Puškin Literature and Social Ideas 9780231888950

Citation preview

Puskin LITERATURE AND SOCIAL IDEAS

Puskin

Literature and Social Ideas

SAM DRIVER COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

N E W YORK

The Press acknowledges a ¡¡rant from Brawn University toward the cost of publishing this volume.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY NEW Y O R K

PRESS

OXFORD

Copyright © 1989 Columbia University Press All rights reserved L I B R A R Y OF C O N G R E S S C ATA LOG I NG - I Ν - Ρ U Β L I C A T I Ο Ν DATA

Driver, Sam N., 1929Puikin : literature and social ideas. bibliography: p. Includes index. ι. Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 1799-1S&—Political and social views. 2. Authors, Russian—19th century—Biography. I. Title. PGÌÌSS.SÓDTS 19S9

891.71'} S8-340Í7 ISBN 0-2)i-06&4i-4 Book design by Jennifer Dossin Printed in the United States of America Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are Smyth-sewn and printed on permanent and durable add-free paper

FOR CLAIRE

Contents

PREFACE

ix

I PUSKIN AND P O L I T I C S

I

II PUSKIN'S

ARISTOCRATISM

21

III POLITICS AND LITERATURE

$3

IV PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

77

V PELHAM AND P E T R O N I U S

103

CONCLUSION

119

NOTES

121

SELECTED INDEX

BIBLIOGRAPHY

137 141

Preface

world, the idea of the poet as alienated from society is a more unexceptionable one than the idea of the poet as an engaged social thinker or a practical political theorist. Although the conception of the poet as a higher being living on some higher plane of existence is as old as the history of literature, the years following the Romantic rebellion in the early nineteenth century tended to reinforce the image of a head-in-the-clouds garret dweller, estranged from everyday life and barely able to function in it. This idea would have seemed odd to PuSkin and his fellow poets in Russia as well as to their counterparts in the West; it was not until after Puäkin's death that poets came to be thought of in the popular mind as apolitical, if not as political ignoramuses. However otherworldly and sublime the poetry, European poets from the turn of the century at least into the 1830s showed no particular awareness of a barrier between themselves and the social realities of their day. Byron could speak easily in his diary of "the very poetry of politics" in referring to his hopes for "the grand object" of "a free Italy." 1 Shelley agreed with Byron that poetry and politics were interrelated; Shelley not only wrote political poems but complemented them with "readable" tracts, such as the Philosophical View of Reform.2 As we shall see, interest in politics and social issues was in some cases merely fad, affected for the sake of fashion among literary men as well as among their more frivolous contemporaries. Still, writers like Bulwer-Lytton and Disraeli put literature to the service of politics (and politics to the service of literature); they advanced their own political careers by writing fashIN T O D A Y ' S

χ

PREFACE

ionablc novels. In France, Chateaubriand and Stendhal had successful diplomatic careers; in Germany, Heine publicly took radical political stands; and in Russia, the very name of a whole group of poets is taken from the rebellion they helped to incite—PuS kin's friends, the "Decembrist poets." Indeed, in the period of our concern, it is not easy to find a major literary figure in England or on the Continent who was not, overtly or covertly, significantly involved in some way with politics. C. M. Bowra has some interesting general thoughts on the matter: Many people dislike the notion that poetry can have any connection with politics and think that, even if we extend politics to cover a whole range of public events, it stands in an awkward relation to poetry, that its incursions are usually unsuccessful and often deplorable, and that its influence defiles an otherwise pure art. Yet public themes have for centuries been common in many parts of the world and the conscious avoidance of them is more often the exception than the rule. . . . If much political verse is not worth the paper on which it is written, that is after all true of most verse on most subjects at most periods and does not discredit the small amount of authentic poetry which defies the corrosion of time. . . . Poets spoke consciously and conscientiously for a whole people or a whole class. What they said was marked and quoted and might even influence public opinion. If, in speaking as they did, they repressed something that was most personal in themselves, at least they represented a large mass of sentiment to which they gave shape and style.3 Bowra's point is well-taken: that what poets said "was marked and quoted and might even influence public opinion." Poets are not obliged to analyze, theorize, and provide—or even suggest—political remedies; they need only raise the questions and give them statement in their own way. This PuSkin did in a surprising number of works and especially in those written in the last decade of his life. Because of the autocracy, censorship, and the secret police, PuSkin o f course could not express directly any political views which diverged too markedly from the officiai ones. Non-literary works of the type called "publicistic" in Russian and which included political commentary had to be written with the censor in mind; literary works were scarcely less exempt, and Ρ uS kin's private correspondence with friends and even his wife was always subject to perlustration. A common

PREFACE

xi

solution to the problem was to disguise the political argument in a literary work, and PuSkin frequently made use of the possibility. Although the social message could not be hidden so deeply that the perceptive reader would miss it, it could not be so obvious as to raise objections on the part of the censor. With the passing of time, the loss of topicality, the changes in communicative conventions, and the like, social and political themes PuSkin could have expected his peers to perceive can seem today ambiguous or even opaque. A close scrutiny of PuSkin's works from this point of view is long overdue. Although the present study includes the development of Puikin's social ideas from the early Lycée period onward, its focus is on his mature political thought after about 1828. Central to his concern in this period was the fate of his own social class. This Western-leaning and most liberal segment of society Puükin liked to refer to as "the educated" or "the enlightened" nobility. Despite its reduced circumstances and relative powerlessness, he came eventually to see in its legal protection the political remedy for Russia's social ills. He also saw clearly the competition between his own class and the social group in some ways equivalent to the middle classes in Europe and America, a social group that included educated non-nobles and bureaucrats, the raznoiincy. Already challenging in the public press the nobility's position of intellectual leadership, these men were in a very few years to appropriate the social and political vanguard, much as the middle class in England had done in the first half of the nineteenth century. Presented in this schematic fashion, such a sociopolitical situation seems scarcely a likely focus for a poet's passionate concern or indeed subject matter that might be productive in his poetry and fiction. It is, however, the aim of this study to fix a historical perspective that will help to make sense of PuSkin's much misunderstood political and social ideas and in turn to give some idea of the effect of these ideas on the creation of a remarkable range of literary works. The first chapter offers a survey of the scholarship on the question of ΡuSkin's political ideas. This old-fashioned and, one must admit, perhaps tedious approach seems necessary in the present instance: my argument is so at odds with the prevailing views and the standard sources that a reasonably comprehensive review is appropriate. The second chapter deals with the importance of Pu3kin's aristocratic ethos to his political views, and the third with the reflection of those views in ΡuSkin's later literary works.

Xll

PREFACE

A separate chapter is devoted to dandyism: PuSkin's own, his dandy heroes, and the odd relationship among Russian dandyism, aristocratism, and politics. The final chapter treats two of Puákin's fragments in regard to this curious matrix of social phenomena. I hope that these chapters will give PuSkin his due as a serious social and political thinker. At the same time, I make no claim that his ideas were either an original or even a valuable contribution to the political thought of his age. They may indeed have been, but the importance of those ideas here is their productiveness in the literary works, and the dimension of understanding they provide for reading them. ι S H O U L D like to acknowledge an enormous debt to a number of people who have helped me in one or another stage in writing this book. First and foremost, my sincere gratitude and heartfelt thanks are due to Professors Caryl Emerson and Richard Gregg for their careful reading of the manuscript and for their invaluable suggestions for improving it. No less am I indebted to the editor, Ms. Jennifer Crewe, for her kind help throughout and also to my colleagues Professors Victor Terras and Tom Gleason for their encouragement at times when I needed it most. I am grateful also to Professor Stephanie Sandler whose reading of an earlier version resulted in certain changes in the final one. Most particularly, I would like to thank my colleague Professor Inna Chechelnitsky for her help, advice, information, and best of all, hours of conversation about PuSkin. I alone of course am responsible for any errors which may have persisted in the text despite all these good offices. Parts of the present work have appeared in earlier versions in the Slavic and East European Journal: "PuSkin and Politics," (Fall 1981), 25:1-2?; 'The Dandy in PuSkin" (Fall 1985), 29:243-257. The Pelham chapter appeared in a slightly different form m A Festschrift forAntonin Dostal, Byzantine Studies (1981,1984,1985), 8,11,12: 77-84. A Note on the Transliteration System used in this book is the international system used by the Slavic and East European Journal and other leading scholarly reviews in the field of Russian literature.

T H E TRANSLITERATION

Puskin LITERATURE AND SOCIAL

IDEAS

ι

Puskin and Politics

THERE HAS always been a peculiar reluctance among literary critics to consider PuSkin a serious political thinker or to see in his later oeuvre the workings of a mature political mind. Recently, scholars writing essentially historical and sociological essays about the poet and his time have taken a clear-eyed view of PuSkin's literary works at the various stages of his political evolution. 1 Their literary counterparts, however, seem for the most part to prefer thinking of Puäkin as a political light-weight, a kind of Onegin, a Romantic rebel with only the vaguest ideas of real politics, and too often as some uncomplicated Russian schoolboy version of the "singer of freedom." 2 Such conceptions of Pul kin are admittedly appealing, and it is not surprising that even critics of stature have fallen under their spell. Edmund Wilson, for example, suggests a comparison of PuSkin with Byron, Keats, Leopardi, and Poe, observing that it seemed impossible for such poets to survive in the great age of bourgeois ascendancy. "There was for the man of passion and imagination a basic maladjustment to society in which only the student of society—the social philosopher, the historian, the novelist—could find himself and learn to function." The British PuSkinist John Bayley brushes aside the appeal of such generalizations, noting tersely, not only that PuSkin's case was different from that of the other poets, but that "he was himself, also, in fact, a social philosopher, historian and novelist and seems to have fitted ver)' naturally into his age and society." 3 In the first issue of the Vremennik Puskinskoj Kommissii, (Periodical of the PuSkin Commission, 1936), A. N. Sebunin observed:

2

PUSKIN AND POLITICS A. S. Pui>kin's political views and to a certain extent the story of his relationship to the Decembrist movement still remain to be clarified. Without a general explanation of this question, however, there can be no precise understanding of the poet's work. There can scarcely be any doubt that Boris Godunov, Poltava, The Bronze Horseman, Dubrovskij, The Captain's Daughter, and the History of the Village of Gorjuxino are works which conceal constant and intense workings of the political mind. Nor can we be satisfied any longer with general remarks about Puikin's "liberalism" or "conservatism," any more than we can continue to accept the old division of the Alexandrine era into two parts, the liberal and reactionary or, indeed, to reduce the history of Nicholas' reign to a history of oppression by the censors or the activities of the gendarmerie. . . . The complex and multifaceted image of PuSkin, who so fully and profoundly reflected his age, requires detailed research.4

Sebunin gives an impressive list of sources in which the kind of study he suggests might be pursued, but the essence of his complaint still remains valid today; the challenge simply has not been taken up. Much more recently, another researcher notes the difficulty of understanding fully Puikin's later works, especially The Bronze Horseman, without reference to his historico-political views.5 There are a number of extra-academic reasons that may have discouraged direct discussion of Puskin's political thought. Such discussion, of course, was not possible during Puskin's mature years under the repressive regime or even just after his death. Later in the nineteenth century, when Russia's intellectual leadership passed to the essentially middle-class razrwcincy, it must have been difficult for the Positivist critics to understand the centrality of the aristocratic ethos to Puskin's political ideas, just as it was difficult to associate the "singer of freedom" with his political conservatism in the thirties. The tendency was to side-step the issue, or, as Annenkov does, to dismiss it as something less than serious. Speaking of the ferment in political thought just after the Napoleonic Wars, Annenkov writes: This curious time saw a reign of brilliant dilletantism in regard to all aspects of European life. The unusual and unexplainable fondness for ideas brought home after the wars abroad was the characteristic trait of the era. The ideas appeared to us then like

puSkin a n d politics

3

idols with a lost genealogy, but requiring unconditional subservience; [the dilletants] busied themselves with these ideas, and subservience to them hid the absence of education. Similarly, the attraction to politics during this epoch was also characterized by this same dilletantism.6 Following Annenkov's lead, Sipovskij observes that "if among the leaders there were a few energetic and consciously active persons, the mass following them was attracted to liberalism as to a fashion of the grand monde." Sipovskij argues that the young poet "playing at politics" (politikanstvujuicij junoïa-poèt) was not serious about the pursuit and cites the opinions, again referring to Annenkov, of PuSkin's contemporaries, who would not invite him into the secret societies.7 While there is some truth in what Annenkov and Sipovskij say, especially of Puskin in the first Petersburg period, it is, as we shall see, an injustice to PuSkin to imply that his political thinking at the time was litde more than a fashionable game. Probably more than any other single issue, the matter of PuSkin's not being admitted to the secret societies has cast doubts on the seriousness of ΡuSkin's politics not only in the years before 1825 but more confusingly in the mature period. By and large, literary criticism in the Soviet period accepts the assumptions of pre-Soviet scholars on the question. Standard sources (such as Tomasevskij) may give excellent summaries of PuSkin's aristocratic Weltanshauung, but typically fall short of relating it to the system of the coherent political thought PuSkin developed in the late 1820s and 1830s.8 Often, this whole question is confused with or subsumed under the theme of the poet and the "masses" (poèt i cern'), or in TomaSevskij's terms, "the Romantics' idea of the élu" (predstavlente romantika ob "izbrannyx ljudjax").9 Probably the most comprehensive Soviet treatment among the standard works of what one may call Puskin's "aristocratism" (using the word employed by Bulgarin and his ilk in the 1830s to denote the point of view of the aristocratic party: aristokratizm, also aristokratstvo) is "Klassovoe samosoznanie Puskina" ("PuSkin's Class-Consciousness," 1927).10 This essay is one of the few that makes the necessary connection between Puskin's aristocratism and his political views at least up until 1830, and in its progression up to that time it is an exemplary study in early Soviet research on Puskin. Blagoj proposes the "Boldino

4

puSkin and

politics

Autumn" of 1830 as a watershed. At this point, there comes one of those odd twists which seem to occur when Soviet critics deal with the subject of PuSkin's politics. Through the first eleven chapters of his eighteen-chapter study, the argument is well-taken, indeed admirable. Around chapter 12, however, Blagoj begins to introduce the idea that after the autumn at Boldino PuSkin began gradually to forsake his intense aristocratism of 1825-1830 (so convincingly described earlier by Blagoj himself), and to move gradually into the adoption of a middleclass world view in both art and politics. Blagoj's argument for such a shift on PuSkin's part flies in the face of common sense—and also of the sources; indeed, it flies in the face of Blagoj's own documentation in the preceding six chapters. It was, by the way, this highly idiosyncratic reading of the available materials that provided the original impetus for the present book, especially insofar as Blagoj's work is one of the few sources that confronts the matter directly. Essentially, Blagoj bases his idea that PuSkin wanted to become— and actively tried to become—middle class on some apparently documentale but actually very tenuous points. They may be summarized here briefly, with a note on the central objection to each: ι. PuS kin's love-hate relationship with Society, the svet, the grand monde, and his consequent desire to escape from this aristocratic milieu for a less troubled life on the estate. The point to be marked is that this ambivalence existed as part of PuSkin's make-up before 1830, indeed, all the way back to Lycée days, and had typically sparked the desire to escape, whether to exotic climes, to the peace of the country, or abroad. What it did not do in all these years was prompt PuSkin to abandon his class. 2. ΡuSkin's demeaning position at court. It is true that PuSkin suffered bitterly because of that position, the worst insult being his appointment as kamerjunker, but he weathered the insult without bolting from his class. Moreover, as the years wore on, PuSkin was gradually becoming court historiographer, following in the footsteps of the aging Ν. M. Karamzin, and this position at least was one of universal respect. 3. PuSkin's frequent reference to himself as middle class (meSianin). It is not difficult to see in reading the sources that this is the bitterest irony—not PuS kin's rejection of his nobility but his device for underscoring it. The idea might be roughly paraphrased: "If this is what the aristocracy is like nowadays, I'd be proud to be a mescanin."The game,

PUSKIN AND POLITICS

5

which in repetition becomes formulaic, is not to be taken at face value, even if we assume that the beleaguered PuSkin may well have often hankered after a simpler station in life. Certainly, whenever Ρu5kin's aristocratism came under attack, as in the polemical battles with the middle-class critics F. V. Bulgarin and N. A. Polevoj in the early 1830s, PuSkin did not hesitate to emphasize his stance as an aristocrat. Interesting in this regard is an amusing exchange between PuSkin and Prince Vjazemskij in 1825, concerning their friend Kondratij Ryleev, whose position in society was a more or less peripheral one. Ryleev was critical of aristocratic pretension and something of a leveller. Beneath his probably very sincere liberalism there was also perhaps a certain reserve of social resentment. Whatever the case, his famous line "Ja ne poèt, a graádanin" (I am not a poet but a citizen) pleased neither Baron Del'vig nor Prince Vjazemskij and certainly not PuSkin. Vjazemskij parodied Ryleev's formula in this way, "Ja ne poèt, a dvorjanin" (I am not a poet but a nobleman). A letter from PuSkin to Vjazemskij of August 10, 1825, says "the main delight [is your line] 'Ja ne poèt, a dvorjanin!' and it's even more delightful after the Dedication of'Vojnarovskij,' at which my Del'vig is laughably angry." 11 PuSkin, according to Vjazemskij's memoirs, had snapped, "If anyone writes poetry, then he should first of all be a poet, and if he wants to go around being a citizen [grazdanstvovaf], then [he should] write in prose." 12 In a letter to Ryleev, PuSkin wrote, "You are angry that I am vain of my 6oo-year-old nobility (N.B. My nobility is older than that)"; (3:218). 4. Finally, there is what Blagoj calls PuSkin's "resignation" (smirenie) to the complete decline of his class and presumably a recognition of the pointlessness of supporting it further. There is (as in all these points) some justification in support of such a view. There was a kind of smirenie between PuSkin's fierce aristocratism of the late 1820s and the more reasoned and tolerant one of the 1830s, but this process is better seen as concomitant to the working-out of PuSkin's maturer political ideas. It is true also, as Blagoj points out, that PuSkin moved away from his earlier idea of literature as a gentleman's pursuit, and through financial necessity recognized a certain kinship with commercial writers. His pride—along with his honesty and common sense— could not ultimately allow him to do otherwise. This is a far cry, however, from wanting to give up his heritage and to become middle class, however many problems would be thereby solved. Not only does

6

puSkin and

politics

such a view contradict the preponderance of evidence from the 1830s, it does violence to the complex but fully integrated personality of the poet as it developed in a measured fashion over the years, without any marked volte-faces or inexplicable changes. Especially illustrative is the sixteenth chapter of Blagoj's study, which begins: "Resignation," [smirenie, coming to terms with] the desire and attempt to count himself among the "tiers-état," to live a middleclass life [zazit' mescaninom] was the third step in the classconsciousness of PuSkin, characteristic of the last five-year period of the poet's life. However, to want to be counted among the new class and to be able to do it in fact are far from one and the same thing. . . . The "six-hundred-year" nobility of the poet was not so easy for him to cast aside.13 What follows through the remainder of the chapter is a careful documentation of how difficult it was for PuSkin to "throw o f f " his aristocratism. A fairer reading of the documents would suggest exactly the opposite: that whereas the poet had withdrawn from his earlier extreme aristocratism (just as he had withdrawn from his extreme Western liberalism of before 1822 in favor of a more moderate Russian solution for Russian problems), he had embarked on a reasoned aristocratism in the 1830s. To continue the survey of Soviet scholarship on the question of the relationship between PuSkin's class-conditioned attitudes and his politics before such studies were effectively outlawed during the Stalin years as "vulgar sociology," we have one other major source, P. N. Sakulin, who gives much more acceptable opinion. He describes PuSkin as "the poet par excellence of the noble class" and concludes: PuSkin's way of thinking and his creativity bear the mark of his class and his epoch. The poet himself felt and acknowledged his blood tie with a given historical milieu. He is not a newcomer who is by chance adapting himself to his environment, but the brilliant culmination of a long process in the history of the gentry culture and in the history of Russian literature.14 Of both the Blagoj and the Sakulin schools of thought, Gerald Mikkelson has this to say:

PUSKIN AND POLITICS

7

One may quarrel with some of the emphases and some of the conclusions offered in these essays by Sakulin and Blagoj. They left many questions unanswered, and their method tended to be rather one-sided. However, some important elements of truth were lost in the 1930's, when any consideration of the relevance of Ρu$kin's social background to his mode of thinking was not only abandoned, but scorned in the Soviet Union for at least twenty years. The Pokrovskij-Sakulin school was overthrown, and Blagoj recanted his earlier indulgences in the "vulgar sociologism" regarding PuSkin's thought and creativity. 15 Mikkelson's research shows that not until the middle to late 1950s did articles on the theme of PuSkin as nobleman or the aristocratism of his works begin to appear; neither theme, however, was central, and some of the works were published in provincial university centers and are not easily available. By 1971 Mikkelson had found only two Soviet articles that deal directly with the question. He continues: In the past +0 years of Soviet PuSkin scholarship, only Tarle (and to a lesser extent Mal'cev, Degterevskij and Usmatkina) has succeeded in print in examining PuSkin's art as though it were to some degree influenced by his aristocratic outlook. Considering the ideological suppositions of Marxist scholarship and the pedagogical function assigned to Pul kin's works in Soviet schools, one can easily understand why PuSkin has been referred to since 1930 not as a "poet par excellence of the gentry class" [genial'nyj poèt dvorjanskogo klassa], but rather as "the great Russian national poet" [velikij russkij nacional'nyj poet]. However, the attempt to democratize PuSkin has left some serious gaps in our understanding of the poet's thought. 16 The fact remains that research on PuSkin's politics is remarkably meagre. One of the most valuable sources scarcely even impinges on PuSkin and perhaps purposely avoids complicating very touchy matters by not including him. It is Ju. Lotman's essay on the Decembrists. The approach is through "cultural semiotics"—that is, "reading" the behavior of the Decembrists in their normal intercourse in everyday affairs to determine their underlying principles and motivations. In summary, what Lotman suggests is a kind of political double-think on the part of

8

puSkin and

politics

the Decembrists before 1825, when their self-interest as landed gentry, their professed liberalism as gentlemen, their universal aristocratism as opposed to autocratism, their flirtations with radicalism, their splintered views on monarchy, constitutional or otherwise, even a number of voices crying in the wilderness for democratism—all these matrices came together in the Decembrist movement and in Lotman's view eventually defeated it. Lotman's point is that the class determinants of the nobility often conflicted with the political interests of the Decembrists—and presumably also the other liberals of the day. He demonstrates that when this happened, the aristocratic ethos usually won out in terms of practical conduct. Very roughly, the Decembrists were made up of the nobility (and others sympathetic to their position); the nobility largely made up Society (the monde, svet, as separate from court circles on the one hand and parvenus on the other), so that not only was the social "code" prescriptive for its members, it was at the same time tantamount to and largely indistinguishable from what may be called the "platform" of the aristocratic party. Thus, when political initiatives came into conflict with the social code, the code prevailed; the sense of old virtues perceived as specifically noble ones (honor, example, noblesse oblige, and the like) was so strong that it hindered or vitiated common sense political initiatives. For this reason the espousal of liberal causes was probably not cynical lip service but an unconscious doublethink—at the expense of those causes. The conduct of the educated, Europeanized society of the epoch was essentially a dual one. In the sphere of ideas it accepted a culture which had grown out of the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment. The sphere of practical conduct, connected with habit, everyday life and the real conditions of the landowner economy, the real circumstances of service [to the crown], fell outside the area of "ideological" thinking, from the point of view of which [that sphere] "[it] was as though it did not exist." . . . It is precisely this plurality of conduct, this possibility of choice of styles of conduct depending on the situation, this duality which included the distinction between the practical and ideological, which characterized the progressive [peredovoj] man of the early nineteenth century. Lotman cites examples in which observing the social code actually harmed the Decembrist cause: it was more important to conduct oneself as a gentleman than to advance the position of the Decembrists.

PUSKIN AND POLITICS

9

Among the examples is that of Dmitrij Irinarxovii ZavaliSin, a twentyyear-old naval officer who in 1824 had just returned to Petersburg after sailing around the world.17 Furnished with a letter of recommendation to Arakfeev, then at the zenith of his power and certainly the most dangerous man at court, ZavaliSin refused to present it. The base-born Arak£eev did not misunderstand the slight and understood too well the political connection. He observed to Baten'kov (whom the Decembrists criticized for being on speaking terms with Arakieev): "So that's ZavaliSin! Well, listen to me, Gavrilo StepanoviC, he's got to be either the greatest snob [veliiajiijgordec], just like his father, or else a liberal." Lotman says it was characteristic that in Arakieev's mind a "snob" and a "liberal" would behave in exactly the same way. He goes on to observe: There is another curious thing: by his conduct, ZavaliSin unmasked himself before he had hardly time to step into the political arena. However, it never entered the minds of his Decembrist friends to blame him [for exposing his position], although they were no longer the fiery propagandists of the Sojuz blagodenstvija era, but were [now] conspirators, ready to take decisive measures. Moreover, if ZavaliSin had shown the ability to mask his position, if he had bent his knee to Arakfeev [even for the sake of the cause], then his conduct most probably would have been condemned, and he himself would have engendered mistrust.18 There is no doubt that the peculiar phenomenon that Lotman observes on the part of the Decembrists and Society in general was also operative in PuSkin, especially in the years of his strongest attraction to Western liberal thought, up to about 1822-1823. It may even have been ΡuSkin's recognition of the inherent contradiction that contributed to his growing estrangement from Decembrist programs at about that time—a matter to be discussed in chapter 2. In any case, Lotman's fresh perception of the era is important here for two reasons: it establishes the close, indeed inextricable, relationship between politics and Society at the time (that is, in main the noble class) and suggests a new perspective on PuSkin's aristocratism as a dominant factor in his political thinking. Although Lotman refers to Puskin in the course of his study, he wisely refrains from explaining PuSkin's own views in terms of the Decembrists'. When PuSkin's political ideas have been discussed at all, it is usually

IO

PUSKIN AND POLITICS

in some relation to a supposed Decembrist view; this approach is inevitably doomed to confusion since there seem to have been almost as many Decembrist 'Views" as Decembrists.19 Even the two issues on which the Decembrists should have been able to agree, the autocracy and serfdom, show a surprising range of opinion. One has the feeling that sometimes the objection to autocracy was pro forma, but among those passionately opposed to it, the remedy sought varied widely from limitation in powers in favor of the nobility, to a constitutional monarchy on the pattern of England's, to a republic, to violent revolution. Probably the English pattern was the most generally acceptable, but even this inference is doubtful in some degree sincc the extent of liberal posturing involved is difficult to assess. Similarly, the question of the Decembrists' stand on serfdom is unexpectedly complex. Although, as Anatole Mazour notes, "almost every member of the Decembrist society opposed serfdom,"20 such statements need the qualification Lotman's article offers. The key issue, among the more thoughtful liberals at least, was probably not so much emancipation but how it was to be effected: whether with full political rights, free land, a corvée of a certain number of years, or some combination of these. It is at least fair to say that whatever the degree of sincere opposition to serfdom among the Russian nobles who made up the backbone of the Decembrist movement, they were for the most part far from being levellers or democrats. In sum, to characterize Puskin's political views, as is usually done, by their relationship to a supposed Decembrist view is most troublesome and calls for more qualifications than most people would care to make. A more productive approach is to consider Puskin not so much as a near-Decembrist but as a member of the aristocratic party. There are problems here, too, but a vastly lesser number and only three major ones: a problem of terminology—the meaning of "aristocratic," especially in Puskin's usage; the problem of a "party," which did not exist as such in the modern political sense; and a serious article by PuSkin that inveighs against aristocratic privilege in the strongest terms. The question of terminology is more than ordinarily acute in this instance: in PuSkin's vocabulary the same word may be used in different ways, pejoratively or positively. "Aristocracy" (aristokratija) can mean the aristocracy of power, wealth, and privilege, the Ekaterinskie

puSkin and

politics

II

vel'mozi (the grandees of Catherine's time) and their heirs, the upper level of the sluziloe dvorjanstvo (the service nobility), and at worst court sycophants and minions of the Tsar. On the other hand, it can mean (more rarely) truly noble souls, those who are real aristocrats by ancient lineage, example, and conduct. Usually, however, the latter are referred to by PuSkin as dvorjane (nobles). The hereditary nobility, the ancient families of Russia and PuS kin's own class, were by this time (unless gone over to the autocrat) relatively powerless and increasingly impoverished. The term dvorjane is usually positive, except when PuSkin upbraids the class for allowing itself to be brought so low. A common theme is that the dvorjanstvo was descending into meicanstvo (middling orders, roughly petty bourgeois). Thus, in this sense, as we have already seen, dvorjanstvo is sometimes even ironically equated with meicanstvo. Puskin's bitter lines from Ezerskij, so often misread, reflect this equation: "I am a meslanin, as you know,/And in this sense a democrat" (5:99)· Mikkelson has straightened out and carefully defined the conditions of the Russian nobility. 21 The dvorjanstvo (in Ρ u5 kin's positive sense) was of increasingly less importance after Peter and Anna, and after Catherine it had neither wealth nor power. It was this class that formed the solid center of what is called here the aristocratic party; it was made up of the old, hereditary landed nobility. It also contained those in sympathy with that class, like Nikita Vsevolozskij, whose grandfather had made a fortune in coal in the Urals, or F. F. Vigel', whose father had risen in the service of the Tsar and who despite certain social resentments had aristocratic pretensions. Thus, the "party" was quite like the loose aristocratic party in England (as distinct from the more defined parliamentary parties). Like the English one, the Russian aristocratic party was scarcely even conscious of itself (except perhaps as "exclusive," the obscestvo or svet), but its aims were clear: assertion of its own privilege (which meant opposition to the autocracy) and self-protection (which meant exelusiveness vis-à-vis the lower orders). The more serious political thinkers of the class thought of it as a healthy counterpoise to the power of the autocrat, as Puskin eventually did. According to IvanovRazumnik (R. V. Ivanov): Puskin considered that the old, patrimonial, hereditary aristocracy— unconditionally hereditary, for l'hérédité de la haute noblesse

12

PUSKIN AND POLITICS est une guamntte de son indépendance—was a kind of constitutional guarantee, being a restraining influence on despotism.22

The third problem concerning PuSkin as a member of the aristocratic party involves an angry essay he wrote in 1822, which on the surface at least seems to run counter to the theses advanced here. PuSkin was in KiSinëv in 1822 when he reached his most radical, Western-oriented political development. Possibly, his situation—exile for nearly two years in the dusty Bessarabian military outpost—exacerbated his ardent nature and desire for precipitate change. In any case, it was here that he wrote the most extreme of his political statements, "Zametki po russkoj istorii XVIII veka" (Notes on Russian History of the Eighteenth Century). A cursory reading suggests admiration for Peter the Great, condemnation of the aristocracy and nobility, and insistence on emancipation of the serfs: "Our political freedom is inseparable from the freeing of the serfs; the hope for better things unites all classes against the common evil, and a firm, calm unity of spirit may quickly place us in the ranks of the enlightened peoples of Europe" (11:15). This is strong stuff, even for PuSkin, and implies a political alignment with the most radical democratic wing of the liberals of the time. Indeed, the "Notes" have been read by researchers as legitimating claims for an abrupt shift in PuS kin's thinking the following year. Even Mikkelson's otherwise meticulous and perceptive study accepts the general reading. A close reading shows that PuSkin's admiration for Peter the Great is offered as a contrast to the "roguery" of his successors (especially Anna and Catherine); the conclusion of the paragraph equates him with tyranny and inhuman despotism. PuSkin attacks the aristocracy [aristokratija] even more bitterly: The aristocracy, after Peter's death, plotted more than once to limit the autocracy. Fortunately, the wiliness of the emperors triumphed over the ambition of the grandees [vel'mozi], and the manner of rule remained untouched. This spared us a monstrous feudalism. (11:14) Here is the nub of the problem: odd words indeed for someone who is being presented as a member of the aristocratic party. It is precisely the words PuSkin uses that must be taken into consideration.

