkin’s story itself goes fairly far in the direction of creating areas that are grey rather than black and white. Other aspects of the story are also parallel; for instance, the Cossack

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girl Mariana’s mother and father have a relationship of at least equal power, as do Pushkin’s Captain Mironov and his wife, parents of another Maria who becomes Grinev’s fiancée. Mariana is sometimes described as ‘the cornet’s daughter,’ much as Masha is titled ‘the captain’s daughter.’ Both Masha and Mariana are greatly idealized by their suitors (or would-be suitors, in Olenin’s case), but Mariana is a realistic character who ultimately belongs in a different world from Masha. Just as Mariana determines her own fate, refusing Olenin, Masha saves Grinev by taking his case to the Empress and impressing her with her eloquence. Hence Tolstoy updates not only the classic Caucasian tales of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Bestuzhev-Marinskii, but also Pushkin’s story undercutting the demonization of Pugachev and satirizing and critiqueing the Russian military.15 Although Mironov’s garrison offers only slight resistance and the occupied soon offer bread and salt to the attackers, the only complete moral reprobate is Shvabrin, a nobleman and an officer; Pugachev, on the other hand, is intelligent, cunning, and loyal to Grinev, through whose impressionable eyes we first see Pugachev. The story, with its layers of social classes and ethnic groupings, which do not predetermine the characters’ true worth, is a fitting background for Tolstoy’s, in which there are multiple gradations of class and cultural background, and in which no group is always in the forefront. At the beginning of chapter 10 of The Cossacks, for example, which describes the arrival of the Russian soldiers into the Cossack village, the viewpoint changes from being Olenin’s or closely following Olenin to a viewpoint that more closely expresses the impressions of the Cossack villagers, who are displeased to have loud, ill-behaved Russian soldiers suddenly in their midst, demanding water and cooking utensils. At this juncture Olenin is described for the first time from a Cossack’s point of view, as someone who clearly has not mastered the local style of dress. He himself, however, is quite unaware of this viewpoint and basks in his own positive self-image, thinking he has fully acclimated. As usual, however, it is Vaniusha who points to the issues at hand, saying that the Cossacks don’t seem like Russians (‘Не русские какие-то’ [They are not Russian somehow]) and they are worse than Tatars (‘Хуже татар, ей-Богу. Даром что тоже христиане считаются. На что татарин, и тот благородней.’ [They are worse than Tatars, I do declare – though they consider themselves Christians! A Tatar is bad enough, but all the same he is more noble!]) (6:40).16 What Olenin admires unquestioningly, Vaniusha is suspicious of. The very flexibility of status that Olenin finds

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and values everywhere in the Caucasus disturbs Vaniusha, who does not share his views or impressions. Earlier, as Olenin travelled south from Russia, he had already begun to imagine himself increasingly free of his past and his social standing: Чем дальше уезжал Оленин от центра России, тем дальше казались от него все его воспоминания, и чем ближе подъезжал к Кавказу, тем отраднее становилось ему на душе. ‘Уехать совсем и никогда не приезжать назад, не показываться в общестo,’ приходило ему иногда в голову. ‘А эти люди, которых я здесь вижу, – не люди; никто из них меня не знает и никто никогда не может быть в Москве в том обществе, где я был, и узнать о моем прошедшем. И никто из того общества не узнает, что я делал, живя между этими людми’ [...] От Ставрополя зато все уже пошло удовлетворительно дико и, сверх того, красиво и воинственно. И Оленину все становилось веселее и веселее. Все казаки, ямщики, смотрителя казались ему простыми существами, с которыми ему можно было просто шутить, беседовать, не соображая, кто к какому разряду принадлежит. Все принадлежали к роду человеческому, который был весь бессознательно мил Оленеину, и все дружелюбно относились к нему. (6:12–13) [The farther Olenin traveled from Central Russia the farther away his memories seemed to him to be, and the nearer he drew to the Caucasus the lighter his heart became. ‘I’ll stay away for good and never return to show myself in society,’ was a thought that sometimes occurred to him. ‘These people whom I see here are not people. None of them know me and none of them can ever enter the Moscow society I was in or find out about my past. And no one in that society will ever know what I am doing, living among these people’ ... after Stavropol everything was satisfactory – wild and also beautiful and warlike, and Olenin felt happier and happier. All the Cossacks, post-boys and post-station masters seemed to him simple folk with whom he could jest and converse simply, without having to consider to what class they belonged. They all belonged to the human race which, without his thinking about it, all appeared dear to Olenin, and they all treated him in a friendly way.]17

Much like Levin on his wedding day, who feels that the whole world is rejoicing with him, Olenin feels that because he himself is not looking at others in terms of class, that they are similarly blind to class. Everyone is kind and friendly to him, and he sees this as being completely separate from his status as a nobleman. Those who are privileged, of course,

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can feel immune to inequality and take deference to class as friendliness. When Olenin feels that class differences are falling away as he heads south, this change feels apparent to him and is reflected in everything he sees. As Olenin begins his journey and is preoccupied with both where he is going and whence he has come, the ‘Ammalat-beks, Circassian girls, mountains, precipices, terrible torrents, and dangers’ (6:11) that Olenin imagines to be in the Caucasus mingle with thoughts of the money he owes his tailor and Sashka B. from Moscow. He imagines himself on both sides of the conflict, as well as both Capelle the tailor and Sashka B., but he comes back to the image of a beautiful Circassian wife whom he will bring back to great success in Moscow society.18 Everything is for him, for his benefit; the world revolves around him. He thinks to himself: А завоеванный край, давший мне больше богаства, чем мне нужно на всю жизнь? Впрочем, нехорошо будет одному воспользоваться этим богатством. Нужно раздать его. Кому только? Шестьсот семьдесят восемь рублей Капелю, а там видно будет. (6:12) [And the conquered land, having given me more wealth than I can use during my whole life? After all, it would not be good to use this wealth only for one person. It is necessary to distribute it. But to whom? Six hundred seventy-eight roubles to Capelle, and then we’ll see.]

Olenin is drawn as a naive and self-centred young man who constructs the world in his own image. Like the narrator of ‘Trip to Mamakai-yurt,’ written in 1852, Olenin has to discover that ‘there are no Circassians – there are Chechens, Kumyks, Abasekhs and so on, but no Circassians. There are no plane trees, there is the bug, a well-known Russian tree; there are no blue-eyed Circassian maidens (if under the word Circassian is meant the the collective name of Asiatic peoples) and there is much else that is not there. You will have to give up many still-sonorous words and poetic images if you wish to read my stories’ (3:216). Yet clearly the reader also recognizes himself in Olenin, as in Nikolenka of ‘Childhood’ and in Levin with his exuberant delight on the day of his wedding. However self-consciously Tolstoy pokes fun at the typical Caucasian plot structure, however determined he may be to overturn and wring out the old tropes and clichés, Olenin remains an engaging character. His story solidifies the Caucasian journey into a Bil-

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dungsroman, into a story of maturation. Instead of the grand tour of Europe, or perhaps along with it, the young man travels to the Caucasus, there to discover what life is really about. Olenin’s trip to the Caucasus is both a convention – the young Russian serving in the Caucasus, the young man’s need to see the Caucasus and in that sense ‘complete his education’ – and a trip that is foregrounded (not surprisingly) by literary preconceptions, as Olenin ponders visions of ‘Ammalat-beks, Circassian girls, mountains, precipices, terrible torrents, and dangers’ (6:11) on his way south. The narrator of ‘Mamakai-yurt,’ for example, is disturbed by the fact that the young ladies at the fort ‘lived in Chechnya – in the Caucasus – a country that is wild, poetic and warlike, exactly as if they lived in the city of Saratov or Orel. Jasmine pomade is a wonderful thing and also prunella boots; and an umbrella; but they somehow don’t go with my understanding of the Caucasus’ (3:216–17). As Olenin approaches the Cossack village where he is to stay, however, Tolstoy’s narrator assures his reader of the authenticity of his portrait of the Cossacks: ‘Станица Новомлинская считалась корнем гребенского казачества (The Novomlinsk stanitsa was considered the root of Grebensk Cossackdom) (6:17). Hence there is an assertion of authenticity and ‘real life’ along with Olenin’s imaginings; during the story the distance between these two views narrows, although throughout, as Bagby and Sigalov point out, the narrator’s voice is always most closely allied to Olenin’s in terms of background and social class.19 The Cossacks as ‘noble savages,’ little touched by civilization, are very much creations of Olenin, rather than of the implied author, although Olenin eventually has to admit that they are not what he imagined them to be at first. The Chechens in the story, who presumably are even less touched by civilization than the Cossacks, are worthy of cautious respect. They are also ‘real.’ The Cossacks are valorized not as Rousseauian innocents but as leaders of a relatively non-Westernized, yet Russian, way of life. The extent to which they ‘lean’ towards the Chechens in their values is not to say they are not still Russian but to say that their cultural influences tend towards the East, not the West. If the Cossacks are idealized in the story, it is in that they are depicted as Russians who have for the most part remained free of Westernization.20 At the same time, as a perspicacious reader points out, the story exists at least as much to criticize Olenin as a representative of the aristocracy as for any other reason.21 The extreme disparity of class differences is something that, overall, the Cossacks are shown as having evaded.

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It is significant for the story that Olenin is a Russian in the wilderness, not a Parisian or an English gentleman. Olenin is only a quasi-European; the Cossacks are described in the novella as quasi-Russians (there are long passages describing their half-Russian state), middle terms in an equation that also includes the Chechens, who share many characteristics with the Cossacks. Hence no one can be seen as a ‘pure’ type. Olenin is a Westernized Russian nobleman among the peasant (though, importantly, not enserfed) Cossacks, who themselves are ‘between’ the Chechens and the Russians, both geographically and culturally. The layer of ‘true European’ is missing, but suggested by Olenin’s fellow officer Beletskii’s copy of Dumas’ Les trois mousquetaires. Olenin ponders at length his Europeanization in the novella, as well as the Cossacks’ unwesternized state. The Cossacks had a long history of being rebellious and independent, with such heroes as Sten’ka Razin and Emel’ian Pugachev already the stuff of legend, and they were known for preferring to rely on each other and often refusing to consider themselves a part of the Russian Empire.22 Hence the story’s similarities to ‘The Captain’s Daughter’ are appropriate, since it deals with the Pugachev uprising and paints Pugachev as a cunning and in some ways attractive figure. While the Cossacks lived very much as peasants, they were not enserfed, although those who worked the land were, practically speaking, less free than those who did not. Thus in many ways the Cossacks could be considered ‘true Russians’ – they followed the Orthodox faith and spoke Russian, and legend had them always the defenders of Holy Rus.’ Nonetheless, Tolstoy does not really exploit these particularly Cossack connotations in the novella, but focuses mostly on Olenin and his thought processes, which are evoked by his contact with the Cossacks. However, the popular Cossack mythology must be kept in mind in order to understand the reader’s background connotations of the word ‘Cossack.’ In an interesting correspondence to the narrator’s experiences of peasants’ notions of fixed social hierarchy in Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead, the Cossacks in Olenin’s village can make sense of Olenin only insofar as he behaves as a member of his class – or, rather, insofar as he behaves the way they expect a wealthy nobleman should behave. Olenin makes every effort to be considerate, priding himself on being a keen observer and on refusing to step on the Cossacks’ toes, paying for his lodging and other services, and being at first so respectful of his landlady’s privacy that she assumes he is condescendingly aloof. But

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Olenin’s respectful behaviour does not smooth the way for him. His behaviour, as that of one of Dostoevsky’s aristocratic prison convicts who tries to be ‘just one of the convicts,’ is incomprehensible to the peasants, who know how the gentry should behave and expect them to follow those unwritten, but firmly fixed, codes. Ironically for Olenin, the Cossacks take well to the Russians Olenin himself despises, for example, the French-speaking Beletskii: Beletskii immediately entered into the customary life of a rich Caucasian officer in a Cossack village. Before Olenin’s eyes, in one month he became like an old resident of the village: he got the old men drunk, made evening parties, and himself went to parties given by the girls, bragged of his conquests, and even came to the point that the girls and women for some reason nicknamed him grandpa, while the Cossacks, having clearly defined for themselves this man, who loved wine and women, got used to him and even liked him better than they did Olenin, who for them was a riddle. (6:90)

Olenin, in the Cossacks’ eyes, is so inept in his knowledge of the proper social codes that he has to be reminded of them by the Cossacks themselves. When Olenin, unable to help himself, proposes marriage to Mariana, she replies: ‘Now, what are you babbling about?’ she interrupted ... ‘After all, do gentlemen marry Cossack girls? Go away!’ (6:126).23 What Olenin perceives as Mariana’s occasional interest in him arises mostly out of his failure to understand that in her view, whatever happens, given codes of behaviour must obtain. Whatever they might say in a moment of passion or playfulness, Russian gentlemen do not marry Cossack girls. The same unwritten rules apply in Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead. The aristocratic narrator of Dostoevsky’s story describes the way in which he is given, to his surprise, the best seat in the house for the prison convicts’ theatrical. The reason he is given the best seat is due to what the others consider his appropriate stature as a connoisseur of theatre. In their eyes, he is the rightful occupier of the best seat in the house, because he is understood to be the man who can best appreciate the convicts’ theatrical performance. As the narrator puts it: The best and most outstanding characteristic of our common people is their sense of justice and their desire for it. The cockerel-like habit of always wanting to be first in every situation, and at all costs, and whether one is

212 Writing at Russia’s Border worthy of it or not – this is unknown among the common people. One has only to remove the outer, superficial husk and look at the kernel within attentively, closely and without prejudice, and one will see in the common people things one had no inkling of. There is not much that our men of learning can teach the common people. I would even say the reverse: it is they who should take a few lessons from the common people.24

The ‘Tolstoyan’ flavour of the last two sentences is remarkable, the commonalities of the two authors striking with regard to this issue. Both Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are polemicizing against notions of egalitarianism, legitimizing their stance by appealing to popular attitudes.25 What is particularly noteworthy in this case is that while Dostoevsky’s narrator spells out the differences in cultural codes and the peasants’ sense of what is just and correct in a given instance, Tolstoy’s Olenin never quite makes sense of the Cossack peasants. The question in each of these texts is not whether the peasants could or should be idealized, but that their particular way of life be recognized as complex and individual, not subject to immediate comprehension and mastery by outsiders, which the gentry, in reality, actually are. The fact that The Cossacks addresses such questions (however ‘novelistically’) as the status of the peasants, whose classification as such represented older notions of estate and Western ideals of progress, with its notions of class and egalitarianism, shows the extent to which Tolstoy took over the genre and made it his own. He took the possibilities of the ‘poetics of marginality’ inherent in the setting of the Caucasian tale and used them to foreground the process of Bildung, issues of Russianness, class relations, the doctrine of progress, and humans’ relationship to nature. Returning to the plot of The Cossacks, then, one might expect that Olenin’s extravagant imaginings about Circassian maidens and other wonders would lead him to a complete frustration of all his illusions. But as it turns out, Tolstoy’s method is to indicate that while many of the same ingredients for the old recipe for the ‘Caucasian tale’ are present, they can no longer be combined to create the same dish. Thus at times the promise of a more typical plot is held out, only to show how impossible that plot has become. Mariana, the beautiful and chaste maiden, is right under Olenin’s nose, but he cannot get to her. This makes Tolstoy’s reworking all the more interesting, because the old plot line seems feasible at first. Olenin is of course completely new in terms of the Caucasian genre; much of his activity consists of introspective and self-

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doubting thought, not a common occupation of the heroes of earlier stories. Furthermore, Olenin’s portrayal is closely linked to Tolstoy’s interest in debunking the contemporary fascination with progress, especially progress at any price and of any sort. Contemporaries objected that Olenin did not fit properly into the story. Olenin regards his Moscow life much as Pushkin’s captive in ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ viewed his life in Russia – that is to say, very critically. Much as the captive admired the freedom, simplicity, and code of ethics of his Caucasian captors, Olenin admires the Cossacks among whom he lives. Olenin regards the Cossack Lukashka as an example of an ‘authentic man.’ The Chechen warriors also have much to commend them: their bravery, their determination, their distrust of falseness. Pushkin’s captive was loved by the Circassian girl, who gave her life for him, and was greatly admired by his captors for his fearlessness. Olenin, on the other hand, is a failure as a warrior and a lover. His lack of success is thrown into sharp relief by Lukashka’s successes. Olenin’s inability to win Mariana’s affection is, of course, an ironic antidote to his original dreams of a Circassian woman with ‘submissive eyes,’ who greets her husband (Olenin) with open arms as he returns from battle covered in blood and glory. In the novella, both the blood and the glory are reserved for Lukashka.26 The old Cossack Uncle Eroshka insists, in fact, that Lukashka is the only man left in the present generation who can measure up to the standards of past Cossacks. Eroshka is himself in some ways a model Cossack – a good hunter, successful with women as a young man, ruthless when necessary. He has acquired a certain wisdom and maturity, a knowledge of his limitations.27 Eroshka sounds a note of lament over a past Golden Age of Cossackdom, insisting that the Cossacks are not what they used to be. At one point, he cries over his lost youth, saying ‘прошло ты мое времечко’ (My little time, you have passed), and sings a song about how Russians kill everyone in a Tatar aul and burn it, leaving only one young man to weep over his lost family. It is he who makes explicit some of the savagery that has taken place during the Russian conquest: ‘And once as I sat watching by the river I saw a cradle floating down. It was sound except for one corner which was broken off. Thoughts did come that time! I thought some of your soldiers, the devils, must have got into a Tartar village and seized the Chechen women, and one of the devils has killed the little one: taken it by its legs, and hit its head against a wall. Don’t they do such things?’ (6:57).28 This note of lament, even protest, over the brutality of the Russian conquest of the

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Caucasus and the concomitant loss of indigenous autonomy is of course not new, but Tolstoy presents images that are concrete and disturbing. The Chechen abreks of the story are given motivation for their attacks on Russians, since the family of five brothers has had several brothers killed by Russians. The fact that Vaniusha frequently voices sharp-tongued criticisms of the Cossacks, calling Eroshka, for example, ‘попрошайка старый!’ (old beggar!) further indicates that no group will be put on a pedestal. Eroshka’s claims that the Caucasus had already outlived its Golden Age is of course pervasive in the genre; such claims, in a sense, justified the Russian colonial presence, since Russia, by contrast, was entering its own zenith of power and influence. Olenin’s lack of manhood, so to speak, is thus more than made up for by Russia’s increasing power over the Caucasus, which is evident in the novella. In both the Pushkin and Tolstoy texts, then, Russia becomes the predestined force in the Caucasus – whether it be for better or for worse, the entire process is regarded as inevitable. In The Cossacks, as Eikhenbaum noted in his Young Tolstoy, the author successfully ‘rewrote’ the stock characters of the Caucasian Romantic tale, namely, the local girl, her lover, and the village elder figure. In Pushkin’s ‘The Gypsies,’ they appear as Zemfira, her lover, and her father, with the Russian Aleko corresponding to Olenin. ‘The Gypsies’ ends with the father’s final pronouncement upon Aleko after he has killed Zemfira and her lover in a fit of jealous rage: Aleko must leave because he cannot live and let live as the gypsies do. As Iurii Lotman analyses it, ‘The Gypsies’ is about the opposition of the ‘natural life’ of the gypsy camp as opposed to the ‘non-natural’ life of civilization; free, poor nomads are better off than wealthy citizens enslaved by the law.29 In Pushkin’s tale, Aleko might have been able to become like the gypsies, had he not been inextricably tied to the mores of his own civilization. In Tolstoy’s novella, however, as Eikhenbaum points out, Tolstoy reworks the triangle. The girl Mariana is the pronouncer of the final moral, rather than the avuncular Eroshka, who represents the ‘elder’ figure. Eroshka’s role is not to stand between Mariana and Olenin; on the contrary, Eroshka encourages Olenin to have his fun with the local girls. And unlike the old gypsy, Eroshka does not have the final word: rather, he is ‘an old beggar!’ as Vaniusha’s rather dependable opinion expresses it at the end of the tale. However, the story is not so different from ‘Kapitanskaia dochka’ (‘The Captain’s Daughter’) in which Maria

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takes a very active role in the resolution of the story and both the older Savelich and Pugachev himself favour the marriage between Maria and Grinev. In contrast to the usual motifs of conquest and love, Olenin’s clichéd speeches declaring love to Mariana do not make sense to her, nor does a seduction ever take place. Mariana is beautiful, as is to be expected, but she is hardly a delicate flower like Lermontov’s Bela; rather, her beauty is described as almost too masculine, her body as remarkably powerful. Her ability to work hard, it is clear, would put any man to shame. Furthermore, she has, relatively speaking, a mind of her own, ‘led astray’ neither by her Cossack betrothed Lukashka, nor by Olenin. And it is Mariana herself who declares, ‘Get away! I’m sick of you!’ She requires no father figure to admonish her would-be lover. Mariana, with her sharp tongue, muscular body, and unquestioned mastery over her native tongue – Russian – effectively demolishes earlier demure, dainty Caucasian damsels.30 Mariana is a woman whom neither the Caucasian damsels nor the spoiled Moscow beauties can approach. Her practicality, dependability, and well-roundedness as a character make her a considerable departure even from more powerful female figures like Zemfira. It is more commonly recognized now (as opposed to when The Cossacks first appeared) that Mariana, Lukashka, Eroshka and the other Cossacks are very well-drawn characters, whose vividness is not necessarily overpowered by Olenin’s attempts at philosophizing. In fact, numerous small touches, such as Lukashka’s relationship with his deafmute sister – herself shown as clever and resourceful – create strong characterizations for even the most stock figures. From the beginning, the implied author is aware of the folly of outmoded Romantic Caucasian paradigms, and of Olenin’s folly in believing in them. He phrases Olenin’s imaginings quite ironically, whereas Olenin himself, at first all unaware, gradually drops or is foiled in his Romantic-style expectations. Olenin’s experiences thus parody old formulas, but Olenin himself does not become laughable. He realizes, unlike Quixote, that the windmills are windmills, not monsters, although Olenin’s understanding of the process of Romantic debunking is certainly not as complete as that of the implied author. Moreover, Olenin does not become laughable because he is undergoing a process of Bildung. Although Olenin may be something of a sketchy figure compared to characters in Tolstoy’s later novels, he is nevertheless relatively rounded; his insights are by no means always ironically treated by the

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implied author, and there is much of value in his youthful enthusiasm. Tolstoy sometimes reworks Romantic clichés without actually parodying them, as he must in order to prevent Olenin and his perceptions from becoming laughable. For example, one can look at the way Tolstoy treats Olenin’s first glimpse of the famous Caucasian mountain range in The Cossacks, which occurs at the end of chapter 3. In Russian Romantic literature, one of the most remarked-upon aspects of the journey south to the Caucasus from Russia is the first sighting of the Caucasus Mountains in the distance; it is a scene of awe, revelation, veneration. Eikhenbaum remarks upon this scene, noting that Tolstoy writes of the impression received by Olenin of the sight of the mountains rather than of the mountains themselves. Eikhenbaum notes that ‘The mountains become a background against which everything assumes a new character.’31 Or, we might say, against which Olenin believes everything will now assume a new character: С этой минуты все, что только он не видел, все, что он думал, все, что он чувствовал, получало для него новый, строго величавый характер гор. Bсе московские воспоминания, стыд и раскаяние, все пошлые мечты о Кавказе, все исчезли и не возвращались более. ‘Теперь началось,’ как будто сказал ему какой-то торжественный голос. (6:14) [From that moment everything that he saw, everything that he thought, everything that he felt, received for him the new, sternly majestic character of the mountains. All his Moscow reminiscences, shame, and repentance, and his banal dreams about the Caucasus, all disappeared and did not return. ‘Now it has begun,’ some sort of solemn voice seemed to say to him.]

The suggestion is that Olenin is being transformed by the sublime experience of the mountains, but again it is from his own perspective that he feels the mountains have made a change in him.32 In any case, the way in which the vast mountains put human affairs in perspective is brought out for consideration, but the narrator carefully attributes these changes to Olenin’s own imagination, not asserting them as facts. It is as if a solemn voice tells him ‘Now it has begun.’ The remainder of the paragraph gradually morphs into interior monologue: Из станицы едет арба, женщины ходят, красивые женщины, молодые, а горы ... Абреки рыскают в степи, и я еду, их н боюсь, у меня ружье и сила, и молодость, а горы ... (6:14)

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[A cart travels out of the stanitsa, women walk, beautiful women, young ones, but the mountains ... Abreks canter on the steppe, and I ride, I do not fear them, I have a weapon and strength, and youth, but the mountains ...]

It is worth noting, of course, that the mountains become interior mental markers just as much as physical, geographic markers. Andrew Kaufman in particular relates the way in which Olenin sees the mountains to his world view in general, which starts with himself and carries outward.33 In particular, Olenin equates the mountains with Mariana, the Cossack girl with whom he is infatuated. To Olenin, both the mountains and Mariana are ‘velichavye,’ ‘nepristupnye’ (majestic, unapproachable/inaccessible), both long-standing adjectives for the Caucasian Mountains, and therefore inseparable from each other: ‘Каждый день передо мною далекие снежные горы и эта величавая, счастливая женщина ... Oна счастлива; она, как природа, ровна, спокойна и сама в себе’ (Every day before me are those faraway, snowy mountains and that majestic, happy woman ... she is happy; she, like nature, is even, calm, and mistress of herself) (6:122). Such proclamations, of course, create doubt about whether Olenin has changed as much as he thinks he has; to equate Mariana with nature herself does not allow Olenin to get past the clichés he seeks to abandon. Susan Layton finds that ‘The Cossacks replicates an important feature of the past by reifying nature in the person of a nubile mountain maid [...] as Olenin extols Mariana as the natural woman at one with her envigorating, uplifting environment [...] While never gendering the land, The Cossacks thus exhibits the conventional, pastoral impulse to project the Caucasian maiden as the embodiment of the wilderness with which the civilized man ambivalently yearns to merge.’34 In The Cossacks both the mountains and Mariana, whose qualities are constituted by Olenin, serve mostly as a means to reflect Olenin’s own thoughts and desires back at him. In that sense, this new Caucasus experience is not interactive so much as self-reflexive: the Caucasus Mountains seem to form a screen on which the young Russian nobleman projects his inner life. At first glance, it appears that The Cossacks continues to uphold the Caucasus as an imaginary space constructed by the male, European/ Russian gaze. As we have observed, the Caucasian or Oriental landscape is customarily either assimilated to the male narrator, as it was in Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ (in which the captive mirrored the mountains that loomed around him), or else it is rendered feminine and therefore under the control of the (male) viewer, as in Pushkin’s

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‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ in which a male narrator holds sway over a feminine Crimean landscape. A close examination of Tolstoy’s text, however, shows that Olenin believes that the landscape remains a spectacle to be admired by him, a uniquely qualified and educated male viewer, but that his belief in his mastery of the situation is not warranted. ‘Я нынче вернулся домой, увидал ее, свою хату, дядю Ерошку, снеговые горы с своего крылечка, и такое сильное новое чувство радости охватило меня, что я всё понял’ (I now returned home, and saw her, my hut, Uncle Eroshka, and the snowy mountains from my porch, and such a strong new feeling of joy seized me, that I understood everything) (6:123). The allusion to Pushkin’s famous line towards the end of ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ when the main character realizes the Circassian girl has drowned herself and ‘understood everything’ (всё понял он), seems inescapable here. Everything – Mariana, the hut, the old man, the mountains – is taken in by Olenin’s all-powerful gaze; he ‘understands everything’ and has mastered it, in his own eyes. As Andrew Kaufman phrases it, ‘Olenin effectively turns the mountains into his mountains.’35 However, this mastery is in Olenin’s mind; as we know, in fact, he has not mastered it, has not understood everything, and Mariana is ultimately not part of the scenery – she is out of Olenin’s control. This is in direct contrast to Pushkin’s Circassian girl, who, in drowning herself, both conveniently remains forever a part of the background scenery of the tale, and indeed goes so far as to realize that metaphor, physically integrating herself with the rushing river so emblematic of the landscape of the Caucasus. However, Olenin’s feeling about Mariana directly imitates the feelings of Pushkin’s captive about the Circassian girl: in each case, the protagonist feels himself revived, resurrected by the Caucasian woman. As Stephanie Sandler points out, Pushkin’s captive starts out half dead, and the Circassian girl gradually transfers to him her vitality, until finally he recovers and escapes, while she ends up giving up her life for him. Similarly, Olenin thinks, in regard to Mariana, (‘Прежде я был мертв, а теперь только я живу’) (Before I was dead, but only now I live) (6:124). One might also examine Olenin’s hunting forays into the woods and fields, which do not prove his prowess as a hunter or superiority as a Russian. Rather, they provide opportunities for Olenin’s thought and for his increasing perspective on both the Caucasus and on Moscow society. Olenin’s hunting emphasizes not his power over nature, but rather his powerlessness in the face of nature, his small place in the

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scheme of things. Although Olenin shoots pheasants respectably enough, he bags nothing larger. In spite of the fact that he is not a remarkable hunter, or perhaps because of it, Olenin appreciates the land and the way of life of the people who work it. Levin-like, he is astounded by the straightforwardness of real outdoor work, performed by people who must do it in order to survive. He is drawn, as Levin is, to a way of life so basic that it requires little thought and brooks no procrastination or laziness. Olenin envies the fact that the Cossacks play essential roles in life, that each of them does work important to the community. His thoughts are a part of his continuing reflections on class; wealthy noblemen, cut off from needing to work for a living, are missing something fundamental. Olenin tries to convey these thoughts to his friends in the north, who, he claims, all think he is ‘lost’ and utterly cut off from any sort of culture or society. Olenin’s feelings are the opposite of those expressed by Bestuzhev’s Verkhovskii, serving in the Caucasus, in Dagestan, writing to his fiancée in Russia. Verkhovskii writes, as we have seen in chapter 4: My existence is the trail of a chain on the barren sand. Only service, fatiguing if not diverting me, helps to shorten the time. Thrown into a climate that is murderous to the health, into a society that stifles the soul, I do not find among my companions people who could understand my thoughts, nor do I find among the Asiatics anyone who could share my feelings. Everything surrounding me is either so wild or so limited that I am seized with anguish and annoyance. One could sooner make fire by striking ice on stone than one could make diversion out of everyday life here.36

The letters are opposite – Verkhovskii complains about being in the Caucasus, while Olenin idealizes it. Verkhovskii writes to those who can understand him, while Olenin writes to those whom he feels cannot understand him: [Olenin] wrote a letter, but did not send it because after all no one would have understood what he wanted to say [...] ‘They write to me letters of condolence from Russia; they fear that I will perish, buried in these wilds. They say about me: “He will become coarse; he will be behind the times in everything; he will take to drink, and who knows but that he may marry a Cossack girl” [...] Indeed it won’t do for me to ruin myself when I might have the great happiness of even becom-

220 Writing at Russia’s Border ing the Countess B—–’s husband, or a Court chamberlain, or a Maréchal de noblesse of my district. Oh, how repulsive and pitiable you all seem to me! You do not know what happiness is and what life is! One must taste life once in all its natural beauty, must see and understand what I see every day before me – those eternally unapproachable snowy peaks, and a majestic woman in that primitive beauty in which the first woman must have come from her creator’s hands – and then it becomes clear who is ruining himself and who is living truly or falsely – you or I.’ (6:120)37

Olenin goes on at great length in this vein, criticizing the falseness and artificiality of society beauties and society pecking order, mores, and manners. Olenin, of course, maintains that the true life is where he is, that the false and anguish-ridden life is in Russia. When he notes that ‘they fear that I shall perish, buried in these wilds,’ his Russian friends’ concerns echo Verkhovskii’s own fears of being suffocated in a barren desert. But in Tolstoy’s tales, the roles have been reversed; the barren desert that suffocates is Russia. Tolstoy follows such predecessors as Chaadaev and Lermontov, among others, in this regard. As we have noted above, Lermontov’s poem ‘Proshchai, nemytaia Rossiia’ (Farewell, Unwashed Russia), written before he left Russia for the Caucasus in 1841, makes no bones about where the real ‘benighted Orient’ lies: Farewell, unwashed Russia Country of slaves, country of masters And you, blue uniforms, And you, the people devoted to them. Perhaps, beyond the wall of the Caucasus I will conceal myself from your pashas, From their all-seeing eye, From their all-hearing ears.38

For all the functions Olenin fulfils in the novella, he is by no means ‘finished off’ by the end of the novella; it is not improbable to say that he evolves, in a sense, into Levin of Anna Karenina. At the end of The Cossacks the implied author and Olenin are not one and the same, although the gap between them has narrowed. The interplay between Olenin and the implied author is perhaps Tolstoy’s main contribution to ‘overcoming’ Romanticism in the story. This interplay is complex, and the difference between what Olenin thinks and understands is often differ-

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ent from what the implied author and the other characters think, a difference that plays out even in the ways in which names are used, as Bagby and Sigalov point out. Profound changes that Olenin feels, such as when he imagines that he can understand the buzzing of the mosquitoes and feels himself to be part of the whole of creation, neither more nor less important than even the tiniest creatures in it, are experiences that transform him, but that he fails to realize do not affect the perceptions of others. In the woods, ‘И ему ясно стало, что он нисколько не русский дворянин’ (It became clear to him that he was not a Russian nobleman) (6:77). Olenin’s impressions here are both true and not true – he is certainly part of the whole world, a frame enclosing a bit of the universe, but he is also a Russian nobleman. ‘It became clear’ only to Olenin, not to everyone else; the disconnect between Olenin’s thoughts and perceptions and ‘reality’ as experienced by everyone else is part of this tension. Olenin often fools himself, although never the implied author. As Olenin is trying to convince himself that he has a chance with Mariana, the narrator remarks, ‘все ее слова казались ему правдой’ (all her words sounded true to him) (6:140). Hence we have both perspectives: Olenin feels she is telling the truth, but the narrator lets us know that it actually only seems that way to him. Very frequently the construction is ‘казаться’ (it seems) or ‘как будто’ (as if) or ‘показалось ему’ (it seemed to him) or ‘ему чувстовалось’ (it felt to him).’ A telling moment, as I have mentioned above, occurs when Olenin goes up to talk to the abrek who is engaged in ransoming his dead brother from Lukashka and the other young Cossacks, and Olenin is surprised that the abrek is not interested in him (6:80). One must read carefully to realize that this surprise is not endorsed by the implied author. In terms of Olenin’s many warm feelings of solidarity with the Cossacks, these constructions prevail. For example, it ‘felt to Olenin’ (чувствовалось Оленину) that the village was ‘his home, his family, all his happiness’ (6:85). In the giving of the horse to Lukasha, Olenin imagines to himself that Lukashka understands and accepts the giving of this extravagant and inappropriate gift: ‘Lukashka, it seemed, completely calmed down and understood the relationship of Olenin to himself’ (6:86). But Lukashka’s own actual thoughts come on the next page, as he expresses to himself his suspicions of the gift and its giver; his mother in turn is sure the horse must be stolen. Gift giving is highly codified in any society, and Olenin is aware of the code of kunachestvo both from his reading and from his exchanges with Uncle Eroshka. In

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fact, his admiration of the Cossacks also stems in great part from the comparative simplicity of their lives and their self-sufficiency, into which the sudden and inappropriate gift of a horse does not fit. The act further sets Olenin off from the Cossacks, although of course his intention is opposite. This all comes through very clearly to the reader, who in collusion with the narrator/implied author realizes that Olenin could never be a Cossack or even accepted by them. This is reconfirmed by the incident in which Lukashka is wounded, when the Cossacks want Olenin to stay out of the way. There are many instances of such a collusion between reader and narrator. When Olenin meets Beletskii, the latter uses French and Russian ‘words from that world, which, as Olenin thought, he had left forever’ (слова из того мира, который, как думал Оленин, был покинут им навсегда) (6:90). Here it is clear that while Olenin thinks he has left that world forever, the narrator does not. Olenin changes when he finally realizes that Mariana is ‘unapproachable,’ as he had first thought: ‘And such repulsion, contempt, and anger were expressed on her face, that Olenin suddenly understood that there was nothing for him to hope for, that what he had earlier thought about the unapproachability of this woman was doubtless true’ (6:146). He knows, as well, that his departure is different from the one he made from Moscow: ‘But Olenin already did not confer with himself, as he did then, and did not tell himself that everything that he had thought and done here, was not it. This time he did not promise himself a new life. He loved Marianka more then before, and knew now that he could never be loved by her’ (6:146). In both quotations the narration indicates that the information is generally reliable; Olenin is assessing the situation correctly. One might think that Olenin has now reached a state of convergence with the narrator/implied author and has now gained an ability to see himself through the eyes of others. The final scene of the novella, however, indicates that this is not so. Eroshka makes a great show of his sorrow that Olenin is leaving, and wheedles a gun out of Olenin, much to Vaniusha’s disgust. While Vaniusha understands Eroshka’s motivations, Olenin is clearly taken in. Marianka is indifferent to his departure, which angers Olenin. Eroshka shouts out a last farewell, but when Olenin turns around to look back, it is evident that in that brief space of time he has already been forgotten: ‘Olenin turned around to look. Uncle Eroshka was conversing with Marianka, clearly, about his own affairs, and neither the old man nor the maiden was watching him’ (6:150). Olenin was certainly expecting Eroshka, at least,

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to watch him depart, but as Vaniusha well understands, the show of emotion was intended to elicit parting gifts. Olenin has certainly matured, but he continues to be the same poor judge of social interaction that he has been all along. Although his Moscow friends at the beginning of the story were surely more indulgent towards him than the Cossacks, they too expressed impatience at his drawn-out departure and turned to their own affairs as soon as he turned to leave. The first time, however, Olenin was oblivious to his friends’ impatience; the second time, he is aware of the Cossacks’ indifference, even if he still believes Eroshka’s sincerity until the final moment of departure. It is important that Olenin does not lose his naivety; this quality, along with his enthusiasm and self-doubt, makes him appealing and ‘real’ to the reader. The setting of the Caucasus puts Olenin into high relief as a character; he is removed as far as is possible from his milieu, from being evaluated in terms of his education, wealth, and class, and is ignorant of local ways, not only in spite of but because of his prior reading of literary works. But while other officers merely bide their time in the Caucasus, Olenin concentrates on his experiences there, hence becoming a new kind of character, even if not the man he hoped to become.