P U S K I N AND P O L I T I C S

13

He uses aristokratija here not in the sense of the judicially defined estate of the dvorjanstvo, but rather, as he often used it disparagingly, in the sense of the ranking aristocracy of men of power and wealth, not necessarily of old families. What PuSkin means here is the old condition of verxovnikt, officially abolished as a class under Anna. He makes his meaning clear by equating this class with vel'mozi—that is, the Princes Dolgorukij and their like. The "monstrous feudalism" he refers to is not a more or less independent rule by landholders with nominal fealty to some sovereign but an oligarchical rule by a few important families—surely a more demeaning thing to a nobleman than rule even by autocracy. PuSkin continues, making his distinction between the aristocracy and the nobility even clearer: This spared us a monstrous feudalism, and the existence of the common people [narod] was not divided off by some eternal line from the existence of the nobility. If the proud ambitions of the Dolgorukijs and their kind had been realized, then the owners of serfs, strong in their rights, would have opposed with all their strength or even completely destroyed the means of emancipating the serfs; they would have limited the number of nobles fdvorjane] and would have blocked the other classes' path to government positions and civil honors. (11:14—15) The line PuSkin takes here is not at all inconsistent with the thinking of a member of the "aristocratic party," understood to be the nobility [dvorjanstvo], even though PuSkin inveighs against the aristocracy [aristokratija], defined as the rich and powerful families with a sharp political eye on oligarchy. It is in the light of this understanding that Pu5 kin's next comments make sense: Nothing but a terrible upheaval could have destroyed the deeply-rooted slavery in Russia; now, however, our political freedom is inseparable from the freeing of the peasants. (11:15). Sentiments such as these are not unworthy of a nobleman [dvorjanin] and speak to PuSkin's later political development as a raisonneur for the aristocratic party. The point is that far from representing an anti-aristocratic extreme in PuSkin's thinking, the "Notes" are a demonstration of his essentially aristocratic stance precisely in those years when his political ideas in regard to the autocracy reached their most

14

PUSKIN AND POLITICS

radical stage. PuSkin is not just talking about émancipation but of "our" freedom—(the nobility's)—as consonant with that development. The "Notes" also explain why, from that time onward, his concern for the welfare of the serfs became increasingly tied to the welfare of the nobility (in whose legal protection he came to see a viable and humanitarian means of emancipation).

ESSENTIALLY, THEN, PuSkin's point of view at his most liberal stage is not incompatible with that of a Russian nobleman; if his language had been more temperate, the ideas would likely have found agreement among the politically minded of his class (and they were the larger proportion, given the fact that in the post-Napoleonic era politics was, if not a serious pursuit, then at least a social fashion). Ρ uà kin's article—and the widely different understandings of it— points to the need for some definition of terms for the purposes of this book and especially the next chapter. Unless otherwise indicated, "aristocracy" and "aristocratic" will be used not in the narrower and sometimes contradictory senses in which PuSkin often used them but as pertaining broadly to that level of society between the crown and the third estate. Included in this class are the nobles [dvorjane] of ancient lineage and hereditary landowners; the "made" aristocrats, the sluziloe dvorjanstvo, and court society; and the "higher circles," including foreigners granted patents of nobility and nobles from the lands acquired during the imperial expansion (the Baltic States in particular, Little Russia, and so on)—in a word, Society, the svet. The terms will not be used in a pejorative sense but to suggest those positive traits that were traditionally ascribed to aristocracy (whether righdy or wrongly is not at issue here). "Noble," "nobleman," and "nobility" will be used to refer to PuSkin's own class in general and specifically to the larger part of the class that, as a result of Peter's reforms and the "roguery" [plutovstvo] of the empresses, suffered reduction in station and increasingly diminished landholdings (in ΡuSkin's formula, the obednevsee dvorjanstvo). Obviously, some members of the nobility were far from being relatively "poor," and, insofar as some held influential positions at court and in the military and civil service, they were far from being powerless, but their number was minuscule by comparison. Thus, "nobility" [dvorjanstvo] will refer as closely as possible to

PUSKIN AND POLITICS

15

Puikin's notion of it. The general condition of the aristocracy included the nobility, but "nobility" does not include within its meaning either "oligarchical" (old families with power, great lands, and close ties to the Tsar) or the "new aristocracy" (families with new power and wealth, patents created no earlier than Peter and Catherine, and again close ties to the Tsar). There is a further problem in the terminology of class. Since chapters 2 and 4 depend heavily on a comparison between English Regency society and society in Russia, there are difficulties with the idea of the "middle class." Properly speaking, at the time of our concern here there was no real middle class in Russia, in the sense of the English middle class at least. Russia's rich merchants formed a unique institution within the class structure. The Moskovskie kupcy and their like had their own peculiar ambience and culture; they tended to close in upon themselves and were politically conservative—if political at all—traditional, and backward-looking. While they played an important role in the economy, they kept for the most part on the sidelines of social and political developments. Few strove for upward mobility outside their own enclaves, unlike the French and English middle class, whose striving became such a fertile theme in literature of a slightly later period in the nineteenth century. Similarly, there were in Russia as yet still few "bearded millionaires," no Wedgwoods ("clay-daubers," Regency society called them), and no "giants of industry," as we would call them today (called then "ironmongers" and "cloth-spinners.") A good portion of lighter industry was part of the economy of noble estates, and gendemen interested themselves in their profitability. In Russia, where the English prejudice against being "in trade" was not nearly so developed, this interest was thought to be not at all eccentric. PuSkin himself later acquired through his wife's dowry a share in Polotnjanyj zavod, a village that took its name from its flax mill; he welcomed the extra bit of income it provided. The point is that for social and other reasons an industrial bourgeoisie and an haute bourgeoisie did not develop in numbers large enough to be called a class. There was, however, a fairly close equivalent of the petty bourgeoisie, the mescanstvo—artisans, craftsmen, shopkeepers, and the like. PuSkin's later frequent suggestion that the nobility had descended into mescanstvo does not indicate, as some have maintained, a democratization of his attitudes; no more should it be interpreted to mean that the

ι6

Ρ υ δ Κ Ι Ν AND POLITICS

nobility has lost its noble nature and adopted petty bourgeois attitudes. He meant merely that through the loss of power and wealth the impoverished nobility was often no better off than the mescanstvo and that in this situation aristocratic pretensions were ridiculous. To complicate matters, there grew up in PuSkin's lifetime a peculiarly Russian class, drawn largely from the ranks of the enormous Imperial Civil Service. In some respects this class played the role of the middle class in the West: it paralleled the rise of the middle class in England to positions of power and political leadership, displacing the landed nobility. After Pul kin's time and through the rest of the century it was this class that assumed the position of social and political leadership. Its members were called raznoiincy, and they came to represent the intellectual, progressive, and politically reformist segment of Russian society. Such positive associations with the raznoiincy, however, developed for the most part after Puskin's lifetime. Essentially, the officials in question came from the lower classes, schooled enough to function as civil servants but neither particularly well-educated nor cultivated in taste. Because of the odd Russian requirement of service (military or civil) on the part of the nobility, these civil servants were automatically placed in competition with the nobles—a competition in which they were not always at a disadvantage. While the social code assumed a pro forma, desultory performance on the part of the noble, the men "of various ranks" recognized that their preferment and advancement would come through assiduousness and loyalty to the bureaucracy and ultimately to the autocracy. Whatever their role later in the century, they were perceived by Puskin's class as something other than gendemen, as something closer to toadies, or worse. The presumption of these men became more than just a thorn in the side of the nobleman PuSkin; eventually, it led him to public acrimony. The bitterness of the journalistic battles in PuSkin's time was not due merely to aristocratic horror of the "nobodies" nor to social resentment of the aristocrats on the part of the "nobodies"; underlying it all was a "class struggle"—not the Marxist cliche, but a very real and deeply-felt one. Puskin's own aristocratic Sovremennik (The Contemporary) was a conscious attempt to counter the plebeian journals and is an excellent case in point. The Russian nobility, gradually weakened by law since the time of the Ivans, was by PuSkin's time in a perilous condition. They owed medieval fealty to the Tsar, yet they had to compete with

PUSKIN AND POLITICS

17

the "service nobility," who were obligated to the autocracy for their wealth and prestige. Moreover, pressing impatiently from below were the bureaucrats, who like the "service nobility" owed everything to the autocratic system. The only counter-balance to the autocracy in these years was the nobility, but in its weakened—most would say decadent —state it did not have anything like the force of the hereditary landowning class in England (which could more properly be called decadent, since it was still in a position of power but did litde to preserve its own advantage). The sad story of PuS kin's Contemporary, chronicled admirably in André Meynieux's biography,23 is illustrative. Both it and Baron Anton Del'vig's earlier Literaturnaja gazeta (Literary Gazette) had been doomed from the start by a concatenation of the Tsar and the imperial censors, the Third Section (the political police headed by Α. X. Benkendorf, to whom PuSkin was personally responsible), and the new anti-aristocratic, middle-class journalists. F. V. Bulgarin, a tool of the Third Section, attacked PuSkin viciously in his Severnaja píela (Northern Bee; N. A. Polevoj, of Moskovskij telegraf (Moscow Telegraph), openly propagandized for the new middle class at the expense of aristocratic writers, using "every pretext to show the enormous role of the middle class in the development of literature."24 From 1828 on, his journal began to reflect the interests of the bourgeoisie and preached education for the merchant class (even Benkendorf objected to that dangerous idea, but Polevoj won his point on the grounds of "practical public usefulness").25 Polevoj became increasingly audacious and took a more and more accusatory position toward the aristocrats, with whom he broke completely (Prince Vjazemskij had been a partner in the early days of the Telegraph). Polevoj's grandfather had been a blacksmith and his father a self-taught merchant, and Polevoj was not ashamed of his origins. "I am a merchant myself, and am proud to belong to that honorable corporation which, ceding place to others perhaps in matters of education, of course cedes place to no one in its desire to labor for the good of the fatherland."26 Attacks against the nobility become the rule, and when Bulgarin managed the neutrality and then the alliance of Polevoj through flattery and machinations, he was in a position to throw oil on the polemical fires and to foster the distrust of the police with his writings. The Telegraph, having attacked the aristocracy as a social class, began after 1830 to attack the aristocrats individually and their literature as a social poison and a useless luxury.

ι8

Ρ υ δ Κ Ι Ν AND POLITICS

A letter quoted by Meynieux gives some idea of the aristocratic view of the middle-class journals. It is from Α. V. Venevitinov (the poet's father) to S. P. Sevyrev, dated 26 April 1830: . . . if the noise made by our literary usurpers has reached you, you surely know that Bulgarin and Polevoj are audaciously drawing up their lines against our leading literary men, and no longer attack them just in passing, but directly, and with the greatest effrontery. This is what we have come to! However stupid and pitiful these people are, they nevertheless have completely stopped any forward movement in our lazy literary world, because they have their party supported by all those who don't know how to tie a cravat comme il faut. 27 When Puskin's Literary Gazette appeared, the Telegraph attacked PuSkin and his associates; in one parody, PuSkin was identified with a monkey. His episde to Prince Jusupov was denounced as a piece of fawning flattery. Bulgarin was even worse; his attacks exceeded all measure, until finally the tsar was offended (even though he was still displeased with Puskin's trip to Arzerum). He wrote to Benkendorf: "I forgot to tell you, dear friend, that in today's number of the Bee there is once more a very unjust and trivial article directed against PuSkin; this article, to be sure, will have consequences; this is why I propose that you call Bulgarin in and forbid him henceforth to print any criticism whatever of literary works, and, if it's possible, forbid his journal altogether." 28 This should have been an end to Bulgarin and the Northern Bee, but Benkendorf and his clique held tightly onto their agent and rose en masse to defend him. Benkendorf's answer to the Tsar's note was as scurrilous as Bulgarin's attack and included a hidden accusation against Puskin. In his response to Bulgarin, Puskin made clear in print that Bulgarin was no less than a police spy and agent provocateur. The fray continued. Finally, Benkendorf got his way; on the flimsiest pretext, the censors ordered suspension of the Literary Gazette in 1831, while the Northern Bee continued successfully under the protection of the secret police. The complex battle of the journals was waged on several levels. On the literary level Puskin had always hoped—and continued to hope— to set Russian letters on a course much superior to the contemporary one, especially as represented by the Bee and Telegraph. On the political

PUSKIN AND POLITICS

19

level his Literary Gazette did not conceal the aristocratic origins of its editors and contributors nor, insofar as possible, its aristocratic stance. There was no question of its opposition to the social initiatives suggested by Polevoj and his kind; this fact in itself had political ramifications within the bureaucracy and the Third Section and in this sense touched indirecdy the very seat of power. Third, and of special interest, is what the journalistic battle meant to PuSkin in the realm of everyday life. There is an object lesson here on the plight of the nobility in general, sadly reflected in the sympathetic but ineffectual protest of Venevitinov's father. Pui>kin's financial troubles, always acute, became even more so after his marriage, especially since it was necessary to maintain his household suitably as a member of the court. The Tsar would not release him, but his patronage was niggardly, amounting on one desperate plea from PuSkin to less than one-third of PuS kin's accumulated debt. There was nothing for PuSkin to do but abandon the attractive view of literature as a pastime for gendemen and to go into journalism for the sake of income. The idea was not one he easily accepted, but necessity resigned him to it. (There is no reason to suppose, as Blagoj does, that this resignation was accompanied by an active desire to become middle class, a thing unthinkable particularly in these years of heated polemics with Polevoj and Bulgarin. There are, to be sure, some face-saving moues of a proud gendeman, buy they seem to be in the nature of a sigh—if it must be done, then it must be done.) Objectively, by the 1830s PuSkin's personal situation was intolerable. He was convinced by his readings in Russian history of the nearly hopeless condition of his class. The batde of the journals made it abundandy clear that the rising middle orders would not permit him to engage even on the level of journalism. Behind Bulgarin stood Bcnkendorf, and Benkendorf was addressed by Nicholas I as "cher ami," even while the Emperor was ordering him to stop Bulgarin's attacks on PuSkin. Required by the Emperor to remain at court and keep up a life of some state, PuSkin was forced into ever-increasing debt; his attempt, born out of desperation, to join the ranks of the journalists was frustrated by their anti-aristocratic prejudices, leading to public attacks of the most libellous sort, which were encouraged by the police. The bureaucracy, especially in the form of the imperial censorship, dealt the death-blow to his journal. Thus, the conditions of society that pressed

20

PUSKIN AND POLITICS

Puikin's class from above and below, the Emperor, the civil service, and the new, rising middle class, left him à buis clos. It is no surprising that in the early thirties, while he shed the former aristocratic hauteur (which he had used as a social foil), PuSkin confirmed his belief in the noble class as a crucial element in the national welfare and eventually saw the remedy for Russia's socioeconomic woes in the program called ograzdenie dvorjanstva—that is, the protection by law of the nobility.

π

Puskin's Aristocratism

f r o m h i s earliest years Pul kin was exposed to the attitudes of the nobility. His parents and uncle were proud of their ancient lineage, and if they were more interested in the advantage it gave them in the fashionable world than in its significance for the society as a whole, the underlying political and social assumptions of the class, though tacit, were pervasive. Like his elders—and like Byron—PuSkin took a lifelong pride in his ancestors. He once observed: "They say that Byron prized his genealogy more than his works of art; a quite understandable sentiment" (7:317). In 1835 PuSkin began a genealogy of Byron's family (11:275); in 1830 (the first year of the Literary Gazette) he undertook to write his own (12:310). On his father's side PuSkin traces his ancestry back to the thirteenth century, to a certain Prussian nobleman, Rad£a (or Raía), who came to Russia in the reign of Aleksandr Nevskij (1220-1263). The family, if its claims are correct, is thus one of the oldest among those recorded in Europe; the Musins, Mjatlevs, Buturlins, and other notable families are also descended from RadSa. 1 The family claim was made in 1686; the first mention of the surname was in the seventh generation (koleno) from Radia, a certain Grigorij PuSka.2 From this Gregory PuSkin, who lived at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century, the line descended. PuSkin began his serious historical research in the late twenties and admitted his pride in finding members of his family (though not in the direct line) in Karamzin's monumental Istorija rossijskqgo ßosudarstva

22

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

(History of the Russian State). Puskin wrote in the "Nacalo avtobiografii" (Beginning of an Autobiography) that "Grigorij Gavrilovic PuSkin belongs to the number of the most remarkable individuals in the time of the Pretenders." During the interregnum another Puskin commanded his own troops, and four Puskins were among the nobles who signed the charter electing the Romanovs to the throne (12:310). In the eighteenth century the Puskins were in and out of favor at court but were financially comfortable (PuSkin's great-grandfather had at least six estates in various parts of Russia). In the maternal line the brother of PuSkin's great-grandfather was the grandfather of PuSkin's grandmother, Mar'ja Alekseevna, so that both lines go back to the same progenitor (Pctr Pctrovic PuSkin, ob. 1692). Mar'ja Alekseevna Puskina married Osip Abramovic Cannibal— that is, "the son of the blackamoor of Peter the Great"; it was their daughter, Nadezda Osipovna, who was PuSkin's mother.3 Information on Abram Petrovié's background depends largely on his own claims and family legend, neither of which is verifiable. He may or may not have been an Abyssinian prince; all that we know for sure is that he was an African taken aboard a slave ship and sold at Constantinople, whence he was brought back as a blackamoor to Peter's court by the Russian ambassador to the Sultan. Peter took a strong liking to the boy, and christened him at Vil'no in 1707. (The name Gannibal was a later accretion; for years, he signed himself simply Abram Petrov). In 1716 Peter sent him to Paris to study military science and on his return made him a gunnery officer in his own Preobrazenskij regiment. Abram Petrovic also taught mathematics to young noblemen, including the heir to the throne (Peter II). Fearing his influence, Men'sikov had him sent on distant assignments in Siberia —in effect, exile. He fared well under Empress Anna (acceded 1730) and even better under Elizabeth, during whose reign he was made commander in chief at Revel'. He distinguished himself as a military engineer and was promoted to general and later to general in chief. Puskin's family—on both sides—was characterized by periods of distinguished service to the state and in private life by domestic disharmony and a series of scandals, infidelities, and divorces. In the generation preceding PuSkin, his uncle Vasilij L'vovid divorced his first wife and remarried; PuSkin parents' marriage, however, lasted. PuSkin's parents are probably depicted as more lightminded and

P U S K I N ' S ARISTOCRATISM

23

frivolous than they were, but whatever the case, it is difficult not to feel a certain resentment toward them for his sake. PuSkin's mother played favorites among her children, all of whom, however, took a back seat to her social pretensions. She seems also to have been somewhat of a hysteric. PuSkin's father also felt that keeping up with society took priority; he refused to undertake the expense of outfitting PuSkin for the Guards, and later, at the time of the Mixailovskoe exile, he was more concerned about the effect of the scandal on his position than for his son. Uncle Vasilij's relationship to his nephew was vasdy more pleasant; although he too had no doubts about the importance of society, he was witty and clever and had some considerable literary talent. If he played at being a "fashionable" of the time and sometimes was not above a little buffoonery for the sake of social advantage, he was a good friend to PuSkin. As a member of literary societies and gentlemen's eating clubs, he arranged contact with major literary figures even before the Lycée and certainly after it. For the purpose here the important thing to note is the role of society, the svet, in the lives of PuSkin's elders. Society was at least aristocratic in attitude if not always in fact, and the genealogies, while scarcely a matter of pride in terms of behavior inside the family, were indeed a matter of pride in terms of civil accomplishment in the Gannibal line as well as the more ancient PuSkin line. In establishing their position in society, the elder PuSkins had every reason to make use of their noble lineage, and PuSkin himself used it in much the same way even after he was mature enough to question his parents' assumptions about the svet in general. Such a measure of maturity is doubtful in the PuSkin of the preLycée years (he was only eleven when he entered). He went to the Lycée at the age when peers are most important, and the attitudes of his schoolmates were those of the old aristocratic families; genealogies, as a matter of fact, were required as part of the admissions papers.4 The school had been set up in a wing of Catherine's summer palace at Tsarskoe Selo and was modeled on the aristocratic schools of England. The idea originally was that the Tsar's sons would be educated after the English pattern in a "public" school rather than by tutors, as had been the practice. Speranskij's good idea failed when he fell into disfavor,5 and the imperial sons did not attend the school. It had, however, been launched, and PuSkin was entered in the first class. Although, as André Meynieux points out, the tone of the lycée was

24

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

aristocratic and elitist, it was remarkably liberal in fact 6 —that is, o f course, for Russia at the time. One of the staff was David Ivanovii de Budri, incognito the brother o f Marat. The liberality o f opinion, however, was primarily conditioned by the opposition of the aristocracy (here in the sense o f old families) to the autocracy and its creature, the "service nobility." If Jacobin ideas inevitably popped up, it was Girondist ideas that were more to the point in this careful gathering o f scions o f old noble houses. Meynieux says: L'entreé au Lycée aura des conséquences incalculables pour la carrière de notre auteur. Non parce que le choix qui s'est porté sur lui est le résultat d'un concours difficile (la naissance a joué un plus grand rôle que le mérite, et il n'y eût, après tout, que huit refusés sur un plus de trente candidats, soit à peine un quart), mais parce qu'il a lié des amitiés précieuses, irremplaçables, parce que c'est le Lycée, le premier, le seul et qu'il est le point de mire à la fois d'une sorte d'intelligentsia, limité à la noblesse et de ce qu'on appelle en Angleterre la gentry. 7 For all the liberality o f the period, the consciousness of their class among the young scions o f old noble houses is evident in the memoir literature. T o some extent, they were probably still reflecting the attitudes o f their own families, but it is likely also that this sense was heightened simply by their physical proximity to the court and the imperial family. One of the most interesting sources in this regard is I. I. PuS£in, one o f PuSkin's closest friends at the Lycée (they had adjacent rooms in the dormitory). PuScin does not connect the change in plans for the school with Speransky's fall; rather, with some resentment he blames the hauteur of the Empress (unwarranted in the eyes of sons of nobility older than the Romanovs) : "Alexander . . . intended to educate with us his brothers, Grand Dukes Nikolaj and Mixail, who were almost our peers in age: but the Empress Marija Fedorovna opposed this, finding too democratic and improper the bringing together of her sons, Imperial personages, with us, plebeians." 8 The Lycée was not exactly in awe o f the court as the years passed on nor overly impressed with its doings; the very proximity bred if not contempt at least the rather intolerant criticism of adolescents for the older generation, regardless o f rank. PuSéin gives one version of the famous story about PuSkin's imbroglio with one o f the ladies-in-waiting to the

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

25

Empress. In question was the sexually precocious youth's advances to someone he thought the very pretty maidservant of the lady-in-waiting —and in some versions to the lady herself. In whatever version of the story the lady in question complained to the Emperor, and the Emperor had to do something. The headmaster Engel'gardt, whom Pulkin so disliked, learned of the incident and made his own representation in PuSkin's favor to Alexander.9 The Emperor whispered: "Let him write [the note of apology PuSkin intended to send the lady-in-waiting] but tell him it's the last time. La vieille est peut-être enchantée de la méprise du jeune homme, entre nous soit dit." 1 0 But he also said, "What is to become of this? Your pupils not only swipe my apples through the fence and beat up on the watchmen of my [head] gardener Ljamin . . . ; now they won't even allow passage to my wife's ladies-in-waiting. " The Emperor seemed to take the whole matter lighdy enough, but there are disturbing undertones which suggest that he was quite aware of the attitudes of the sons of the nobility toward himself and the court. Following the mention of the thrashing of the gardener's watchmen, he added a parenthetical statement—"(indeed, there was such an incident, with Count Sylvester Broglio in the fore . . . ) " n — a statement indicating that he associated the schoolboy pranksters with incipient revolutionaries. Count Broglio (b. 1799) was among the first graduating class of the lycée, after which he went to Italy and took part in the revolutionary movement in the Piedmont, was tried, and exiled from his homeland. It is clear along what lines the Emperor's mind was running; indeed, he would have had to have been incredibly naive if he expected undivided loyalty from the noble families. The PuS£ins traced their line back to that same Radia, progenitor of the PuSkins. They had given distinguished service but were by this time hardpressed for money; Puscin himself later joined the secret societies and became a Decembrist. Puscin's pride of class shows clearly in another regard. The Emperor wanted the headmaster to have the lycée students act as pages (kanurpazi) to the Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna during her summer stay at Tsarskoe Selo; Puscin was horrified at what he called an "attack" on the students and at the intolerable indignity of a "lackey's duties" (lakejskaja dolznost')u The noble young students were not especially awed by the court (and the court, it must be said, was not exactly delighted with them, calling them as a group, Puscin notes, "l'inévitable lycée").