Conclusion

In this study I have argued that Russian literature, like Russian nationalism, was significantly constructed and shaped by its engagement with the southern border, the periphery of the burgeoning Russian empire. Even texts read as essentially separate from the classic texts of the Caucasian theme, such as Eugene Onegin, are informed by, indeed are formed by, this dynamic. The powerful investment of meaning in ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ a narrative poem that proved to be a turning point in Russian literature, created an important legacy. A return to this narrative was always a return to familiar ground, a revisiting of wellknown characters and settings, the evocation of a plot that was emblematic of the empire’s narrative about itself. Yet at the same time this plot also indicated a rootedness in the historical and the contemporary; unlike ‘Ruslan and Liudmila,’ the story was about real people in a real place. The story was recognized as a Russian story, but one that fulfilled many roles and expectations – historical relevance, topicality, innovation in form. The captive’s disillusioned, aimless persona, recognized as a contemporary figure by Pushkin’s readership, finds many echoes in Onegin, while the Circassian girl’s unrequited love, returned too late by the captive, may well prefigure Tatiana’s plight. And these two important characters, Onegin and Tatiana, themselves have many literary progeny. Pushkin’s ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ and ‘The Gypsies’ constructed the relationship between poet and empire in different ways, evoking in Russian literature worlds that were not Russian, and collapsing and blending space and time to create literary effects of simultaneous presence and distance. Writing and poetry bridge the distance between metropole and periphery, past and present. ‘The Fountain of

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Bakhchisarai,’ like ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ builds on Byronic themes and tales to construct Russian imperial power and history, poetically portraying Russia as paradoxically both vulnerable to the Crimean khanate and its triumphant conqueror. It is poetry that reconciles these two modes, ‘bringing to life’ the past glories of the Crimean palace. ‘The Gypsies’ is built upon similar contradictions, portraying gypsies at first glance free and yet ultimately circumscribed by Russian imperial encroachment. ‘The Gypsies’ also interrogates the status of poetry, reimagining Ovid’s exile to Bessarabia, the site also of the gypsies’ wandering and Pushkin’s southern exile, as a gypsy legend. Like the readers of ‘Bakhchisarai,’ only the readers of ‘The Gypsies’ are able to experience the special linkage between mutually conflicting states of being, in this case the poetic ‘convergence’ of the two exiled poets, separated by nearly two thousand years. Pushkin’s southern sojourns and motifs of exile, both Oriental and provincial, are also foundational to the operation of Eugene Onegin, perhaps the most important Russian text ever written, and to the character of Onegin himself. Eugene Onegin, ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ and ‘A Journey to Arzrum’ are all closely connected to the character of Onegin, and all mediate between place and written word in order to represent Russia and its provincial and Oriental peripheries. The example of the Roman Empire, with its imperial poets and tension between centre and periphery, with its multiple peoples and languages brought together by a common language, government, and literature, served as a special point of comparison to the Russian case. Horace and Ovid are not simply literary classics, they are predecessors to Pushkin with whom he has much in common. ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ in its original form as the eighth of nine chapters of Eugene Onegin, might have politicized the novel and otherwise explained Onegin’s development. The travel that both demarcates and defines the boundaries of Russia and provides a method of ‘reading’ its geography is also to be found in ‘Journey to Arzrum,’ a complementary piece of the puzzle that also tests limits both literary and geographic, responding to Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveller much as ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ had answered his History of the Russian State. The motif of the epistolary metonymy joining imperial periphery with metropolitan centre is brought out in both Ammalat-bek and A Hero of Our Time, creating in the texts metropolitan readers who join in the project of Russian expansion on the periphery. Both texts also justify the ‘pacification’ of the Caucasus by imagining benign imperial representa-

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tives such as Verkhovskii, his fiancée Maria, and Lermontov’s Maksim Maksimych, while hybrid natives such as Ammalat, the ‘re-educated’ warrior, or Bela as stolen ‘bride’ of Pechorin re-established the need to control the male other while co-opting the female other. Narodnost’ is evident in both the idealized camp setting in Ammalat-bek and in the depiction of Bela and her family in A Hero of Our Time. Tolstoy, too, explored the concept of exile, ‘exiling’ himself to the Caucasus in a search for identity.1 In The Cossacks, Tolstoy tests the limits of the Russian word, describing an epistolary connection linking centre and periphery that is metaphorically snapped in two. Olenin believes the addressees of his letters to Russia cannot understand him, although the novella itself is addressed to the self-same audience. Defamiliarizing narodnost’, Tolstoy portrays the Cossacks as foreign, not really Russian, yet intimately tied to Russian history and identity. The Russian self is unknown territory, terrain to be travelled and discovered. The Cossacks is a novella that explores multiple conflicts of identity. The Caucasus setting isolates Olenin, removing him from his milieu. His education, wealth, and class do not operate as universal signs; in the Cossack village he is ignorant of local ways, basing his assumptions on literary works. Instead of merely biding his time in the Caucasus, as other officers do, Olenin makes an effort to treat himself self-consciously, hence becoming a new kind of character, even if not the man he hoped to become. Together these texts created important narratives of identity. As Melissa Frazier notes, ‘The much-touted rise of Romantic nationalism has often lent itself to an understanding of the ideal Romantic space as homogeneous, whole, authentic and complete, one nation clearly demarcated from another.’ This space, however, she notes, was actually more often ‘imagined in heterogeneous, fragmentary, inauthentic and complete terms,’ a set of peripheries with an ‘ironically empty place in the center.’2 Because of the confluence of Romanticism, Russian literary development, and Russian imperial expansion, this ‘empty centre’ constituted by periphery was long-lasting. This periphery was not only southern, of course; it was also provincial.3 Peripheral areas, as sites of construction and change in Russia’s imperial, cultural, and imperial identity, should be seen not as areas separate or separable from the processes that led to the creation of Russian national culture and literature, but as integral to them. Among many other issues, it is clear that the textual connection

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between centre and periphery, be it interior or exterior, was vital in creating the imagined community of Russian readers in the nineteenth century. Russian writers constructed a world for their readers in which they had a stake as the educated and the enlightened, with characters and settings so powerful that they continue to be used, in one form or another, into the twenty-first century. A ‘return’ to the Caucasus, then, always leads not away from the centre but towards it, towards the constitution of self and nation, toward the most basic and complex questions. So Tolstoy’s The Cossacks and Hadji-Murat focused closely on Russian identity and self-representation, while ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ continues to be the title of books and movies into the twenty-first century, a title that announces its preoccupation with Russian nationality and identity.

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Appendix: Aleksandr Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’ – A Translation

The Captive of the Caucasus A Tale 1820–1821

Dedication to N.N. Raevskii

Take with a smile, my friend, The offering of the free muse: To you I dedicated the singing of my exiled lyre And my inspired leisure time. When I perished, blameless, dismal, And heard the whispers of slander from all sides, When the cold dagger of betrayal, When the heavy dream of love Tormented and numbed me, Near you I still found calm; I rested my heart – we loved each other: And the storms over me wore out their ferocity, I praised the gods in a peaceful haven. In the sad days of separation My thoughtful sounds Reminded me of the Caucasus, Where the overcast Beshtu,1 the mighty hermit,

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The five-headed ruler of auls2 and fields, Was for me a new Parnassus. Will I forget its stony peaks, Thundering springs, withered ravines, Sultry deserts, places, where you and I Shared the young impressions of the soul; Where warlike brigandage roams the mountains And the wild genius of inspiration Hides in the deaf stillness? Here you will find memories, Perhaps, of days dear to the heart, The contradictions of passions, Familiar dreams, familiar sufferings And the secret voice of my heart. We have gone separately in life: in the embraces of quiet You had barely, barely bloomed and in the footsteps of your father-hero Into bloody fields, under the clouds of enemy arrows, A chosen youth, you proudly flew. Our fatherland caressed you with tenderness, Like a sweet sacrifice, like the faithful light of hopes. I knew grief early, was overtaken with persecution; I am the victim of slander and vengeful ignoramuses; But I have strengthened my heart with freedom and patience. I lightheartedly awaited better days; And the happiness of my friends Was to me a sweet consolation.

Part One In the aul, on their thresholds, The idle Circassians sit. The sons of the Caucasus speak Of martial alarms, disastrous, Of the beauty of their horses, Of the enjoyments of wild bliss; They recall the former days Of raids that could not be repulsed,

Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’

Of the treachery of sly leaders,3 Of the blows of their cruel sabres,4 And of the accuracy of their arrows that could not be outrun, And of the ash of destroyed villages, And of the caresses of black-eyed woman prisoners. Conversations flow in the quiet; The moon swims in the night fog; And suddenly before them on a horse A Circassian. He quickly on his lasso Dragged a young captive. ‘Here’s a Russian!’ – the plunderer cried out. The aul at his cry came running In a fierce crowd; But the captive, cold and mute, With a disfigured head, Like a corpse, remained unmoving. He does not see the faces of his enemies, He does not hear their threats and cries; Over him flies a fatal dream And he breathes a noxious cold. And for a long time the young captive Lay in heavy forgetfulness. Already over his head, noontime Blazed in merry radiance; And the breath of life awoke in him, An indistinct groan rang out on his lips; Warmed by the sun’s rays, The unfortunate quietly raised himself up; Looked around with a weak gaze ... And sees: impregnable mountains Have raised themselves over him in a mass, A nest of robber tribes, The boundary of Circassian freedom. The youth recalled his captivity, Like the terrible anxieties of a dream, And hears: suddenly his shackled legs Began to rasp ... That terrible sound said everything, everything;

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Nature eclipsed itself before him. Farewell, sacred freedom! He is a slave. Beyond the saklia5 dwellings he lies By a thorn fence. The Circassians are in the field; there is no supervision, In the empy aul all is silent. Before him the deserted plains Lie in a green shroud; There the monotonous hilltops Draw themselves into a ridge; Between them a lonesome path Loses itself in the gloomy distance – And the breast of the young prisoner Was agitated with heavy thoughts ... To Russia leads the faraway path, To a country where his fiery youth He began proudly, without cares; Where he knew first happiness, Where he loved much that was good, Where he embraced dreadful suffering, Where with stormy life he destroyed Hope, joy, and desire, And the memories of his best days He locked in his withered heart. ..................................................................... He came to know people and society And knew the price of unfaithful life. Having found betrayal in the hearts of friends, And in thoughts of love but a mad dream, Bored of being the customary victim Of long-ago despised vanity, And double-tongued hostility, And simple-hearted slander, Abandoner of society, a friend of nature, He left his native bounds And flew to a faraway place With the merry apparition of freedom.

Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’

Freedom! you alone He still sought in a deserted world. Having destroyed feelings with passions, Having become cold to dreams and to the lyre, He listened to songs with agitation, Animated by you, And with faith, with an impassioned entreaty He embraced your proud idol. It occurred ... with the goal of hope He sees nothing in the world. And you, the last dreams, Even you have concealed yourselves from him. He is a slave. Having leaned his head on a stone, He waits, so that with the dusky sunset The flame of his sad life would go out And he thirsts for the canopy of the grave. The sun is already dwindling beyond the mountains; In the distance a loud hum rang out; From the fields the people are going to the aul, Sparkling with bright scythes. They arrived; in the homes fires were lighted, And gradually the dissonant hum Quieted; everything in the night-time shadow Was embraced with a quiet languor; In the distance a mountain spring sparkled, Rushing down from the rocky rapids; The sleeping peaks of the Caucasus Clothed themselves in a mist of clouds ... But who, in the shining of the moon, In the deep silence Is walking, stepping stealthily? The Russian regained consciousness. Before him, With a tender and mute greeting, Stands a young Circassian girl. He looks silently at the girl And thinks: this is a deceitful dream, The empty game of exhausted feelings. Slightly lit by the moon,

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With a gratifying smile of pity, Bending her knees, she To his lips some cold kumys6 Brings with a quiet hand. But he forgot the medicinal vessel; With a greedy heart he catches The magical sound of pleasant speech And the gaze of the young girl. He does not understand the strange words; But the sweet gaze, the heat of her cheeks, The tender voice says: Live! and the captive revives. And he, having gathered the remainder of his strength, Is obedient to the kind order, He raised himself and with the benevolent cup Quenched his languor of thirst. Then on a rock he lay anew His burdened head; But all the while toward the young Circassian He strained his failing gaze And for a long, long time before him She sat, lost in thought; As if by mute participation She wished to comfort the prisoner; Her lips unwillingly every hour Opened, with speech beginning; She sighed, and more than once Her eyes filled with tears. Days followed days like a shadow. In the mountains, in chains, near the flocks The captive passes every day. The dark coolness of a cave Hides him in the summer heat; When the silvery horn of the moon Sparkles behind the gloomy mountain, The Circassian girl, along a shady path, Brings wine to the prisoner, Kumys, and the fragrant honeycomb of beehives, And snow-white millet;

Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’

She shares the secret dinner with him; On him she rests her tender gaze; With unclear speech she mixes The conversation of her eyes and signs; And sings him songs of the mountains, And songs of happy Georgia7 And to an impatient memory Transfers the foreign language. For the first time with a virginal soul She loved, knew happiness; But the Russian long ago spent The voluptuousness of young life: He could not answer with his heart The childish, open love – Perhaps, he feared to recall The dream of forgotten love. Our youth does not fade suddenly, Delights do not throw us away suddenly, And unexpected joy We will still embrace more than once; But you, living impressions, First love, The heavenly flame of rapture, You will not fly back anew. It seemed that the prisoner, hopeless Accustomed himself to the dreary life. The yearning of imprisonment, the mutinous burning He hid deep in his soul. Dragging himself amid gloomy crags In the hours of early, morning cool, He trained his curious gaze Toward the distant masses Of grey, ruddy, darkblue mountains. Magnificent pictures! Eternal thrones of snows, To the eye their peaks seemed Like an unmoving chain of clouds, And in their circle a two-headed colossus,

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Glittering in an icy crown, Enormous, majestic El’brus Showed white against a blue sky.8 When, blending with a hollow rumble, That harbinger of the storm, lightning, boomed, How often the captive above the aul Sat unmoving on the mountain! Around his feet the clouds smoked, On the steppe the flying dust rose up; Already shelter among the cliffs The frightened deer was seeking; The eagles arose from the crags And called to each other in the skies; The noise of the herds, the lowing of the flocks Were already deafened by the voice of the storm ... And suddenly on the dales rain and hail Erupted from the clouds through the lightning; Swarming the steepness in waves, Moving age-old rocks, The streams of rain flowed – But the captive, from the mountain peak, Alone, behind a thundercloud, Awaited the return of the sun, Inaccessible to the gale, And to the feeble wail of the storm Listens with some sort of joy. But all of the attention of the European Was attracted by this marvellous people. Among the mountain people the prisoner observed Their faith, customs, upbringing, Loved the simplicity of their life, Their hospitality, their thirst for battle, The swiftness of their free movements, And the lightness of their feet, and the strength of their fists: He watched for whole hours, As sometimes an agile Circassian, Along the wide steppe, along the mountains, In a shaggy hat, in a black burka,

Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’

Bending to his bow, bracing his fine Leg against the stirrups, Flew according to the wishes of his steed, Accustoming himself ahead of time to war. He admired the beauty Of clothing both martial and simple. A Circassian is hung about with weapons; He is proud of them, is comforted by them: On him armour, musket, quiver, Kuban’ bow, dagger, lasso, And sword, eternal friend Of his labours and his leisure. Nothing burdens him, Nothing clatters; on foot, on horseback – He is just the same; he has the same look Undefeatable, unbending. A threat to careless Cossacks, His wealth is an ardent steed, The nurseling of mountain herds, A faithful friend, patient, In a cave or in deep grass The crafty plunderer hides with him And suddenly, like a surprise arrow, Having glimpsed a traveller, he rushes; In one moment the faithful strike Decides his mighty blow, And he already drags with his lasso The traveller in the mountain gorge. The steed strives with all his might, Full of fiery courage; Everything is a path to him: marsh, forest, Bushes, cliffs, and ravines; The bloody trail follows behind him, In the desert a footfall resounds; The grey-haired stream sounds before him – He rushes into the boiling deep; And the traveller, thrown to the bottom, Swallows the turbid wave, Blacking out, he begs for death And sees it before him ...

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But his mighty horse – like an arrow Carries him out onto the foamy bank. Or, having seized the horned stump, Into the river overthrown by a storm, When on the hills, in a mist Lies the shadow of a moonless night, The Circassian on ancient roots, On branches hangs all around His battle armour: His shield, burka, armour and helmet, Quiver and bow – and into the rapid waves He throws himself after it, Tireless and silent. The night is dark. The river roars; Its mighty flow carries him Along isolated banks, Leaning on their spears, the Cossacks Watch the dark run of the river – And beside them, dark in the gloom, Float the weapons of the enemy What are you thinking of, Cossack? Are you recalling previous battles, Your bivouac on the deadly field, The prayers of praise of the ranks And your homeland? ... Perfidious dream! Farewell, free settlements, And your fathers’ house, and the quiet Don, War and beautiful girls! The secret enemy has moored himself to the banks, An arrow comes out of the quiver – Soared – and the Cossack falls From the bloodied barrow. When with his peaceful family The Circassian in his father’s dwelling Sits during bad weather, And the coals in the hearth are smouldering; And, having leapt from his faithful horse, Delayed in the deserted mountains,

Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’

Towards him comes an exhausted stranger And timidly sits by the fire: Then the benevolent host With a greeting, gently stands up And to the guest in a fragrant cup Offers comforting chikhir.9 Under a damp burka, in a smoky saklia, The traveller partakes of peaceful sleep, And in the morning he leaves The hospitable10 shelter of his lodging. It used to happen, in bright Bairan11 The youths would gather in a crowd; One game would give way to another game: Either, having filled a quiver full, With winged arrows They pierce eagles in the skies; Or, from the height of steep hills In impatient rows At a given signal, they suddenly fall, Like does, strike the ground, Cover the plain with dust And run in a friendly clatter. But monotonous peace is boring To hearts that are born for war, And often the games of idle liberty Are troubled with a cruel game. At times the swords fiercely flash In the mad playfulness of feasts, And into the earth fly the heads of slaves, And the young children dance for joy. But the Russian watched with indifference These bloody pastimes. Before he had loved the games of glory And burned with thirst for destruction. A prisoner of merciless honour, From close up he saw his end, In duels, hard and cold

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Meeting the fatal bullet. Perhaps, weighted down in thought, He remembered that time, When, surrounded by friends, He would loudly feast with them ... If he rued the waning days, The days that deceived hope, Or, curious, contemplated The pastimes of severe simplicity And in that truthful mirror read The customs of a wild people – He hid in deep silence The movements of his heart, And on his lofty brow Nothing changed at all. His careless boldness Amazed the formidable Circassians, They spared his young life And in a whisper among themselves Were proud of their catch. Part Two You came to know them, girl of the mountains, The transports of the heart, the sweetness of life; Your fiery, innocent gaze Expressed love and happiness. When your friend in the night darkness Kissed you with a mute kiss, Burning with delight and desire, You forgot the earthly world, You said, ‘Sweet prisoner, Brighten your dismal gaze, Lean your head on my breast, Forget freedom, forget your homeland. I am happy to hide in the desert With you, tsar of my soul! Love me; no one until now Has kissed my eyes; To my lonely bed

Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’

No young black-eyed Circassian Has crawled in the night-time quiet; I am reputed to be a cruel girl, Of implacable beauty. I know my fate is ready: My father and stern brother Wish to sell me to a hateful man Into a strange aul for a price of gold; But I will beseech my father and brother, Not that – I will find a dagger or poison. With an incomprehensible, miraculous strength I am completely drawn to you; I love you, dear captive, My soul is in rapture with you ...’ But he with wordless sympathy Gazed at the passionate girl And, full of grave reflection, Listened to her words of love. He forgot himself. In him crowded The memories of bygone days, And once tears from his eyes Even flowed thick and fast. Lying in his heart, like a bullet, Was the melancholy of love without hope. At last before the young girl He poured out his sufferings: ‘Forget me: of your love, Your raptures, I am not worthy. Don’t squander your priceless days with me: Call another youth. His love will replace for you The sorrowful chill of my heart; He will be true, he will value Your beauty, your sweet glance, And the warmth of your young kisses, And the tenderness of fiery speeches; Without hope, without desires I will wither a victim of passions.

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You see the trace of unhappy love, The dreadful trace of the soul’s storm; Leave me; but pity My sorrowful lot! Unhappy friend, why did you not before Appear to my eyes, In those days when I believed in hope And hopeful dreams! But it’s too late: I have died to happiness, The apparition of hope has flown away; Your friend has become unused to voluptuousness, For tender feelings has turned to stone ... How terrible with dead lips To answer living kisses And to meet with a cold smile Eyes full of tears! Torturing myself with fruitless jealousy, Having fallen asleep, my soul without feeling, In the embraces of a passionate lover How terrible to think of another woman! ... When so slowly, so tenderly You drink in my kisses, And for you the hours of love Pass quickly, serenely; Consuming tears in the silence, Then, scattered, dismal, Before me, as in a dream I see a figure forever dear; I call it, I strain towards it, I am silent, neither see nor hear; I give myself up to you in forgetfulness And embrace the secret apparition. About it in the desert I shed tears; It wanders everywhere with me And brings a gloomy melancholy Onto my orphaned heart. Leave me then my iron, Solitary dreams,

Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’

Memories, sorrow and tears: You cannot share them. You heard the admission of the heart; Forgive me ... give me your hand – in farewell. The cold parting will not sadden A woman’s love for long: Love passes away, boredom begins, The beauty falls in love anew.’ Having closed her lips, sobbing without tears, The young girl sat: Her clouded, unmoving gaze Wordlessly expressed reproach; Pale as a shade, she trembled: In the hands of her lover lay Her own cold hand; And finally the melancholy of love Flowed out in a sad speech: ‘Ah, Russian, Russian, for what, Not knowing your heart, Did I give myself to you forever! Not for long on your breast Did a girl rest in forgetfulness; Not many joyful nights Did fate send her as her portion! Will they come again another time? Has happiness really perished forever? ... You could, captive, have deceived My inexperienced youth, Even if only out of compassion, With silence, an insincere caress; I would have sweetened your fate With humble and tender care; I would have watched over your moments of sleep, The rest of a suffering friend; You did not wish it ... But who is she, Your beautiful friend? You love, Russian? you are beloved? ... Your sufferings are understood by me ... Please, you also forgive my sobbing,

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Don’t laugh at my sorrows.’ She fell silent. Tears and moaning Tightened the chest of the poor girl. Lips without words murmured reproaches. Without feeling, having embraced his knees, She could hardly breathe. And the prisoner, with a quiet hand Having raised up the unfortunate one, said: ‘Don’t cry: I am also hounded by fate, And have experienced the tortures of the heart. No! I have not known reciprocal love, I have loved alone, suffered alone, And will perish, like a smoky flame, Forgotten among empty plains. I will die far from my wished-for shores; This steppe will be my grave; Here on my exiled bones This burdensome chain will rust.’ The night stars began to darken; In the transparent distance the masses Of light-snowed mountains stood out; Having hung their heads, having cast down their eyes, In silence they parted. The dismal captive from that time Wandered the environs of the aul alone. Blazing in the sultry sky New days rose one after the other; Night followed night in turn; In vain he thirsts for freedom. If a chamois flashes among the bushes, Or an antelope leaps through the gloom, – He, blushing, rattles his chains, He waits to see whether a Cossack might be crawling, A night ravager of auls, A courageous deliverer of slaves. He calls ... but all around is silent; Only the waves weave ragingly,

Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’

And an animal, smelling a man Runs into the dark desert. Once the Russian captive heard A military cry resound in the mountains: ‘To the herd! To the herd!’ They run, make noise; The bronze bridles clank, The burkas show up black, the armour flashes, The saddled horses boil, The whole aul is ready for the raid, And the wild nurselings of battle In a river gushed from the hills And rode along the banks of the Kuban’ To gather tribute by force. The aul became quiet; in the sun sleep The guard dogs near the saklia. The swarthy youngsters, naked Play in noisy freedom; Their forefathers sit in a circle, From their pipes the smoke, curling, shows blue. In silence they listen to the familiar refrain Of the young girls, And the hearts of the old men grow young. Circassian Song 1 In the river rushes a thundering billow; In the hills is a night-time silence; The tired Cossack fell asleep, Leaning on a steel spear. Don’t sleep, Cossack: in the night darkness A Chechen is walking beyond the river. 2 A Cossack floats on a dugout, Dragging a net along the river bottom.

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Cossack, you will drown in the river, Like small children drown, Swimming when it is hot: A Chechen is walking beyond the river. 3 On the bank of forbidden waters Blossom rich Cossack villages; A merry ring of girls dances. Run, Russian songstresses, Run, my beauties, to your homes: A Chechen is walking beyond the river. Thus sang the girls. Having sat on the bank, The Russian dreams of escape; But the prisoner’s chain is heavy, The river is deep and fast ... Meanwhile, having grown dark, the steppe fell asleep, The peaks of the crags are overshadowed. Along the white huts of the aul Flashes the pale light of the moon; Deer slumber over the waters, The late cry of the eagles fell silent, And the tramping of the horses Is indistinctly echoed by the mountains. Then someone became audible, A girl’s shawl flashed, And there – sorrowful and pale – She came closer to him. The lips of the beauty seek speech; Her eyes are full of melancholy, And her hair, in a black wave, Falls onto chest and shoulders. In one hand gleams a saw, In the other a damascene dagger; It seemed as if the girl were going To a secret battle, to a feat of arms.

Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’

Raising her gaze to the captive, ‘Run away,’ – said the girl of the mountains, – ‘Nowhere will a Circassian meet you. Hurry; don’t waste the night hours; Take the dagger: no one will notice Your track in the darkness.’ Taking the saw in her trembling hand, She bent to his feet: The iron squeals under the saw, An involuntary tear slid down – And the chain fell apart and clanked. ‘You are free, – the girl says, – ‘Run!’ But her mad glance Expressed a burst of love. She suffered. The loud wind, Whistling, swirled around her cloak. ‘Oh, my friend!’ – the Russian cried, – ‘I am yours forever, yours ’til the grave. Let’s leave this terrible place together, Run away with me ...’ – ‘No, Russian, no! It has disappeared, the sweetness of life; I knew everything, I knew happiness, And all is past, disappeared without a trace. Is it possible? you loved another! ... Find her, love her; What am I still grieving for? What is my dejection about? ... Farewell! the blessings of love Will be with you at all times. Farewell – forget my sufferings, Give me your hand ... for the last time.’ To the Circassian girl he stretched out his hands, With a resurrected heart he flew to her, And a long kiss of parting Imprinted the union of love. Hand in hand, full of sorrow, They went to the bank in silence – And the Russian in the noisy depths

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Already swims and froths the waves, Has already gained the opposite crags, Already grips at them ... Suddenly the waves began to sound dully, And a faraway moan is heard ... He emerges on the wild shore, Looks back ... the banks showed clear And white, foamy; But the young Circassian is not there Not on the shores, not beneath the mountain ... All is dead ... on the sleeping banks Only the light sound of the wind is heard, And by the moon in the dancing waters Disappears a swirling circle. He understood everything. With a parting gaze He takes in for the last time The empty aul with its fence, The fields, where the captive looked after the flock, The rapids, where he dragged his chains, The stream, where he rested at noon, Where in the mountains the severe Circassian Sang a song of freedom. The deep gloom thinned out in the sky, The day lay down on the dark valley, Daybreak came. Along a faraway path The freed captive walked, And before him already in the mists Russian bayonets glistened, And on the burial mounds, calling out to each other Were Cossack sentries. Epilogue Thus the muse, the light friend of daydream, Flew to the borders of Asia And plucked herself for a crown The wild flowers of the Caucasus. The severe apparel of the tribes,

Pushkin’s ‘The Captive of the Caucasus’

Brought up on war, captivated her, And often in this new clothing The enchantress appeared to me; Around the emptied auls She wandered alone along the crags And to the songs of the orphaned girls She lent there an attentive ear; She loved the warlike Cossack villages, The cares of the brave Cossacks, The burial mounds, quiet tombs, And the noise and neighing of the herds. The goddess of songs and stories, Full of memories, Perhaps will repeat The legends of the formidable Caucasus; Will tell the tale of faraway countries, Of the ancient single combat of Mstislav,12 Betrayals, the deaths of Russians On the laps of treacherous Georgian girls; And I will celebrate that glorious hour, When, having felt the bloody attack, Upon the indignant Caucasus Our double-headed eagle raised itself; When on the grey-haired Terek For the first time burst forth the thunder of battle And the roll of Russian drums, And in battle, with a bold brow, There appeared the ardent Tsitsianov; You I glorify, hero, O Kotliarevskii, the scourge of the Caucasus! Wherever you rushed, a terror – Your speed, like a black plague, Destroyed, annihilated tribes ... Now you have forsaken your sword of vengeance, War does not gladden you; Bored with the world, in the wounds of honour, You taste idle rest And the quiet of domestic dales ... But look – the Orient raises a howl! Hang your snowy head,

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Resign yourself, Caucasus: Ermolov is coming! And the violent cry of war fell silent: All is subject to the Russian sword. Proud sons of the Caucasus, You have fought, you have perished terribly; But our blood did not save you, Nor charmed armour, Nor mountains, nor valiant steeds, Nor the love of wild freedom! Like the tribe of Baty, The Caucasus will betray its forefathers, Will forget the voice of the greedy field of battle, Will abandon the battle arrows. To the canyons, where you used to nestle, A traveller will ride up without fear, And dark rumours of legend Will announce your execution. Translated by Katya Hokanson

Pushkin’s Notes to ‘A Captive of the Caucasus’ 1 Beshtu, or, more correctly, Beshtau, a Caucasian mountain forty versts from Georgievsk. Famous in our history. 2 Aul. This is what the villages of the Caucasian peoples are called. 3 Uzden’, leader or prince. 4 Shashka, Circassian sword. 5 Saklia, hut. 6 Kumys is made of mares’ milk; this drink is in great use among all the mountain and nomadic peoples of Asia. It is fairly pleasant to the taste and is considered extremely healthy. 7 The happy climate of Georgia does not recompense this beautiful country for all the calamities which it must always endure. Georgian songs are pleasant and for the greater part mournful. They praise the short-lived successes of Caucasian arms, and the death of our heroes: Bakunin and Tsitsianov, betrayals, murders – sometimes love and pleasure. 8 Derzhavin in his excellent ode to Count Zubov first depicted in the following lines the wild pictures of the Caucasus:

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O young leader, completing your campaigns, With your army you traversed the Caucasus, Saw the horrors, the beauties of nature: Flowing as if from the ribs of the terrible mountains, The angry rivers roar in the gloom of the abyss; As from their brows, with a rumble, the snows Fall, lying for whole centuries; Like chamois, having bent their horns down, Looking tranquilly into the gloom under themselves At the birth of lightning and thunder. You saw, as in the bright moments There the sun’s rays, amid the ice, Amid the waters, playing, reflecting, They seem a magnificent view; As, scattering in various colours There the droplets, a fine rain burns; As a dove-grey amber cloud, Hinging itself, looks into the dark pine forest; And there the gold-crimson dawn Makes its merry gaze through the forest. Zhukovskii, in his epistle to Mr Voeikov, also dedicates several magnificent verses to the description of the Caucasus: You saw, as the Terek in its swift run Sounded among the grapevines, Where, often concealing himself on the bank, A Chechen or a Circassian sat Under a burka, with a deadly arrow; And in the distance before you, Dressed in a blue fog, Mountain misted over mountain, And in their assembly the grey-haired giant, Like a cloud, double-headed El’borus. Everything there glittered With a terrible and majestic beauty: The moss-covered masses of cliffs, The waterfalls rushing with a roar Into the gloom of abysses from granite crags; Forests whose sleep for centuries Has not been disturbed either by the

252 Appendix Blow of axes or the merry voice of a man, In whose twilight canopies The daylight has not yet pierced, Where from time to time only deer, Having heard the terrible cry of an eagle, Tightening into a crowd, make noise with branches, And goats with light feet Cross along the crags. There everything seems to the eyes A magnificent creation! But there – amid the isolation Of the valleys, languishing in the mountains – Nest the Balkar, and Bakh, And Abazekh, and Kamutsinets, And Karbulak, and Albazinets, And Chechereyets, and Shapsuk; Musket, chain mail, sabre, bow, And horse – swift-legged comrade-in-arms Both their treasures and their gods; Like chamois skip along the mountains, Throw death from behind a cliff; Or, along the marshy banks, In high grass, in the depths of the forest Scattered, they wait for plunder: The crags of freedom are their shelter; But days in their auls drag On the crutches of mournful idleness: There their life is a dream; crowding into a circle And into a brotherly pot full of tobacco Thrusting their chibouques, like shadows, They sit in the swirling smoke And speak of murders, Or praise accurate muskets, From which their grandfathers shot; Or sharpen their swords on whetstones, Preparing themselves for new killings... 9 Chikhir, red Georgian wine. 10 The Circassians, like all savage nations, differentiate themselves from us in terms of their hospitality. A guest becomes for them a sacred person. To

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betray him or not to protect him is considered among them to be the greatest dishonour. A kunak (i.e., friend, acquaintance) answers with his life for your security, and with him you can go deep into the very heart of the Kabarda mountains. 11 Bairan, or Bairam, a holiday of fasting. Ramazan [sic], Muslim Lent. 12 Mstislav, the son of St Vladimir, nicknamed the Bold, the independent prince of Tmutarakan (the island Taman’). He fought with the Kosogs (most likely, the present-day Circassians) and in single combat overpowered their prince, Rededia. See The History of the Russian State, vol. 2.