26

puSkin's a r i s t o c r a t i s m

Most revealing of aristocratic attitudes is the one strong criticism Pu$£in makes of PuSkin in his otherwise highly favorable memoirs. After speaking well of PuSkin's liberal tendencies and describing his concern over the freedom PuSkin allowed himself in politically dangerous quips, PuScin goes on to say: Meanwhile, it was that very same PuSkin, so liberal in his views, who had a regrettable habit of betraying his noble nature — a n d angering me and the rest of us—by bustling about in the parterre near Orlov, CemySev, Kiselëv and the others: they would listen to his jokes and witticisms with a patronizing smile. It happened that if [one of them] made a sign from their fauteuils, he would run right up. We used to say: "Why, dear friend, do you want to run with that lot? In not one of them will you find sympathetic feelings," and so on. H e would listen patiently, and then begin to tickle you, embrace you as he usually did when he was a little at a loss for words. Then you look again—and PuSkin again is with the lions of the day. 1 3 It is obvious that PuSCin is thinking particularly about the contradiction between PuSkin's behavior and his liberalism, but given the general tone of Puáíin's remarks, it is possible to say that PuSéin felt such behavior to be infra dignitatem for a member of his class and perhaps a kind o f betrayal of it. The liberal aristocrat probably did not make this division; the social "code" embraced both the aristocratic outlook and liberal leanings; certainly, playing up to the court grandees was something gentlemen were not supposed to do. This same odd (to the modern way of thinking) combination o f aristocratism and political liberalism was typical in general for the Lycée and not only among the students—the staff and the headmaster were surprisingly liberal (at least twice, as we have seen, Engel'gardt opposed the Emperor himself on behalf of his noble wards). PuSkin's best marks at the Lycée were in French literature and fencing, but he maintained that his favorite subject was political science, or "political economy" as it was then called. His master, A. P. Kunycin, was one of a very few outstanding Russian political economists of the era. Although not much impressed by Puskin's logical sense, his seriousness as a student, or his assiduousness, Kunycin did note his "depth of understanding, thoughtfulness and w i t . " 1 4 While some of the newer Western political ideas could obviously not be

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

27

taught as part of the formal program, PuSkin received a solid grounding in French political thought of the eighteenth century, a background that allowed him to hold his own and more in the political discussions (spory he called them) after graduation. If PuSkin's formal studies gave him a solid foundation for later development in political thought, it is probable that his informal education at Tsarskoe Selo was even more important, especially in regard to Western political thinking of the time. In this aspect of his education the officers of the guard played a prominent role. The guards officers, who were the backbone of the aristocratic party in Russia, had spent time in Paris society after the Liberation, and many of them had been to London, especially in connection with the Imperial Progress of 1815. They came back dandys militaires and Anglophiles, having been lionized in the societies of both capitals. In Regency London they had every opportunity to observe at first hand the power, prestige, and freedom of their opposite numbers in England, and the more thoughtful among them can only have absorbed the political tone current in Regency society. 15 It was, at the time, essentially aristocratic and anti-monarchical and certainly anti-democratic. The war had been won, and despite the staggering war debt, the English economy was the envy of a devastated Europe. The English system seemed the best one to emulate. At the very least, it was the only successful model available. (The Corn Law riots were broadly dismissed as an agitation of the rabble and not considered a portent, and Victoria did not accede until 1837. The Reform Bills of 1831-32 were scarcely even thought of, except perhaps in the minds of a few visionaries.) The guards' quarters were in a low, graceful, curved colonnade behind the Summer Palace—and just across the courtyard from the Lycée wing. The young Puskin, with all his ebullience and wit, was welcome in the guards' quarters and had free rein in the colonnade. He had a lot to learn from rakes like P. P. Kaverin and also a lot to learn from the more frowning sort of political thinkers like P. Ja. Caadaev. The memoir literature does not lack for references to PuSkin's exposure to both sorts. The inimical Count Korf registers his own self-righteous impressions of the proceedings: [During the last three to four years in the lycée] everything changed and we would go not only to Tepper's [the music

28

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

master] and to other respected houses, but also to Ambiel's confectionery and moreover to the hussars—at first only on holidays and on written invitation, but later on ordinary weekdays, with no invitation at all. Our teachers had no knowledge of it; sometimes we returned very late at night. I think that some wasted the whole night there, although with me personally that never happened. A small tip to the doorman setded everything, for the monitors and batmen ¡¿juvernëry i d'jad'ki] were long since asleep. . . . The circle in which PuSkin spent his free time was made up of officers of the Life-Guard Regiment. In the evenings after class, when the other students were either at the headmaster's or in the homes of other families, Puäkin, who detested any kind of restraint, wined and dined with these gendemen freely [naraspafku]. His favorite chap was the Hussar Kaverin, one of the wickedest rakes in the regiment.16 PuSkin's friend Prince Vjazemskij comments on Count Korfs note: "And in the Hussar Regiment, PuSkin not only Svined and dined freely,' but became close to Caadaev, who was not at all a rake; I don't know what went on before, but from the time of the arrival of Karamzin at Tsarskoe Selo, [PuSkin] spent the evenings daily at [the Karamzins'], and what of his friendship with I[van] PuS£in?"17 Caadaev, superbly educated, not only after the French, but also after the English manner, was already twenty-six years old, rich, and knew four languages. His influence on PuSkin was astonishing. He forced him to think. [PuSkin's] French education found opposition in Caadaev, who already knew Locke, and who had exchanged light-mindedness for research. Caadaev was then a man of thought; he thought about things PuSkin has never imagined. . . . PuSkin felt obliged to him, and abandoned his follies when he was at Caadaev's, who lived at the time in the Hotel Demuth. PuSkin's conversations with him were serious ones.18 Caadaev, who later wrote the famous Philosophical Letten, was clearly an informed follower of contemporary English ideas since the wars and not a Voltairean liberal of the years preceding them. Like ¿aadaev, in the years just after the lycée the notable political thinker A. I. Turgenev also concerned himself with PuSkin, both with

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

29

his conduct and with furthering his political education: "PuSkin-theCricket* I scold daily for his laziness and lack of concern about his own éducation. What's more, there is a common marketplace skirtchasing, and a political freethinking also of the common marketplace variety, the [French—SD] eighteenth-century sort. Where is there food for the poet in this? Meanwhile, he is ruining himself on small change. Give him a scolding." 19 Thus, the guards officers whom he had come to know in the Lycée remained close friends after PuSkin's graduation, and the more serious ones consciously attempted to continue his political education, despite the distractions of Petersburg society. F. F. Vigel' says of those years: At seventeen, Aleksandr PuSkin was graduated from the Lycée and entered the ranks of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but he didn't pay much attention to service. This ebullient creature, in the most ebullient years of his life, one may say, threw himself into its pleasures. Who was there to stop him, to watch over him? His weak father, who knew only how to delight in him? [one assumes Vigel' means his successes in literature and society—SD]? His young friends, mosdy military, intoxicated by his wit and imagination and who, in their turn, tried to intoxicate him with the incense of their praise and with champagne? The goddesses with whom he spent the larger part of his time? What saved him from going astray and from real trouble was his own strong common sense, constandy reasserting itself in him, the sense of honor which he had in full measure, and frequent visits to the house of Karamzin, who was at that time as attractive a person as he was an upright one. 2 0 Vigel', like Caadaev and A. I. Turgenev, had no high opinion of PuSkin as a political thinker in these years: ' T h e young people, who willingly repeated liberal phrases learned by heart, understood nothing of politics . . . and [PuSkin], if possible, less than the others." Nevertheless, Puskin continued to see his older friends, and the tone of the sources suggests that he cannot have escaped some attempts at sharpening his political oudook, however scattered his thoughts might have * In the Arzamas, a gentlemen's literary and eating club, the members had nicknames; PuSkin's was "Cricket"

30

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

been at the time—and certainly he did not escape lectures on his general conduct. Vigel' says: . . . of the people who were older than he, Puskin most frequendy visited the brothers Turgenev [Aleksandr, the older and more moderate liberal, and Nikolaj, the younger and more radical— SD]; they lived on the Fontanka, directly opposite the Mixailovskij zamok, now the Inzenemyj, and frequendy highminded young freethinkers would gather to visit [Nikolaj]. Vigel' describes in his own idiosyncratic version such a meeting at which PuSkin was present. It was when PuSkin composed the famous ode "Vol'nost' " (Freedom), which eventually had such unhappy consequences. Vigel' thought it "a good, but not excellent expromptu," which praised freedom a bit and argued that "only freedom could save the rulers of governments from the assassin's knife." Vigel' notes that the poem was soon forgotten and doubts that it was much circulated.21 It was circulated, and, moreover, it was reported to the throne; it became one of the main reasons for PuSkin's exile. The notes to the 1957 Academy Edition say simply: "The 'Ode' expresses the political views of the young PuSkin, made up partly from Kunycin's lectures on 'natural law,' and also under the influence of conversations with N. I. Turgenev." 2 2 Probably Vigel' and the Academy Edition are right in not making overmuch of the poem, regard for which has become exaggerated for reasons other than intrinsic esthetic worth or depth of political reflection. On the other hand, it does seem harsh and unfair to dismiss PuSkin's political thinking at this time as a parroting of fashionable ideas (AnnenkoVs position), or as immature (he was only eighteen when he wrote the poem). One can only wonder what they expected of the young man in his first year of freedom from the lycée. If being a man-about-town had precluded serious political thought, the Decembrist movement would scarcely have developed in the way it did. The facts should at least be credited: PuSkin's favorite subject at the lycée was political economy, taught by Kunycin; some of his older knowledgeable friends tried actively to foster his political thinking; PuSkin was extremely fond of political debate (spory), and although he was not invited into a secret society, he attended meetings. We should

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

31

not assume that his libertine behavior overwhelmed his liberal thinking altogether. One meeting is described by PuSiin; it was specifically for those interested in "taking part in a proposed political journal." The meeting was at Ν. I. Turgenev's house; Kunycin was there, and PuSkin was surprised to find PuSiin there also. PuSkin immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had stumbled on one of the secret groups ("Finally, I have caught you in the act") and pressed Puáéin for information about them. 23 (PuSkin at this time sincerely desired an invitation to join; this was also true during the early southern period, but by 1822— 23 he had reservations about the movement; it is doubtful that he would have accepted an invitation by 1825 if one had been offered.) It is unlikely that the social clubs like The Green Lamp (Zelenaja lampa) to which PuSkin did belong furthered his political education to any great extent. The "Arzamas Brotherhood," for example, was originally founded on a studiously apolitical basis. Arzamas was more or less an eating club cum literary discussion group 2 4 and in the beginning eschewed any impression of seriousness—in fact, its very organization was a mockery of the more staid proceedings of SiSkov's "Beseda ljubitelej rossijkoj slovesnosti" (Discussion Group of Lovers of Russian Literature), in PuSkin's words, "Beseda gubitelej . . ( D i s c u s s i o n Group of Destroyers . . . ). There is actually considerable disagreement on the exact nature of Arzamas. 25 While Barry Hollingsworth argues that literature cannot have been a major concern of the group, in a more recent study, M. I. Gillel'son shows that there were more serious treatments of literary concerns than had been previously supposed. By the time PuSkin joined the membership in 1817, however, it seems clear that a political tendency had appeared. A journal for the group was being proposed, and it was to contain three sections: "Notes," "Literature," and "Politics." Also, at around the time PuSkin became a member, three prominent political thinkers joined, giving the association a marked turn to the left: N. I. Turgenev, M. F. Orlov and N. M. Murav'ëv 26 (the last later wrote the Decembrist draft most closely reflecting the interests of the aristocratic party). Of the twenty or so members, four were in the diplomatic service and another four held high government posts. One should not conclude, however, that because of their service these men were all conservatives—even if the extremist Nikolaj Turgenev called them all "Tories." Orlov and Turgenev harangued the group on representative

32

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

government on the model of England. The harangues—and quite possibly resistance to politicization of the group—resulted, as PuSkin describes it, in "an Arzamas battle of tongues, and the second Babel since the creation of the world." Arzamas disintegrated after the transfer of a large number of its members away from Petersburg in 1818, but PuSkin remained in contact with the others until his exile south some two years later. It is of course impossible to say how truly deep PuSkin's interest in politics was at this time or how much the expression of it was the reflection of a current fad. In the interest of fairness, though, it would be well to recall that the separation between politics and fashion was not nearly so distinct in this period as it was in others. A young man in society, a young man of fashion, a dandy, was necessarily political; he represented, consciously or unconsciously, the aristocratic party. In PuSkin's case, I think we can accept Vigel's observation that he had a self-asserting grain of common sense and a strong sense of honor: for all his youthful, rakish foibles, in quieter moments, he knew full well what he was doing. It is difficult to believe that his running with a coterie of "freethinkers," his outrageous dandyism, and his wicked epigrams on persons in authority were merely a matter of fashion; also a fine poem like "Liciniju" (To Licinius), written in iSis, cannot have been simple lip service to freedom from tyranny. Even while critical of the youth for giving himself too freely to the distractions of Petersburg, Vasilij Zukovskij said of the poet: "When PuSkin was eighteen, he thought like a thirty-year-old; his mind matured much earlier than his character." 27 It is worth noting in this regard that PuSkin's political ideals, which had been formed by this time, were quite moderate and did not change in essentials through the rest of his life: emancipation of the serfs; constitutional monarchy; the rule of law above the Tsar. It was the approaches, remedies, and means toward these ends that changed and evolved, but the ideals did not waver. Even if it were true that PuSkin was not entirely "serious" about politics during the Petersburg period, the fact and circumstances of his exile inevitably led to political considerations of the most serious kind. In the first years of exile PuSkin was naturally inclined to political radicalism—perhaps, as S. L. Frank points out, the only period in his life when this was so. Even in exile in far-off KiSinëv there was ample opportunity for

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

33

political discussion; fortunately for PuSkin, General M. F. Orlov, his friend at that time and former Arzamasec, was posted there (September 1820-January 1822). Orlov, as I have noted earlier, was one of the best political minds of the era; much later (1833) he wrote an important book on political economy, O gosudarstvennom kredite, an autographed copy of which he sent to Puikin. PuSkin was a "constant visitor" at his home in KiSinëv, and his wife, Ekaterina Nikolaevna, whom PuSkin much admired, recalled "ceaseless noisy arguments [spory]—philosophical, political, literary." The spory may be reflected in PuSkin's lightly satirical tone in dealing with serious matters in his ruminations "Oveénom mire" (On Eternal Peace, 1821): . . la dispute est toujours une très bonne chose en ce qu'il aide à digérer—du reste elle n'a jamais persuadé personne—il n'y a que les imbéciles qui pensent le contraire" (12:19o). 28 PuSkin refers to the spory at Orlov's table also in his poem "Iz pis'ma k Gnedifu" (1820): B c ë t o t we λ, Kan 6 μ λ h n p o K A e , C π ο κ λ ο η ο μ He xojKy κ Heee>K4e,

C OpAOBbIM cnopio, Μ3ΛΟ nblO, ΟΚΤΗΒΗΙΟ—Β cAenoH Ha4ejK4e— MoAeÔHOB AecTH He ποιο. (13:27) I'm still the same as I was before; I never call on philistines; I argue with Orlov and drink but little; To Octavius—in blind hope— I do not sing flattering petitions. Actually, the letter to Nikolaj Ivanovié Gnedif was written in December 1820 not from Kiâinëv but from Kamenka, later one of the seats of the Southern Union. This was the grand country house of the Davydovs; the mistress was née Raevskaja, and the two families became prominent in the Decembrist movement. PuSkin stayed there for some four months. In December of 1820 he wrote to Gnedié: "I spend my time between aristocratic dinners and demagogic arguments. Our society, now scattered, was recendy a varied and light-hearted mixture of original minds, of people famous in our Russia, curious to the unknowing observer" (13:20). These "curious" people were, along with the Raevskijs and Davydovs, future members of the Southern Society

3+

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

of Decembrists; combined with the fact of the uprisings in southern Europe at the time, they helped bring PuSkin's radical aspirations to a high point at this stage. It was in KiSinëv in 1822 that PuSkin wrote his most radical piece, "Notes on Russian History of the Eighteenth Century," which was discussed at some length in chapter 1. It would be well to recall briefly the import of PuSkin's politically most extreme document. In it, as we have seen, he attacks especially the emperors, but also all classes of Russian society (except the clergy) for allowing things to come to such a pass. He calls for emancipation in unequivocal terms. The tone of the article is angry and hcctoring. Under all the bitter rhetoric, however, there are ideas that are not inconsonant with PuSkin's earlier ones concerning freeing the peasants and constitutional monarchy and with later ideas that seem to have evolved in part from his thinking this essay through. When PuSkin says, "Our political freedom is now inseparable from freeing the serfs" (11:15), it is clear that he is speaking of his own class, the nobility, for later in the same sentence he refers to "all classes"; the nobility is to write and ultimately place Russia "in the ranks of the enlightened peoples of Europe." If this is not some vision of an allegorical painting with Russians and Europeans bathed in the rays of the Enlightenment, what Ρ uà kin means is that Russia will follow the European model, and, given PuSkin's other statements and the prevailing general opinion, the model must be primarily the English one, the constitutional monarchy. The document—its immoderate tone aside—is not that far from the general opinion of the educated, liberal nobility and is not at all odd or eccentric for a member of the aristocracy to have written. Given PuSkin's later development as a political thinker, what is interesting here is that he is thinking not in terms of vague liberal or humanitarian principles but of the interrelation and interdependence of social classes—in effect, the first evidence of his tying together of socioeconomic and political remedies. Here, he cites emancipation as a necessary condition for freedom of the nobility; later emancipation became in PuSkin's view dependent on the freedom and protection of the nobility—a turnabout, it is true, but the significant thing is that he already makes the connection, the working-out took place some years later. A further feature of the "Notes" that is important for PuSkin's later political thinking is the role of the nobility. The nobility, it is clear,

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

35

takes its lumps along with the tsars and the other classes, but the "Notes" are primarily an attack against the actions of the tsars, and these actions in PuSkin's view damaged primarily the nobility. It is but a logical step from constitutional monarchy and a "law above the Tsar" to laws protecting the nobility—but this step too came later. Very soon after writing the "Notes," PuSkin began to draw away from his most extreme radical position. In Kisinëv and later in Odessa he became disenchanted with the Greek rebels he met. S. L. Frank says that "he saw in these 'new Leónidases' a riff-raff of cowardly philistines, men without honor. Rumors reached Petersburg that PuSkin had betrayed the struggle for Greek independence, sacred to the name of Byron." 29 But as PuSkin wrote: "No matter what they say there [in Petersburg], you mustn't believe that my heart would ever be ill-willed toward the noble efforts of a nation's renascence. . . . I am not a barbarian or apostle of the Koran, I have a lively interest in the affairs of Greece, and precisely for this reason, I am upset by the kind of base people [ces misérables] arrayed in the sacred name of defenders of freedom."30 Another letter, to Prince Vjazemskij, written at about the same time (June 1824), expresses these sentiments even more strongly: Greece has made me sick [Grecija mne ogodila]. One may think about the fate of the Greeks in the same way one thinks about the fate of my brothers the Negroes, and one may wish to both freedom from intolerable slavery. But that all the enlightened European peoples should rave on about Greece—that is an unforgivable childishness. The Jesuits told us stories about Themistocles and Pericles, and we imagined that this vile [pakostnyj] people, made up of bandits and shopkeepers, is their legally born heir and inheritor of their Schoolbook fame. You will say I've changed my opinions. Well, you ought to come to Odessa and just look at the compatriots of Militiades, and you would agree with me. (13:99) Of interest here is the aristocratic tone of the letter: PuSkin might wish the Greek rebels freedom in the sense that all men should be free, but he would not care to associate with them, nor would he, a gentleman, care to stand shoulder to shoulder with them in the field. Beneath all this, of course, was the nobleman's ingrained fear of a popular rising. Speaking of the time around 1823, Walter Vickery says:

36

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM Puákin's revolutionary zeal was tempered by a concern that any upheavals in Russia might lead, not to the implementation of the lofty ideals of an enlightened aristocracy, but rather to a blood-bath of peasant uprisings. For a member of the landowning class the spectre of Pugaiev was never far away. It seems certain, at least, that PuSkin's doubts as to the feasibility of revolution in Russia were at least partly linked with a dawning awareness based on his observations of European independence movements that revolutions initiated by an aristocratic intellectual elite had little chance of success unless they could attract the widespread support of the masses. And in Russia, the masses could mean only the peasantry. 11

Vickery goes on to say that Puskin had initially approached the revolutionary cause with the idea that it was ennobling and would produce noble results; he cites Boris TomaSevskij's opinion that the idea of freedom had been for PuSkin inseparable from the idea of enlightenment. (In regard to the problem of what PuSkin's various meanings for "nobility" and "aristocracy" were, it is worth mentioning here that when he meant the words in the good sense and wanted to make the point clear, he referred to "the enlightened"—that is, to "prosvescënnoe" or "prosvetlënnoe dvorjanstvo.") PuSkin harbored no destructive urges of the type that in a later age took hold of Blok. PuSkin's doubts about the end result of an armed uprising were accompanied by doubts concerning the whole Western-oriented liberal program. Vickery places them in three categories: doubts concerning the feasibility of Russian revolutionary plans; doubts concerning the genuine determination of the repressed peoples to win their freedom; and doubts concerning the importance to be attached to the relative merits of different political systems—doubts, in other words, concerning the importance for individual happiness of the very political ideals for which the future Decembrists were willing to lay down their lives. S. L. Frank complains with justice that the various intellectual histories of Russia invariably omit PuSkin as a social thinker. 32 One can only be awed with the astuteness of a young man in his early twenties who was able to question his mentors and the prevailing opinion of the whole of educated, Western-oriented society and at a time when emotions were running highest, a time when his opinion in Odessa of Greek patriots caused scandal in liberal circles in Petersburg and required justification and explanation. It seems that no one but PuSkin

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

37

and General M. F. Orlov had such serious doubts about the Cause— which was so soon to end in disaster. These doubts cannot have sprung full-blown into PuSkin's thinking shortly after his writing the "Notes"; indeed, his focus on the nobility as victims of the autocracy suggests that they were incipient. Whatever the case, it seems unlikely that he didn't reflect them in the spory that are so well-attested. He loved to scandalize, and it is well to remember that these were PuSkin's dandy years, and the dandy's slogan was "Faîtes toujours le contraire de ce qu'on attend de vous" (although Stendhal did not put it into these words for some years—more about this in chapter 4). Of all the reasons given for PuSkin's not being invited into the secret societies—that he was frivolous and might give away secrets, that his highminded friends wished to protect the great poet from danger, and variations in between—no one seems to have considered that the reason might have been that he was not likeminded. It is probable, even likely, that PuSkin played the devil's advocate in the spory; he was never one to run with the pack. In any case, by the fateful year of 182s PuSkin's earlier doubts had become conviction, and although he undoubtedly would have stood with the rebels had he been in Petersburg at the time, he would not have done so from political conviction but rather out of loyalty to his friends. Bravely, he even said as much to Nicholas I in the interview that ended his exile. The failure of the rebellion can only have confirmed PuSkin's doubts about Western radicalism and armed risings. In early 1826, in connection with PuSkin's petition to lift the exile, it was incumbent on him to rethink his political position vis-à-vis the Tsar. This cannot have been easy in his confusçd emotional state when his close friends were being tried and sentenced, but it is clear that PuSkin, with ail conscience and honor, could claim that he was not opposed to the institution of monarchy (however much he would have liked constitutional guarantees) and that he was solidly against popular armed risings. S. L. Frank may overstate the case somewhat, but there is much truth in what he says about PuSkin's thinking on Boris Godunov in these years. Boris Godunov was begun in November-December 1824 and completed November 1825—that is, in the month before the rebellion. Study of the history of the Time of Troubles brings [PuSkin] to one conviction, which is later fundamental to his political oudook—the conviction that monarchy is in the national con-

38

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

sciousncss the foundation of Russian political life. Curious, in this regard, is his characterization of Pimen: 'In him, I gathered the traits which captivated me in our old chronicles; simplicity and a charming modesty, a somewhat childlike but at the same time wise devotion to the power of the Tsar, power granted by God. . . . It seemed to me that this character, taken altogether, is both new and familiar to the Russian heart.'33 To Del'vig, one of his very closest friends and therefore one with whom he felt no need to dissemble, PuSkin wrote (in the beginning of February 1826): "But I can in all conscience ask the government about lifting the exile, especially now; my way of thinking is known. Hounded for six years in a row, my name besmirched by the civil service . . . , exiled to the deep countryside for two lines of an intercepted letter. I of course could not wish well to the late Tsar, although I gave full justice to his true qualities, but never did I preach sedition or revolution—rather, the opposite" (13:259). PuSiin, giving his deposition after the failure of the Rebellion, said this of PuSkin: PuSkin, the famous author of Ruslan and Ljudmila, was always opposed to secret societies and plots. Didn't he say of the former that they were rat-traps, and of the latter, that they were like hothouse-grown quick-ripening fruits which, gulping the tree's juices, cause it to perish?34 To Vjazemskij, who was as close to PuSkin as Del'vig, PuSkin wrote (July 1826): Your advice sounds good to me. As soon as the investigations were finished, I wrote to the Tsar, including in my petition precisely your words. I'm waiting for an answer, but I don't hope for much. I've never liked uprising and revolution, but I was in contact with all the members of the [Decembrist] plot, and in correspondence with many of them. (13:286). It is clear that PuSkin was balancing his sense of honor as a gendeman (exaggerated by our standards today and probably extreme even among his contemporaries) and his sense of justice: he honesdy did not feel that his political views, as they had been formed since 1822-23, warranted the continued exile, when so many of his peers had taken part in outright rebellion. Certainly, the letter in question to the Tsar (worded by Vjazemskij) was no demeaning thing or in any sense

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

39

cravcn, and, given the nature of such petitions at that rime, it could even have been read as an effrontery. It is to Nicholas' credit, one must admit, that it was not.

WHEN THE emotional and psychological trauma of December 1825 and its aftermath was at least partly allayed, PuSkin threw himself once again into the study of Russian history, and one of the results of his research was that he was led to a clarification of his political stance. At least as early as May 1831, Ρ uà kin's position on the peasant question had gelled: he had come to favor a policy of gradualism. Royal Navy Captain C. Colville Frankland reported a conversation with PuSkin in which the poet supported the idea "education first, and then freedom." What PuSkin had in mind was not only education but a full program of social and legal preparation whereby the peasants would be both emancipated and assured land for their livelihood as well as enough education to hold onto it and prosper. PuSkin continued to associate the well-being of the serfs with that of the gentry (as he had even in the radical "Notes" of 1822), but he shifted the emphasis from the nobility's dependence on emancipation to the peasants' dependence on the nobility through a time of gradual, non-violent change and a period of general enlightenment. Certainly, the failure of the Decembrist revolt can only have strengthened PuSkin's development of this line of thinking, which culminated in "A Journey from Moscow to Petersburg" (1833-1835). As Ρ u$kin's alternative position was taking shape, he was undertaking his serious study of Russian history, and some of the ideas he derived from his research supported and complemented the political lines he had already worked out, with the nobility being the key factor. From our vantage point or even from that of England in that age, PuSkin's views, as they expanded, could only be considered conservative. With suitable historical perspective, however, one can see (given the realities of Russia after 1825 and the fact of the autocracy) that his program was probably the most liberal, practical one possible to advocate publicly at the time. Essentially, it revolved around the protection of the nobility (ograzdenie dvorjanstva). This program, had it been adopted, would have protected by law prerogatives of the class, thus assuring a measure of balance to the autocracy, and would have restored to the class sufficient wealth to insure a prosperous and peaceful peasantry, presumably with the goal of educating them toward even-

40

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

tuai emancipation. This admittedly oversimplified statement of PuSkin's program of the mid-1830s is consonant at least with the views of the aristocratic party of his younger years and in general with the development of his ideas in 1825-2+ and after. One of the principal foci in PuSkin's historical readings was precisely the fortunes of his own class, the old noble families, now largely the "impoverished nobility." According to Il'ja Fejnberg, who studied PuSkin's historical texts and his unfinished works: PuSkin thought, as is known, that a hereditary nobility independent of the Tsar could and should be a counterbalance to the unlimited powers of the autocracy [and should] take on itself by that very fact the function of defending the interests of the entire nation. There was in this idea, of course, a hint of the historically conditioned limitation of PuSkin's views. Speaking now of the "suppression" and again of the "destruction" of the nobility by Peter, PuSkin had in mind Peter's blow against the principle of inheritance of the nobility; that is, the weakening of the hereditary aristocracy and the provision for new people to become nobles, not by right of birth, but through the system of ranks introduced by Peter.35 PuSkin's own clearest statement of his position is an outline for an article written over the period 1830-1835, later entitled by scholars "O dvorjanstve" (On the Nobility). Though sketchy in part, the intent is clear. "Pierre I... les rangs... chute de la noblesse." There follows a schematic plan for an essay on the political role of the nobility vis-à-vis the crown, with these thoughts: "When did the boyars fall? Under the Ivans. Peter. Destruction of the nobility by ranks. Primogeniture [majoratstvo]—destroyed by the chicanery of Anna Ivanovna. The gradual decline of the nobility. The Russian nobility—what does that mean today? By what means does one become a nobleman? What comes of that? Deep disdain for that class. The nobleman is apotnescik" (12:206). Thus, Puskin was unable to forgive Peter for what he had done to the nobility, however much he admired the colossal historical figure and builder of empire. This ambiguity in attitude is common in Puskin's writings, especially in Arap Petra Velikqgo (The Blackamoor of Peter the Great) and in Mednyj vsadnik (The Bronze Horseman). PuSkin's ideas on the nobility were already clear enough in his mind for him to write to Prince Vjazemskij in March 1830:

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

41

I have a letter on my desk which I wrote to you a long time ago: I was afraid to send it by post. Your wife has already told you, probably, what it is all about, more fully and to the point. The Emperor, on his departure, left in Moscow a programme for reorganization, a counter-revolution to the revolution of Peter [the reference here is to the Table of Ranks—SD], Here's a chance for you to write a political pamphlet, and even to print it, for the Government is acting—or intends to act—in the sense of the European Enlightenment. Protection of the nobility [orgrazdenie dvorjanstva], suppression of the government civil service ranks [podavlente Hnovniiestva], new rights for the small landowners and the serfs—these are the great subjects. I'm thinking [myself] of going into political prose. (14:69) The question of the gradual impoverishment of the nobility because of the fragmentation of the estates through inheritance was much in the air at the time, along with the related questions of primogeniture and the "cleansing" (oiiiienie) of the nobility (that is, closing the ranks to civil servants). These problems and the attitudes relating to them at the time are discussed by Ja. Borovoj, who also notes that PuSkin firmly believed that the peasants' lot would be vasdy improved with a wealthy, independent, hereditary nobility. PuSkin rejected as unworkable the many plans and projects that foresaw emancipation as a result of the impoverishment of the nobility. Borovoj finds PuSkin's reasoning extraordinarily acute and quite beyond most political theorists of his day. On all such questions, it is well to keep Borovoj's caveat in mind: The defense by [M. F.] Orlov of such a feudal institution as primogeniture may well seem incredible, but only on first glance. It must be explained not only by general opinions on the limitations of noble-class thought natural to PuSkin and Orlov, but also the whole generation of noble revolutionaries. One must remember that many political thinkers and sociologists at that time saw in primogeniture a means of creating a materially, as well as politically, independent aristocracy, not fawning upon absolute power, and capable of creating a real opposition to it. Primogeniture was given as the reason for England's "freedoms" and the famous "independence" of the English nobil-

42

puSkin's

aristocratism

T o underscore again a point made earlier, PuSkin's position was certainly an aristocratic one, but for its time and in Russia still a reasonable and reasonably liberal one. The whole matter was much on PuSkin's mind, and besides the letters to Vjazemskij and Caadaev, it is reflected in a surprising range of sources. It is already incipient in the "Notes on Russian History of the XVIIIth Century," despite their extreme position; by i8jo PuSkin makes clear his bitterness at the plight of his class in "Nabroski predislovija k 'Borisu Godunovu' " (Drafts for an Introduction to Borisgodunov). Even while rejecting his exaggerated "nobleman's hauteur," which he had used as a social foil in the later 1820s on his return to society after the exile was lifted, PuSkin is far from abandoning the true aristocratic stance. Having found in [Karamzin's] history one of my ancestors who played an important role in this unfortunate epoch [the Time of Troubles], I brought him out on the stage, without even a thought for the ticklishness of propriety, but con amore, without the noble's hauteur. Of all my imitations of Byron, the noble's hauteur was the most ridiculous. A new nobility [dvorjanstvo] makes up our aristocracy [aristokratija]; the old nobility has gone into decline, its rights made equal to those of other classes; the great estates have been cut up into pieces, annihilated, and no one, even the descendants themselves, and so on [sic]. To belong to the old aristocracy does not afford any perquisites in the eyes of the prudent masses [cern'J, and the solitary honoring of one's ancestors' glory can only bring on a charge of peculiarity or some mindless imitation of foreigners. (11:141) The plight of the class is presented in even more personal terms, in terms of PuSkin's own noble family, in his essay "Oproverzenie kritikam" (In Refutation of the Critics) (text and variant, 1830). PuSkin begins with a comparison between the English and the Russian nobleman, where the former derives all sorts of advantages from his birth while the latter only pride in the family name. What is there in common between the [English] lord's attachment to his feudal perquisites and our innocent respect for our dead great-grandfathers, whose past glory provides us with neither rank or preferment? For now our high-ranking people [znaf]

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

43

are made up for the most part by new families who received their livings only under the Emperors. But no matter to whom I trace my origins—to raznoäncy who became ennobled, or to a historical boyar family, ancestors whose names appear on almost every page of our history—the shape of my opinions would not in the least depend on [my genealogy], and although to this day I have nowhere revealed it and no one cares a fig for it, I am not in the least inclined to forsake it. No matter what direction my thoughts may have taken, I have never been able to share with anyone a democratic hatred for the nobility. It has always seemed to me a necessary and natural class in a great, educated nation. Looking about, and reading our old chronicles, I was sorry to see how some of our old noble families were being destroyed, how the rest go into decline and disappear, and how the new families, new historical names, having taken the place of the old ones, are already themselves in decline, since they have no [legal] protection. I was sorry to see how the name of nobleman, further degraded from hour to hour, has passed into a byword and a hissing among the raznoäncy who were given their nobility, and among the idle jokers in the marketplace. (11:161) Puskin waxes even more wrathful in comparing the honor for their forebears of the French and English nobles with that of the Russians, to whom he refers as uncultured primitives, "Kalmyks." "The savage, the base and the philistine" do not honor the past. And in Russia, "some descendant of Rjurik treasures more the star [i.e., the decoration relatively recently awarded by the Emperor—SD] of some uncle once removed than the history of his own house, that is to say, the history of his own fatherland. And this one assigns to his credit!" Of course, there are qualities higher than prominence of family, namely, the quality of the individual—but I have seen the genealogy of Suvorov, written by himself; Suvorov did not despise his noble origins. Perhaps the names ofMinin and Lomonosov [i.e., commoners of great achievement—SD] together outweigh all our old genealogies. But even so, would it be ridiculous for their descendants to be proud of those names? Note: let's be fair: one cannot accuse Mr. Polevoj of base

+4

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

servility before the eminent [znatnye], rather the opposite; we arc prepared to blame him for youthful superciliousness, respecting neither age, nor station, nor fame, and insulting equally the memory of the dead as well as relations with the living. (11:162). In a radical reworking of the preceding article, called "Opvt otrazenija nekotoryx literatumyx obvinenij" (An Attempt at Refuting Certain Literary Charges), PuSkin develops the theme of dvorjanstvo versus the ciiwvnitestvo as part of the polemics with raznocinec critics like Polevoj and most particularly Bulgarin. In fact, the whole position of Literaturnaja gazeta as a gentlemen's magazine is intimately related to the issue at hand. The article includes an imagined conversation between "A," who is partial to the middle-class journals, and "B," who defends the Literary Gazette. A. So you obviously stand behind the Literary Gazette. And have you made yourself an aristocrat long since? B. How an aristocrat? What's an aristocrat? A. What's an aristocrat? O, yes, you don't read the journals. You see, the publisher of the Literary Gazette, and his contributors, and his readers, are all aristocrats [obviously, in the ironic sense—SD]. " Β " argues that if Baron Del'vig, Prince Vjazemskij, PuSkin, Baratynskij, and others are aristocrats, it doesn't bother him for they never talk about it; moreover, he has never seen in the journal either aristocratic vainglory or attacks on other classes (The Northern Bee's—Bulgarin's journal—attack on the nobility is implied). " B " goes on to say: It is permissible and necessary to attack the wrongdoing and weaknesses of every class. But to ridicule a class merely because it is such-and-such a class and not another is wrong and not allowable. And whom do our journalists attack? Certainly not the new nobility, who got their start under Peter I and the emperors, and who make up most of our eminent members of society [znaf]; the real, rich and powerful aristocracy—pas si bête. Before that nobility, our journalists are polite in the extreme. Rather, they attack the old nobility which now, because of their diminished estates, make up a kind of middling order, a class of honorable, hard-working and educated people, to which most of our literateurs belong. Jeering at them (moreover in an official gazette) is

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

+5

not good—and even against all common sense. Let's suppose that the epigrams of the French democratic writers had prepared the way for the shouts of "les aristocrates à la lanterne"; we have just such epigrams, although not much distinguished by wit, which can have even more perilous consequences. . . . Just think what this nobility signifies in our country, and in what relationship it stands to the peasantry. . . . Do I have to explain further? (11:172-73) "B" explains that he calls the opposing journals democratic because they attack the aristocracy, and the Literary Gazette was a necessary defense. It is in connection with the argument in this article that PuSkin's idea of "protection of the nobility" first appears. Still very much in embryonic form and limited to the confines of the argument, it occurs as a kind of aside or afterthought, but it is nevertheless very clearly there. The two interlocutors discuss the lack of redress for unjust attacks. "B" is willing to accept even the office of the censor in that role. "If we have a censor, then it wouldn't be a bad idea to protect whole classes in the way private persons are protected from obvious malicious attacks" (11:172-73). It is this idea that grew and broadened in application, becoming a fulcrum of PuSkin's subsequent political thought. Among the more important non-fictional pieces of the 1830s that reflect most clearly the continuing development of PuSkin's ideas is the "PuteSestvie iz Moskvy ν Peterburg" (Journey from Moscow to Petersburg). It was written mosdy in 1833-1834, with a key chapter, "Moscow," added in 183$. The tide, of course, is suggested by the famous piece by the eighteenth-century freethinker Aleksandr RadiJiev, who dared to rise in opposition to the system (and was arrested and exiled for his pains). RadiSéev's Putekstvie iz Peterburga ν Moskvu (Journey from Petersburg to Moscow) was among other things a moving condemnation of serfdom; it was much admired by PuSkin. Nevertheless, Puskin was far from uncritical of RadiSfev, especially in regard to his relationship to Lomonosov on the one hand and his attitude toward the land-owning class on the other. A separate article on RadiSiev, intended for publication in the Contemporary, is markedly negative in tone. Vickery notes quite properly that the tone was adopted to placate a censor (who ultimately proved implacable). PuSkin was far from

46

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

being an apologist for the institution of serfdom, but at this stage in his thinking he was not about to take an ill-considered stance in favor of emancipation without concern for serious social dislocation. Puskin writes: [RadiScev] seems to be trying to irritate the supreme power by his bitter and malicious criticism. Would it not have been better to point out the good which the supreme power is in a position to achieve? He berates the power of the landowners as being clearly illegal. Would it not have been better to set before the government and the intelligent landowners measures aimed at a gradual improvement in the position of the peasants? He is angry at the censorship. Would it not have been better to talk about the rules by which the legislators should be guided, so that, on the one hand, the writers should not be repressed and Thought, the sacred gift of God, should not be the slave and victim of senseless and capricious control; and, on the other hand, that the writer should not employ this divine instrument in the attainment of a base or criminal goal? But all [these suggestions] would have been merely "useful," neither sensational nor attractive, since the government itself was neither neglecting nor repressing writers, but was actually demanding their participation, calling upon them to play an active role, listening to their opinions, adopting their advice. [The government] felt the need for the cooperation of enlightened and thoughtful people, neither fearing their boldness nor taking offense at their sincerity. Vickery says of this passage that Pulkin was "not so much describing the situation under Catherine II in 1790 as he was expressing pious hopes for the right to free but loyal speech under Nicholas I . " 3 7 Relevant particularly to my discussion, however, are two points that Puskin makes here: the implication that the rights of the landowning nobility are not only legal but necessary; and, resonating with the idea expressed in "An Attempt at Refuting Certain Literary Charges," the belief that the censor's office might serve as legal protector for writers (in the context, one may assume noble writers; by the same token, the censor's office might serve as legal prosecutor for the ignoble ones, who have "base and criminal goals"). PuSkin is less harsh with respect to RadiSiev in his own "Journey," but, again, he is not uncritical. In the chapter "Russkaja izba" (The

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

+7

Russian Peasant's Hut), he adopts a surprisingly ironical tone toward the periwigged gentleman of the preceding century who stopped for refreshment at a peasant home: At Peski [a road station then no longer in existence], RadiSiev had a slice of ham and a cup of coffee. He made use of the occasion to refer to the unfortunate African slaves, and grieved over the lot of the Russian peasant who didn't have sugar. All that was the fashionable rhetoric of the time. But, says PuSkin, the description of the Russian hut was remarkable. The description follows: splintered floors overlayed with filth [grfaz'], a chimneyless stove and smoke, windows glazed with bladders and dark at mid-day, a common cup and round objects called plates, a deal table. "A trough to feed the swine and heifers—if there were any— and to sleep with them all together, gasping for breath, a room in which the candle seems to be in mist or behind a curtain" (11:256). PuSkin's reaction to all this (which goes on beyond what is quoted here) is one of admiration for the writer as writer, but his next step is to make claims about the subsequent improvement in that earlier sorry state of the Russian peasant. He speaks of improvements—at least on the main highways—very much as an Englishman of the time would. There were glass panes instead of stretched bladders in the windows; every hut had a chimney, and in general there was more cleanliness and convenience, which the English call "comfort." Apparendy, RadiSfev had sketched a caricature, but he does mention a bathhouse and kvass as necessities of Russian everyday life. That is already a sign of some well-being. Worthy of note is also the fact that RadiSéev, having made his housewife complain about hunger and the bad harvest, completes the picture of want and poverty with this line: and she began to put the loaves of bread into the oven. [Puskin's italics]. In this connection Puskin recalls that Denis Fonvizin, who had travelled in France, said that the lot of the Russian peasant seemed a happier one than that of the French tiller of the soil. Further, PuSkin notes the condition of English factory workers, a condition "that raises the hair on one's head with horror." He elaborates, then notes that in Russia there is nothing of the sort, that the head tax [podusnaja] is paid by the peasant commune [mir], that the soccage [baritina] is fixed by

+8

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

law; the corvée is not ruinous (except in the environs of Moscow and Petersburg where various forms of industry have increased and aggravated the greed of the owners). Pu£kin continues with the positive character traits of the Russian peasant, presumably conditioned by the system, and compares his lot most favorably with that of his European counterparts: The lot of the peasant improves daily to the extent that enlightenment spreads . . . The well-being of the peasant is closely bound up with the well-being of the landowners; this is plain to everyone. Of course, great changes must still come, but the time must not be hurried. . . . The best and solidest changes are those which originate in the improvement of morals, without forced political upheavals, so terrible for humanity. (11:258) In the chapter "Moscow," PuSkin focuses his attention on the class of landowners, the Russian nobility. He begins with a charming encomium of Moscow in its great days, when it was still a real rival to imperial Petersburg, picturing Moscow as the nobleman's city, as distinct from the imperial seat, with its "service nobility" and bureaucracy. Once in Moscow there was a rich boyar class which did not serve [the xszr],grands seigneurs who had left the Court, people who were independent, carefree, passionately fond of harmless gossip and free hospitality; once, Moscow was the gathering place for all Russian noblemen, who came from all the provinces to spend the winter season. . . . In the hall of the Noblemen's Club [Blagorodnoe sobranteJ, there were twice a week up to five thousand people. With tolerant amusement PuSkin describes the caprices and follies, idiosyncracies and excesses, the fun and excitement of this free and selfindulgent society of the past. He compares the city of the past to that of the present: Now in subdued Moscow, immense boyar houses stand sadly between the wide courtyard, overgrown with grass, and the garden, abandoned and let run wild. Below the gilded family crest sticks out the sign of a tailor who pays the owner thirty rubles a month for his apartment; the magnificent bel étage is rented by a French schoolteacher for a pension—and thank God it's only that!

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

+9

On all the gates is nailed a notice saying that the house is for sale or rent, but nobody buys it or rents it. (11:245-47) 38 PuSkin mourns the decline of his class along with the decline of Moscow. Given his already frequently expressed thoughts on the subject, it is not difficult to sense the metaphorical undercurrent in his comments: The decline of Moscow is the inevitable consequence of the rise of Petersburg. The two capitals cannot in equal measure flourish in the same government, just as two hearts cannot exist in a man's body. But the impoverishment of Moscow is indicated by something else: the impoverishment of the Russian nobility, originating in part in the cutting up of the estates which are disappearing with a terrible speed, and in part in other reasons which we have yet to talk about. (11:241-42; draft) In a variant passage, eventually not included as part of the finished chapter "Moscow," PuSkin expands on the impoverished nobility and also on what that condition meant for the peasants: The decline of Moscow is an important phenomenon, worthy of scholarly study: the impoverishment of Moscow is an indication of the impoverishment of the Russian nobility, resulting from dividing the estates. . . . So that the great grandson of a rich man becomes a pauper simply because his grandfather had four sons and his father as many. He can no longer live in the immense house, which he can't afford to light or even heat. He sells it to the government or gives it over for a pittance to old moneylenders and goes to his little village, mortgaged and remortgaged, where he lives in boredom and in want.... But will the situation of the peasant improve because of this? The serf of a small landowner suffers more oppression and bears greater obligations than the peasant of a rich barin. But some say that the division of the estates will contribute to emancipation. The landowners, not receiving enough in rents, are forced to mortgage their peasants with the Opekunskij sovet [i.e., a government agency handling such matters], and being ruined, find themselves unable to pay the interest on the loan. The estate enters the jurisdiction of the government, which can turn the peasants into free farmers or landholding peasants. This

50

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

reasoning is false. A landowner, having fallen into extreme need, hastens to sell his peasants, for which there are always willing buyers, and the debt of the nobility ties the hands of the government and does not permit it to emancipate the serfs, for in that case, the nobility will justifiably consider its debt requited by the cancelling of the mortgage. (12:334) The variant to "Moscow" and the chapter itself were written in 1835; it is not surprising that PuSkin's diary entries around that time touch on the matter, both briefly and at length. The longer example records a conversation between PuSkin and the Archduke Michael, who, Puskin allowed, was "very gracious and open." He must indeed have been, for PuSkin at points treads very close to lèse-majesté. The Archduke was much exercised by a "stupidity" printed in The Northern Bee concerning the arrival of the Emperor in Moscow. The writer claimed that after visiting the cathedrals, the Emperor returned to the palace and, in PuSkin's recounting, "from the top of the grand porch bowed low (low!) to the people. And if that were not enough, that fool of a journalist continues: 'How delightful to see the great emperor inclining his holy head before the citizens of Moscow!'" (12:334). Huffed the Archduke, "Keep in mind that shopkeepers read that stuff." PuSkin noted that the Archduke was quite right; then they began to discuss the nobility. The Archduke was opposed to the decision to establish the rank of "honored citizen" (postanovlenie 0 pocëtnom ¿¡razdanstve) : "Why place obstacles to merit, the highest goal of ambition? Why form a tiers-état, that eternal element of rebellion and opposition?" PuSkin, evidendy agreeing, went on to direct the conversation along his own lines: I remarked that either the nobility is not needed by the government, or if so, it should be protected and closed to entry except on the express will of the Tsar. If people may enter the nobility from the other classes, as though moving from one bureaucratic rank to another, not by the exclusive will of the Emperor, but according to the order of service, then soon there will be no nobility, or (which is the same thing) everyone will be noble. With regard to the tiers état, what meaning is there to our ancient nobility, annihilated by endless divisions of estates, with all its education, with its hatred for aristocracy [aristokratija; here in the sense of oligarchy—SD] and

PUSKIN'S ARISTOCRATISM

51

with all pretensions to power and riches? Even in Europe, there is no such terrible element. Who was on the [Senate] Square on the 14th of December? Noblemen only. How many of them will be present at the first new disturbance? I don't know, but it would seem a lot of them. —Speaking about the old nobility, I said, "Nous, qui sommes aussi bons gentilshommes que l'empereur et vous. . . . etc." The Archduke was very gracious and open. I said to him: "Vous êtes bien de votre famille; tous les Romanofs sont révolutionnaires et niveleurs." "Thanks," he said, "for enlisting me in the Jacobins! Thank you, voilà une réputation qui me manquait." . . . I managed to tell him a great deal. God grant my words may have done at least one drop of good! (12:335) Close in spirit to this exchange is PuSkin's "Natalo avtobiografìi" ("Beginning of an Autobiography"), which he opens with his genealogy. The various genealogies, both real and literary, should be seen not so much as a reflection of pride in lineage as a significant component of a reasoned political argument. PuSkin's notes on Byron's genealogy (apparently a first draft for a biographical article), carries a manuscript notation: O n Byron and Important Subjects" (1835). The article does not go beyond the genealogy and Byron's youth, but one can comfortably speculate that the "important subjects" included more than Byron's achievement in literature. Byron had taken his seat in the House of Lords and was politically active for a time; it is not unreasonable to assume that one of the other "important subjects" to have been discussed was Byron's political life. In the Byron essay and the large number of other unfinished works, fragments, and outlines he undertook in the 1830s, the matrix of PuSkin's political thought is pervasive; it seems almost as though when the political theme became too strong, PuSkin would abandon the piece, rather than continuing it and then having it struck down by the censor. A case in point is Ezerskij, in which PuSkin develops quite clearly his ideas about the nobility and the state of Russian society. PuSkin abandoned it and immediately took up The Bronze Horseman, but with the political content just below the surface. This complex matter will be taken up in the next chapter, which deals with the remarkably productive effect of PuSkin's political ideas on his works of the late 1820s and early 1830s.

III

Politics and Literature

the ideas that later made up the center of PuSkin's mature social thought around the time he was completing Eugene Onegin were present in his mind as early as the first chapter of the novel in verse. One of these was the decline of the Russian nobility. The much-argued question of whether Onegin was conceived as or intended to be a Decembrist1 is perhaps less important from this point of view than what he demonstrably was in fart: the last of an old noble house, "the extant heir of all his kin," whose father had been reduced to living by borrowing, "gave three balls a year and ruined himself at last." Although Onegin appears to be studiously apolitical, the fact of the hero's class and, as we shall see in chapter 4, his dandyism, suggest a certain tacit political point of view. PuSkin denied vehemendy any political satire in Onegin and gave reason for excluding it. In correspondence with Bestuzev, who wanted satire in the manner of Byron, PuSkin replied that if he so much as touched it, "the Embankment [i.e., the Winter Palace] would tremble" (13:155). It is clear from the context of the correspondence that specifically politicai satire was in question. Of social satire, of course, there was plenty, and of interest here is the subject of the nature of the Russian nobility, what constitutes true nobility, the difference between the true noble and other conditions. Only implied in the final version, particularly of chapter 8, the point is made in the variants, with specific reference to the raztwänec journalists. SOME

OF

Β r O C T H H O H HCTHHHO ¿ B O p A H C K O H

My>K4aAHCb meroAbCTBa penett H meKOTAHBOCTH MemaHCKOH

POLITICS AND

LITERATURE

)KypHaAbHbix nonopHbix cy4eii. Χ03ΛΗΚ0Η CBCTCKOH H CB060/IH0H BbIA ηρΗΗΛΤ ΟΛΠΟΓ np0CT0Hap04HbIHÍÍ Η He nyraA ee yuieft >KHBOK) crpaHHOcTbK) CBoeñ (HeMy

HaeepHO

y4HBHTCfl,

ΓΟΤΟΒΛ CBOH pa3ÔOpHbIH AHCT, MHOH RAYÖOKHH >KypHaAHcr; H o Β CBeTe Μ3ΛΟ Ab MTO TBOpHTCfl, O HeM y Hac He noMbiuiAHA, EblTb MO>KeT, HH 04HH >KYPHAA!). HHKTO HacMeuiKoio XOAO^HOH BcTpeMaTb He 4yMaA CTapHKa, 3aMeTH BOpOTHHK HeMO/iHblH Π 0 4 6aHTOM iueHHoro nAaTKa. Xo3«HKa cnecbio He CMymaAa H HOBHMKa-npOBHHUHaAa; PaBHo ΑΛΛ Bcex OHa 6biAa HenpHHy>K4eHHa H MHA3. AHiiib nyTeuiecTBeHHHK 3aBeTHbiii, BACCTHIUHH A0H40HCKHH HaxaA, RIOAYYABIÔKY B03ÔY>K4AA Ceoeft ocaHKOK) 3a6oTHotí; M 6bICTpo OÔMeHeHHblH Β3θρ E M y 6 b I A 061IJHH π ρ Η Ι Ό Β Ο ρ .

(6:626)

In a truly noble drawingroom, They avoided foppishness o f speech and the petit-bourgeois mannerisms O f punctilious literary critics. The free, sophisticated hostess Accepted the speech o f the simple folk, And its lively peculiarities Did not offend her hearing ( A t which some profound journalist Would probably be surprised As he prepares his next review; But in Society, a thing or two perhaps Goes on that not a single journal Has even thought o f ! )

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

55

No one [there] would think of greeting An old man with a cold, derisive smile, Noting an unfashionable collar Underneath the bow of his neckcloth. Nor would the hostess haughtily discomfit A naive ingenue from the country— She treated everyone the same, Unconstrained and kind. Only the travelling bird-of-passage, The brilliant London puppy Would call forth a half-smile With his mannered bearing— And a quickly exchanged glance Meted out his sentence. PuSkin's social ideas as described in the preceding chapters clearly underlie the sense of these lines from the variants near the end of Eugene Onegin. He reflects back on the changes and development in his thinking through the years when he completed the novel in verse. In a letter to P. A. Osipova in December 1835, ten years after the Rebellion was put down, PuSkin wrote: Quand je songe que 10 ans sont écoulés depuis ces malheureux troubles, il paraît que j'ai fait une rêve. Que d'événements, que de changements en tout, à commencer par mes propres idées— ma situation, etc., etc. En vérité il n'y a que mon amitié pour vous et votre famille que je retrouve en mon âme toujours la même, toujours pleine et entière. (11:68) Adam Mickiewicz, recalling his meetings with Pulkin during those years (1826-1829), said of him: "When he spoke about questions of foreign and domestic politics, you would think that you were listening to a man's experiences in the affairs of state, one who daily read the accounts of the debates in [the English] Parliament."2 S. L. Frank comments that PuSkin's correspondence with Eliza Xitrovo supports fully Mickiewicz's opinion, and goes on to observe: Beginning approximately with 1827, PuSkin formed an original political world-view, based both on a fundamental knowledge of history . . . of European and Russian politics. After 1826-1827, PuSkin's political outlook did not substantially change . . . [except for] a certain increase in conservative tendency after 1831.3

56

POLITICS A N D LITERATURE

T o judge by his literary works, the basic contour of Piß kin's historical and political ideas must have been worked out as early as The Blackamoor of Peter the Great (1827), where they are clearly implied. (Possibly also this was one of the reasons Puákin abandoned the project.) The rather bland historical narrative of the first three chapters comes alive with PuSkin's characteristic verve and wit only in chapter 4 of the five chapters written; it is precisely this chapter that deals with the old nobility and the effect of the Pettine reforms. Of course, the matter is handled lightly, on the level of opposition to Western fashion and manners, but the implications are clear. The central figure of the chapter is one Gavrila Afans'evii Rievskij. He came from an ancient boyar family, owned an immense estate, was hospitable and loved hunting with falcons; he had numerous servants. In a word, he was a Russian bann to the core, and, in his own expression, could not abide foreign ways [ne terpel nemeckogo duxu]; he tried in the domestic life of his household to preserve the ways of the old days so dear to his heart. (8':ΐ9) The initial scene is a formal dinner à la russe; Gavrila's lovely daughter Natal'ja takes round to the guests goblets on a silver platter; the guests regret that the custom of the kiss allowed in olden times on emptying the cup had fallen into desuetude. They sat down at the table. In the place of honor, next to the host, sat his wife's father Prince Boris Alekseevic Lykov, a boyar some seventy years of age; the other guests, observing seniority of family and in so doing recalling the happy times of the mestnicestvo* sat—women on one side; men on the other. At the foot of the table took their accustomed places a barskaja barynja [a sutixa, an amazing old woman, a fool] in an old sufun i kicke [specifically Russian female attire and headdress], a dwarf who was a thirty-year-old little doll, mincing and meticulous, and the captive Swede [Natal'ja's aged dancing master, wounded at Narva] in a worn blue uniform. (8 ':2o) * Mcstinilatvo was a social system that observed order of precedence by seniority, a system of feudal hierarchy, from the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth centuries. It was formed at the court of the Grand Prince of Moscow, where the heirs of the ancient princes of Rus' (udtl'nye knjaz'ja) and their boyars gathered. The place (moto) on the hierarchical ladder was determined by birth and the service of forebears to the Grand Prince.

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

57

It is a patriarchal dinner in the old style, but it is also a court on no miniature scale. The table is set with a number of courses and surrounded by lots of bustling domestics, "among whom the major-domo distinguished himself by his stern gaze, fat belly and majestic immobility." During a lull in the feast, the host asks for his jester, called simply Ekimovna.4 She appears, "an old woman, powdered and rouged, her hair done in flowers and tinsel, wearing a damask roberonde showing her neck and bosom, pripevaja i podpljasyvaja," (singing and dancing along) (8 ':2o). The old boyar company is delighted with her incongruous old Russian speech, which is difficult to translate into English. —Zdravstvuj, Ekimovna,—skazal knjaz' Lykov,—kakovo pozivaeS'? —Podobru—pozdorovu, kum: pojuâi da pljaSu£i, zeniSkov podzidajuci. —Gde ty byla, dura?—sprosil xozjain. —Narjazalas', kum, dlja dorogix gostej, dlja bozija prazdnika, po carskomu nakazu, po bojarskomu prikazu, na smex vsemu miry, po nemeckomu maniru. (8 ':2o) "Greetings, Ekimovna," said Prince Lykov, "how are you getting on?" "Well and healthily, godfather, singing and dancing, and waiting for suitors." "Where have you been, fool?" asked the host. "I was putting on my finery, godfather, for the dear guests, for God's holiday, by the Tsar's command, by the boyar's order, in the foreign [literally "German"] manner, for all the world to laugh at." Gavrila's older sister observes that the fool raves on and on but babbles out the truth; the sister has a great deal more to say, in language almost as colorful as old Ekimovna's. But the point is made in the response of a former voevoda (military commander) of Rjazan', where he had acquired a largish estate and a young wife. His wife, he says, could dress as she liked, but the Western fashion, of ordering a new gown every month and giving the old one to the maid, is ruinous. It used to be that the granddaughter received her grandmother's sarafan as part of her dowry. . . . But what can you do? It's the ruination of the Russian nobility, pure and simple! (8 ^n)

58

POLITICS AND

LITERATURE

Gavrila opines that it is the nobility's own fault for allowing the young women their filies, and indulging them. The cx-voevoda objects: But what can we do, when we are not free to do as we please [koli ne naia volja]? Another might be happy to lock up his wife in the women's quarters [terem], but she is sent out on a roll of the drums to the assembly; the husband goes after his whip, and his wife after her finery. Oh, those assemblies! The Lord has punished our transgressions with them. (8 ] :2i) The "assemblies" were Peter's court gatherings, and one did not decline an invitation. Here it is worth recalling that Louis XIV brought all but the richest aristocracy to heel by the simple expedient of dressing himself as grandly as possible, declaring this to be court dress, then requiring his nobles to appear at court. When a petition was presented by anyone who failed to appear, Louis would say "On ne le voit pas à la cour," thus rejecting the petition; it was tantamount to disgrace. PuSkin's story, however, continues lightly in the tone of tolerant satire. Peter the Great himself arrives and asks the hand of Gavrila's daughter for his blackamoor. There are feminine vapors and fainting fits, but the level-headed Gavrila knows he is in no position to object. When his sister asks how he answered the Tsar, Gavrila replies, "I said that his power is with us, and our subservient role is to submit to him in everything" ["Ja skazal, ito ego vlast5 s nami, i naie xolop'e delo povinovat'sja emu vo vsem"] (81:26) The plot takes a turn for the better from this dark moment—the blackamoor wins the good graces of Natal'ja's elders and, it is expected, will soon win her own; he will not force himself on her—but in all this Peter's humbling of the proud boyars runs like a leitmotif. Two years after The Blackamoor of Peter the Great, in 1829, PuSkin wrote his next prose piece, "Roman ν pis'max," a fragment of an epistolary novel with literary echoes of the genre. The love plot, such as it is, turns on the fact that the heroine, Liza, is a member of the impoverished nobility. Her friend SaSa writes to her that a certain Vladimir misses her with all his heart. Liza rejects SaSa's matchmaking, and here PuSkin uses his favored ironic device, having Liza make "democrats" of the old nobility, since the new aristocracy is made up of bureaucrats, service nobility, and the rich middle orders: I will admit frankly that I liked Vladimir; but I never thought of marrying him. He is an aristocrat, and I a humble demokratka.