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Notes

Introduction 1 Ronald Grigor Suny, ‘The Empire Strikes Out: Imperial Russia, “National” Identity, and Theories of Empire,’ in A State of Nations: Empire and NationMaking in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 38. 2 One of the earliest Western accounts of Russia, Siegmund von Herberstein’s Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, established Russia as an Oriental country in 1557. See Irena Grudzinska Gross, ‘The Tangled Tradition: Custine, Herberstein, Karamzin, and the Critique of Russia,’ Slavic Review 50, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 889–998. 3 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather (New York: Routledge, 1995), 28. 4 ‘The Account of George Turberville,’ in Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers, ed. Lloyd E. Berry and Robert O. Crummey (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 83. 5 Marquis de Custine, Letters from Russia, abridged translation of La Russie en 1839, trans. Robin Buss (London: Penguin, 1991), 94. 6 Adam Mickiewicz, ‘Digression,’ translated from the Polish by Waclaw Lednicki in Pushkin’s Bronze Horseman: The Story of a Masterpiece (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1955), 109–10. 7 Czeslaw Milosz, Native Realm (New York: Doubleday, 1968), 131. 8 P. Ia. Chaadaev, quoted and translated in Marc Raeff, Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press/Harvester Press, 1978), 162–3. Andreas Schönle also comments on this passage in his Authenticity and Fiction in the Russian Literary Journey, 1790–1840 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 14. 9 Gogol’, N.V., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [henceforth PSS], 14 vols. (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1937–52), 3:161.

256 Notes to pages 7–11 10 Gogol’, Dead Souls, trans. Robert A. Maguire, (London: Penguin Classics, 2004), 251. Original citation is Gogol’, PSS, 6:220. 11 Suny, ‘The Empire Strikes Out,’ 5. 12 Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. 1, From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), see in particular chaps. 8–10. 13 Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 12–13. 14 Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 7. 15 Michael Khodarkovsky, ‘Colonial Frontiers in Eighteenth-Century Russia: From the North Caucasus to Central Asia,’ in Extending the Borders of Russian History: Essays in Honor of Alfred J. Rieber, ed. Marsha Siefert (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003), 127–8. 16 See my article ‘In Defense of Empire: “The Bronze Horseman” and “To the Slanderers of Russia,”’ in Beyond the Empire: Images of Russia in the Eurasian Cultural Context, Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, forthcoming 2008. 17 Yuri Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 74–5. 18 Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 5th ed., 3 vols (St Petersburg: I. Einerling, 1842–3), Iu. M. Lotman, Sotvorenie Karamzina (Moscow: Kniga, 1987), Gita Hammarberg, From the Idyll to the Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge Uniersity Press, 1991), Henry Nebel, N.M. Karamzin: A Russian Sentimentalist (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), J.L. Black, Nicholas Karamzin and Russian Society in the Nineteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), Hans Rothe Essays on Karamzin: Russian Man-of-Letters, Political Thinker, Historian, 1766–1826, ed. J.L. Black (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), A.G. Cross, N.M. Karamzin: A Study of His Literary Career, 1783–1803 (De Kalb: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971), Caryl Emerson, Boris Godunov: Transpositions of a Russian Theme (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1986), Nataliia Kochetkova, Nikolay Karamzin (New York: Twayne, 1975), Natan Eidel’man, Poslednii letopisets (Moscow: Kniga, 1983). 19 Karamzin, quoted in Marc Raeff, Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978), 118. 20 N.I. Mordovchenko, Russkaia kritika pervoi chetverti XIX veka (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1959), 53. Belinskii, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, tom. VIII (St Petersburg, 1907), 258–9.

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21 Schönle, Authenticity and Fiction, 71. The quotation by Schönle is from Wolfgang Iser’s The Act of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 56. 22 Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 17 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1937–59), 11–57. Quoted and translated by William M. Todd III, Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 86. 23 Gita Hammarberg, ‘Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin,’ in Early Modern Russian Writers, Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Marcus Levitt (Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1995), 149. 24 Ibid. 25 Rothe, ‘Karamzin and His Heritage,’ in Essays on Karamzin, 163. 26 Black, Nicholas Karamzin and Russian Society in the Nineteenth Century, 129– 35ff. 27 Ibid., 136. 28 Ibid., 149. 29 Gross ‘The Tangled Tradition,’ 995. 30 N.M. Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 12 vols. (Moscow: Nauka, 1989), 1:45–6. 31 See in particular Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). 32 Ibid., introduction, but particularly 8–10. 33 Ibid., 10. 34 Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia (Moscow: Akademiia Nauk, 1956–61), 408. 35 See, for example, discussions in Mordovchenko, Russkaia kritika pervoi chetverti XIX veka, Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, (Moscow: Akademiia Nauk, 1956–61), Iu. N. Tynianov, Arkhaisty i novatory (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1985), G.A. Gukovskii, Pushkin i russkie romantiki (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1965). 36 Jerome McGann, ‘Introduction,’ Lord Byron: The Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), xvi–xvii. 37 Monika Greenleaf, Pushkin and Romantic Fashion (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 108. 38 Maria Todorova, ‘The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of Eastern European Nationalism,’ Slavic Review 64, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 157. 39 Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 408. 40 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, (London: Routledge, 1994), 1. 41 Stoler and Cooper, Tensions of Empire, 1.

258 Notes to pages 18–25 42 Theophilus Prousis, Russian Society and the Greek Revolution (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994), 111. See also Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 407. 43 Gukovskii, Pushkin i russkie romantiki, 298. 44 Ibid., 317–19. 45 Ibid., 257ff. Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime, 132 46 Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 407. 47 See Bassin, Imperial Visions. 48 L.N. Tolstoy, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 47, ed. Lev Nikolaevich Chertkov (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1937; repr., Nendeln/ Lichtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1972), Diary, 7 July 1854, 8. 49 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 94. Bhabha points out that Mill begins by commenting on Macaulay’s famous 1835 ‘Minute’ on the education of Indians. 50 Ibid., 195. 51 Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 90. 52 Edward Said, ‘Secular Criticism,’ in The World, The Text and the Critic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 8. Stephanie Sandler also makes note of Said’s remarks on Auerbach in Distant Pleasures: Alexander Pushkin and the Writing of Exile (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989). 1. Pushkin, ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ and Russia’s Entry into History 1 Oleg Proskurin, Poeziia Pushkina, ili podvizhnyi palimpsest (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1999), G.A. Gukovskii, Pushkin i russkie romantiki (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1965), and Paul Austin, The Exotic Prisoner in Russian Romanticism, vol. 9, Middlebury Studies in Russian Language and Literature, ed. Thomas Beyer, (New York: Peter Lang, 1997). 2 See Greenleaf, Pushkin and Romantic Fashion, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), esp. 43–5, 109–55. 3 Ibid., 146–7. 4 Jerome McGann, ‘Introduction,’ in Lord Byron: The Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), xvi–xvii. 5 Maria Todorova, ‘The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of Eastern European Nationalism,’ Slavic Review 64, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 157. 6 Boris Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1956), 408.

Notes to pages 25–30

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7 Gukovskii, Pushkin i russkie romantiki, 282. 8 N.M. Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 5th ed., 3 vols. (St Petersburg: I. Einerling, 1842–4): Kniga 1, toma I, II, III, IV, vol. 1:1. 9 Aleksandr Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [hereafter referred to as PSS in the notes] 16 vol. (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1937– 59), 4:113. Subsequent references are to this edition and will appear in the text within parentheses. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. 10 Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiiskogo, Kniga 1, toma I, II, III, IV, vol. 2:11 and note 25; Pushkin, PSS, 4:117, note 12. 11 Ibid., 2:11, my translation. 12 Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 411. All translations mine unless otherwise indicated. 13 For a concise discussion of the history of the conquest of the Caucasus, see Willis Brooks’s ‘Nicholas I as Reformer: Russian Attempts to Conquer the Caucasus, 1825–55,’ in Nation and Ideology: Essays in Honor of Wayne S. Vucinich, ed. Ivo Banac, John Ackerman, and Roman Szporluk (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1981), 227–63. See also John F. Baddeley, The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus (London: Longmans, Green, 1908), and William Monteith, Kars and Erzeroum with the Campaigns of Prince Paskiewitch in 1829 and 1829; and an Account of the Conquests of Russia Beyond the Caucasus (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1856). 14 Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 87. See also such works as Daniel Brower and Edward Lazzerini, eds., Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), Adeeb Khalid, ‘Russian History and the Debate over Orientalism,’ Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 4: (Fall 2000), 691–9, Thomas Barrett, At the Edge of Empire: The Terek Cossacks and the North Caucasus Frontier, 1700–1860 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), and Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). See also dissertations and other publications by Nathaniel Knight and Austin Jersild, such as Jersild’s ‘Authenticity and Exile: Ethnography, Islam, and the Mountaineer in Russian Caucasia, 1845– 1877’ (PhD diss., University of California, Davis, 1993) and Knight, ‘Constructing the Science of Nationality: Ethnography in Mid-nineteenth Century Russia’ (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1995). 15 Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, 102.

260 Notes to pages 30–3 16 S.S. Uvarov, Etudes de philologie et de critique (St Petersburg: Imprimerie de l’Académie imper. des sciences, 1845). 17 Cynthia Whittaker, The Origins of Modern Russian Education (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1984), 23. 18 See Nicholas Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825– 1855 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961). 19 Ostaf’evskii arkhiv kniazei Viazemskikh (St Petersburg: Tipografiia M.M. Stasiulevicha, 1899), 1:357. See also Lauren Leighton, Russian Romanticism: Two Essays (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 49. 20 From an exchange in ‘Vestnik Evropy,’ 1824, no. 5. Cited by Tomashevskii, Pushkin: Kniga vtoraia (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1961), 126–7. Alluded to, without citation, by Leighton in Russian Romantic Criticism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), 38. 21 At the time, the primary meaning of the Russian word narod, as listed in the Slovar’Akademii Rossiiskoi, was ‘tongue, tribe, the inhabitants of a state, of a country, which are under the same laws and speak the identical native language.’ The word narodnyi meant ‘belonging to, relating to a people; concerning a people.’ The examples given were ‘Narodnaia pol’za. Narodnyia prava. Narodnaia molva. Narodnyi slukh.’ There is, of course, no entry for narodnost’. Equally, the entry for nation, natsiia, betrays no tendencies that we would now call ‘nationalist’ – it is defined as the Latin for ‘narod , tribe, language.’ Slovar’ Akademii Rossiiskoi (St Petersburg: Pri Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, 1814, repr. 1971), vol. 3, cols. 1175–6, col. 1257, and col. 1257, respectively. 22 Melissa Frazier, Romantic Encounters: Writers, Readers and the ‘Library for Reading’ (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 188. 23 N.I. Mordovchenko, Russkaia kritika pervoi chetverti XIX veka (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1959), 173. 24 Pushkin, PSS, letter to Viazemskii on 6 Feb. 1823, 13:57. 25 Mordovchenko, Russkaia kritika pervoi chetverti XIX veka, 181. 26 Ibid., 178. 27 V.K. Kiukhel’beker, ‘O napravlenii nashei poezii, osobenno liricheskoi, v poslednee desiatiletie,’ in Puteshestvie, dnevnik, stat’i (Leningrad: Nauka, 1979), 452–9. 28 Iu. N. Tynianov, ‘Pushkin,’ in Arkhaisty i novatory (Leningrad: Priboi, 1929), 253. 29 Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003) and ‘Russian Poetry and the Imperial Sublime,’ in Russian Subjects: Empire, Nation, and the Culture of the Golden Age, ed. Monika Greenleaf and Stephen Moeller-Sally (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 21–49.

Notes to pages 33–40

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30 Ram, The Imperial Sublime, 189. 31 Orest Somov, Selected Prose in Russian, ed. John Mersereau and George Harjan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974), 173. 32 Ibid., 174–5. 33 Cf. Mordovchenko, Russkaia kritika pervoi chetverti XIX veka, 193. 34 Tynianov, Arkhaisty i novatory, 254n. 35 See Tomashevskii, ‘Pushkin i narodnost’,’ in Pushkin. Kniga vtoraia, 106–53. Pushkin’s opinions come from various sources, detailed by Tomashevskii, but many of Viazemskii’s opinions come from his 1825 article, ‘O novoi piitike basen,’ published in Moskovskii telegraf. 36 Pushkin on Literature, trans. and ed. Tatiana Wolff, rev. ed. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1986), 1826 Draft on the national spirit in literature, p. 168, ‘O narodnosti v literature,’ Pushkin, PSS, 11:40. 37 Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions, 12–13. 38 Frazier, Romantic Encounters, 196–7. 39 V.G. Belinskii, ‘Stat’ia shestaia,’ in Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1981), 6:311. 40 See also Lauren Leighton, Romanticism: Two Essays (The Hague: Mouton, 1975) and Russian Romantic Criticism: An Anthology, Contributions to the Study of World Literature, no. 18 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987). 41 For commentary on the latter article, see V.V. Gippius, Gogol, trans. Robert Maguire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989), and Donald Fanger, The Creation of Nikolai Gogol (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1979). 42 N.V. Gogol’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (hereafter referred to as PSS), (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1952), 8:51. Edyta Bojanowska finds that Gogol subtly undercuts Pushkin’s ‘national’ status in ‘Gogol’s “A Few Words About Pushkin”: A Study in Equivocal Praise and National Conundrums,’ article in progress. See also her Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). 43 Ibid., 8:384. 44 Ibid., 8:407. That service, as Gogol then goes on to say, is of a Christian nature; Gogol writes that the poet must be educated as a Christian; a discussion of those implications, however, will not be attempted here. 45 Ibid., 8:51. 46 Donald Fanger, The Creation of Nikolai Gogol, 87–8. 47 F.M. Dostoevsky, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1984), 26:145–6. Henceforth cited as PSS. Piece entitled ‘Pushkin (ocherk),’ translation and emphasis mine but translation based in part on ‘Pushkin. A Sketch,’ in Marc Raeff, Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology, trans. Boris Brasol (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978), 288–300.

262 Notes to pages 40–62 48 F.M. Dostoevsky, PSS 27:36–7. Trans. (amended) K. Lantz, Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary, 2 vols. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993– 4), 2:1369–74. 49 Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002), 415. 50 Dostoevsky, PSS, 26:148–9. 51 Frazier, Romantic Encounters, 201. 52 David Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow: Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 52. 53 Ibid., 53. 54 Ibid., 54–6. 55 Stephen Cheeke, Byron and Place: History, Translation, Nostalgia (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 61–2. 56 Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow, 55. 57 ‘The Giaour,’ lines 549–66, in McGann, Lord Byron, 222. 58 Cheeke, Byron and Place, 44. 59 Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow, 45. The reference is to Terence Spencer, Fair Greece, Sad Relic (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1954). 60 Oleg Proskurin, Poeziia Pushkina, ili podvizhnyi palimpsest (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1999), 112–21. 61 For a discussion of male friendship as a framing device in Pushkin, see Stephanie Sandler’s Distant Pleasures (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989). 62 Greenleaf, Pushkin and Romantic Fashion, 117–18 and 147. 63 See Ram, The Imperial Sublime, 192–8 and Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, 101–9. See also Adrian Wanner, ‘Imperialism as an Infectious Disease: The Theme of Death in “Kavkazskii plennik,”’ Pushkin Review 3 (2000): 133–50. 64 McGann, Lord Byron, 80–1. 65 Ibid., 79. 66 Polar Star for 1823, 24–5. Appeared in December 1822. My italics. 67 G.A. Gukovskii, Pushkin i russkie romantiki, 213. 68 Ram, The Imperial Sublime, 189. 69 McGann, Lord Byron, 73–4. 70 Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, 95. 71 Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 425. 72 Pushkin, PSS, 13:52. Draft of a letter to V.P. Gorchakov, October/November 1822. 73 See Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, 91, Sandler, Distant Pleasures, 148– 65, Zhirmunskii, Bairon i Pushkin, 87–8. 74 Sandler, Distant Pleasures, 150 and 154, respectively.