P O L I T I C S AND L I T E R A T U R E

59

I hasten to explain, and say proudly, like a real heroine in a novel, that I belong by birth to the oldest Russian nobility, and that my chevalier is the grandson of a bearded millionaire. But you know what our Aristocracy is. (8 ':49). Vladimir pursues Liza fervendy; she is afraid that she will fall in love with him—and then he will think over the unprofitability of the match and later abandon her. Saia replies that her fears are groundless and that not to marry Vladimir is nonsense. Why don't you marry [Vladimir]? Where are the insurmountable obstacles here? He's rich; you're poor, so what? . . . He's rich enough for two, what more do you want? He's an aristocrat, and you, by your name and upbringing, aren't you an aristocrat too? (81:52) Fortunately for Liza, Vladimir is an aristocrat—in everything, that is, except lineage; he shares the point of view of the aristocratic party and in a letter to a friend speaks as PuSkin's raisonneur, expressing the ideas PuSkin was setting forth in his nonliterary works of the period. Disgusted with Petersburg life and the service, Vladimir plans to get married, retire, and run his estate. He argues that the calling of landowner is also service and conceives noblesse oblige as the most practical way to render it. To undertake the direction of three thousand souls, whose entire welfare depends completely on us, is more important than commanding a platoon or copying over diplomatic despatches. . . . The dereliction in which we leave our peasants is unforgivable. The more rights we have over them, the more obligations we have in relation to them. We abandon them to a rogue of an overseer, who oppresses them and robs us. We live at the expense of our future income; we ruin ourselves; old age finds us in want and care. Here is the reason for the rapid decline of our nobility: the grandfather was rich, the son is in want, the grandson goes abegging. The ancient families are coming to nothing; new ones rise and, in the third generation, disappear again. The classes are running together, and not a single familv knows its ancestors. To

6o

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

what does such a political materialism lead? I don't know, but it's time to put limits to it. (8 52-53) It is not quite clear what PuSkin intends by having Vladimir equate the leveling process pure and simple with "political materialism" in 1829; the phrase can hardly have had the connotations then that it was to have in later years. Nevertheless, the connection made between democratization and materialism is sound, and the opposition of these concepts to the older aristocratic system of noblesse oblige is clear enough. Interesting too is the preceding statement on absentee landlordism. It would seem to support Mickiewicz's impression to the effect that PuSkin was quite familiar with Parliamentary debate, that he was quite aware of the arguments on the Home Rule question. The bloody risings and destruction in Cornwall and elsewhere during the French Revolution, and in Ireland the rebellion, first centered on Ulster, and when put down, breaking out again in Mayo, Sligo, and the midlands with the help of French Directoire troops—all had their roots, however complex the total question, in absentee landlordism. Closer in time were England's Corn Law riots, which, if different in provenance, were ultimately related to the same problem of absentee (therefore uncaring) landlords. If such death and destruction, pillage and firing of great estates, and burning and razing of humble cottages could occur in the stablest and freest of nations (Ireland of course excepted), then it is no wonder that PuSkin (as Vladimir) takes this history as a cautionary tale not only for his class but for his Tsar and the entire country. Vladimir goes on to make this point: I have never, without affliction, been able to see the humiliation of our historical families; no one in our country treasures them, beginning with those who belong to them. What pride in memories can one expect from a country where a monument is inscribed "To Citizen Minin and Prince Pozarskij" [and people ask] "What Prince Pozarskij is that? What is such a thing as a Citizen Minin?" Prince Dmitrij Mixailovié Pozarskij was an okoVnicij [one of the highest boyar ranks], and Kozma Minin Suxorukij was a townsman [meicanin, bourgeois, commoner], chosen person of the entire State. But the Fatherland has forgotten even the real names of their saviors. The past for us does not exist. A pitiable people! (81:53).

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

61

Here, perhaps, more than elsewhere in his belles-lettres—and also in the literature that is in Russian called "publicistic"—PuSkin expresses most effectively the idea of the commonweal, the Russian commonweal of Tsar, nobility, and commoner working together for the common good. The idea is not "aristocratic" in the pejorative narrow sense. It is not anti-monarchical: Minin and Pozarskij saved the crown, and the passage is not a diatribe against the lower orders (Minin is the hero). It is a recollection to common sense of a nation that, with a little thought, might reset its ways, top to bottom, and avoid a Cornwall or a Connaught. Pui>kin ever hoped that his essays "might do some g o o d " — t h a t is, help serve in molding social opinion. It seems likely that he intended such passages as the one at hand to have such an effect also. The bureaucratic aristocracy [tinovnaja aristokratija] will never replace the aristocracy of birth frodovaja aristokratija]. Family memories should be the historical memories of the nation. But what are the family memories o f a collegiate assessor? Speaking on behalf of the aristocracy, I cannot pretend to be an English lord as does the diplomat Severin, grandson of a cook and a tailor; my origins, while I'm not ashamed o f them, do not give me any right to do that. But I agree with La Bruyère: "affecter le mépris de la naissance est un ridicule dans le parvenu et une lâcheté dans le gentilhomme." (81 :j3) 5 It is tempting to search among the admittedly central differences in class and condition that figure in Povesti Belkina (The Tales of Belkin 1830) for a relationship to the theme being developed here, but such a connection would be strained at best and distorting. There is, however, an indirect connection through the related "History of the Village of Gorjuxino" (1830), first conceived as a kind of autobiography of Belkin, with historical notes. The decline of the fortunes of the family Belkin follows the already established pattern: My ancestors, owning many other estates, paid no attention to the distant holding [Gorjuxino], . . . But in the course of time, the family lands o f the Belkins were divided up and went into decline. The impoverished grandsons of the rich grandfather could not break their habits of luxury, and required of their estates, which had been reduced tenfold, the former full rents. . . . (81:13e).

62

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

The peasants reacted by growing lax and surly; a wicked overseer was hired, and in three years, the village was poverty-stricken. The "History of the Village of Gorjuxino" breaks off at the point where one might expect some kind of rising; in Dubrovskij (1832-33) this indeed occurs and as a result of the financial ruin of the lord. One must be careful not to read too much into what is essentially a noblebrigand, Robin Hood kind of Romantic tale. Even so, it is worth noting that the impetus for the plot at the beginning is the inordinate pride of a nearly ruined nobleman—Dubrovskij's father—who is reduced to his last small estate. Even this is lost after a contretemps with a rich and powerful neighbor and the ensuing bureaucratic chicanery. The villainous neighbor is Troekurov, a member of the old Russian nobility but not one of the educated nobility (once again, the prosvescennoje dvorjanstvo, as PuSkin often refers to it; in PuSkin's positive usage dvorjanstvo includes the idea of the enlightened, the educated— in effect, the intelligentsia of that age). "In his home life, [Troekurov] demonstrated all the vices of an uneducated man . . . twice a week, he suffered from his gluttony"; he keeps his maidservants under lock and key and is strict and capricious with his serfs and highhanded with his acquaintances, who often suffer as a result (this is sometimes true also of his oldest friends). There is almost nothing of noblesse oblige in Troekurov; in fact, he ought to have been considered by the enlightened nobility as someone who has betrayed his class. Dubrovskij's father alone has not suffered up to this time from Troekurov's caprices and machinations. Dubrovskij (the father) is one of the by-now familiar types of the noble reduced to his last holding, and this a tiny one, of only some seventy souls. He had left his career as an officer for lack of funds and lives on his estate, a man of impatient but resolute character; he is also proud and refuses outright the proffered patronage of Troekurov. Each has a single child, but when Troekurov proposes to join them in marriage, Dubrovskij refuses on the grounds that a poor nobleman like his son is not a suitable fiance for Troekurov's daughter; he would be better off to marry the daughter of a poor noble than to act as overseer for a spoiled girl. The elder Dubrovskij's frankness exceeds all bounds when he observes that his neighbor's hunting dogs are better cared for than his peasants. An offended dogkeeper replies insultingly to Dubrovskij, and Troekurov laughs. Mortally offended, Dubrovskij takes his leave quiedy and refuses further hospitality; he sends a note saying "I

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

63

am not a [court] fool, but a nobleman of ancient family" (Sl:i64). Troekurov begins to harass Dubrovskij, and the upshot of the matter is that Troekurov makes use of the bureaucracy to take over the Dubrovskij estate; he allies himself with the enemy, the bureaucracy, in order to bring down his neighbor and peer. The narrator comments that "we will give the decision [of the magistrate] in full, assuming that everyone will be pleased to see one of the means by which in Russia [na Rust] we can deprive ourselves of our estates, to the ownership of which we have an inarguable right" (81:i67). There follows a heavily ironic parody of a legal document (Troekurov, of course, wins the case); Dubrovskij goes into a decline and then into accesses of madness; finally he dies. His proud but rakehell son, a promising guards officer, is summoned to his father's bedside. The father dies shortly thereafter, and the young Dubrovskij swears vengeance. He leads his own loyal peasants into rebellion, quite like both Protestant and Catholic landowners in Ireland not thirty years before, in the face of an oppressive government that was progressively ruining the native-born nobility regardless of faith. PuSkin did not have to use a great deal of imagination to speculate on how an impoverished noble might act if pushed too far; the recent histories of England and Ireland, not to speak of December 1825, could provide examples enough. The younger Dubrovskij is the extreme case of the impoverished nobleman who is forced not merely into shabby gentility but into outlawry and brigandage. Before he disbands his troop of peasants, there is a confrontation with government soldiers sent to subdue them. Thus, there is more than a suggestion of open rebellion. Again, there is no intent here to suggest that Dubrovskij is some kind of covert political tract; it is certainly not. One may say fairly, though, that certain of the plot elements parallel to a notable degree some of PuSkin's political thoughts at the time of writing. Contrary to Pulkin's usual careful practice, the unexpected and anticlimatic ending is not well-motivated in the literary sense. Of course, the arrival of the soldiers could have made Dubrovskij rethink the entire undertaking for the peasants' own sake, but the whole turn of plot remains curiously unsatisfying. This turn was perhaps included as a gesture toward the censors or might have been a reflection of PuSkin's very real fear of an armed peasant rising, a fear that is implicit in the Istonja Pußaieva (History of Pugaéev 1833-1834)6 and Kapitanskaja doika (The Captain's Daughter 1833-1836).

64

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

The History of Pugalev is a dry and scholarly schema of the historical events; while the historian who is also a litterateur occasionally breaks through, this happens rarely; PuSkin seems to have been guarding his prose carefully, aiming at a workmanlike job as a historian. It is in the footnotes where the full horror of the rising is indicated by PuS kin's careful inclusion of some twenty-five pages of a report listing the atrocities of Pugaiev and his men: assassination of nobles and functionaries; wholesale murder of people of all classes, of women and children, and often of whole families; pillage and burning of estate houses; sacking of numberless churches; theft of plate and bayoneting of holy icons and other acts of sacrilege. Piß kin's only comment is that "the list is still far from complete."7 The History ofPutjaZev is bracketed in time by the composition of the The Captain's Daughter. The idea of the novel came to PuSkin in January of 1833; shortly thereafter (early February) he applied for access to the archive materials. In July he asked for leave to visit the area where the action centered (Orenburg-Rjazan'). By this time he already had a plan in mind; the novel and the history were written concurrently, with the historical notes completed in 1834 and the final reworking of the novel in 1836. After his trip to the Urals, in 1834, PuSkin, at Boldino, recast the original plan in a new first draft, which became the finished novel.8 Of particular interest here is the fact that in the original idea for the novel PuSkin had in mind as hero not Grinev, but a certain $vanvi£ (in the later recasting, Svabrin, the villain of the piece). Svanvif was a historical figure, one of the noblemen who went over to the rebels— an "apostate" [otfccpenec; probably, here, the best translation is a "turncoat"]. PuSkin was particularly interested in him as a turncoat nobleman, enough to make him the hero in the original plan, and then, after his research and mission to the Urals, to make him the villain. This remarkable reversal may justify a rather lengthy quotation from the notes to the 1957 Academy edition, especially as it relates to the foregoing discussion of Dubrovskij: The idea for the novel [came to PuSkin] at the beginning of 1833. The first date under the plan of the novel, in which the hero is named Svabrin, is 31 January 1833. Concurrently, PuSkin initiated measures for his access to the archives connected with the Pugaiev rising. . . . After PuSkin's trip to the Urals [in Septem-

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

65

ber], PuSkin stopped at Boldino, where he finished The History of Pugatev. Probably related to that period are the new plans for the novel, and perhaps the new draft. . . . The Captain's Daughter was conceived while Ρu5kin was writing Dubrovskij. Evidendy, he was attracted by the fate of the hero—a turncoat nobleman who had abandoned his class. The historical background—the time of Pugaéev—lent a special interest to the working out of the plot line. PuSkin saw the possibility of touching on those questions which excited him in connection with his ideas about the fate of the Russian nobility, about a peasant rising, and about the bureaucratic system of the Russian autocracy. He fixed on this subject probably because, around that time, he received information about Svanii as a supporter of Pugafev, in whose destiny he had become interested. [Svanvif's] grandfather, a certain Marti, had turned up in Russia in 1718, and served in minor capacities. He did not have the rank of nobleman [dvorjanskogo zvanija ne imel].9 The notes go on to say that the son, Svanvié's father, was a junior officer in the Preobrazenskij Regiment in 1748. He had the reputation of being a man of strength fsitae] and a brawler. The elder SvanviC was a crony of the Orlovs and in a fight with one of them, around 1750, cut A. Orlops cheek. As a result, or for one or another escapade, he was sent to the Orenburg garrison. Not long after (with the accession of Peter III), he returned to a regular army career, held officer ranks, and was given a patent of nobility (hereditary). His son Michael, the prototype for Svabrin, also went into the army, became an officer, and fought in the Turkish campaign, at Poltava and at Narva, before being sent to Orenburg in the action against Pugafev. The detachment he was leading was captured (almost without resistance), and Svanvic went over to Pugacev, who gave him the rank of infantry captain. As an officer knowing foreign languages, he was assigned to Pugacev's war ministry. After Pugaéev's defeat Svanvif was stripped of his rank, excluded from the nobility, and exiled to Siberia (the lightness of the sentence was due to the direct intervention of Catherine, who was petitioned by the father and perhaps the Orlovs). What is significant in all this is that Puskin originally chose Svanvic as hero—that is, he chose a nobleman who went over to the rebels; the early drafts and plans have only Svanvii (later called Basarin, then

66

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

Valuev). Grincv as hero was introduced only quite late in the reworkings, representing the positive aspects of the hero; Svabrin was left almost entirely negative. The notes to the 1957 Academy edition assume this was done to appease the censor, as is very likely. PuSkin omitted an entire chapter for the same reason (it describes the peasant uprising in Grinev's village).10 Similarly Ρu$kin reworked the part where of his own volition Grinev goes to Pugaiev (that is, as a nobleman to a head of state) to petition protection for the captain's daughter against Svabrin; clearly, this would have been almost as unacceptable to the censor as the hero's going over to the enemy. What we do not have is any dear reason why Svabrin so easily turned his coat, other than the cowardice and lack of honor of a thorough blackguard. The expected part of the formula is not there: Svabrin is not a member of the old nobility nor impoverished to the

degree that he could make common cause with the peasants—as in the case of Dubrovskij, whose story, it is worth noting, was written during the composition of The Captain's Daughter. Yet if Grinev was conceived as Svabrin's "good side," Ρ uS kin's original idea for Svabrin may well have included a background like Grinev's: his father, a former major, retired to his single estate; his lineage is not given, but he married the daughter of an impoverished local nobleman. (Much of the Svanvi£ story is transferred to Grinev, including the crucial petition to Catherine.) It is thus not unreasonable to conclude that PuSkin's political thinking in the 1830s probably influenced the composition of The Captain's Daughter much more than appears in the version submitted to the censors. His ideas on the crucial role of the nobility in the social fabric of the state and the possible end result of the nobility's impoverishment and lack of protection might even in some considerable measure have dictated the choice of theme for the novel: a peasant uprising in which some nobles crossed over to the rebels. It is a theme that was not calculated to please the censors, any more than Boris Godunov pleased Benkendorf. That PuSkin fixed on it at all suggests that he may have originally had in mind a moral tale, instructive—as he always hoped certain of his works might be—to the lern' and, if lost on them, then at least to the more thoughtful members of Russian society. The novel in its final form, of course, makes such a thesis extremely tenuous; it is supported only by the history of the composition, variants, and plans. Further support may be adduced from works—mostly unfinished—written around the same time.

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

67

One such work is "Gosti s"ezialis' na da£u" (The Guests Gathered at the Country House, begun 1828; the third chapter, of special interest here, was written in 1830). This and related works—"Na uglu malenkoj ploSéadi" (On the Corner of a Small Square, 1830-1831) and "Otryvok" (Fragment, 1830)—express variations on the same ideas, and will be discussed in detail in chapter 4, in connection with "Egyptian Nights" (Egipeckie noéi, 1835). Also important in this regard is the fragment "Russkij Pelam" (ca. 1834), which will be treated extensively in chapter 5. All these works, taken together with The Captain's Daughter, touch on Puákin's political concerns: the decline of the nobility, the lack of a nobility that is exclusively hereditary, the fact of a nobility with almost free access on the one hand and no entailment on the other, and the descent of the old nobility into the tiers-état. For the "Russkij Pelam" (The Russian Pelham), there are several detailed plans and some introductory chapters of a novel PuSkin intended to write about Petersburg society in the 1820s. The viewpoint is again that of the Russian dvorjanin, but this time in his batde not with the autocrat or with the peasants but with the rising middle class, the raznoiincy, the Bulgarins and the critics. Like his prototype the Russian Pelham was to have been a dandy and aristocrat, and if PuSkin was to have followed the model at all closely, his hero would have had a marked political bent and have been a spokesman for the aristocratic party. Since the impetus of the work was to counter the publication of Bulgarin's rogue novel, Ivan Vyzigin, written from a middle-class point of view, or more precisely that of a raznotinec and aristocratbaiter, such a surmise seems fully justified. In sum, the prose works of the years 1828-1836 show a surprising incidence of the theme of the Russian nobility in one or another form, with variations reflecting PuSkin's political thinking in these years.11 In the poetic works the thematics of concern here appear most clearly in the various genealogies, such as "My Genealogy" {Moja rodoslovnaja, 1830). Here again Pulkin employs his favored play on the position of the old nobility versus the new "aristocracy"; in this poem it is echoed throughout as a refrain: Ja po krestu ne dvorjanin. Ne akademik, ne professor; Ja prosto russkij me&anin (31:26i) (I swear I'm not a nobleman/ Nor academic nor professor;/ I'm just a Russian meilanin.)

68

POLITICS

A N D

LITERATURE

Each stanza ends with the word meicanin, and by the end it becomes a higher station and reason for pride than the rank of all the courtiers and men of power and wealth (3 1 1263). 12 The general theme is taken up again in Ezerskij (1832-1833) in a more elaborate statement; portions were abstracted by PuSkin in 1836 for publication under the tide of "Rodoslovnaja moego geroja" (Genealogy of My Hero), thus bracketing composition of Bronze Horseman. There seems litde doubt about the close connection among these works, especially since Richard Gregg's article, which gives in two extensive footnotes the clearest and most nonsense-free examination of the question.13 It is clear that Ezerskij is an earlier version of Evgenij, and that the poem itself is an earlier beginning for what was to become the Bronze Horseman: H a 4 OMpaMeHHbiM

IleTporpaAOM

OceHHHH BeTep TynH rnaA, /JbiLuaAo He6o ΒΛΗΤΚΗΜΜ XAa^oM, H e e a u i y M e A a . BHACH B a A

O npHCTaHb Ha6epe>KHOH cTpoHHofi, K a K MeAOÔHTMHK ÔecnOKOHHblH O 6 4 B E P B CY4EHCKOII. /LO>K4B Β ΟΚΗΟ C T y i a A n e n a A b H O . Y>K TCMHO B c ë CTaHOBHAOCb. Β s t o B p e M f l

E3epcKHH, MOH coce^, BouieA Β CBOH T e c H b i i i KaÔHHeT . . . OAHaKo >κ po4 ero, H nAeMH, Η ΗΗΗ, Η CAy>K6y, Η ro^a B a M 3HaTb H e xyAO, rocno^a. ( 5 : 9 7 ) HeaH

Above darkened Petersburg The autumn wind drove the storm-clouds; The heavens breathed a moist coldness The Neva roared. The waves smashed Against the pier on the sturdy embankment, Like an anxious petitioner At the magistrate's door. The rain knocked At the window sadly. Everything Was already getting dark. It was Then that my neighbor Ivan Ezerskij Came into his small, crowded study . . .

P O L I T I C S AND L I T E R A T U R E

69

However, his family name, his genealogy, His civil rank and service, and his years, Ladies and gentlemen, are something worthwhile for you to know! After the first introductory stanza the fragment continues into Ezerskij's family history, which contains the thematic development already noted in other works. It begins with Ezerskij's ancient lineage, the knighdy deeds o f his forebears, their service to Tsars and princes as generals and counselors; here (PuSkin reminds us) the first Romanov was elected by the Duma, after which the Ezerskijs came to great power at court.

KorAa w OT /lyMbi bcahhsboh CBOH BeHeq, Kor4a Π04 ΜΗρΗοκ) ¿epwaeoH ΠρΗΗΛ P o M a H O B

Pycb 0 T 4 0 X H y A a HaKOHeq, A HauiH ΒΟρΟΓΗ CMHpHAHCb, Tor4a E3epcKHe HBHAHCb

Β BeAHKOH CHAe npH 4BOpe. Π ρ κ HMnepaTope Π ε τ ρ ε . . . H o H 3 B H H H T e : CraTbCH

mojkct,

HHTaTeAb, H BaM 40ca4HA: H a u l B e n Bac e e p H O npoceeTHA, B a c c n e c b 4 B o p « H C K a « H e ΓΛΟ^κετ,

H Hy«4bi HeT BaM HHKaKoii ,4ο BauieH κηηγη P040B0H . . . (5:98) When from the proud Duma [The first] Romanov accepted his crown When Rus could rest at last Under a peaceful rule, And our enemies were calmed, Then it was that the Ezerskijs were In a position o f great power at court. Under Emperor Peter . . . But do excuse me: it is possible, Reader, that I'm annoying you: Our age has educated you truly, A noble's pride does not gnaw at you, And you have no need at all T o look up things in your family history . . .

70

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

Significantly, PuSkin breaks off at the mention of Peter and substitutes ellipses where one might surely expect a discussion of the family's fortunes under Peter and perhaps also under Anna and Catherine. The notes to the 1957 Academy edition assume a political content in the omitted lines. 14 PuSkin abrupdy changes to a light conversational tone in a lyrical digression to his reader, which shifts into a bitter irony on the decline of the old class and the rise of the new, in lines where he once again uses his favored device: H CaM

XOTb Β KHH»KKaX H CAOBeCHO

CoÔpaTbH Ha40 ΜΗΟΗ TpyHHT— Λ MeiyaHHH, KaK BaM H3BeCTHO, H Β 3ΤΟΜ CMblCAe 4eMOKpaT. Ho Kaiocb: hobmh Χο43κοβοκηη, Λκ)6λιο o t 6a6yuiKH mockobckoh

H CAyuiaTb τολκη o podHe, O6 OT4aAeHHOH crapHHe. MorywHX npe4KOB npaBHyK 6e4Hbiiï,

Λιο6λιο BcrpeMaTb hx HMeHa Β 4 B y x - T p e x c r p o n a x KapaM3HHa.

Οτ 3TOH CAa6ocTH 6e3Bpe4Hoñ, K a K HH C T a p a A C H , — b h 4 H T 6 o r — OTBblKHyTb Η HHK3K He ΜΟΓ.

I myself—though in their books And out loud my colleagues scoff at me— I am myself as you know, a meiianin, And in that sense, a democrat. But I confess: like a new Xodakovskij, I love to hear tales about my relations From my Moscow grandmother, And tales from the distant past. The poor great-grandson of mighty ancestors, I love to meet their names In two or three lines of Karamzin's history. Of this harmless litde failing, No matter how I tried, God knows, I've never been able to break the habit. The lyrical digression, of course, only seems to break off the Ezerskij genealogy at the time of Peter: actually, it continues the history of

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

71

Ezerskij's family and that of all his class under the guise of PuSkin's own. There follows a lament for the whole class (iz bar my lezem ν tiersétat) and for their lost estates. Ρu5kin sums up Ezerskij's whole bitter story in eight lines: E3epcKHÍi caM >κε TBep4o ee/jaA, Ητο A£A ero, bcahkhh My», Hmca nHTHa^qaTb tmchh 4ym M3 HHX OTLiy ero 4ocraAacb OcbMaü nacTb—h Ta cnoAHa EbiAa cnepea 3aAO>KeHa ΠοτοΜ β AOMÖap^e npo^aeaAacb . . . A caM OH >KaAOBaHbCM JKHA H perHCTpaTopoM cAy>KHA. Ezerskij himself knew for sure That his grandfather, a great man, Had fifteen thousand souls; Of them, his father inherited One eighth part—and that part itself Was mortgaged right off", And later sold to the pawnbrokers . . . He himself had to live on his salary, And worked as a registrar in the civil service . . . At this point PuSkin again veers deftly away from the incipient political question and engages in a literary chat in defense of the late Romantic "little" hero: not an officer, not a Don Juan, not a gypsy, but a "citizen of the capital," a minor civil servant. The fragment Ezerskij ends on this note, and Pulkin abandoned Ezerskij for work on the Bronze Horseman, recasting his hero into the mould of the "poor clerk." The First Part introduces much the same "little" hero as in Ezerskij, but the genealogy is deliberately and obviously omitted: ripHuieA EereHHH μολολοη . . . Mbi 6y4eM Hauiero repon

3ßaTb 3THM HMeHeM. Oho 3ßyHHT ΠρΗΛΤΗΟ; c HHM 4aBHO Moe nepo κ TOMy we 4py»HO. np03eantM

HOM eeo ne nyjtCHO,

72

POLITICS AND

LITERATURE

XoTb Β MHHyBUIH BpeMeHa O h o , 6tamb MOJtcem, η Ö A H c r a A o

H Π04 nepoM KapaM3HHa Β po4Hbix npe4aHbHx npo3BynaAo; Ho HbIHe C B e T O M η μ ο λ β ο η O h o 3a6biTO. Haui repoii JKHBCT β KoAOMHe; Γ4ε-το cAyjKHT, /(ΠΗΚΤΟΙ 3HaTHbIX Η He TyjKHT Hh o noMHioiueii po4He, Hh o 3a6biTOH C T a p H H e . [my italics—SD] Young Evgenij entered . . . We will call our young hero By this name. It has A pleasant sound, and my Pen has long since been friendly to it. His last name you don't need to know. Although in times long past, Perhaps it shone brighdy, And under Karamzin's pen, It resounded in our country's legends— But now by society and fame It's been forgotten. Our hero Lives in Kolomna; works in an office somewhere, Is shy in front of superiors and doesn't long for Either his buried forefathers Or forgotten olden times, [my italics—SD] The pointed omission, of course, calls attention to its importance. Since in the 1830s the decline of the nobility, the reasons for the decline, and possible remedies were prime topics of political conversation; even the merest hint on PuSkin's part would—or should—have been generally understood. Further, one may assume that Puskin published his "Rodoslovnaja moego geroja" in 1836 at least partly so that his point would not be missed.15 O f course, there are many ways of reading the poem without necessary reference to Puskin's political views. Over fifty years ago Vladislav Xodasevii set about cataloguing interpretations in a literature already so vast that he was obliged to list only the major categories into which they fell. 16 The categories themselves are too numerous to detail here,

POLITICS AND

LITERATURE

73

but they include various ideological and political ones (such as the autocrat versus the masses, or, alternatively, versus the Romantic individual; Russia versus Europe; connections with the Decembrist revolt of 1825 or the Polish Rebellion of 1831). There are more or less nonideological ones also, such as the Petersburg myth, polemics with Mickiewicz, or the relationship to eighteenth-century Russian odes. The literature on the subject has increased apace, and the last line of inquiry has been pushed back to the third century B.C., to Callimachus and Apollonius of Rhodes. 17 Nevertheless, it is possible to suggest still another interpretation, one that reflects Ρ uS kin's ideas on Peter and the impoverished nobility. The facts for such an interpretation have been marshalled time and again, but researchers have stopped short of making it or have veered off on another tack.18

of the noble class and the historical and political reasons for the decline are pervasive themes, as we have seen, in the widest range of PuS kin's literary and non-literary works, surrounding in time the composition of The Bronze Horseman. Given the intimate connection between Ezerskij and The Bronze Horseman, it is not eccentric to suppose that the general ideas in the earlier work were transposed to the later one, although couched in a more Aesopian language. Indeed, this assumption may be the reason for the deliberate ambiguity in the passage last cited:

THE STATE

We don't need his name,/ Although in times long past,/ It perhaps shone brightly,/ And under Karamzin's pen/ Resounded in our country's legends . . . This byf mozet (perhaps) seems to bring into question whether Evgenij was even a nobleman at all, whether impoverished or not. On the other hand, to assert simply on the basis of this small ambiguity that Puskin intended his hero to be of something other than noble lineage raises a whole battery of reasonable questions. Did Puskin, in abandoning Ezerskij to take up The Bronze Horseman, do a complete about-face in regard to the nature of his hero? With the plight of the

74

P O L I T I C S AND L I T E R A T U R E

impoverished nobility so clearly in his mind at this time, why should he suddenly select a razttocinec as his hero? Why, indeed, should he make such a point o f omitting the genealogy, except to call attention to it without offending the censor? Why should he publish the "Genealogy of My Hero," taken from Ezersktj, just after he had written The Bronze Horseman? And finally, how is one to explain the peculiar syntax of the passage in question? The name o f the hero's family shone perhaps in Karamzin's history—but after the half-stop in the very same syntactical period, there is no longer any doubt: "But now by society and fame/ It's [the family name] been forgotten." Any real ambiguity beyond what appears to be a deliberate literary mystification is difficult to see. Thus, the following reading is offered as one consonant with PuSkin's historical thought and political ideas o f the time. Just as the image o f Peter hounds Evgenij toward his final destruction, so does Peter metaphorically pursue the old landed nobility through history to its ruin. The actions taken by the Ivans and more particularly by Peter and his successors resulted ultimately in an impoverished, nearly powerless, and desperate class o f nobles. As the most powerful and therefore the symbolic autocrat among the succession of Tsars and Empresses, Peter is on one hand the magnificent epic head o f state; on the other, he is the agent of Evgenij's individual, Romantic tragedy—as well as the tragedy o f his entire class. 19 At the beginning of the tale Evgenij is already in painfully reduced circumstances; even his humble hopes for improvement are to be dashed: the horseman will harry him to the end. Unhinged by grief, he fixes on the equestrian statue as the author o f his woes—a madman's fixation, to be sure, but not without a kind o f reason to it. It was Peter who had caused the granite city to be raised on the waters of the Neva; he had mastered the very elements; his imperial city rises triumphant, like Triton, above the waves of the flood which was to sweep away Evgenij's hopes and sanity. At the end of Part I, the opposition of Evgenij and Peter is clearly suggested through parallel images. Evgenij, distraught to a degree but still in possession o f his faculties, sits astride one o f the marble lions on the perron of a noble house: a lion segreant, one paw upraised protecting the house, a heraldic lion. Within Evgenij's vision is the statue of Peter, bestride his horse rearing back on its haunches, the Emperor's arm flung out—as though commanding the flood.