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75 Susan Layton remarks that the girl ‘virtually parrots his earlier, Byronic formulations about the pain of unrequited passion.’ Russian Literature and Empire, 91. 76 Roessel, In Byron’s Shadow, 66. 77 Ibid., 62. 78 Ibid., 65. 79 Ibid. 80 Sandler, Distant Pleasures, 149. 81 Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, 98. See also Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Carribbean, 1492–1797 (London: Routledge, 1992). 82 Quoted in Tomashevskii, Pushkin: kniga pervaia, 406. Letter to Turgenev on 27 Sept. 1822: I am sorry that Pushkin bloodied the last verses [stikhi] of his tale. What sort of a hero is Kotliarevskii; Ermolov? What is good here, that he like a black plague Destroyed, annihilated tribes? From such glory the blood freezes in the veins and the hairs stand on end. If we were enlightening the tribes, that would be something to celebrate. Poetry is not the ally of executioners; they may be necessary to politics, and then it will be to a judge of history to decide, if it is possible to justify it or not; but the hymns of the poet should never be the glorification of slaughter. I am disappointed with Pushkin: such rapture is a real anachronism. It is also vexing that, of course, I cannot even hint about that in my article. My love for humanity and moral feeling will seem like a mutinous movement and a devilish suggestion in the eyes of our Christ-loving censors. 83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90

See Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 405–11. Ibid., 406–7. Quoted from ibid., 407. Willis Brooks, ‘Nicholas I as Reformer: Russian Attempts to Conquer the Caucasus, 1825–55,’ in Nation and Ideology, ed. Banac, Ackerman, and Szporluk, 240. Trans. Brooks. V.G. Belinskii, ‘Sochineniia A. Pushkina. Stat’ia shestaia,’ in Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1981), 6:312. Greenleaf, Pushkin and Romantic Fashion, 45. Adrian Wanner, ‘Imperialism as an Infectious Disease: The Theme of Death in “Kavkazskii plennik,”’ Pushkin Review 3 (2000): 133–50. See in particular Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, Eikhenbaum,

264 Notes to pages 71–7 ‘Batal’naia tema v russkoi poezii nachala XIX veka,’ Zalp 4 and 5 (1933: 67– 72 and 53–7), and Ram, ‘Russian Poetry and the Imperial Sublime.’ 91 Oral comment made by Professor Roman Timenchik at the ‘Pushkin Beyond Europe Conference,’ Pennsylvania State University, October 1999. 92 Harsha Ram, ‘Prisoners of the Caucasus: Literary Myths and Media Representations of the Chechen Conflict,’ working Paper published by the National Security Education Program at http://socrates.berkeley.edu/ ~bsp/pubs/working.html, summer 1999, unpaginated. Another version of the article has also been published as ‘Kavkazskie plenniki: Kul’turnye mify i medial’nye reprezentatsii v chechenskom konflikte,’ Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 34 (1998). 2. The Poetry of Empire: ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai’ and ‘The Gypsies’ 1 The polemical article led to a long debate with M.A. Dmitriev. See discussions in B. Tomashevskii, Pushkin: Kniga vtoraia (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1961), 126–7, and Pushkin. Kniga pervaia (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1956), 516–19, and in Lauren Leighton, Russian Romantic Criticism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987). 2 P.A. Viazemskii, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1982), 2:96. All translations are by the author unless otherwise indicated. 3 Ibid., 98–9. 4 Leonid Grossman, ‘U istokov Bakhchisaraiskogo fontana,’ in Pushkin: Issledovaniia i materialy (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1960), 3:89. 5 A later traveller even claims that Lalla Rookh describes Bakhchisarai (William Elery Curtis, Around the Black Sea [New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1911], 274–5). 6 Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [hereafter cited as PSS 10 vols.] (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1977–9), 4:149. Subsequent references are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text. All translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. 7 See N.M. Karamzin, Istoriia gosudarstva rossiskago, 12 vols. (The Hague: Mouton, Slavistic Printings and Reprintings, 1969), 6:192. 8 See discussion of Pushkin’s technique of presenting mutually conflicting points of view of historical events and facts in Boris Gasparov’s article on ‘Graf Nulin’ in Text and Context: Essays to Honor Nils Ake Nilsson (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1987), as well as in Andrew Wachtel, An Obsession with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994).

Notes to pages 77–84

265

9 See Stephanie Sandler’s Distant Pleasures (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989). See also Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 196–200. 10 Monika Greenleaf, Pushkin and Romantic Fashion (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 125–38. Greenleaf’s excellent analysis of ‘Bakhchisarai’ also engages gender issues. 11 Ibid., 127–9. 12 Oleg Proskurin notes that Maria is figured as Sacred Love, while Zarema is figured as Profane Love. Proskurin, Poeziia Pushkina, ili podvizhnyi palimpsest (Moscow: Novoe literaturno obozrenie, 1999), 136. 13 Greenleaf’s discussion of the poem reminds us that Maria, who venerates her culture’s sacred texts and whose special privileges result from the khan’s recognition of her cultural ‘superiority,’ ultimately ‘continues to give rise to legend, art, culture, while Zarema’s passion reverted to nature, leaving no trace’ (Pushkin, 133). One could argue, however, that because Pushkin uses the poem to show a connection to both ‘Oriental’ and European roots, Zarema also retains her power to inspire cultural artefacts. 14 Erik McDonald argues in ‘Symmetry and Asymmetry in the NarratorHeroine Interaction of “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,”’ Slavic and East European Journal, 47, no. 3 (2003): 423–40, that the narrator feels closer to Zarema than to Maria (428), but acknowledges as well that there are structures in the poem that tend to support the preeminence of each. 15 See Simon Karlinsky, ‘Two Pushkin Studies: I. Pushkin, Chateaubriand, and the Romantic Pose; II. The Amber Beads of Crimea (Pushkin and Mickiewicz),’ California Slavic Studies 2 (1963): 96–120. See in particular 108–20. 16 Pushkin uses a variation of the quotation again in the fifty-first stanza of chapter 8 of Eugene Onegin. 17 Sa’di wrote poetry in both Persian and Arabic. 18 Tomashevskii states that Pushkin took his quotation from a translation of the piece by the French translator Amedé Pichot, who also translated Byron. Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 505–6. See also the textual annotations to the narrative poem, in Pushkin, PSS, 4:418. 19 Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1895), 120. 20 Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 505–7. 21 See, for example, Abbas Milani ‘Sa’di and the Kings,’ in Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Modernity in Iran (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2004), 37–50. 22 Scholars have suggested that a 1796 translation of Sa’di into Russian did exist and that Pushkin may have known it; see M.L. Nol’man, ‘Saadi ili Tsitseron?’ in Tvorchestvo Pushkina i zarubezhnyi Vostok (Moscow: Nauka, 1991), 219–8. However, other aspects of Moore’s Lalla Rookh would seem to point to the fact that Pushkin encountered the quotation in Moore. A prose pas-

266 Notes to pages 84–8

23 24

25 26

27

28

29 30 31

32 33 34

sage introducing the framed poem ‘The Light of the Haram’ contains a number of motifs that correspond to motifs in ‘Bakhchisarai.’ Eyes that had created a garden, but were now now longer there to see it, recalls the Saadi epigraph; Moore’s Sultana Nourmahal fed fishes in marble basins, a detail very similar to the description of the khan’s wives dropping earrings to fishes in marble basins. Most strikingly, Lalla Rookh’s visit to the Royal Gardens called forth a poem about the woman, Nourmahal, who was memorialized by the gardens and basins, just as the poet-narrator’s visit to Bakhchisarai called forth a poem about Maria and Zarema (Moore, 237). Morals Pointed and Tales Adorned: The Bustan of Sa’di, trans. G.M. Wickens, Persian heritage series 17, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 30. My italics. See Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago: Benton, 1965), 2:184–5. See also G.M. Wickens, ‘Persian Literature,’ in Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition (Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1988), 21:753, and Edward G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia: From Firdawsi to Sa’di (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 17–34. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, 528. This move is in some sense an adoption of a Byronic mask, since Byron also moulded himself as the latest successor to Oriental poets, but it is noteworthy that Pushkin was in fact called ‘our young Saadi’ by a delighted critic who wrote a short review in the Damskii zhurnal. (Referred to by Tomashevskii in Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 521.) Iu. M. Lotman, ‘Problema Vostoka i Zapada v tvorchestve posdnego Lermontova,’ in Lermontovskii sbornik (Leningrad: Nauka, 1985): 5–22, see in particular 16–17. See also Sara Dickinson, ‘Russia’s First “Orient”: Characterizing the Crimea in 1787,’ Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 3, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 3–25, and Ottoe Boele, The North in Russian Romantic Literature (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996). See Greenleaf, Pushkin, Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, and Peter Scotto, ‘Prisoners of the Caucasus: Ideologies of Imperialism in Lermontov’s “Bela,”’ PMLA 107 (1992): 246–60. See Mark Bassin, ‘Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geography,’ Slavic Review 50 (1991) 1–17. Ibid. Here, and elsewhere in the chapter, in discussing the uses of the doubled time frame of ‘Fountain,’ I am indebted to Andrew Wachtel’s insightful commentary. Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 503–4. Jeremiah Curtin, The Mongols in Russia (Boston: Little, Brown, 1908), 453. Alan Fisher, The Crimean Tatars (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press,

Notes to pages 91–106

35 36

37

38 39 40 41 42 43

44

45

46 47 48 49 50

51 52

267

1978), and George Lantzeff and Richard Pierce, Eastward to Empire (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1973). Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 496. For an explanation of the functioning of the term ‘north’ to denote Russia, see Lotman, ‘Problema Vostoka i Zapada v tvorchestve posdnego Lermontova.’ See also Boele, The North in Russian Romantic Literature. The motif of the native and/or captive girl who dies, leaving the issue of what kind of monument is proper, occurs also in Chateaubriand’s Atala and Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time. Jerome McGann, ed., Lord Byron: The Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 42–3. Stephen Cheeke, Byron and Place: History, Translation, Nostalgia (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 51. Ibid., 60. George Gordon, Lord Byron, ‘The Giaour,’ from Poetical Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), ll. 723–8, 259. Ibid., ll. 1329–34, 264. See ‘O romanticheskoi poezii’ in Orest Somov, Selected Prose in Russian, ed. John Mersereau and George Harjan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974), as well as my discussion in the first chapter of this book. Iurii Lotman, Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin: Biografiia pisatelia (Leningrad: Prosveshchenie, 1983). See chap. 3, ‘Iug,’ 52–110. For additional discussion of this issue, see Monika Greenleaf, ‘Pushkin’s Byronic Apprenticeship: A Problem in Cultural Syncretism,’ Russian Review 53 (1994): 382–98. See also her Pushkin and Romantic Fashion. See Sandler, Distant Pleasures, 165–6. See also Grossman, ‘U istokov Bakhchisaraiskogo fontana,’ in Pushkin: Issledovaniia i materialy (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1960), vol. 3. Stephanie Sandler, Distant Pleasures, 180–1. Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 616. Sandler, Distant Pleasures, 197, 209. Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 653. The extent to which Aleko stands for Pushkin is of course a matter of debate, but many readers have found the name suggestive. Tomashevskii believes that the name was chosen for its autobiographical overtones, which was both purposeful on Pushkin’s part and also a ‘necessary accoutrement of the Romantic hero.’ Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 617. Pushkin, ‘Tsigany,’ in PSS, 1977, 4:187. Tomashevskii, Pushkin. Kniga pervaia, 631.

268 Notes to pages 106–11 53 Ovid, Tristia, book 5, X, ll. 35–42, trans. L.R. Lind (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975), 140. 54 P. Ovidi Nasonis, Tristium Libri Quinque Ex Ponto Libri Quattuor Halievtica Fragmenta, ed. S.G. Owen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915), Tristia 5, ll. 35–42. 55 Gareth Williams, Banished Voices: Readings in Ovid’s Exile Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 8–16. 56 Ibid., 11. 57 On the links between Ovid and Pushkin, see also V.V. Vinogradov, Stil’ Pushkina (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1941), A.I. Malein, ‘Pushkin i Ovidii: (Otryvochnye zamechaniia),’ in Pushkin i ego sovremenniki (St Petersburg: Materialy i issledovaniia/komissia dliaizdatel’stva, 1916), 23–4:45–66, D.P. Iakubovich, ‘Antichnost’ v tvorchestve Pushkina,’ in Vremennik Pushkinskoi komissii (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1941), 6:92–159, M.M. Pokrovskii, ‘Pushkin i antichnost’,’ in Pushkin: Vremennik Pushkinskoi komissii (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1939), 45:27–56, as well as Hokanson, ‘Barbarus Hic Ego Sum: Pushkin and Ovid on the Pontic Shore,’ Pushkin Review/Pushkinskii vestnik 8 (2005–6): 27–42. 3. Centring the Periphery: Eugene Onegin, ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ and ‘A Journey to Arzrum’ 1 Edward Said, ‘Secular Criticism,’ in Critical Theory since 1965, ed. Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1989), 609. 2 Stephanie Sandler, Distant Pleasures (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989), 4. 3 Iurii Lotman, A.S. Pushkin: Biografiia pisatelia (Leningrad: Prosveshchenie, 1983), 77. 4 Sandler, Distant Pleasures, 212. 5 Nabokov, Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse by Alexander Pushkin, Translated from the Russian with a Commentary, 4 vols. (New York: Bollinger, 1964), 3:151. 6 Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (hereafter cited as PSS), 16 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1937–59), 6:167, ch. 8, stanza 5. Hereafter references to this edition of Eugene Onegin will appear parenthetically in the text following the abbreviation EO by chapter and stanza numbers. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. 7 Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, trans. James Falen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 14–15. Hereafter cited as Falen, Eugene Onegin. 8 Ibid., 31. The allusion to Ovid is also noted by V.V. Vinogradov, Stil’ Pushkina (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1941), 415.

Notes to pages 112–27

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9 Harry B. Evans, Publica Carmina: Ovid’s Books From Exile, trans. Harry Evans (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 33. 10 Sandler, Distant Pleasures, 45–6. 11 Evans, Publica Carmina, 33–4. 12 See Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). 13 See Nabokov, Eugene Onegin, 3:293–300. 14 Pushkin, PSS, 6:31. 15 Horace, Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1936), 389. 16 Monika Greenleaf, Pushkin and Romantic Fashion (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 239. Even if the potentiality for a triple rhyme is phonetically suspect, it is certainly arguable in a visual sense. 17 P. Lowell Bowditch, Horace and the Gift Economy of Patronage (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 152. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 143. 20 Falen, Eugene Onegin, 35. 21 Nabokov, Eugene Onegin, 2:219. 22 Cf. Bowditch, Horace and the Gift Economy of Patronage, 153. 23 Ibid. 24 Boris Gasparov, ‘Funktsii reministsentsii iz Dante v poezii Pushkina (Stat’ia pervaia),’ Russian Literature 14 (1983): 317–50. 25 Nabokov, Eugene Onegin, 2:313, translation amended. 26 Lina Bernstein, ‘Women on the Verge of a New Language,’ in Russia, Women, Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 210. ‘Zakonodetel’nitsa’ was coined by Pushkin in Eugene Onegin, Bernstein notes, presumably in chapter 8, stanza 28. See also Todd, The Familiar Letter as a Literary Genre in the Age of Pushkin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), and Mordovchenko, Russkaia kritika pervoi poloviny XIX veka (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1959). 27 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 72. 28 Nabokov, Eugene Onegin 2:406. 29 Ian Helfant, ‘Sculpting a Persona: The Path from Pushkin’s Caucasian Journal to Puteshestvie v Arzrum,’ Russian Review 56 (July 1997): 369. 30 For a fascinating study of these conventions, see Todd, The Familiar Letter as a Literary Genre in the Age of Pushkin. 31 Pushkin, PSC 6:200. 32 Falen, Eugene Onegin, 220.

270 Notes to pages 128–33 33 Pushkin, PSS, 6:201, trans. Falen, Eugene Onegin, 221. 34 Pushkin, PSS, 6:505, translation mine. 35 Nabokov, Eugene Onegin, 3:310. Verse, dated 18 Sept. Boldino 1830, is in PSS 6:506. 36 Pushkin, PSC 6:481–2. 37 See also the discussion of these citations in the second chapter of Oleg Proskurin’s Poeziia Pushkin, ili podvizhnyi palimpsest (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1999), 108–22. 38 See Susan Layton, ‘The Creation of an Imaginative Caucasian Geography,’ Slavic Review 45 (Fall 1986): 470–85, as well as her Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). See also Katya Hokanson, ‘Literary Imperialism, Narodnost’, and Pushkin’s Invention of the Caucasus,’ Russian Review, 53 (July 1994): 334–5. 39 See Pushkin’s notes to ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ PSS, 4:115–17. 40 See Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, especially the chapters entitled ‘Imaginative Geography’ and ‘The National Stake in Asia.’ 41 For an enlightening discussion of the status of the epilogue to ‘Kavkazskii plennik’ and an excellent summary of scholarship on the issue, see Adrian Wanner’s article ‘Imperialism as an Infectious Disease: The Theme of Death in “Kavkazskii plennik,”’ Pushkin Review 3 (2000): 133–50. 42 Nabokov, Eugene Onegin, 3:280. 43 See, for example, Peter Julicher, Renegades, Rebels and Rogues under the Tsar (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 85ff. 44 Evgenii Kassin, Notes to ‘Puteshestvie Onegina’ by Natan Eidel’man in Boldino: Osen’ 1830 (Moscow: Planeta, 1989), 125–9. 45 See Richard Pipes, ‘The Russian Military Colonies, 1810–1831,’ in Journal of Modern History, 22, no. 3 (Sept. 1950): 205–19. 46 Layton argues that the anthropomorphic treatment of Kazbek in the poem cannot be divorced from similar characterizations that make the mountains function as the head of a body politic (Russian Literature and Empire, 49). 47 Mary Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992), 209. 48 Yuri Druzhnikov, Prisoner of Russia: Alexander Pushkin and the Political Uses of Nationalism, trans. Thomas Moore and Ilya Druzhnikov (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999), 432. The 1829 poem reads: Terek, which rushes between the mountain walls Wears the wild shores with its waves, Seething around enormous rocks, Here, then there, it digs a path for itself,

Notes to pages 133–8

271

Like a living beast, it cries and wails – And then, is quiet and obedient. Descending deeper and deeper, It runs, barely alive. Thus, exhausted by the storm, A rainy stream trickles along. And thus ... has been revealed Its stony bed. Druzhnikov leaves out the final two lines, the first of which is incomplete. The original poem, Pushkin, PSS, vol. 3, pt. 1, 201, follows: Меж горных стен несется Терек, Волнами точит дикий берег, Клокочет вкруг огромных скал, То здесь, то там дорогу роет, Как зверь живой, ревет и воет – И вдруг утих и смирен стал. Все ниже, ниже опускаясь, Уж он бежит едва живой. Так, после бури истощаясь, Поток струится дождевой. И вот ... обнажилось Его кремнистое русло. 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Pushkin, PSS, 6:482. All trans. mine unless otherwise noted. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 6:482–3. Ibid., vol. 8 pt. 1, 450. G.R. Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1981), 127. Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 96–7. Ibid., 96. Emphasis in the original. V.A. Zhukovskii, Sobranie sochinenii chetyrekh tomakh (Leningrad: Gos. izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1959–60), vol. 1, pp. 437–8. Ibid., 1:187, my trans. Pushkin, PSS, 6:476. Ibid., vol. 8, pt. 2, 1038–9. Ibid., 6:483.