POLITICS AND LITERATURE

75

In Part II Evgenij wanders crazed through the streets of Petersburg, totally bereft of even his meager possessions. Finally, he seems to come to a lucid moment: he "wakens" before the stone lions, which are now more directly opposed to the statue. Evgenij's thoughts clear, and he rises in rebellion—pitifully and only for a moment—against the horseman. But he is weak and defenseless: all he can manage is a child's threat, "Uzo tebe," and then the horseman, in his disordered mind, pursues him through the night and haunts him until he dies. The pathos of this comédie humaine is a quiet echo of the epic tragedy of an entire class, once mighty, now brought so low. This pathos is expressed direcdy in Ezersktj: VIII

MHe He >KaAb, mto chx p040B ôonpcKHx BAe4neeT 6acck h hhkhct 4yx.

MHe >KaAb, η το Ηετ KH«3etí riojKapcKHX, Μτο o 4pyrwx nponaA h CAyx, Mto hx noHOCHT uiyT Φηγλλρηη, Μτο pyccKHH BeTpeHbiií 6o«pHH TepneT rpaMOTbi uapeft, KaK crapbiH c6op KaAeH^apeii, Μτο HCTopHHecKHe zeyKH HaM CTaAH My«4bi, xoTb cnpocTa H3 6ap mm Ae3eM β tiers-étât, XoTb HHIIJH 6y4yT HaiUH BHyKH, Μ μτο cnacHÔo HaM 3a το He cKajKeT, Ka»eTCH, ηηκτο. ix

MHe

>KaAb, WTO

/Ϊ03Β0ΛΛ

mm, p y n e HaeMHOH

r p a Ö H T b CBOÍÍ 4 Ο Χ Ο 4 ,

C T p y 4 0 M H p e M 3 a 6 o T M TCMHOH BAaMHM Β CTOAHqe K p y r A M Í Í Γ 0 4 ,

Μτο He jKHBeM ceMbëio ApywHofi Β 4 0 B 0 A b C T B e , Β THUIHHe 40Cy>KH0H,

CTapefl 6ΛΗ3 μογηλ po4Hbix Β CBOHX nOMeCTbHX p 0 4 0 B b I X , 1 4 e β HauieM T e p e M e 3a6biTOM

PacreT nycTMHHa>i

Tpaea;

P O L I T I C S AND L I T E R A T U R E Mto re paA b4 h m ec ko ro AbBa /^eMOKpaTHHCCKHM KOHblTOM y Hac AHraeT h ocöa: /íyx eena bot KyAa 3ameAÎ (5:100-101) I regret that o f these boyar families The brilliance pales and the spirit declines, I regret that there are no more Princes Pozarskij, That even the memory of others [like him] is lost, That a clown like Figljarin * defames them, That the empty-headed Russian boyar Loses his patent of nobility Like some collection of old [court] calendars, That the sounds of history Have become alien to us, even though unthinkingly We slip from noblemen into the tiers-état, Although our grandsons will be impoverished, And that nobody, or so it seems, Will ever give us any thanks for it. I regret that while allowing A hireling's hand to steal our income, We drag year-round in the capital The heavy yoke of dark worries, That we do not live like a family on good terms, In freedom from want and leisured peace, Growing old next to our forbears' graves On our own family estates, Where in our forgotten chambers Weeds of the wasteland grow; That in our own home, the donkey Kicks the heraldic lion With his democratic hoof : This is what the spirit of our age has come to! * "Figljarin" here is of coursc Bulgarin.

IV Puskin and Dandyism LIKE PUSKIN'S aristocratism and closely related to it, his dandyism is too important a phenomenon to dismiss as merely another of the vagaries of a great man. It is true that from one point of view dandyism was no more than an excess of fashionable frivolity, but in Russia in PuSkin's time it acquired a special cachet with distinctly political overtones. It is in this sense that PuSkin's playing the dandy role and the prominence he gave it in his literary works communicated something well beyond mere social posturing. It is not difficult to understand why PuSkin's critics have been reluctant to deal with the poet's attraction to a fad that in its negative aspects could be petty and vain and cruel. Just as critics hesitate to ascribe to the very symbol of artistic freedom in Russia a worldview that is essentially aristocratic, so we refrain from associating the genius of his age with something generally perceived today as factitious or even silly. Still, simply to pass over this puzzling aspect of PuSkin's biography and works with neither comment nor explanation ultimately does an injustice to the idea of him as a complex but thoroughly integrated individual. The relationship among aristocratism, politics, and dandyism would not have been missed by PuSkin's more thoughtful contemporaries, but without a conscious effort at some historical perspective it is probably a little difficult to perceive today. It is useful to recall first of all the enormous social and political differences between the societies of England and of Russia in the years following the War of 1812. England was a constitutional monarchy; the king's powers over his

78

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

people were limited by law. If all the classes below the king benefited from this fact, there is no doubt that the class benefiting the most was the aristocracy (here in the general sense of the gentry, that stratum of society between king and commoner). This privileged group enjoyed a freedom, economic advantage, and political security unrivalled anywhere else in the world. In Russia the opposite numbers of the English hereditary nobility were ruled by an autocrat; the relationship was not vastly different from a feudal one. The laws that existed tended to weaken the hereditary nobles rather than to protect them. By PuSkin's time the class had largely lost its power and much of its wealth. The English model was of course very attractive, and indeed it was a crucial element in Decembrist thinking leading up to the rebellion. Whether in Russia or England this class, when it consciously or unconsciously acted in concert for its own advantage, became in effect a political party. In neither country did it call itself by that name, nor did it think of itself as such. When it thought of itself at all, it was as Society, "good society," or what the outsiders called "high society." The dandy not only amused that society and legislated its "tone"; he was in a very real sense representative of it, a spokesman for it. By taking society's most salient features and sharpening them to a degree, he became an emblem of its attitudes (the good ones and also the bad). These attitudes did not cause any particular comment in Regency England; they had been evolving in the system for hundreds of years. It was the way things were. When, however, the very same attitudes were transplanted from London to Petersburg on the wave of Anglomania that followed the War of 1812, then these attitudes were no longer vaguely political in some abstract historical sense but distinctly political in the practical, ordinary sense. The dandy represented Society, and Society (as separate from and in contradistinction to court circles) represented consciously or unconsciously the aristocratic party in its opposition to autocracy.

not only a major fact of PuSkin's biography from 1817 until the late 1820s; it was also significant in his works, primarily in forming the hero of Eugene Onegin. Moreover, PuSkin had planned a serious novel about Petersburg society in the 1820s that was to have had a dandy hero, a "Russian Pelham." The amount of scholarship on DANDYISM WAS

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

79

the plans and fragment of the novel (1834) is astonishing, but it nevertheless manages to ignore entirely that the model, Bulwer-Lytton's Pelham, was both a political and a dandy novel. Finally, that constandy fascinating piece among Pu5 kin's last prose works, "Egyptian Nights," has as hero Carskij, a dandy hero at a time (1835) when the type was itself in general démodé. (If the dandy continued to flourish in European literature throughout the century, in society of the later 1830s the type was something of an anachronism and rather old hat for a contemporary hero). Also, like Byron in Beppo, PuSkin in Onegin gave the very word "dandy" common currency in his language.1 If only for these reasons, the question merits a great deal more attention than it has received heretofore. Investigators have documented the minutiae of PuSkin's life and his views on everything from montgolfiers to magnetism, macadamized roads to "the railroad question," but there is only one article that deals with dandyism in PuSkin's life and work. It is Leonid Grossman's 1918 study, "PuSkin i dendizm" (Puskin and Dandyism).2 It is an exemplary work, although lacking the apparatus scholars have come to expect since its writing, and it is regrettably brief, treating in some thirty pages the general subject of European dandyism, Ρ uS kin's own dandy years, and most particularly the comparison between Onegin and The Red and the Black. In the preface Grossman observes that . . . it is now time to consider the image of Onegin under the emblem of that dandyism, the first and best expression of which he, up till now, remains for us. We cannot but look more closely into Ρu5 kin's deep interest in this complicated phenomenon of the era, one which gave its definite stamp to his personal image and poetic manner. Grossman goes on to say: Russian dandyism is a phenomenon little noted and still entirely unstudied. But at the same time it deserves no less attention than analogous currents in the life of the West, painstakingly researched in special monographs and essays. In the West, Dandyism has long since passed into the circle of respectable themes on esthetics, histories of mores, ideas and even literary movements. . . . Research on Byron and Alfred de Mus-

8o

PUSKIN

AND

DANDYISM

set, Balzac and Stendhal, Bulwer and Mérimée, Baudelaire and Barbey D'Aurevilly cannot pass by this unique spiritual factor of the epoch. It is as though it opens a new chapter in the history of European literature in counterpoise to existing divisions of Romanticism. Isn't it time to include in our study of Russian poetry, and especially our study of Puikin, that unusual but rich and fruitful term? Apart from Grossman's own initial attempt to answer that question, PuSkin scholarship has not responded to it. For well over half a century the fact is the more surprising because in the history of European literature Eugene Oneßin may be considered the first major dandy novel. Western studies of the dandy typically exclude consideration of Russian literature; this is deplorable but alas traditional. What is more difficult to understand is why PuSkinists should not make the claim for the poet, a claim usually made for Henry Plumer Ward's Trentaine (1825). PuSkin's chapter 2, the "dandy" chapter, was completed well before that; Stendhal's The Red and the Black was not written until Puikin was working on the final chapters of Onegin; Bulwer's Pelham came out only in 1828. The tendency has been to dismiss PuSkin's dandyism as a youthful folly and to subsume its literary ramifications under his Byronism. The latter is perhaps more justifiable; certainly, dandyism was a part, and one of the more obvious ones, of Ρ uà kin's Byronizing, but the plain fact is that Puskin's attraction to dandyism began years before there was any real acquaintance with Byron and lasted long after the influence of Byron had begun to wane. That attraction continued well into the mid-i83os, when PuSkin had given up his own dandy excesses, and the fad itself had become somewhat passé. Still, in 1835 he chose a dandy hero for "Egyptian Nights." Obviously, there was for PuSkin something more to the dandy than merely another young man of fashion or some breed of fop. As Balzac observed, there was indeed much more than fashion involved: "Qui ne voit dans la mode que la mode, est un sot." 3

IT is difficult to give a clear idea of what the dandy was or to give a concise definition. Modern notions of the dandy have been distorted by satires and caricatures and more particularly by peevish middle-class

P U S K I N AND DANDYISM

81

attacks on the type such as Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. Further, the phenomenon had a long history and different evolutions in various countries (especially France and England), with a late, decadent flowering among the esthetes of the Edwardian age. Finally, even in the earliest days dandyism was a bundle of apparendy irreconcilable contradictions. When all is said and done, "The Incomparable Beau" introduced in society refinement in wit, cleanliness of person (a real innovation), and an elegant simplicity of dress (men's evening clothes, at least until lately, continued to reflect Brummell's taste.) Still, even Brummell's celebrated wit was often too caustic, and that of the dandiacals— Carlyle's coinage, by analogy with "maniacal"—was often merely cattiness. Simple cleanliness was turned into a cult of the fingernail (of which more later), and the Beau's understatement in exquisitely tailored clothing somehow or other was transmogrified into corsets and bright yellow chicken-feet gloves; the simplicity somehow got lost in the elegance. Similar contradictions are legion. On the one hand, there was the goal of self-perfection in taste, conceived of as aristocratic; on the other, there was a fascination with the "low life," as it was unblushingly called, and expeditions, like those that once were also unblushingly called "slumming," were much in vogue. The dandy dressed fastidiously for evenings spent in gamblers' hells as well as in the more refined gaming clubs such as Brooks' or White's. From the bow window at Brooks', he preached exclusiveness while passing judgement on the fashionable and unfashionable crowd moving by; that same evening, after having adjusted his toilette, he could go out and be josded by the rabble at blood sport (the unspeakable cockfights). The dandy made a social grace out of insolence; he affected to despise society while exerting himself to the utmost to "set its tone." Exlusiveness—a practical and necessary condition of an aristocratic society—was fostered by the dandies, yet in many cases, because of their often indifferent backgrounds, the rule had to be set aside to admit them. These and other anomalies are characteristic of the earliest dandies. As the phenomenon ramified in its later incarnations, the list grows proportionately, and anything like a comprehensive description becomes a near impossibility. The dictionary definitions are unsatisfactory, and most descriptions of the time were given satirically;4 still later ones impose moral judgement. There are, however, a number of serious modern studies, especially Ellen Moers' The Dandy; From

82

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

Bruttimeli to Beerbohm and Domna Stanton's The Aristocrat as Art} Studies such as these give a composite of the type, although I have the feeling that the early dandies themselves would have been vasdy amused by so much scholarly seriousness (quite like Onegin vis-à-vis the "archive youths"). It is dear from works of this kind that there was much more to the dandy than what one contemporary called "a variation within a species." The species was made up of a scries of fops and puppies, "clothes-wearing men" as Carlyle called them. Over the years, there had been variation enough: petits-maîtres, muscadins, merveillieux, incroyables; the Neapolitan ¿fiorini signore; the English macaronis, beaux and bucks, Corinthians, and so on. The dandy, however, did not just flash brilliantly and amuse society for a time before becoming outmoded and thereupon ridiculous, like some of his predecessors and successors. He lasted well into the present century in one guise or another, was highly productive in literature, and in the beginning even in politics. Such disparate types as Byron, Disraeli, and Bulwer-Lytton broke into the most exclusive society in the world not by noble lineage (Byron, it is true, was a lord and sat for a time in the House of Lords) but by a more or less calculated dandyism. Disraeli and Bulwer launched their political careers in the House of Commons by writing dandy novels. On the Continent Stendhal's "Beylisme" was an idiosyncratic version of dandyism, and Balzac, Baudelaire, and Mérimée concerned themselves with explaining a "philosophie du dandysme." In Russia there was less theorizing, but more assiduous practice: it is worth noting here that serious thinkers like P. Ja. Óaadaev and F. F. Orlov (brother of General M. F. Orlov) were dandies. (In fairness to Kaverin, we should say that he was not only a rake and man-about-town, but a person of true refinement and sensibility.)6 Given the diversity among even the early dandies and the incongruities within dandyism itself, I will not attempt to give an overall portrait of the dandy in a book which is essentially about PuSkin. Rather, it will be more to the point to develop certain central, common characteristics of dandyism that are specifically relevant to the Russian dandy and to the poet himself.

BY A curious set of circumstances, PuSkin, while yet a schoolbov tucked away in Tsarskoe Selo, was among the first on the Continent to

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

83

be exposed to the new phenomenon. Scarcely more than a year after the first recorded mention (in the sense intended here) of "dandy" and three years before Byron's Beppo (1817) gave the word currency in English beyond the narrow circle of adepts and the society in which they moved, the young PuSkin became closely acquainted with some of the exemplary Russian dandies of the era. The first attested use of the word "dandyism" is from 1813, in a letter from Byron to his friend Thomas Moore; 7 by 1819 dandyism had swept the fashionable world sufficiently to prompt a satire of it in far-flung Boston, by one pseudonymous Lester Pester.8 As a consequence of the Napoleonic Wars and in particular of the Imperial Progress of Alexander to London at their end, a great number of Russian Guards Officers had the opportunity to become intimately acquainted with London's Regency society. Beau Brummell's star had risen around 1811-1812; by 1814 and the Progress dandyism was a distinct feature in London society. A bosom companion of the Prince Regent, Bruitimeli instructed his not very svelte sovereign in the refinements of his art.9 The Russian officers both succumbed to the fashion and contributed to it: for once—unthinkable as it may seem—Russians even influenced the cut of Englishmen's clothes. The exaggerated epaulettes of the Emperor and his guardsmen were translated into the padded shoulders and puffed sleeves of the fashionable's coat, just as the baggy "cossack" trousers, such as those sported by Byron (and satirized in a Cruickshank print) became the rage. 10 Arthur Bryant's The Age of Elegance chronicles in a highly amusing way the extraordinary effect of the Russians on the societies of the Western capitals. He quotes an English visitor to Paris who wrote, 'They seemed the most refined of all the foreign officers in Paris, with fair complexions, soft hair and expressive features." 11 When they arrived in London with the Progress, there was such a todo that Jane Austen allowed that she was heartily sick of all the fuss. "I hope," she wrote, "Fanny has seen the Emperor, and then I may fairly wish them all away!" 1 2 It is of course impossible to say just how much the Russians lent to or borrowed from the English dandy, but it is significant that Julien Sorel in The Red and the Black went to London to finish his own dandyism, and once there, he studied the Russians. "A Londres, il connut enfin la haute fatuité. Il s'était lié avec de jeunes seigneurs Russes qui l'initièrent." It will be recalled of course that Sorel's mentor

84

PUSKIN AND

DANDYISM

was Prince Korasoff, a Russian diplomat, who formulated for Julien the cardinal rule of the dandy: "Faîtes toujours le contraire de ce qu'on attend de vous." 13 The first dandy to cross the channel (or very nearly the first, if we discount the dandys militaires) had his effect on Russian society in Paris recorded by Lady Sydney Morgan. Lady Morgan, one of those indefatigable English travelling ladies and memoir keepers, had been champing at the bit to see what the wars had done to Paris. She did not, it appears, approve, but did manage to find her way to the fashionable salon of the 1814 season, that of Princess Volkonskaja, wife of General Volkonskij, "liberator of Paris." While chatting with the Princess, she observed the entry of a dandy: One of those children of Fashion, as Beatrix calls them, appeared at the door, clearly vain of his toilette which had been gotten up with such care, and reconnoitered the company by means of a quizzing glass.* He did me the honor of recognizing me. . . . Mme de Volkonskij was seized with an avid curiosity and seemed much amused. When he had left us, she asked me, "But what on earth is that?" I replied, "A dandy." "A dandy," she repeated. "Is the dandy then a genre in your country?" "No," I replied, "it's rather a variation in a species."14 The societies of London, Paris, and Petersburg were closer in the Regency era than they had ever been or were ever to be again. The Francophile Russian nobility underwent a wave of Anglomania. The German Catherine once observed (in French) in the century preceding, referring to the craze for English gardens, "Mon anglomanie devient la plantomanie." The English manner penetrated all phases of life from fashion to roadbuilding and agricultural improvement. Appolinarias who had been Paulines became Pollys; Elizavetas went through Lises and Zazas to become Betsys; Annette Olénine's younger brother was called Junior. In Paris, according to Lady Morgan, the only fashionable salon was Princess Volkonskaja's; in London, at a time when society was its most powerful and most exclusive, it was ruled by the six lady patronesses (not called the ladies patroness) of Almack's. One of these formidable arbiters was the Princess Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador.15 * T o " q u i z " in the dandy idiom is to observe, even stare, insolently; what is meant is a lorgnette with one lens on a string or stick, not a "lorgnette double."

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

85

Such was their power that they could exclude the great Wellington himself, hero of the hour, from a ball because he arrived a quarter-hour after the time appointed. Communication among the three capitals was frequent and swift (Puikin regularly received the Paris newspapers in under two weeks). What the Empress Dowager said in Petersburg was quoted at London dinner tables only shortly after she had said it. 16 In London the Tsar was looked on as the liberator of Europe. Londoners chose to forget the defeats, the betrayals, the abuse, and collaboration with the foe. "The Emperor of Russia," wrote an English lady, "is my hero, and everybody's hero." Since the retreat from Moscow she and her compatriots had lost all sense of proportion about the northern heroes who had chased their enemies across Europe. The first cossack to appear in London had been followed by cheering thousands and given three-times-three by the Lord Mayor on the steps of the Royal Exchange. 17 For the Continent, however, the hero was not Alexander, or the King of Prussia, nor Field Marshal von Blucher: it was England: The almost hysterical enthusiasm with which everything that had happened was now attributed to Russia caused the Czar's sister, who was not given to understating Russian achievements, to reply impetuously: "On, no! The emancipation of Europe is owing to the steady and persevering conduct of this great and happy land! To this country Europe owes its deliverance!" 18 After the ruin and devastation of the Continent, England at peace seemed to the Europeans not only a model to be emulated but an ideal. Bryant's account of the first days of the Progress continues in this way: Next morning, they set out for the capital. As their carriages bowled along the fine metalled highways, they were able to see some of England's wealth with their own eyes: the emerald downs with their immense flocks of sheep, the fat meadows and catde, the yeoman farms and orchards; the weather-boarded cottages smothered in flowers . . . the country houses with classical facades and cool, creeper-famed windows set among lawns and trees. . . . Everything seemed cared for down to the minutest blade of grass.

86

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

To the Czar, fresh from scenes of destruction, it all looked like a garden. 19 If the Tsar was impressed—his sister had more reservations—one can imagine the effect on the guards officers. Not only was this a nation of free and prosperous yeomanry, a state without a Third Section or much policing at all (for this reason the Tsar was obliged to enter London incognito by back streets for fear of the enthusiasm of the townspeople), it was also a state in which hereditary landowners effectively ruled the land. The lesson could not have been lost on the officers, and the "English system" must have held an enormous attraction—whether in terms of social idealism and a desire to rework the model for the good of Russia or pure self-interest and other petty motives. The gradations between are not important; the actors in the drama could probably not have sorted them out themselves. They could not in this moment of victory be expected to see in the peaceful "English garden" the rot which would in a very few years cause the whole system to topple. Not many Englishmen foresaw the result of the inequities and injustices built into the system; to Russian noblemen, observing it from the point of view of their increasing impoverishment and political thralldom, the antiquated British system would have seemed a most desirable goal for their own class—and for Russian society as a whole. When the aristocratic Russian Officers of the Guard came back from the West, they came back with serious political ideas that were not unconnected with the frivolity of fashion. Le dandy militaire had something more under his exaggerated epaulettes and elaborate froggings than what Hortense Schneider was to celebrate in her songs later in the century. These were the young men who were to lend a special character to the Rebellion of 1825. As they returned, they assumed their duties in Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo. Behind the summer palace, there was a low colonnaded structure; this was the officers' quarters, a quick run across the courtyard from the Lycée. In his last years at the Lycée, Puskin did not care for the headmaster's social functions and much preferred the atmosphere of the guards' quarters. Given his ebullience and quick wit, he had free rein of the place; apparendy, the school did nothing to prevent the association. We do not lack for comments about PuSkin's preference from his schoolmates.20

PUSKIN AND

DANDYISM

87

Both Caadaev and Kavcrin were consummate dandys militaires: Caadaev was the archtypical dandy-esthete, and Kaverin represented with flair the dandy-rake. Puskin could not have had more accomplished models of the types. It is not surprising that when he finally put aside his schoolboy uniform, he stepped with ease into the dandy role in Petersburg society. The essence of the early dandy was perceived later in the century (1844) by the French dandy par excellence, Barbey d'Aurevilly, in this way: Dandyism is not only a thing visible from the exterior, it is also a way of life [manière d'être], composed entirely of nuances which belong to a society where convention barely triumphs over boredom. In the battle between convention and boredom, one had to create the unexpected [l'imprévu—recall KorasofPs dictum, "Faîtes toujours le contraire de ce qu'on attend de vous"— SD]. The dandy, while he plays games with the rules, respects them. He suffers from them and revenges himself upon them even as he overcomes them. He boasts when he escapes from them; he dominates them and is dominated by them in turn.21 Barbe/s generalization goes a long way in explaining the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies of the dandy: the "setter of tone," if he was to be successful, had to shift, feint, and parry with the agility of a swordsman and the grace of a toreador. Barbey's perception comes from a lifetime of study of dandyism— or, perhaps better said, a lifetime of study to become a dandy. The young aristocrat consciously strove to turn himself as a dandy into a living work of art.22 Barbey was closer in time and—as a real aristocrat in a country where a republican government followed a bourgeois king —closer in temperament to the early dandy than we are in the twentieth century or even many of his contemporaries in the nineteenth. His vision of the early dandy was not obscured by the egalitarian attitudes of the mid-nineteenth century which we more or less unconsciously accept today. It takes more than a little historical perspective to penetrate the heavy plush Victorian curtain that separates us from the brilliant "high life," the monde, the svet of those years following the Napoleonic Wars.23 Regency London seemed, as we have seen, a model for the continent, and its glittering society the epitome of its achievement, to be emulated in Petersburg and Moscow as well as in

88

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

Paris. Despite the liberal posturings in fashion at the time, few seemed to criticize the calculated exclusiveness of that society, even though it often enough turned into petty snobbery and downright cruelty. M. Dorothy George gives an idea of the exclusive phase. She quotes the Prince von Piickler und Muskau, who saw this particular world in terms of "a peculiar caste . . . not influenced by rank and still less by riches" and who attributed it to the English addiction to social striving. "It is an almost universal weakness in England to parade acquaintance with the noble, and the noble do the same with the 'fashionable' or exclusive." In the inner circle, the dandies made up an Imperium in Imperio; people outside the circle were called "nobodies," whom Fielding had defined as "all in Great Britain cxccpt about 1200." (In Don Juan, Byron admitted a few more, the "twice two thousand for whom the earth was made.") Captain Gronow (Brummell's biographer) remembered that "a worldly man or woman would, without scruple, cut their [sic] father or mother if they did not belong to the particular set which they considered good society. . . . Who's your friend,' drawled Lord C. 'What,' replied S., 'Oh, a very good sort of fellow; one of my Cheshire farmers.' " It was his own father.24 Such excesses of course would not have been countenanced by a Russian gentleman, still highly conscious of his code,25 or more likely they would have been dismissed as ridiculous. But there is no doubt of the appeal of such a society to those otherwise liberal-leaning young officers. They were nobles, most of them from the class of "impoverished" gentry, and the frivolity of the fashionable world did not obscure the fact that its very exclusiveness in the top circle (and lesser ones copying it in watering places and the assembly halls of provincial towns) provided in a very practical sense a united front, a measure of protection for the gentry and nobility. From above Fashion in England was allowed to dictate in a way the crown would not have dared to. Even under the Regent's grandfather, society was strong enough for the Duchess of Queensbury to put him in his place on a purely social basis: Small wonder that when the Duchess of Queensbury was forbidden [access to] the court by the King [George II] for rather tactlessly having attempted to obtain subscriptions at the Court for an opera which was strongly anti-government in tenor, she wrote to the King in high dudgeon: 'The Duchess of Queens-

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

89

bury is surprised and well-pleased that the King hath given her so agreeable a command as to stay from Court, where she never came for diversion but to bestow great civility on the King and Queen." 26 Anecdotes of this sort were rampant in society by the Regency period, what with the King's lucid periods becoming ever briefer, the general hell-raising of the Marlborough House set, Queen Charlotte's unfashionable routs (invitations were routinely refused). By 1830 Seymour was able to write and publish Lady Patronesses ofAlmack's versus Royalty, in which four of the seven ladies sit in close conference to decide that Queen Adelaide cannot be admitted, for "she intends going to the Gilt [sic] Hall, some vile place beyond Temple Bar" for a dinner of the Lord Mayor that was canceled. "She intends appearing in some vile stuff made by the canaille at a place called Spittlefields [ite]."27 This passage, although probably to some extent mystifying outside its context and time, indicates not only that ladies in society could be condescending even to the Queen, but that they could be silly and cruel in their attitudes toward the lower classes. The place references are to the Guild Hall and to Spitalfields, an area which was a weaving center. As a matter of fact, the Queen was patronizing English silks because of distress among the weavers. The point here, however, has to do not with the Queen's gracious gesture, nor the ignorance and the heartlessness of the ladies of society, but with the freedom of their stratum of society vis-à-vis the crown. To the Russian nobles as subjects of an unlimited autocrat, such an illustration of relative freedom—not only of the upper classes, but mutatis mutandis of all conditions in England—can only have seemed most enviable and particularly to their own class. Not only were they still in legal fealty of a near-medieval stamp to the Tsar, but in the realm of practical conduct their personal lives were closely governed. Many could still remember, and all of their fathers could, the personal indignities inflicted by Paul I through his whims and odious sumptuary laws. An insufficiently low curtsey by a lady in the street on the passing of the imperial coach could mean disaster for her husband, if he had not already been impressed into the Guards for the audacity of wearing a French waistcoat. London society's flouting of even the court itself suggested a dream of freedom few Russian nobles would have entertained without the