272 Notes to pages 138–46 62 63 64 65

66 67 68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75 76 77

78

Ibid., 4:99. Ibid., vol. 8, pt. 2, 1039. Ibid., vol. 8, pt. 1, 450. See, for example, Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1959), and Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, the chapter entitled ‘Imaginative Geography.’ Pushkin, PSS, 6:484–5. Nabokov, Eugene Onegin, 3:283. Pushkin, PSS, vol. 8, pt. 2, 1029. See, in particular, Greenleaf, Pushkin and Romantic Fashion, and Todd, Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1986). Caryl Emerson, ‘Tatiana,’ in A Plot of Her Own: The Female Protagonist in Russian Literature, ed. Sona Hoisington (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995), 17. Thanks to Caryl Emerson and to an anonymous reviewer for helping me to develop this point. Prof. Emerson made several very helpful remarks in response to a paper given at the ‘Pushkin Beyond Europe’ conference, held at Penn State in October 1999. My thanks also to several other participants, including Roman Timenchik and Vadim Skuratovsky, who also made helpful editorial comments. Leslie O’Bell, ‘Through the Magic Crystal to Eugene Onegin,’ in Pushkin Today, ed. David Bethea (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 168. Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 126–7. Falen, Eugene Onegin, 8:10, 189. Ibid., 189. See, for example, Emerson, ‘Tatiana,’ 14. Yuri Druzhnikov, Prisoner of Russia, 433–4. Monika Greenleaf calls his trip ‘illicit’ (Pushkin and Romantic Fashion, 141) while Andreas Schönle believes that ‘the point of his calculated defiant undertaking was to exhibit his independence while implying no evil intent’ (Authenticity and Fiction in the Russian Literary Journey, 1790–1840, [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000], 189). See Ian Helfant, ‘Sculpting a Persona: The Path from Pushkin’s Caucasian Journal to Puteshestvie v Arzrum,’ Russian Review 56 (July 1997): 368, and Iurii Tynianov, ‘O Puteshestvii v Arzrum,’ in Vremennik Pushkinskoi kommissii (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1936), 2:61. Other studies of ‘Journey to Arzrum’ include Piotr Bitsilli, ‘Puteshestvie v Arzrum,’ in Belgradskii pushkinskii sbornik, ed., E.V. Anichkov (Belgrade: Slovo, 1937), V.L. Komarovich, ‘K voprosu o zhanre “Puteshestviia v Arzrum,”’ Vremennik Pushkinskoi Komissii 3 (1937): 326–38, Krystyna Pomorska, ‘Structural Peculiarities in “Puteshestvie v Arzrum,”’ in Alexander Pushkin Symposium,

Notes to pages 146–55

79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

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ed. Andrej Kodjak and Kiril Taranovsky (New York: New York University Press, 1976), Anthony Olcott, ‘Parody as Realism: The Journey to Arzrum,’ Russian Literary Triquarterly 10 (Fall 1974): 245–59, G.P. Makagonenko, Tvorchestvo A.S. Pushkina v 1830–e gody (1833–1836) (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1982), T. Roboli, ‘Literatura puteshestvii,’ in Russkaia proza, ed. Boris Eikhenbaum and Iurii Tynianov (The Hague: Mouton, 1963, reprint), and Andrew Wachtel, ‘Voyages of Escape, Voyages of Discovery: Transformations of the Travelogue,’ in Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism: From the Golden Age to the Silver Age, ed. Boris Gasparov, Robert P. Hughes and Irina Paperno (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), 128–49. See Helfant, ‘Sculpting in Personn,’ 379–81. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 446. Quotations in English of ‘Journey to Arzrum’ throughout have been taken from the translation of Birgitta Ingemanson, A Journey to Arzrum (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1974), with some modifications. Here, Ingemanson, Journey, 17. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 446. Ingemanson, Journey, 16. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 475. Ingemanson, Journey, 75. Helfant, ‘Sculpting in Personn,’ 375–6. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 446. Ingemanson, Journey, 17–18. Pushkin, PSS, 8:2, 1028. Translations of Pushkin’s travel notes and variants are my own and are cited in the text. Ingemanson A Journey to Arzrum, 97n.18. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 447. Ingemanson, Journey, 19. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 447. Ingemanson, Journey, 19–20. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 447. Ingemanson, Journey, 20. Helfant, ‘Sculpting in Personn,’ 375–6. Schönle, Authenticity and Fiction, 186–7. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 448. Ingemanson, Journey, 22. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 449. Ingemanson, Journey, 23. See, in particular, Tynianov, ‘O Puteshestvii,’ Olcott, ‘Parody as Realism,’ and Wachtel, ‘Voyages of Escape,’ cited above. See Roland Barthes, ‘From Work to Text,’ in Modern Literary Theory, ed. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh (New York: Arnold, 1996). Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 450. Ingemanson, Journey, 26. Pushkin, PSS, 6:484–5. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 451. Ingemanson, Journey, 27. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 451. Ingemanson, Journey, 28. See Greenleaf, Pushkin and Romantic Fashion, 152. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 451. Ingemanson, Journey, 28.

274 Notes to pages 156–64 102 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 452. Ingemanson, Journey, 30. 103 Indira Ghose, Women Travellers in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 47–8. 104 Schönle, Authenticity and Fiction, 191. 105 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 452–3. Ingemanson, Journey, 30–1. 106 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 454. Ingemanson, Journey, 33. 107 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 454. Ingemanson, Journey, 33. 108 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 455. Ingemanson, Journey, 35–6. 109 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 455. Ingemanson, Journey, 36. 110 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 456. Ingemanson, Journey, 38. 111 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 456. Ingemanson, Journey, 37. 112 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 456. Ingemanson, Journey, 38. 113 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 456. Ingemanson, Journey, 38. 114 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 459. Ingemanson, Journey, 43. 115 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 458–9. Ingemanson, Journey, 42. 116 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 459. Ingemanson, Journey, 44. 117 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 460. Ingemanson, Journey, 44. 118 Schönle, Authenticity and Fiction, 185–6. 119 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 460. Ingemanson, Journey, 45. 120 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 462. Ingemanson, Journey, 48. 121 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 449. Ingemanson, Journey, 24. 122 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 462. Ingemanson, Journey, 48. 123 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 462. Ingemanson, Journey, 48. 124 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 463. Ingemanson, Journey, 50–1. 125 In Lermontov, Sobranie sochineniia v chetyrekh tomakh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1981), 1:472. For a longer analysis of this poem, see Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, ‘Lermontov’s Farewell to Unwashed Russia: A Study in Narcissistic Rage,’ Slavic and East European Journal, 37, no. 3 (1993): 293–304. 126 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather (New York: Routledge, 1995), 26–7. 127 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 464. Ingemanson, Journey, 52–3. 128 Pushkin PSS, 8:1, 465, Ingemanson, Journey, 55. 129 Pushkin PSS, 8:1, 465, Ingemanson, Journey, 55. 130 Druzhnikov, Prisoner of Russia, 429. 131 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, p. 466, Ingemanson, Journey, 58. 132 K.V. Aivazian, ‘“Puteshestvie v Arzrum” Pushkina (Pushkin v Armenii),’ in Pushkin i literatura narodov Sovietskogo soiuza (Erevan, Armenia: Itdatel’stvo Erevanskogo universiteta, 1975), 371. 133 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 467, Ingemanson, Journey, 60. 134 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 468, Ingemanson, Journey, 61. 135 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 469. Ingemanson, Journey, 63. 136 Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 469–70. Ingemanson, Journey, 65.

Notes to pages 165–72 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

275

Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 470. Ingemanson, Journey, 66. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 471. Ingemanson, Journey, 68. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 472. Ingemanson, Journey, 69. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 473. Ingemanson, Journey, 72. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 475. Ingemanson, Journey, 76. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 476. Ingemanson, Journey, 77. Greenleaf, Pushkin and Romantic Fashion, 153. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 477. Ingemanson, Journey, 80. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 479. Ingemanson, Journey, 83. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 481. Ingemanson, Journey, 86–7. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 481. Ingemanson, Journey, 85. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 481, Ingemanson, Journey, 87. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 481. Ingemanson, Journey, 87. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 481. Ingemanson, Journey, 88. Ghose, Women Travellers in Colonial India, 47. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 482. Ingemanson, Journey, 88. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 482. Ingemanson, Journey, 89. Druzhnikov, Prisoner of Russia, 430. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 482, Ingemanson, Journey, 89. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 482. Ingemanson, Journey, 90. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 449. Ingemanson, Journey, 23. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 483. Ingemanson, Journey, 90. Pushkin, PSS, 8:1, 483. Ingemanson, Journey, 91.

4. The Future of Russia in the Mirror of the Caspian: Hybridity and Narodnost’ in Ammalat-bek and A Hero of Our Time 1 Aleksandr Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1958), 1:492. All references are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text. Translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. 2 See Jeffrey Brooks, ‘Nationalism and National Identity,’ in When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861–1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), as well as Gregory Freidin, ‘Romans into Italians,’ in Russian Culture in Transition, ed. Gregory Freidin (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 241–74. 3 Lewis Bagby, Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Russian Byronism (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 310. 4 Ibid., 311. 5 Robert Reid, Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time (Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical Press, 1997), 30.

276 Notes to pages 172–83 6 See Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992). 7 Lermontov, Sobranie sochineniia v chetyrekh tomakh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1981), 4:215. Subsequent references are to this edition and will appear parenthetically in the text. Translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. 8 Andrew Barratt and A.D.P. Briggs, A Wicked Irony: The Rhetoric of Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time (Bristol, UK: Bristol Classical Press, 1989), 14–15. 9 Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 403. 10 See, in particular, Vladimir Golstein’s chapter ‘Lermontov versus Marlinsky,’ in Golstein, Lermontov’s Narratives of Heroism (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 133–53, and Skvoz ‘umstvennye plotiny’: ocherki o knigakh i presse pushkinskoi pory, ed. V.E. Vatsuro and M.I. Gillelson (Moscow: Kniga, 1986). 11 V.A. Manuilov, V.E. Vatsuro, T.P. Golovanova, L.N. Nazarova, and I.S. Chistova. 12 Lermontov, Sobranie sochineniia v chetyrekh tomakh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1981), 4:466. 13 An abrek is a man who agrees to risk his life in battle as a way of obtaining salvation. 14 Lauren G. Leighton, Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1975), 111. 15 Ibid., 29. 16 L.N. Tolstoy, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1928–58), 6:11. Henceforth abbreviated as PSS. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. 17 See Leighton, Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, 112, and F.Z. Kanunova, Estetika russkoi romanticheskoi povesti (A.A. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii i romantikibelletristy 20–30–kh godov XIX v.) (Tomsk: Izdatel’stvo Tomskogo universiteta, 1973), 205–17. 18 Kanunova, Estetika russkoi romanticheskoi povesti, 243. 19 See Moshe Gammer, Muslim Reistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan, esp. chap. 21, ‘Shamil’s State’ (London: Frank Cass, 1994). 20 Tolstoy, PSS, 6:107. 21 Gammer, Muslim Reistance to the Tsar, 35 and 37, respectively. 22 Orest Somov, Selected Prose in Russian, ed. John Mersereau and George Harjan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1974), 173. 23 This phrase was apparently spoken by Ermolov himself, and it has been widely quoted. John Baddeley quotes him as saying, ‘I desire that the terror

Notes to pages 184–96

24 25

26 27

28 29 30 31

32

33 34 35 36

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of my name should guard our frontiers more potently than chains or fortresses, that my word should be for the natives a law more inevitable than death. Gentleness, in the eyes of Asiatics, is a sign of weakness, and out of pure humanity I am inexorably severe. One execution saves hundreds of Russians from destruction and thousands of Muslims from treason.’ John F. Baddeley, The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus (London: Longmans, 1908), 97. See Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). As noted by V. Vatsuro in ‘Lermontov i Marlinskii,’ in Tvorchestvo M. Iu. Lermontova: 150 let so dnia rozhdeniia 1814–1964, ed. U.R. Fokht (Moscow: Nauka, 1964), 341. Noted also by N. Mordovchenko in ‘Lermontov i russkaia kritika 40–x godov,’ Literaturnoe nasledstvo 43–4 (1941): 746. Belinskii quotation appears in PSS, 3:188. Vatsuro, ‘Lermontov i Marlinskii,’ 355. Boris Eikhenbaum, Lermontov: A Study in Literary-Historical Evaluation, trans. Ray Parrott and Harry Weber (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1981), 163–70. For a discussion of the role of landscape description in retarding the action of the enchained tales, see Cynthia Marsh, ‘Lermontov and the Romantic Tradition: The Function of Landscape in A Hero of Our Time,’ The Slavonic and East European Review 66 (1988): 37–40. Lidiia Ginzburg, Tvorcheskii put’ Lermontova (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1940), 171. Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time, trans. Paul Foote (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1987), 24. Aleksei Petrovich is Ermolov. Leonid Grossman, ‘Lermontov i kul’tury Vostoka,’ Literaturnoe nasledstvo 43–4 (1941): 715. See also a discussion by S. Durylin, who finds that Maksim Maksimych’s description echoes that of ‘Kavkazets.’ S. Durylin, Geroi nashego vremeni (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe uchebno-pedagogicheskoe izdatel’stvo Narkomprosa RSFSR, 1940), 110–19. For a discussion of ennui as Pechorin’s motivation for kidnapping Bela, see Paul M. Austin, ‘The Exotic Prisoner in Russian Romanticism,’ Russian Literature 16–18 (1 October 1984): 263–7. Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time, trans. Paul Foote (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1987), 24. See, for example, Durylin, ‘Geroi nashego vremeni,’ 158–9. Moskvitianin, no. 2, pt 1, 1841, 524. Cited by Durylin, ‘Geroi nashego vremeni,’ 118. Cited in and translated by Laurence Kelly, Lermontov: Tragedy in the Cauca-

278 Notes to pages 196–7 sus (London: Constable, 1977), 99. The original letter, in French, is cited in full by Emma Gershtein, Sud’ba Lermontova (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1964), 467–8. This section reads: ‘Le caractère du Capitaine est joliment ébauché, en commençant l’histoire j’espérais et me rejouissais que lui probablement était le héros de nos temps, car il y en a dans cette classe de bien [sic] plus véritables que ceux que l’on gratifié trop vulgairement de cette épithèthe. Le corps du Caucase en compte sûrement beaucoup – que l’on n’apprend que trop rarement à connaître; mais il paraît dans l’ouvrage comme un espoir non réalisé et M. Lermontoff n’a pas su suivre ce noble et si simple caractère, et remplace cet individu par des misérables et fort peu intéressants personnages qui s’ils ont ennuyé auraient mieux fait de rester ignorés pour ne pas provoquer le dégoût.’ 37 Kelly, Lermontov, 121. Gershtein, Sud’ba Lermontova, 468. ‘Bon voyage à Mr Lermontoff, il n’a qu’à purifier la tête [sic], si c’est possible, au milieu d’une sphère où il trouvera à achever son caractère de Capitaine si toutefois il est jamais capable de le saisir et de pouvoir le dépeindre.’ 38 See Kelly, Lermontov, and Gershtein, Sud’ba Lermontova. 39 That Pechorin is a diplomat or military attaché is nowhere explicitly stated. However, there are a number of clues in the text, such as Maksim Maksimych’s remark that the fine carriage might be that of an official on his way to conduct a hearing in Tiflis, that Pechorin is in a hurry, and that he seems to have become more important and is heading for Persia and beyond. Interpretive remarks on a Slavic discussion board by Professor Françoise Rosset of Wheaton College are indicative of this view. A questioner wrote in: ‘Does anybody have any guesses as to why a twenty-four year old officer (who had previously been in trouble with the authorities) would be heading to the kingdom of the Shah? (I mean, other than so that he can get killed off on his way back and have his journal published.)’ Rosset replied: Well, personally I think that last reason is the most compelling one. Historical reasons depend on when exactly the scene is set. After 1827, after a second war with Persia over the Caucasus, Russia and Persia essentially reached a modus vivendi, with Russia keeping all the territories it had taken from Persian control but not expanding much further (conquered Tabriz was even ‘given back’ to Persia to cement the deal). So, in the 1830s there must have been some regular diplomatic and/or military exchanges. In addition, around 1837-1838-1839, Russia was engaged in a volatile diplomatic dance involving the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, England, France, Prussia, etc., and Russia reportedly tried to get the new Shah of

Notes to pages 198–202

279

Persia to attack Afghanistan– a move against British interests. So, in the late 1830s, Persia was seen as an ally of Russia. Plenty of reasons for diplomatic/military ties and for P.’s trip. As to why Pechorin, who is young-ish and troublesome: he would not have to be a senior diplomat, just a military attaché of some sort. He obviously has high connections. And perhaps Persia was seen as a hot spot – the sort of place to which you send difficult officers. Someone out there must actually know the history of the area and could provide more exact reference points. This might serve as a start. But I still vote for the plot device, since much of the book is predicated on the publication of that journal. This exchange occurred on the Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures List on 22 Sept. 2003. http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgibin/ wa?A2=ind0309d&L=seelangs&D=1&P=1037. Accessed 9 Feb. 2006. 5. Tolstoy on the Margins 1 L.N. Tolstoy, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1928–58), 47:8–9 (July 1854). 2 First published in Russkii vestnik, No. 1, 1863. Tolstoy began writing it in 1852. 3 Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860–1865 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 223. 4 Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 240. 5 Ibid., 234–5. Layton cites Arnold Zisserman, Dvadsat’ piat’ let na Kavkaze, 2 vols. (St Petersburg: Tipografia A.S. Suvorina, 1879), 1:328–9. 6 Cf. Boris Eikhenbaum, Tolstoy in the Sixties, trans. Duffield White (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1982), 86–90. See also Viktor Shklovskii, Lev Tolstoy, trans. Olga Shartse (Moscow: Progress Publishing, 1978). 7 Cf. Boris Eikhenbaum, Tolstoi in the Sixties, trans. Duffield White (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1982), 86–7. Tolstoy, it should be noted, may have been prepared to abandon a continuation of The Cossacks in any event. 8 Boris Eikhenbaum, The Young Tolstoy, trans. Gary Kern (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1972), 92–3. 9 Carol Anschuetz, ‘The Young Tolstoy and Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality,’ Russian Review 39, no. 4 (October 1980): 405–6. See also Robert L. Jackson, ‘The Archetypal Journey: Aesthetic and Ethical Imperatives in the Art of Tolstoj: The Cossacks,’ Russian Literature 11 (1982): 389–410.