90

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

Regency example. They cannot be blamed for attributing England's stability and wealth to the situation of the English hereditary landed aristocracy, for which Society spoke (nor, for that matter, can they be held accountable for not seeing what few of the English themselves realized: that the English hereditary landowners were to be undone in the decade following Seymour's book). Inevitably, there grew a hope among the Russians for a political remedy on the English pattern for their own country. That such a remedy would benefit principally their own class cannot have escaped the more thoughtful of the Guards Officers, but in the liberal mood of the time this idea was apparendy more tacitly accepted (if thought through at all) than openly discussed. The very exclusiveness of the English model represented to a certain degree a benefit as far as the Russian nobility was concerned insofar as it closed ranks and gave a certain amount of unity and protection to the class, beleaguered since Peter's time by imperial decrees and the bureaucracy. The Anglijskij klub in Moscow and the noblemen's clubs were centers for the aristocratic party—a pale reflection, perhaps, of their glittering examples in London, but a reflection nonetheless. In England the aristocratic party was represented by the haut monde in London's clubs and assemblies, with copies at spas and provincial centers. Of this time in English history, it can be fairly said that Society with a big "S" ruled society with a small one. It controlled Parliament through the "rotten borough" system, enacted laws in favor of the hereditary landowners, and protected its privilege by nearly impenetrable social barriers. It evolved rigid codes of behavior—which may have kept the rich cotton-spinners and ironmongers at bay, but also resulted eventually in an almost intolerable boredom. It is precisely at this point where we come to the beginning of Barbey's description of the dandy, in a society "où les convenances triomphent à peine sur l'ennui." To provide relief from Society's boredom and the stifling conventions, the dandy was permitted outrageous behavior of a certain kind, but he was far from having carte-blanche for conduct ("Bien qu'il se joue de la règle, il la respecte"). His function was to set form, "lend tone," promote exclusiveness—that is, to support the very things society itself avowed. Whether or not it was consciously realized, the dandy was a kind of figurehead for the aristocratic party (the middle class realized this quite clearly later on). While the dandy was condescending toward Society, often enough superci-

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

91

liously and disdainfully, he was far from being a threat to it. At his best he embodied what were thought of as aristocratic characteristics at their best—honor, noblesse oblige, giving example, refinement. Unfortunately, there were less admirable concommitants: ignoring the true worth of the "nobodies" outside the charmed circle, ignoring equally the failings of some of those within, professing horror at any incursion from the rising middle orders or from any other "nobody." The dandy did not have to be an aristocrat himself, like Byron or the Comte d'Orsay, nor did he need wealth or position: but he had to ascribe to the assumptions of the aristocratic party (in many cases there was merely aristocratic pretension) and to support its privilege against monarch and commoner alike. Thus, quite apart from his frivolousness as a "creature of Fashion," the dandy in his early manifestation was also an odd political animal. In this he was different, in degree at least, from the other "clotheswearing men," the beaux, bucks, Corinthians, and the like. In The Dandy: From Bruttimeli to Beerbohm Moers makes this peculiar point quite clear—a point that explains much of the attraction to dandyism on the part of PuSkin and other young Russian noblemen of his class: Dandyism [was] a necessary badge of class for the disaffected aristocrat and for the bourgeois with pretensions to aristocratic society. . . . It justified social superiority without reference to wealth or power. [It was] a pose for those who deplored the abandonment of aristocratic ideals before the bourgeois slogan of "enrichissez-vous." It was a defense against vulgarity.28 Dandyism, then, was an aesthetic statement, but inevitably also for the time, a political one. What comes immediately to mind in reading Moer's assertion is the usefulness of the dandy pose to PuSkin, a member of the obedneivee dvorjanstvo, "the impoverished nobility." The fact that Puskin was a member of that class became, as we have seen, a touchstone in his mature political thinking. Two of the many facets of dandyism are central if not immediately obvious and necessarily appealed to Puskin and his compatriots: first, dandyism as a useful ploy in a society where nobility—of birth, to be sure, but also of spirit—counted for less and less; second, dandyism as a kind of political badge, an outward manifestation of adherence to the

92

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

aristocratic party as opposed to the autocracy and the levelling influences of the bureaucracy. Pul kin's assiduousness in perfecting his dandy role suggests that there was more to the matter than just fashionable caprice. The memoir literature of the period abounds in detailed references to it. Taken in sum, they give an oddly distorted picture of the poet because the memoirists themselves were, though often observant, unanalytical, and the reportage is on the level of gossip about a modnyj cudak, or fashionable eccentric, with no attempt to perceive any deeper significance in the stance. The nature of such accounts, then, should be kept in mind while considering the following reminiscences on ΡuSkin's dandy behavior. The purpose in this survey of biographical information is not to tarnish the image of the great poet, but to put his dandyism into a more reasonable perspective. Puskin was rarely able to dress with true elegance because he was chronically in financial difficulties, and his father, who could barely keep up his own position in society, was mean with money.29 Since he could not afford to dress well, he dressed for effect (Barbey d'Aurevilly^ imprévu). In the muddy frontier town of KiSinëv he would appear in formal black, "buttoned up to the chin, with all the graces and recherché politesse of a young man in society,"30 while for a formal evening in the capital at which he was to give a poetry reading, he arrived with a soft open collar, un col àia Byron}1 At an officer's dinner party in Moldavia he shocked a conservative minor functionary by turning up in a Bessarabian arxaluk and fez. He also occasioned comment by walking about the hot dusty streets in black velvet sarovary. He affected the dandy's iron walking stick, probably in imitation of Byron's. In Odessa PuSkin abandoned couleur locale for a black coat and hat, with a cravat so elaborate it completely hid his collars. He kept the cane, however, and sported a large gold signet ring which bore his coat of arms.32 Later in Moscow he would receive his guests in his salon, wearing a Samoyed ergak}* Even in his Mixailovskoe exile, with no one but his Trigorskoe neighbors to impress, he continued to play the dandy: he was, A. N. Vul'f observed, "utterly wild [reíitel'no pomeian] about Byron; he used to study him in the most painstaking way and even tried to adopt many of Byron's habits."34 Vul'f also observed that "Puskin dressed carelessly too, however, imitating in this as in many things his prototype Byron—but this carelessness was only a seeming one: PuSkin with regard to his toilette was meticulous [scepetilen]."35 (It should be

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

93

recalled that Brummell's major innovation in fashion was simple cleanliness of person and attire. The studied negligence of the colala Byron, of course, was just another ploy; it required as much attention as the most formal stock.) It is worth noting too that in these years, PuSkin exhibited the dandy's predilection for horseflesh; he wrote to his brother Lev that "I want to train horses, in free imitation of Al'fieri and Byron." 36 Vul'f notes also that once PuSkin scandalized "the entire beau-monde of Novorzevsk" by appearing in a red peasant's shirt and a peasant's headcover at a country fair at the Svjatogorsk Monastery.37 After the Mixailovskoe exile, when PuSkin reentered society, he did so with the dandy's most blasé indifference, completely disguising his joy at escape from the boredom of exile. A ball he attended just after his arrival is described by Annette Olénine (to whom PuSkin later proposed) in a memoir written as a novel, describing herself in the third person. Once, at a ball at the home of Countess Tiesenhausen-Hitroff, Annette saw the person who was the most interesting of his time and the most distinguished in the career of letters: it was the famous poet PuSkin... . His frightful sideburns, disordered hair,38 nails as long as claws, his small stature, his posturing manner, his bold looks at women [pointed to] . . . a strangeness of character, both natural and forced, and unbounded vanity—these are the distinctions [A.O.'s italics], both physical and spiritual, which society ascribed to the Russian poet of the nineteenth century.39 Annette continues to relate that at the same ball, A. O. Smirnova (then Rosset) was present and discussed the evening later with E. M. Xitrovo: Stephanie and I were invited. . . . In the corner stood PuSkin surrounded by a group of men. During the mazurka, I said to Stephanie, "Choose PuSkin." She did. He indifferently made a turn around the ballroom with her, and then I chose him. He made a turn with me, also quite indifferendy, saying not a single word.40 Elsewhere in her memoir-novel, Annette says of PuSkin—and so probably summarizes the opinion of staider members of the society on the dandy type—"il est faux, il est fat, il est méchant."41 When A. A. Olenina was very old, a grand-nephew asked her why she never married PuSkin. Her response is very much to the point: "On

94

PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

byl veltopaux [i.e., vertoprax; obviously the old lady continued to kartavit5 in the French w a y — S D ] ; On byl veltopaux, ne imel nikakogo polozenija ν obScestve, i nakonec, il n'était pas riche" (He was scatterbrained, had no position in society, and, finally, il n'était pas riche).42 If such attitudes were common in the higher circles, one can understand Pul kin's use of the dandy's pose of superiority and cold disdain, no matter how much at odds with his own fiery and ebullient nature. In the early 1820s he lost himself so completely in the role that it even affected his most personal communication; here is an excerpt from a letter of advice from Pulkin to his younger brother, Lev, then about to go into society himself : Vous aurez affaire aux hommes que vous ne connaissez pas encore. . . . Commencez toujours par en penser tout le mal imaginable: vous n'en rabbatrez pas beaucoup. . . . — N e les jugez pas par votre coeur, que je crois noble et bon et qui de plus est encore jeune; méprisez-les le plus poliment qu'il vous sera possible: c'est le moyen de se tenir en garde contre les petits préjugés et les petites passions qui vont vous froisser à votre entrée dans le monde. Soyez froid avec tout le monde. (13:49) PuSkin's deportment in society during the dandy phase seems to have been one of admirable insolence from one point of view—or puppyish presumption from the other. He scorned bluestockings and "serious" interlocutors; he much preferred the fashionable routs of the day, where he comported himself with a condescension equal to that at the ball reported by Olenina. His Onegin-like conduct at the theater in KiSinëv is preceded by an incident in Petersburg in 1819, where he was attending some mindless play. PuSkin yawned, whisded and called aloud, kin's use of themes drawn from classical antiquity.21 But apart from a single brief commentary on PuSkin's prose style in the fragment by Boris Ejxenbaum,22 the focus has been on the connection between the mention of Cleopatra in the outline and the long development of the Cleopatra theme in PuSkin's work of the 1820s and 1830s, which culminated in "Egyptian Nights." This, indeed, is the point of view taken by Puskin's first biographer, P. V. Annenkov. For Annenkov, the earliest Cleopatra poem, "Certog sijal . . ." (The Palace Shone . . . ) was PuSkin's "first idea" for "Egyptian Nights," and those works related to it, including the Roman tale, were stages in its development.23 This approach was sufficiently established by the early 1930s for S. Bondi to refer to it as "the traditionally repeated" one,24 and it still remains pretty much the standard.25 Bondi, however, questions the whole tradition in which the Cleopatra theme is the significant fact of the Roman tale in relation to "Egyptian Nights." As a matter of fact, why should this fragment of the tale "Caesar Was Travelling," where the story of Cleopatra and "our discussions about that," are only an insignificant detail, a theme of the conversations on "the first evening" (and the second eve-

P E L H A M AND P E T R O N I U S

ning being devoted to yet another subject . . . )—why should this unfinished tale be seen not as an independent plot idea [zamysel], but rather as a preliminary sketch [podgotovitcl'nyj otryvokj for "Egyptian Nights," the main thematic core of which, judging both from Pu^kin's tide and hints in the surviving text of the story, were to have been precisely the Egyptian queen's nights?"26 Concluding thoughtfully that the Cleopatra theme seemed of litde significance to the Roman tale, Bondi then throws out the baby with the bath water and assumes that there is no direct connection at all between the fragment and "Egyptian Nights."27 In the second volume of his study on PuSkin B. TomaSevskij has a very detailed chapter entided "Cleopatra" in which he avoids the question altogether by making no mention of the "Tale from Roman Life." He cites and even quotes from Bondi's article but passes over entirely without comment the issue that so exercises Bondi.28 Of course, the mention of Cleopatra is clearly there in PuSkin's plan for the Roman tale and must be dealt with one way or another, whether it is central to the piece or merely tangential. Most recendy, two American scholars have tackled the problem and give by far the most thoughtful ideas on the subject. Paul Debreczeny recognizes the puzzling reference to Cleopatra in the plan for the Roman tale and speculates on the several likely meanings it might have in relation to the theme, but he is careful not to suggest it is that theme that makes the connection with "Egyptian Nights"; indeed, he even raises the question of whether there is necessarily even any thematic connection between its instance here and the early Cleopatra poems. In any case, what is of particular interest is that there is no assumption that the Roman tale represents a step or stage in a thematic continuum running from the early poems to "Egyptian Nights."29 This same careful discrimination is true also of the much lengthier treatment in Leslie O'Bell's recent book, Puskin's Egyptian Nights. Her subject is in part the Cleopatra theme itself : "the subject of the study could be called the Cleopatra text in PuSkin,"30 but she is scrupulous in not claiming overmuch for it in the case of the Roman tale. What she does instead, however, is to suggest briefly in passing a number of other highly interesting connections between the two texts. For ex-

lió

PELHAM A N D P E T R O N I U S

ample, there are the "themes of satiety and decadence" (in relation to Pulkin's social views); parallels with the journey to Arzrum (in regard to PuSkin's and Petronius' biographies); "the evolution of Cleopatra's "pair," the lover/poet," and so on. These and other lines of thought, though complex and in some degree even elaborate, are not in the least strained and seem to offer more fruitful lines of comparison than the Cleopatra theme has done. Among these lines of inquiry is the observation that ¿arskij is "a latter-day Petronius figure,"31 that the historical Petronius "in and of society may have influenced PuSkin's later critical presentation of Carskij," (my italics),32 and that (among other things) politics was "too clearly involved" to permit the safe stylization of the antique theme" in the Roman setting.33 Actually, Annenkov from the outset notes what he calls a "connecting link" between the two stories in the "masterful depiction of the writer as an homme du monde" (masterskoe izobrazenie pisatelja-svetskqgo ¿eloveka),*4 but this obvious fact was pursued neither by Annenkov nor by later commentators. Quite apart from the homme du monde!dandy connection, PuSkin's choice of Petronius as the subject of a prose tale in the 1830s seems altogether natural. Although Petronius was rich and could not in any sense be thought of as an "impoverished nobleman," other parallels between the two authors are markedly close: both men were scions of old noble houses that had served their countries with distinction at various times in history; both men had been exiled by their emperors to distant provinces in one or another bureaucratic function; both had returned from exile and were under a cloud; both were persecuted by close advisors to their Emperors (Tigellinus, Benkendorf); both were poets; both were arbiters of taste, leaders of fashion, "setters of tone," and, finally, dandies. It should be noted that there was in the society of PuSkin's time a distinct awareness of Petronius as the prototype for the dandy figure: indeed, Beau Brummell was assigned Petronius' title arbiter elegantiae,3S and even today, an association between the Regency dandy and his classical counterpart is more or less automatic.36 Like Onegin, Carskij is specifically named a dandy by PuSkin, and his earlier incarnation Minskij ("The Guests Gathered at the Country House") is at least drawn as one, if not so named. As we have seen (in chapter 4), Minskij gives an impassioned speech on the fate of the "impoverished nobility" at the hands of the autocracy; it is the clearest

PELHAM AND

PETRONIUS

117

expression in any of PuSkin's literary works of his own political ideas on the fate of his class. There is no evidence in the text of "Egyptian Nights" that Carskij was not intended to share Minskij's social ideas along with his other characteristics; on the contrary, there is every reason to assume that Óarskij did share them. If, as I have observed, "exclusive" society was in some sense the vehicle of the aristocratic party and scarcely separable from it and dandyism was emblematic of that society, then PuSkin's pointed portrayal of Carskij as a dandy may well have been intended to suggest to his more perceptive readers a political position and worldview not too dissimilar from Minskij's. Much the same can be said of PuSkin's choice of Petronius, the prototypical dandy, as hero of "A Tale from Roman Life." The fragment illustrates particularly well the clear connection among the themes of dandyism, the noble ethos, the plight of the nobles versus the autocracy, and the upward pressure from the lower classes seeking to replace them. In sum, in the context of PuSkin's work the "Tale from Roman Life" is not merely another in a series of settings for the Cleopatra theme; it is intimately if not transparendy connected through its hero to a matrix of social and political ideas that preoccupied PuSkin throughout the last decade of his life.

Conclusion

IN THE two fragments just considered, the Petronius and Pelham themes have significant connections with the rest of PuS kin's oeuvre, although the pieces themselves do not have a marked relative importance even among the unfinished works. They do, however, serve particularly well as examples for the arguments advanced in this book, one of which is that individual works by PuSkin can be understood most fully when they are read in the context of all the others, and even minor fragments and variants can provide valuable insights in interpreting the major works. Probably, very much the same could be said about any author at any time, but it is especially true for PuSkin as a writer working under the artificial constraints of political censorship. As we have seen, PuSkin was committed to a number of political and social ideas, and it was always his hope to communicate them through his writings. Prevented from expressing those ideas direcdy, he frequendy disguised them in his works, obscuring them to a certain degree. For the modern reader, who might not even recognize the hints PuSkin's contemporaries would have perceived, the "message" can be obscured even further: it is in the nature of political topicalities to pass very quickly, and their markers are just as quickly forgotten. Moreover, in a more general sense basic social attitudes and political assumptions common in the era shifted and changed radically over a century and a half, so that even when the issue is identified, PuSkin's attitude toward it cannot always be easily or simply determined. PuSkin's very independence of mind militates against ready assump-

I20

CONCLUSION

rions about his social views. He did not typically conform to the generally accepted positions of his friends, including the Decembrists, and it would be a mistake to try to extrapolate some supposed sociopolitical stance by reference to the position taken by his associates. For all these reasons it is difficult to establish and sometimes even to perceive Pul kin's social intent (when there is one) by dealing with any given text in itself and without developing an adequate historical perspective. And there is an additional difficulty, one that is to be consciously overcome if the modem reader is to read the "social message" with understanding. Our assumptions are unquestioningly egalitarian and essentially democratic in formulation, and these views are alien to Puikin's way of thinking. His generation may have been the last when thinking men could still seriously consider the old order—summed up in the meanings of the phrase "noblesse oblige"—a viable option for society. Pul kin's attitude was rooted in the old aristocratic ethos and largely conditioned by the values of the nobility. While the same may be said for the Decembrists as a group, it appears that some of them did not know it, some did not care to admit it, and some chose just to ignore it. The difference is that PuSkin realized, and probably uniquely, the centrality of his social class to his social thought. He also constructed a reasoned political position on the basis of that centrality, one that was reflected in a wide range of literary works. These assertions constitute the claim for the originality of this book's thesis. Other studies of the kind (such as Blagoj's, as discussed in chapter i) reach an entirely opposite conclusion. Those occasional comments and observations which have been made and are consonant with the ideas presented here have not been worked into an overall approach to PuSkin's works or even as yet into a scholarly argument. An initial step has been taken; much remains to be said on the pieces chosen for discussion, especially the very complex problem of The Captain's Daughter or the questions raised but not pursued in regard to Eugene Onegin. Many of the poems not even mentioned here or others named but not discussed—"André Chénier" is a particularly good example—lend themselves particularly well to this kind of study. But these are all questions for another, much longer book.

Notes

Abbreviations used in the notes and bibliography are: AN SSSR

Akademija nauk SSR

GIXL SEEJ VPK

Gosudarstvennoe izdatePstvo xudozestvennoj literatury Slavic and East European Journal Vremennik puikinskoj komissij

All references to PuSkin's works are to be the Jubilee Edition: A. S. PuSkin, Polnoe sobrante soänenij. Moscow: AN SSSR, i937-i9$9, unless otherwise indicated. The volume number is followed by the page(s).

INTRODUCTION

ι. From a diary entry February 18, 1821, quoted in Charles E. Robinson, Shelley and Byron, p. 138. 2. Ibid., p. 139. j. C. M. Bowra, Poetry and Politics, 1:3.

I.

PUSKIN AND

POLITICS

I. For example, N. K. Kozmin, "Anglijskij proletariat ν izobrazenii Puákina i ego sovremennikov"; Ja. Borovoj, O b èkonomiieskix vzgljadax PuSkina ν nafale 1830-x godov." Il'ja Fejnberg's superb Nezaveriënnye raboty Puikina demonstrates a clear perception of ΡuSkin's political ideas, but is at base more

122

ι. p u S k i n a n d

politics

a historical and social study than a literary-critical one dealing with the major works. Abbott Gleason's European and Muscovite, a history monograph, gives one of the better accounts in English on political thought in the first part of the nineteenth century in Russia, although its subject is Kireevskij and the Slavophiles. The best single source for PuSkin's ideas on international politics is Walter Vickery: "PuSkin: Russia and Europe," which incidentally gives a lucid review of PuSkin's directions in political thought between 1821 and 1823. Undoubtedly the most useful and comprehensive historical study for the purposes here is Gerald Mikkelson's dissertation, PuSkin and the History of the Russian Nobility. On the level of a general theoretical overview of the problem of scholarship on the social ideas of Russian literary figures, an interesting treatment is the introduction to a collection of essays edited by William Mills Todd III, Literature and Society in Imperial Russia. The collection contains an article by the editor on Eugene Onegin that considers PuSkin's social ideas. Of particular interest also are Boris Gasparov's introduction and Jurij Lotman's essay in A. D. Nakhimovsky and A. S. Nakhimovsky, eds., The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History. 2. Oddly, no one seems to doubt PuSkin's seriousness and true accomplishment as a historical scholar, while at the same time his grounding in "political economy" remains open to question. 3. John Bayley, Pufkin: A Comparative Commentary. Two recent books admirably illustrate Bayley's point about PuSkin as a social thinker. The first is Paul Debreczeny's The Other Pushkin, and, although it does not focus on PuSkin's social ideas, it says much about them in passing that is right on the mark. The other is William Mills Todd Ill's study of PuSkin's views on society, especially society with a big "S," or "polite society" as it is called here, in his Fiction and Society in the Age of Puskin. 4. A. N. Sebunin, "PuSkin i 'ObSÉestvo Elizavety.' " 5. E. A. Toddes, "Κ izuceniju 'Mednogo vsadnika.' " "Among the questions requiring further answers are PuSkin's views on the historical fate and political role of the Russian nobility." 6. Quoted in V. Sipovskij, Pufkin: Zizn' i tvorcestvo, p. 116. 7. Ibid., pp. 117,122-23. 8. Β. V. TomaSevskij, Pufkin: Knigapervaja, pp. 192 ff. 9. Ibid., p. 552. 10. D. D. Blagoj, "Klassovoe samosoznanie PuSkina." One must be careful to use the original edition cited in the bibliography because later ones were bowdlerized and to purposes contrary to the intent of the present book. π. A. S. PuSkin, Polnoe sobrante socinenij, 13:204. 12. V. I. Saitov, ed., Ostafevskij arxiv knjazej Vjazemskix, 1:511. 13. Blagoj, "Klassovoe samosoznanie PuSkina," p. 5714. Quoted in Mikkelson, "PuSkin and the History of the Russian Nobil-

I. P U S K I N A N D P O L I T I C S

123

ity," p. 142. See P. N. Sakulin, "Klassovoe samoopredelcnie PuSkina," in Ν. K. Piksanov, ed., Sbornik vtoroj, (Moscow-Leningrad: Goslitizdat, 1930). 15. Mikkelson, "PuSkin and the History of the Russian Nobility," p. 142. 16. Ibid., pp. 143-44. See also p. 150, fn. 28-31. The Mikkelson study focuses primarily on PuSkin's aristocratism and does not delve particularly into the poet's closely related political views. Typically, the sources of most value in regard to Puikin's social ideas deal with other subjects and only tangentially with Pui kin's politics: history, economics, and cultural studies of various sorts. Only two works approach the question directly. One is an article by Ja. A. Gordin, "Gody bor" by: Dokumental'naja povest\" Because of its hybrid nature —somewhere between scholarship and narrative prose—it cannot be used as a scholarly source. This is indeed regrettable, since this curious work is highly interesting, and supports some of the theses being advanced here. The other source is a brief work by S. L. Frank, "Puikin kak polirifeskij myslitel'," in his Etjudy 0 Puikme. The point of view is sound and the intuitions perceptive, but the study seems the product of an earlier kind of scholarship and lacks the expected apparatus. The central issues are stated in such abstract language that one almost has to have researched the issue beforehand in order to grasp the main points. 17. See L. A. ¿erejskij, Puikin i ego okruzenie, p. 151. ZavaliSin was later sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment for his role in the rebellion. 18. Ju. Lotman, "Dekabrist ν povsednevnoj zizni, pp. 25-75, 31, 37. This essay is translated in A. D. and A. S. Nakhimovsky, eds., The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History, pp. 95-149. 19. See the discussion of this complex matter in Anatole G. Mazour, The First Russian Revolution, pp. 68 ff. There was no really coherent movement, no theory without its contradiction, and none of the various programs [prvekty] was in principle similar to the others. Not only was there a gulf between the northern and southern groups, but there were all shades of conflicting opinion, from revolutionary to legitimist, among the members of each. The fiery Ν. I. Turgenev, for example, was at odds not only with his more moderate older brother but also with himself. On the one hand, he was one of the few Decembrists who seriously considered regicide, he so hated autocracy, but at the same time he so hated serfdom that he, probably alone among the Deccmbrists, would have accepted unlimited autocracy if the autocrat would free the serfs. This is an extreme example, of course, but opinion ranged widely from PesteP, who was perhaps the only real revolutionary of the lot, to Mordvinov and Murav'ëv, who came nearest to representing the real aspirations of the aristocratic party. 20. Ibid., p. 7. 21. Mikkelson, "Puskin and the History of the Russian Nobility," pp. 13238.

124

2. P U S K I N ' S A R I S T O C R A T I S M

22. Quoted in ibid., p. 140 2}. André Meynieux, Pouchkine, pp. 543 ff. See also Todd, Fiction and Society m the Age ofPushkin, pp. 8 7 - 1 0 5 . 24. Meynieux, Pouchkine, p. 454. 25. Ibid., p. 455. 26. Ibid., p. 456. 27. Ibid., p. 458. The unexpected equation between political position and fashionable dress will be discussed later. 28. Ibid., p. 460.

2.

PUSKIN'S

ARISTOCRATISM

1. There are, of course, some doubts as to the family's claim, which cannot be checked. B. L. Modzalevskij notes "a tendency on the part of Russian noble families to show their legendary ancestors as coming from foreign states: these legends, not subject to historical proof, were accepted on faith, giving the right to members of the families to take pride in their ancient origin, and to use it in relation to their service of various sorts to the Tsar" {Puikin, p. 19). The point here is that Puikin, a careful historian, accepted the "legend" and offers it as fact in the Genealogy. 2. Puika means "cannon." Family surnames were not in general use until quite late and for the lower classes not until the latter part of the nineteenth century. 3. Modzalevskij, Puikin, p. 35. 4. On the genealogies of lycce students, see V. Vcresaev, Puikin i> zizni, 1:35.

L. A. Cerejskij, Puikin i ego okruzenie, pp. 3 9 4 - 9 5 . 6. André Meynieux, Pouchkine, p. 35. 7. Ibid., p. 36. 8. 1.1. PuSéin, Zapiski 0 Puikine, p. 34. 9. Ibid., p. 54-55· 10. Ibid., p. 56. 11. Ibid., p. 55; see chapter 4 note 20; Cerejskij, Puikin i ego okruzenie, p. 45. 12. Ibid., p. 60. 13. Ibid., p. 68. General Aleksej Fedorovié Orlov (1786-1861)—not to be confused with the liberal political thinker General M. F. Orlov—but for the fact that he was a courtier, would have been sympathetic to Puikin because he had opposed Arakfeev. A. Cernyiev (1785-1857) would have appealed to him as a warm defender of the idea of constitutional government. 14. Quoted in V. Veresaev, Puikin ν zizni, 1:67. 5.

3. P O L I T I C S A N D

LITERATURE

125

15. This matter of Russian officers in Paris and London is discussed at some length in chapter 4· 16. Quoted in Veresaev, Puikin vzizni, 1:86. 17. Quoted in ibid., 1:86-87. 18. Quoted in ibid., 1:114. 19. Quoted in ibid., 1:100. 20. F. F. Vigel', Zapiski, 2:150-51. 21. Ibid. Vigel', of course, was mistaken in this opinion. 22. Puikin Polnoe sobrante soiinenij, Β. V. Tomaievskij, ed., 1:502. 23. Puiíin, Zapiski, p. 70. There is a full discussion of Puikin's not being asked to join the secret societies in Puiiin's own notes (notes 70-71 to pp. 81-88). 24. Barry Hollingsworth, "Arzamas: Portrait of Literary Society." 25. M. I. Gillel'son, Molodoj Puikin iArzamasskoe bratstvo. 26. Puikin knew Nikita Murav'ëv while still at the Lycée, and associated with him socially during the Petersburg period. 27. Quoted in S. L. Frank, Etjudy o Puikine, p. 31; from the memoirs of A. Smirnova-Rosset. 28. The end of the passage, "il n'y a que les imbeciles qui pensent le contraire," is missing in the Jubilee Edition; see 1957 edition 7:526. 29. S. L. Frank, Etjudy 0 Puikine, p. 35. 30. Frank describes this letter, unaccountably, as addressed to Raevskij from Odessa; it was of course two letters to Davydov from Kiiinëv, and those a year earlier; despite the slip, Frank's general development is sound. See letters in 13:104-105. 31. Walter Vickery, "Puikin: Russia and Europe," p. 20. 32. S. L. Frank, Etjudy 0 Puikine, pp. 35-36. 33. Ibid., p. 39. 34· P- Lakrua, Istorija zizni ipravlenija Nikolaja I (1865), 2:68-69. 35. Il'ja Fejnberg, Nezaverfénnye raboty Pulkina, p. 65. 36. Ja. Borovoj, O b èkonomifeskix vzgljadax Puikina ν nasale 1830-x godov," pp. 250-51. 37. Vickery, "Puikin," p. 27. 38. Compare the theme here with the treatment in Ezerskij.