280 Notes to pages 202–14 10 Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, Lewis Bagby and Pavel Sigalov, ‘The Semiotics of Names and Naming in Tolstoj’s The Cossacks,’ Slavic and East European Journal 31, no. 4 (Winter 1987): 473–89, Andrew D. Kaufman, ‘Existential Quest and Artistic Possibility in Tolstoi’s The Cossacks,’ Slavonic and East European Review 83, no. 2 (April 2005): 208–33. 11 Donna Orwin: Tolstoy’s Art and Thought, 1847–1880 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 95. 12 Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, 248–9. 13 Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, ‘Conclusion: The Ambivalent Tolstoy,’ in The Cossack Hero in Russian Literature (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 91–6. 14 L.N. Tolstoy, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, hereafter to be referred to as PSS (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1928–58), 6:8. Subsequent references are to this edition and will appear parenthetically in the text. All translations by the author unless otherwise indicated. 15 See Svetlana Evdokimova, Pushkin’s Historical Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 77–80. 16 The translation in the second instance is from Louise and Aylmer Maude, Great Short Works of Tolstoy (New York: Harper Perennial, 1967), 125. 17 Trans. ibid., 95. Translation amended. 18 Layton finds this to be part of the parody. See Russian Literature and Empire, 244. 19 Bagby and Sigalov, ‘Semiotics of Names,’ in particular 485–6. 20 Thanks are due to Professor Gregory Freidin for elucidating this point. 21 Manuscript reader’s notes. 22 The Cossacks of reality and the Cossacks of literature were rather different. See Judith Kornblatt, ‘From History to Myth,’ in The Cossack Hero in Russian Literature. 23 Mariana says, ‘Nu, chto breshesh’,’ which has implications of lying. Clearly, she perceives Olenin’s offer as absurd and even false. 24 F.M. Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead, trans. David McDuff (London: Penguin Books, 1985), 191. Italics in the original. 25 A commonality pointed out to me by Gregory Freidin. 26 For commentary on this issue, see in particular Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, Bagby and Sigalov, ‘Semiotics of Names,’ and Kaufman, ‘Existential Quest.’ 27 Cf. Orwin, ‘Nature and Civilization in The Cossacks,’ 85–98. 28 Trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude, Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, 143. 29 Iu. M. Lotman, ‘Istoki ‘Tolstovskogo napravleniia’ v russkoi literature 1830–x godov,’ Uchenye zapiski Tartuskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta:

Notes to pages 215–26

30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38

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Trudy po russkoi i slavianskoi filologii, vol. 5 (Tartu, [Estonia (USSR)] Tartuskii gosudenstvennyi universitet, 1962). Pushkin’s Circassian girl is already parodied by him in ‘Puteshestvie v Arzrum.’ Eikhenbaum, The Young Tolstoy, 95. Robert Jackson, for example, says that the mountains are for Olenin ‘a dividing line between present and past experience; not only do they banish all his “trivial dreams,” but they have a purifying effect on him.’ All this is from Olenin’s point of view, not the narrator’s. Jackson, ‘The Archetypical Journey,’ 400. Kaufman, ‘Existential Quest,’ 220–1. Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, 243–4. Kaufman, ‘Existential Quest,’ 220. A.A. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1958), 1:471. Trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude, with minor changes and adaptations, from Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, 210. Lermontov, Sobranie sochineniia v chetyrekh tomakh (Leningrad: Nauka, 1981), 1:472. For a longer analysis of this poem, see Daniel RancourLaferriere, ‘Lermontov’s Farewell to Unwashed Russia: A Study in Narcissistic Rage,’ Slavic and East European Journal 37, no. 3 (1993): 293–304.

Conclusion 1 Tolstoy, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1928–58), 47:8–9 (July 1854). 2 Frazier, Romantic Encounters: Writers, Readers, and the ‘Library for Reading’ (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 166–7. 3 Anne Lounsbery, ‘Dostoevsky’s Provinces,’ paper given at American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies conference, Salt Lake City, November 2005. See also Lounsbery’s Thin Culture, High Art: Gogol, Hawthorne, and Authorship in Russia and America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

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Index

Alexander I, 7, 30, 132 Alexander the Great, 185 Armenia, 26, 125, 145, 160 Bela. See Lermontov, characters Belinskii, Vissarion, 11, 37, 70, 189, 196 Benkendorff, 146 Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Aleksandr, 21, 34, 51, 170–1, 173, 175–6, 181, 189– 90, 196, 197, 206, 219; Ammalat-bek, 14, 21, 170–89, 191, 208–9, 225–6; characters: Ammalat, 21, 70, 173–4, 176–7, 179, 182–8, 194–5, 197, 208– 9; Maria (fiancée of Verkhovskii), 171, 177–8, 181–5, 226; Verkhovskii, 170–4, 176–97, 219–20, 226 borders and borderlands, 4, 7, 9, 13, 16, 19, 24, 28, 41, 73, 124, 128, 171, 198–9, 205, 224; of Asia, 86–7; in ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ 50; and hybrid characters, 196; in ‘A Journey to Arzrum,’ 141, 145, 147, 152, 160–1; in ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ 130, 133–4; and writing, 147 Byron, 114, 119; ‘The Bride of Abydos,’ 81; Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,

16, 25, 41–2, 44–6, 49, 54–5, 58, 71, 95; ‘The Corsair,’ 41, 54, 64, 75, 80; ‘The Siege of Corinth,’ 75; Turkish tales, 41, 95 Catherine II, 76 centre and periphery, 7, 17, 35, 45, 105–9, 125, 141, 145, 147, 163, 174, 177–8, 198, 225–7 Chaadaev, Petr, 6, 220, 255n8 ‘civilizing mission,’ 13–14, 173–4, 188 conquest, 3; of the Caucasus region, 17, 29, 46, 61, 70–1, 98, 178, 186–8, 199, 213, 259n13; of Central Asia, 40; romantic/sexual love as metaphor for, 68, 110, 215 construction of south/Orient, 24–5, 35, 43–52, 73–82, 86, 91, 97, 103, 109, 141, 153–5, 158, 159, 161 Cossacks, 14, 19, 22, 136, 148, 163–5, 179, 181, 185, 198–223; The Cossacks, 198–223, 226, 227, 280n22 countryside/provinces, 116–19 Crimea, 9, 73–4, 76–7, 79–80, 84, 86–7, 90–1, 102–3, 112, 126, 128; as landscape, 82, 90–1, 102–3 Crimean War, 200

298 Index Custine, Marquis de, 4 Dagestan, 177–9, 187, 219 de Staël, Madame, 30, 36, 107 Decembrist uprising, 18, 83, 124, 148, 163 Decembrists, 18, 25; exile and, 124–5; imperial conquest and, 30, 69, 180; 52, 84, 109; in ‘A Journey to Arzrum,’ 146–8, 163, 180 Derzhavin, G.R., and ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ 16, 32, 53, 126, 130–1, 134, 138; ‘Ode to Count Zubov,’ 32, 142, 152; and periphery, 14 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 19; on peasants, 200, 211–12; on Pushkin, 39–40, 71 epistolary writing. See literacy Ermolov, A.P., as character in Ammalat-bek, 172–89; as character in A Hero of Our Time, 189–92; as historical figure, 18, 27–9, 33, 49, 69–70, 131, 145–7, 158, 175, 177–8, 191–2, 263n82, 276–7n23, 277n29; as successor to Peter the Great, 177, 185–92 exile, 3, 6, 17–21, 24–5, 35, 73, 80, 83– 4, 86, 100, 104–10, 112–14, 117, 120, 123, 125, 141, 144, 159, 175, 178, 187, 198, 202, 226 Georgia, 26, 28–9, 76–9, 125, 133, 145– 6, 149, 157–60 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 31, 36 Gogol, Nikolai, city as steppe, 6, geographical emptiness 6–7; on narodnost’ 37–40, 261n42, 261n44 Greek uprising, 25, 45, 105, 109, 114, 120. See also Ypsilantis, Alexander; Greeks

Greeks/Greece, 18, 26, 41–7, 50–1, 64, 70, 95, 109, 114, 120, 180. See also Greek uprising; Ypsilantis, Alexander Griboedov, Alexander, 123, 146, 160 history and history writing: Caucasus as part of Russian history, 27– 8, 44, 51, 73, 133, 145, 198; history and Romanticism, 45–6, 75, 84; Karamzin’s creation of history, 9– 13, 24; Pushkin’s following of Karamzin, 16–20, 25; Russian history like that of Greece and Rome, 51; Russia’s place in history/ ‘lack’ of history, 3–6, 9, 186. See also literacy homosexuality, 165, 195 homosociality and male friendship, 182–3, 184, 262n61 Horace, 114, 118, 119 hybridity, 21, 170, 173, 178. See also Lermontov, Maksim Maksimych; Bestuzhev, Verkhovskii ideology, 170, 174, 188, 190 imagined community, 21, 120, 123, 227 irony, 21, 70, 73, 155, 173 Islam and Muslims, 7, 27, 29, 44, 81, 85, 94, 103, 165, 171, 183, 192, 195, 200, 276–7n23 Karamzin, Nikolai, 9–14, 16, 18, 32, 44–6, 70; as arbiter of taste, 119; Mongols, 76; works: ‘Bednaia Liza,’ 45; History of the Russian State, 11– 14, 23–8, 51, 123; Letters of a Russian Traveller, 10, 108, 156, 160, 225 Kishinev, 113

Index Lermontov, Mikhail, 21, 61, 178, 189, 192, 196; characters: Bela, 21, 170, 172–4, 192–5, 197, 215, 226, 277n32; Maksim Maksymich, 21, 170–5, 178, 190–7, 226, 277n31, 278n39; Pechorin, 172–5, 189–97, 226, 277n32, 278n39; works: A Hero of Our Time, 170–5, 189–97, 226, 267n37; ‘Kavkazets,’ 175, 192, 277n31; ‘Proshchai, nemytaia Rossiia,’ 220; ‘Son,’ 178; ‘Spor,’ 192 literacy and writing, 12–13, 19; constructing the Caucasus/empire through writing, 107, 113–14, 147, 178, 198, 219; conventions of writing, 62, 121, 176, 201–2; letters/ epistolary linkages, 21, 107, 121, 170, 177–8, 193, 198–9, 226; literacy/illiteracy, 98, 159, 161–3, 177, 179, 182; written language, 120; written word 108, 162, 178–9, 191 Marlinism, 173, 176, 189 Mickiewicz, Adam, 5–6, 126 Mikhailovskoe, 113, 128 Milosz, Czeslaw, 5 Moldavia, 18, 124, 209 Moore, Thomas, Lalla Rookh, 75, 83, 264n5, 265–6n22 Murav’ev-Apostol, I.M., 75–7 muse, and Byron, 50, 95; in ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ 51, 70, 72; in Eugene Onegin, 109, 123–4; and Ovid, 107 Musin-Pushkin, Count, 148, 151 Napoleon, 3, 17, 24, 29, 31, 122, 179– 81 narodnost’, 31, 33, 35, 37–41, 61, 74–7

299

nationalism, 7–8, 16, 24–5, 27, 200, 226 Nicholas I, 7, 31; on Maksim Maksymich, 196 Odessa, 18, 103, 105, 113–14, 120, 124, 128 Onegin. See Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, characters Orient, Orientalism, 29–31, 36, 49, 61, 69–70, 75–7, 103, 156–7, 174, 178; Caucasus/south as Russia’s Orient, 86–7, 90, 108, 225; Edward Said’s Orientalism, 14, 61, 147, 178, 184, 188; Oriental journey, 21, 83, 85, 108, 125, 132, 142, 146, 148, 153–7, 178, 199; as maturation narrative, 199, 208, 216. See also Pushkin, ‘Onegin’s Journey’ and ‘A Journey to Arzrum,’ and Tolstoy, The Cossacks; Oriental landscape, 90, 151, 217 Oriental style, 24, 75, 77, 156, 167; Oriental woman, 64, 80–1, 146–7, 167, 265n13. See also individual works; Orientalism and sexuality, 164–7, 182; Russia as Oriental country, 10–14, 220, 255n2 Ottoman Empire. See Turkey Ovid, 109, 112, 114, 117, 119; ‘Tristia,’ 106, 112 Paskevich, I.F., Prince, 29, 146–7, 163– 5, 167–8 Peter the Great, 4, 10, 17, 132, 174, 177; as predecessor to Ermolov, 177, 185–92; role in Ammalat-bek, 185–92 Poland/Poles, 5, 9, 76–8, 80–1, 86–90, 103, 201

300 Index ‘Projét d’une Académie Asiatique.’ See Uvarov, S.S. Pugachev, Emel’ian, 205–6, 210, 215 Pushkin, Aleksandr, and Byron, 24–5, 41–57, 64, 70–1, 73, 75–6, 81, 85, 95; construction of Russia, 86–91, 97–8, 103; and Decembrism, 52; and exile, 25, 73, 105–6, 108–9, 114, 120, 123, 125; and Greek uprising, 25, 45, 105, 109, 114, 120; as imperial poet, 95, 98, 103 161; and Karamzin, 11, 25–7, 44; and narodnost’ (see narodnost’); as Orientalist, 167; and Ovid, 104–7, and periphery, 35, 106 (see also centre and periphery); political views of, 30, 132–3, 147, 160; and romanticism, 23–4, 32, 35; revisiting/revising earlier work, 131, 140–1, 144–5, 153–5 – works: Eugene Onegin, 108, 109–25; characters: Onegin, 109, 112–13, 124–9, 141–2, 145; Tatiana, 72, 109, 112, 118–24, 141, 142, 224, 225 ‘A Journey to Arzrum,’ 145–68, 225 ‘The Captain’s Daughter,’ 203–6 ‘The Captive of the Caucasus,’ 23– 8, 41–72, 213, 217–18; Circassian girl, 64, 72; reception of, 24–30, 32, 35 ‘The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,’ 73– 103, 125, 128, 178, 224–5, 264n5, 265–6n22; characters: Maria, 78– 81, 85, 89, 92, 94, 98–103, 265n12, 265n13, 265n14, 265–6n22; Zarema, 75, 78–81, 85, 92, 98– 103, 265n12, 265n13, 265n14, 265–6n22 ‘The Gypsies,’ 20, 103–7, 178, 214– 215, 224–5; characters; Zemfira,

106, 214–15; Aleko, 87, 104–6, 267n50; Mariula, 106 ‘Onegin’s Journey,’ 125–45, 225 ‘Ruslan and Liudmila,’ 44, 72, 224 ‘Tazit,’ 152 ‘To the Slanderers of Russia,’ 9 Radishchev, Aleksandr, 6, 132 Raevskii, A.N., 68, 150–1 Raevskii, N.N., General (elder), 46, 70 Raevskii, N.N., General (younger), 150–1, 155, 160, 163, 165–6 Raevskii family, 41, 46, 150, 155 Razin, Sten’ka, 126, 131–2, 210 readership, 14, 55, 72, 107, 118–21, 125; constructing readership, 120, 144 Romans/Rome, 17, 25–6, 51, 105–7, 108–9, 113, 117, 164, 178 Romanticism/Romantic: Bestuzhev and Romanticism, 173, 176; Romantic conventions, 176, 214– 16; Romantic hero, 24, 176, 267n50; Romantic style, 173, 176; Romanticism and nationalism, 27, 29, 35– 41, 74; Pushkin and Romanticism, 16–17, 23–4, 32–3, 35, 74, 77, 84, 119, 267n50; Tolstoy and Romanticism, 176, 201–3, 215–16, 220 Russia: centre/periphery, 7, 123, 163, 171, 178, 195, 224–7; citizenship, 158–9, 161, 210; construction of Russian imperial space, 131–2, 158; crossing border of, 141, 145–7, 155, 161, 171; as empire, 3–4, 7–8, 13–16, 20–36, 41, 72, 73–6, 98, 104, 106, 108, 123, 150; ideology of empire, 170, 173, 180–2, 185, 197; military representative of, 170, 197; narod-

Index nost’ and, 164, 170, 180–2, 210; vs. Roman Empire, 105, 181 Sa’di (Persian poet), 80, 82–6, 97, 103, 124–5, 144, 265n17, 265–6n22 Said, Edward, 14, 19, 61; and exile, 108, 258n52. See also Orient, Orientalism St Petersburg, as capital, 7; compared to Rome, 25, 105; as Oriental city, 4–6 Salon hostesses/salonières, 120, 124 Schlegel brothers, 30 skaz, 190 Somov, Orest, 33–5, 75, 98, 182 style indirect libre, 202, 204

301

The Cossacks, 19, 21, 176, 179, 185, 198–223, 226, 227, 279n7, 280n22; ‘A Man Reduced to the Ranks,’ 201; ‘The Raid,’ 201; ‘Trip to Mamakaiyurt,’ 208; ‘The Wood-felling,’ 201 Turgenev, A.I., 31, 70, 263n82 Turgenev, Ivan, 200 Turkey and Ottoman Empire, 4, 17, 41, 74, 76, 125, 145–6, 155, 158, 160, 163, 166, 200, 278–9n39 Uvarov, S.S., 30–1 Viazemskii, Prince, 30–2, 35–6, 69, 74–5, 77, 261n35 writing. See literacy, history

Tatiana. See Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, characters Terek, 22, 130–2, 136–8, 140, 153–5, 168, 198, 203, 270–1n48 Tolstoy, Lev, 14, 19, 21, 175–6, 179, 185, 189, 198–220, 227; characters: Levin (Anna Karenina), 207–8, 219– 20; Mariana, 185, 206, 211–15, 217– 18, 221–2, 280n23; Olenin, 179, 185, 198–9, 201–23, 280n23, 281n32; works: Childhood, 19, 198–9, 208;

Ypsilantis, Alexander, 17–18, 24–5, 109 Zisserman, Arnold, 175, 201 Zhukovskii, V.A., influence on ‘Kavkazskii plennik,’ 16, 33, 45, 53, 55, 126, 130–1, 134, 145; and narodnost’, 18, 32, 38–9; and periphery, 14; and ‘To Voeikov,’ 135, 251