3. P O L I T I C S AND L I T E R A T U R E ι. See chapter 1, note 19. 2. Quoted in S. L. Frank, Etjudy 0 Puikine, p. 42. 3. Ibid., pp. 42-43· 4. Ladies of rank were not usually called by their patronymics. Ekimovna

126

3· P O L I T I C S A N D

LITERATURE

is une femme du peuple, as the French would say, a woman of the people clever enough to amuse Gavrila. 5. D. P. Severin treated PuSkin basely in Odessa and invited him not to come to his house. (See L. A. terejskij, Puikin i ego okruzenie, pp. 369-70). 6. See, for example, vol. 9 of Jubilee Edition: end ch. 4, beginning ch. 5; see also pp. 51—$4 (seige of the garrison at Jaick). 7. Ibid., pp. 116-46. 8. Documentation for these comments on The Captain's Daughter and the History of Pugacev is available in the notes to the 1957 Academy edition,

6:778-79). 9. Ibid., 6:778-80. 10. Ibid., 6:784· h. Literary prose works 1828—1836 in which the dvorjanstvo theme is important (*), related ( + ), or not related at all ( - ): *Arap Petra Velikogo * Roman ν pis'max + Belkin (through Gorjuxino) *"Istorija sela Gorjuxino" - "Roslavlev" (polemics with Zagoskin) * Dubrovskij - Pikovaja dama * Egtpetskie noti * Kapitanskaja doika

1827-ca. 1830 1829 1830 1830 1831 1832-1836 1833 1835 1833-1836

Note that about half of the otryvki and nabroski from the period also contain the theme centrally: •"Gosti s'ezzalis' na dafu" *"Na uglu malen'koj ploS¿adi" * "Otryvok" *"Russkij Pelam" + "My provodili vefer na dafe"

1828-1830 1830-1831 1830 ca. 1834 1835—conection through Egtpetskie noit).

Note also that the reason The Queen of Spades was not included positively in the above listing is that while the theme of class difference, difference in station, is prominent, the drwjanstvo theme in its political and historical aspea is absent. 12. The Post Scriptum at the end is a riposte to Bulgarin ("Figljarin"), who apparently claimed that the Blackamoor of Peter the Great had been bought by a skipper for a bottle of rum. Here, the "skipper" is turned into Peter the

4. PUSKIN AND

127

DANDYISM

Great, and PuS kin's African ancestor, into his friend and confidant. The Post Scriptum referring to Bulgarin ends: "On? On ν Mcílanskoj dvorjanin, ("He? He is a nobleman on Me&anskaja Street"). Me&anskaja Street was identified with petty bureaucrats and was known to harbor gangs of thieves and robbers' dens; Bulgarin's wife is supposed to have had Me&anskaja Street connections before their marriage. (See note on this Polnoe sobrante soänenij [1957], j':5i4. i?. Richard Gregg, "The Nature of Nature and the Nature of Eugene in The Bronze Horseman," especially nn. 5 and 7. The burden of Gregg's argument concerning the hero has to do with Evegnij's psychology and gives short to extratextual and extraliterary considerations such as those raised here. Yet I rather think, judging from the footnotes cited above, that the basic argument of the present chapter is not incompatible with the ideas expressed in these notes. 14. "Lines excluded from the fair copy—possibly for reasons of the censor —had a great significance for the basic idea of the poem; thus, there are no lines touching on the fate of the Ezerskij family in the XVIII c., although it is precisely this century which was abundant in the inconsistencies which led the last Ezerskijs to ruin" (Polnoe sobrante soänenij [1957], 4:570). Variants, 4:534·

15. This version consists essentially of stanzas II through IX, ending with "Dux veka vot kuda zaiel" (passages quoted above). It contains the family history, the reference to Peter, and the lyrical digression on the sad fate of the nobility. Significandy, this version ends just before the aside that deflects attention from political to literary questions. 16. Vladislav Xodasevif, Stat'i 0 russkojpoèzii, pp. 108-109. 17. John Kevin Newman, "Puikin's Bronze Horseman and the Epic Tradition." 18. See, for example, John Bayley, especially in writing about Ezerskij, in Puskin: A Comparative Commentary, pp. 152-53; or Vaclav Lednicki, PuSkin's "Bronze Horseman," which ultimately takes off on the Polish angle. 19. This problem, which is fundamental to the structural oppositions in Bronze Horseman of Classic/Romantic, epic/lyric, late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries is one that begs further study. I hoped that the essentially extra-literary notes provided here may be useful for an analysis of this kind, which is beyond the purview of my remarks.

4.

PU§KIN AND

DANDYISM

ι. The first chapter of Eugene Onegin was published in 1825 with an introduction in which PuSkin relates his work to Beppo. 'The first chapter presents a certain whole. It includes a description of life in society, [svetskaja zizn'J

128

4· puSkin a n d

dandyism

of a young man [in the context, obviously a jeune homme,¡gioviti signor] of Petersburg, at the end of 1819, and recalls the playful work of the gloomy Byron" (6:638). The whole relationship between the two works remains to be studied, but the operative line in regard to dandyism is in stanza LI I of Beppo: But I am but a nameless sort of person, (A broken Dandy lately on my travels) And take for rhyme, to hook my rambling verse on. The first that Walker's Lexicon unravels, And when I can't find that, I put a worse on, Not caring as I ought for critics' cavils; I've half a mind to tumble down to prose, But verse is more in fashion—so here goes. (The Poems and Dramas ofLord Byron, p. 185) Byron's lyrical digression and literary aside has all sorts of connections with important themes in Eugene Oncgin, not the least the fact of digressions on literary subjects. At issue here, however, is of course the description of Eugene as "Kak dèndi londonskij odet" (Dressed like a London dandy). 2. Leonid Grossman, Etjudy 0 Puikine, pp. 5-36. A minor bibliographical question that Grossman raises in the preface may now be straightened out. Grossman speculates that a book in PuSkin's library entided Matinées d'un dandy might shed new light on the genesis of Onegin. It is clear that Grossman did not have access to the book, a rarity; it has little enough to do with the dandy, and none at all with Onegin. The dandy connection is extremely tenuous; it is part of a brief frame-story, like Sheherezade's. The Sheherezade in this case is a barber to a young fashionable who wants to be entertained during his interminable toilette. The stories the barber tells, however, are of the gothic/adventure/swashbuckler/exotic type, often taking place in the wilder reaches of the civilized world (Erdbeben in Chile sort of thing). What is interesting is that PuSkin ordered—or perhaps borrowed—the book on the strength of its title in the mid-i830s, a fact that shows his continuing interest in the dandy when the fashion was no longer new. I can only speculate that PuSkin was disappointed; the stories are awful. 3. Honoré de Balzac, "Sur la vie élégante" (1830), in Oeuvres complètes de M. de Balzac (Paris: Delta, 1973), 19:200. 4. The word "dandy" was in use in Scodand in the eighteenth century and may be related to "dandipratt" (a coin of small value) or to "Jack-a-Dandy" (Andrew). James Murray, New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford: Clarendon, 1888-1928), 3:25. There are also satirical dictionaries, such as Alexander Baudouin, A New Dictionary fitr the Fashionable World (London: Longman, 1820), p. 40.

4· p u S k i n a n d

dandyism

129

5. As the title of Stanton's The Aristocrat as Art suggests, the dandy's goal of self-perfection is related to the aristocratic worldview; Stanton deals with the political stance of the aristocrat only tangenti ally, and regrettably does not deal with Russian dandyism at all. (Sec especially pp. 73-74.) Two useful studies in French are Elizabeth Creed, Le Dandysme de Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly; and John C. Prévost, Le Dandysme en France. 6. L. A. Öerejskij, Pulían i ego okruzenie, pp. 166—67. 7. Letten and Journals ofLord Byron, with Notes on His Lift, Thomas Moore, ed. (New York: Harper, 1830), 1:301. Although the standard sources regularly claim this as the first use of the word "dandy" in the intended sense and that claim is accepted here, it is curious to note that John Knyveton, that garrulous ship's surgeon, later manmidwife and later still social observer, made use of the word in its later Regency sense as early as June 12,1767. The context does not admit of alternative interpretations for the word, nor is there anything to suggest that Dr. Knyveton thought it at all odd to use it. He confessed: I grow weary even of the pageant in the Mall, the bucks and dandies, and the society beauties tripping with their Abigails to Betty's famous fruit shop in St. James Street, etc. (Michael Brander, The Georgian Gentleman, p. 53) Moore satirizes the dandy type in The Fudge Family in Paris: A thing, you know, great-coated and laced, Like an hour-glass, exceedingly small in the waist; Quite a new sort of creatures, unknown yet to scholars, With heads so immovably stuck in shirt collars, That seats like our own music stools soon must be found them, To twirl when the creatures look round them. 8. Lester Pester [pseud.], A Dandy's History: His Birth, Parentage and Education, Described by Himself. This rare book is available at the Worcester, Mass., American Antiquarian Society (copy incomplete). 9. When the relationship cooled around 1816, Bruitimeli delivered a verbal "cut sublime" which constituted lèse-majesté; he had over-stepped the considerable latitude allowed the often waspish dandy and finished out his days in poverty and obscurity at Calais. At issue, according to the legend, was a chance encounter while the Prince of Wales was strolling in Hyde Park with a companion; Bruitimeli met them and asked the companion: "Who's your fat friend?" (Regency society privately referred to the Regent as "Fat Prinny.") 10. Reproduced in British Prose and Poetry, 2:2. 11. Arthur Bryant, The Age ofElegance, p. 170. 12. Quoted in ibid., p. 129.

I30

4. PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

13. Stendhal, Le Rouge et le noir, 2:63. 14. Sydney Morgan, La France, 1:174-75. 15. This remarkable personage was Countess, later Princess Lieven, née Dorothea (Darya) Benkendorf, sister of the chief of the infamous Third Section (the secret police) and Pu5 kin's tireless persecutor. She was a close confidante of both King George III and the Regent—a rather difficult balancing act between the two inimical royals, which attests to her tact and diplomacy. She was also close to the Prime Minister Castlereagh—very close; she may have been his mistress. Moreover, she managed to have a long-lasting affair with Metternich, keeping tryst at the various European congresses of the time; from it developed a voluminous and highly interesting correspondence. When George IV sobered and Victorian attitudes were beginning to form, her Regency morals were no longer in fashion. She removed therefore to Paris and became the mistress of Guizot. 16. The anecdote in question appealed to the Regency taste. On learning the number of children the Shah of Persia had sired the Empress Dowager exclaimed, "Ah, le monstre." The anecdote is described in E. M. Buder, ed., Λ Regency Visitor (New York: Dutton, 1958, p. 223). This book is a collection of scandalous letters of Prince von Piickler und Muskau (named "Pickles-andMustard" by the London rabble), a minor German princeling who had bankrupted his principality by "improving his prospect"—that is, by building an English garden, which involved, among other things, moving a hill. He came to London on a fortune-hunting expedition; the letters are to his beloved wife. The connivings fell through in the end, but the letters, in gossip-mad London as in the other capitals, restored his fortune. Thus, he kept his English garden and his wife as well as his once-again prosperous principality. 17. Bryant, The Age ofElegance, p. 103. 18. Ibid. 19· Ibid., p. 102. 20. Count M. A. Korf, quoted in V. Vcresaev, PuSkin ν zizni, 1:86; Prince P. A. Vjazemskij, quoted in ibid., 1:86-87. Compare notes on this question in the same source by S. D. Komovskij, Μ. I. Zixarëv, and L. S. PuSkin (PuSkin's brother). See also chapter 2, note 11. 21. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Du Dandysme et de Georges Bruttimeli, p. 15. 22. Or artifice: the difference in those years was not at all clear. One of the major lines of development in the Stanton book cited in note 5 has to do with the dandy and self-perfection—as a work of art. A word about the differences between the French and English dandies is probably in order here. We have already seen that the French were more prone to aestheticization of the phenomenon and drawing abstract philosophical conclusions from it. The run-of-the-mill dandies in both countries were also prone to certain bizarre exaggerations in dress and behavior (making them a

4· PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

131

favorite subject of caricatures and satirical charges), but the most famous of the English dandies tended toward elegant simplicity, whereas the French counterparts were generally more flamboyant or extreme (for example, Barbey, Baudelaire, or later in the century Robert de Montesquiou). Quentin Crisp says this of the quintessential English dandy in his preface to the new English edition of Barbeas Dandyism. What we need is a description that is neither disfigured by mockery nor swathed in false poesy. It may be hard to find. The dictionary states that dandyism is "ostentatious elegance" but it is in the very nature of elegance that it is not ostentatious. If it is true that Mr. Brummell said we ought to take four hours dressing but look as though we had spent only a few minutes, then it would seem that he realized this. He soon ceased to affect flamboyant clothes. His object gradually came to be to represent correctness in dress without ostentation, cleanliness without scent, originality without caprice, and superiority of manner without undue seriousness. 23. Puikin's complex and ambivalent attitude toward the svet, toward "swinish Petersburg," will be the subject of a separate study. 24. See M. Dorothy George, Hogarth to Cruikshank, p. 163. 25. See Ju. Lotman, "Dekabrist ν povsednevnoj zizni." 26. Brander, The Georgian Gentleman, p. 194. 27. George, Hogarth to Cruikshank, p. 16}. 28. Moers, The Dandy: From Brummell to Beerbohm, p. 122. 29. It was a great disappointment to Puákin that his tight-fisted father would not go to the expense of outfitting him into the guards; in Kiiinëv General Inzov was distressed that PuSkin had not the means even for decent dress (V. Sipovskij, Puskin: Zizn' i tvorlestvo, pp. 106—107). PuSkin, with an irony lighter than he probably felt, wrote to his brother Lev (4 Sept. 1822): "Mon père a eu une idée lumineuse; c'est celle de m'envoyer des habits— rappelez-la lui de ma part." 30. V. P. Goréakov, "Vyderzki iz dnevnika ob A. S. PuSkine," in M. A. Cjavlovskij, Kniga vospominanij 0 Puikine, p. 66. Gorfakov's account suggests typical dandy behavior in the theatre (p. 64); see also p. 246: PuSkin, like Onegin, had the "habit of stepping on feet making his way to his seat." 31. Cjavlovskij, Kniga vospominanij 0 Puskine, pp. 92 ff.: see also K. P. Zeleneckij, "Svedenija o prebyvanii A. S. PuSkina ν KiSineve i Odesse," in ibid., p. 240. See also Brodskij et al., eds., Puíkin ν vospominantjax sovremennikov, p. 223. 32. Cjavlovskij, Kniga vospominanij 0 Puskine, p. 247. 33. S. A. Sobolevskij, "Kvartira PuSkina ν Moskve," in ibid., p. 283.

132

+. PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

J4- Alckscj N. Vul'f, in V. Vcrcsacv, Puikin ν zizni, 1:28?. 35. Ibid., 1:273· 36. Letter to L. PuSkin, Mixailovskoe, April 22,1825.13:16?. 37. Veresaev, Puikin ν zizni, 1:273. 38. Rastrepannye: Annette probably meant wind-blown rather than unkempt. Cf. the Kiprenskij portrait—which incidentally shows PuSkin sporting a tartan over the shoulder, reminiscent of the Scottish bard. 39. T. G. Cjavlovskaja, "Dnevnik A. A. Oleninoj," 2:248. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., p. 264. 42. Ibid., pp. 278-71. The grand-nephew in later years gives a somewhat different account—possibly because of Soviet sensibilities, but this one rings true; it sounds like Annette Olénine as an old lady. 43. I. I. Laáeénikov, "Znakomstvo moe s PuSkinym," in Brodskij et al., eds., Puikin ν vospominanijax sovremennikov, p. 170. 44. A. Ja. Golovafeva-Panaeva, quoted in Veresaev, Puíktn ν ¿izni, 1:117. 45. Α. Ν. Vul'f, "Ιζ dnevnikov," in Brodskij et al., eds., Puikin ν vospiminijax sovremennikov, p. 324. 46. Ν. A. Raevskij, Drug Puíkina Pavel VoinoviíNaiiokin, passim, especially p. 30. PuSkin's ink sketch of NaStokin (p. 15) shows him inspecting a gem or other bezdeluika ("trifle"). 47. Written by Puikin to Caadaev, but according to Modzalevskij, Puikin meant to apply the characterization to taadaev. Letter to P. Ja. Caadaev, 1820 in Puikin: Pis'ma (Leningrad: PuSkinskij dom, 1926) 1:9; see also note, p. 200. 48. For sources, see N. L. Brodskij, ed., Evgenij Onegin, p. 85. Ja. Ν. Tolstoy is not to be confused with F. I. Tolstoj—"Amerikanec," a gambler and duelist of the same circle, who was inimical to PuSkin and who was later vulgarized into Zareckij. Still later, the enmity resolved itself. See Cerejskij, Puikin i ego okruzenie, p. 415. 49- Ibid., p. 59· 50. Quoted in P. Zisserman, "Puikin i Velikopol'skij." A variant also refers to the poet as a fashionable: . . . u nas V luäSego/ kazdogo poeta LiJ' obuien dlja sveta Manezit'sja Pegas. 51. Β. V. Tomaievskij, "Nezaversennye KiSinëvskie zamysli PuSkina," in M. P. Alekseev, ed., Puikin: Issledovanija i materialy, Moscow-Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1953, pp· 179 ff. 52. Sipovskij, Puikin. Zizn'i i tvoríestvo, p. 113; see also Óerejskij, Puikin i ego okruzenie, p. 150.

4- PUSKIN AND DANDYISM

IB3

53. S. I. Povamin, "Russkij Pelam A. S. PuSkina," p. 343. 54. Cerejskij, Puiktn i ego okruzenie, p. 293. 55. Cjavlovskij, Kniga vospominanij 0 Pulkine, pp. 169,197. 56. Zisserman, "PuSkin i Velikopol'skij," p. 275. 57. A. F. Vel'tman, "Vospominanija o Bessarabii," Brodskij et. al., eds., Pttikin ν vospomtnanijax sovremmenikov, p. 235. 58. J. I. Osipova, "Rasskazy o PuSkine," in ibid., p.315. 59. Quoted in Brodskij, et al., eds., Eugene Onegin, p. 84. 60. Modest Gofman, "PropuSfennye strofy Evgenija Onegina," in Puikin i ego sovremenniki, (1922), 33—35:42. 61. L. N. PavliJfev, Iz sctHtjttoj xrontkt, p. 178. PuSkin's nephew makes the point that PuSkin was not a petty snob, and was kind to social outcasts like Sobolevskij, but "wore a cold hauteur before those he felt it a duty [neobxodimo] to do so." 62. Polnoe sobrante soiinmij (1957) 6:70; see fn. to p. 67, 756. "P.," according to the note, is PuSkin. 63. F. F. Vigel', Zapiski, 1:133. VigePs open avowal of his homosexuality is a matter of record. Modern readers may observe in dandyism and excessive attention to dress a signal of male homosexual tendencies. As Crisp notes in his preface to Barbey^ Dandyism, speaking of Beau Brummell: "Nowadays . . . he would undoubtedly have been thought to be homosexual, but while he lived, no scandal was ever attached to his name. Since he abhorred fox hunting not because of the cruelty to animals that it involved, but because his highly varnished boots were likely to be bespattered with mud, it seems probable that passion of any kind was to be shunned on account of the havoc it might wreak upon his carefully arranged cravat." The great dandies of the time, insofar as the sources indicate, were no more inclined to homosexuality than Brummell, and this is certainly true of PuJkin's dandy associates. Vigel' was not a dandy. 64. H. W. V. Temperley, ed., The Diary ofPrincess Lieven, pp. 245-46. 65. For a careful account of this development, see Leslie O'Bell's Pushkin's Egyptian Nights: The Biography ofa Work. 66. Anna Axmatova said that Carskij is not the PuSkin at the time of composition, but himself as he was in the twenties. Her superb article on Benjamin Constant's "Adolphe," by the way, touches on "The Guests" and the question of aristocracy; Axmatova gives a highly interesting account of PuSkin's use of the names of ancient families in his works. Of interest here is Minskij in "The Guests" as an earlier version of Carskij in Egipeckie noa. Anna Axmatova, Socinenija (Works) (Munich: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1968), 2:243. ff·; see especially fn. 51. 67. A word of explanation is probably in order here. What PuSkin intends is to indicate the dandy's horror of "serious" conversation, "pedantry." How-

5. P E L H A M A N D

134

PETRONIUS

ever much he prized wit ("la repartie vive"), the dandy was at pains to hide his own education and affect lightmindedness. 68. One must translate exactly, but it seems likely that PuSkin had in mind here not "superstition," but the root-sense of the word: "belief in the vain things of this world," "vanity." 69. That is, Carskij did not wish to appear to be a writer. 70. Snisxoditel'nij: literally, "condescending"; in our egalitarian society, the adjective is perjorative; here, it is used in the Regency sense.

J.

PELHAM AND

PETRONIUS

ι. Polnoe sobrante soHnenij (1957), 6:799 (notes to plans). 2. See P. M. Kazancev, "K izufeniju 'Russkogo Pelama.' " This article contains a detailed bibliography on the question (see in. 2, 21). 3. V. F. Perevëraev, "PuSkin ν boPbe s plutovskim romanom." 4. See, for example, Kazancev, " K izufeniju 'Russkogo Pelama,' " or E. Gladkova, "Prozaiâeskie nabroski iz iizni sveta." $. S. I. Povamin, "Russkij Pelam A. S. Puikina." 6. Ju. Lotman, "K problème raboty s nedostovemymi istofnikami," VPK (1975) 13:95· 7. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Pelham: or, The Adventures of a Gentleman, 1:5. Only the early editions of Pelham should be used, for Bulwer later bowdlerized his own novel for reasons of politics and Victorian morality. 8. For example, Walter Allen, The English Novel, p. 168. 9. See L. A. Óerejskij, Puikin i ego okruzenie, p. 25+. 10. Lotman, "K probleme raboty," p. 95. π. Cited in ibid., p. 97. 12. Perevëraev, "PuSkin ν bor'be," pp. 164-65. i}. Quoted in ibid., p. 172. 14. Quoted in ibid. 15. Ibid., p. 173. 16. Ibid., 180. 17. The fragment and plan referred to here are in the 1957 Academy edition, 6:610-14 and 6:801-802. These comments on A Tale from Roman Life were presented in a slightly different form at the New York University PuSkin Symposium 3,1985. 18. I am indebted to Professor Leslie O'Bell for recalling the similarity of plot at this juncture with PuSkin's 1825 poem "André Chénier." Chénier, imprisoned, begs his friends to bear his execution in silence: "Weep, dear friends, over my fate in silence; / Beware arousing suspicion with your tears" etc. 19. That is, the myrrhine vase, which figures in Pliny's account of Petronius,

5. P E L H A M A N D

PETRONIUS

135

and is one of the reasons for ascribing great wealth to Petronius as well as proud lineage and high position. See Gilbert Bagnani, Arbiter of Elegance: A Study of the Life and Works of C. Petronius (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1954)1 P· +8· The full exerpt from Tacitus is included in Philip B. Corbett, Petronius (New York: Twayne, 1970), pp. 13-14. 20. See, for example, Puikin i ego sovremenniki: Materialy dlja issUdovaija (1906) 4:21; (1910) 9 - 1 0 : 162, 309.

21. See V. Zirmunskij, "Puikin i zapadnye literatury," VPK (1937) 3:66-103 (esp. p. 100); M. Pokrovskij, "PuSkin i antiínost,'" VPK (1939) 4-5:28-56; D. P. Jakubovif, "Antifnost" ν tvoríestve Puíkina," VPK (1941) 6:92-159. 22. Β. M. Ejxenbaum/'Problemy poetiki Puíkina," in Skvoz' literaturu, pp. 167-70 (The Hague: Mouton, 1962). 23. Quoted in S. Bondi, Novye stranicy Puíkina: Stixi, proza, pis'ma (Mosc o w : M i r , 1931). p. 149.

24. Ibid., p. 150. 25. The notes to the 1957 Academy edition single out alone for comment on this fragment the Cleopatra connection to "Egyptian Nights"; no other comment beyond a description of the text and an identification of Petronius is given (6:801). 26. Bondi, Novye stranicy Puíkina, p. 151. 27. "Concerning the absence of direct connection between 'Egyptian Nights' and the story from ancient Roman life, we have already spoken. We will moreover not touch on the matter further." (p. 153) 28. B. Tomaievskij, Puikin: Kniga vtoraja (Moscow-Leningrad: AN SSSR (1961), p p . 6 3 - 6 4 , fn. 34·

29. Paul Debreczeny, The Other Puikin, pp. 284-5. 30. Leslie O'Bell, Puíkin's Egyptian Nights: The Biography of a Work, p. 6. 31. Ibid., p. 79. 32. Ibid., p. 82. 33. Ibid., pp. 84-85. 34. The entire relevant passage from Annenkov is cited in Bondi, Novye stranicy Puíkina, pp. 149-50. 35. Variously, arbiter elegantiarum. 36. An example of this association occurs in a discussion of Petronius' wealth: "It is true that certain past leaders of fashion, Brummell, notably, and D'Orsay, were not fabulously rich" etc (Bagnani, Aribiter cf Elegance, p. 49).

Selected Bibliography

Allen, Walter. The English Novel. New York: Dutton, 1954. Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules. Dandyism. Douglas Ainsley, trans. New York: PAJ Publications, 1988. Du dandysme et de Georges Brummeil. Caen: Β. Mancel, 19+S· Bayley, John. Puikin: A Comparative Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Blagoj, D. D. "Klassovoe samosoznanie PuSkina." In Sociolcgija tvorlestva Pulitina, pp.7-68. Moscow: Federacija, 1929. Borovoj, Ja. "Ob èkonomi£eskix vzgljadax PuSkina ν naíale 1830-x godov." In Μ. M. KalauSen et al., eds., Puikin i ego vremja, pp. 246-64 Leningrad: Ermi tai, 1962. Bowra, C. M. Poetry and Politics 1900-1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Brander, Michael. The Georgian Gentleman. Westmead, Eng.: Heath, 1973. Brodskij, N. L., ed. Evgenij Onegin. Roman A. S. Puikina. Moscow: Gospedizdat, 1950. Puikin ν vospominanijax sovremennikov. Leningrad: GIXL, 1950. Bryant, Arthur. The Age of Elegance 1812-1822. London: Collins, 1950. Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George. Pelham: or The Adventures of a Gentleman, 2 vols. New York: Harper, 1838. Byron, George Gordon, Lord. The Poems and Dramas ofLord Byron. New York and Boston: Crowell, n.d. Cerejskij, L. A. Puikin i ego okruzenie. Leningrad: Nauka, 1975. Cjavlovskaja, T. G. "Dnevnik A. A. Oleninoj." In Puikin: Issledevanija i materialy 2, Moscow-Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1958. Cjavlovskij, M. A. Kniga vospominanij Puikine. Moscow: Mir, 1931. Creed, Elizabeth. Le dandysme de Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. Paris: Droz, 1938.

138

SELECTED

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Debreczeny, Paul. The Other Pushkin. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 198}. Fejnberg, Il'ja. Nezaverfênnye raboty Puíkina. Moscow: Sovetskij pisatel', 1969. Frank, S. L. Ètjudy o Puíkine. Letchworth: Prideaux Press, 1978. George, M. Dorothy. Hogarth to Cruikshank: Social Change in Graphic Satire. London: Penguin, 1967. Gillel'son, M. I. Molodoj Pusktn i Arzamasskœ bratstvo. Moscow: AN SSSR, 1974-

Gladkova, E. "Prozaifeskie nabroski iz zizni sveta." VPK (19+1) 6:305-22. Gleason, Abbot. European and Muscovite. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. Gordin, Ja. A. "Gody. Dokumental'naja povest\" Zvezda (1940) 6:20-85. Gregg, Richard. "The Nature of Nature and the Nature of Eugene in The Bronze Horseman." Slavic and East European Journal (Summer 1977), 21: 167-179· Grossman, Leonid. Etjudy 0 PuSktne. Moscow-Petrograd: FrenkeP, 1923. Hollingsworth, Barry. "Arzamas: Portrait of a Literary Society." Slavic and East European Journal, July (1966), 10:306—26. Kazancev, P. M. "K izuíeniju 'Russkogo Pelama' A. S. Puíkina." VPK (1964): 21-33. Kozmin, N. K. "Anglijskij proletariat ν izobrazenii Puíkina i ego sovremennikov." VPK (1939) 4-5:257-99

Leblanc, Ronald D. The Russianization cf Gil Bias. Columbus: Slavica, 1986. Lednicki, Vaclav. Puikin's "Bronze Horseman": The Story cf a Masterpiece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955. Lieder, Paul, et al., eds. British Prose and Poetry. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1950. Lotman, Ju. "Dekabrist ν povsednevnoj zizni (Bytovoe povedenie kak istorikopsixologi£eskaja kategorija)." In V. G. Bazanov and E. Vacuro, eds. Literaturnoe nasledie dekabristov, pp. 25-75. Leningrad: Nauka (1975). Mazour, Anatole G. The First Russian Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961. Meynieux, André. Pouchkine. Paris: Cinq Continents, 1966. Mikkelson, Gerald. Puikin and the History of the Russian Nobility. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1971. Modzalevskij, V. L. Puskin. Moscow-Leningrad: Priboj, 1921. Moers, Ellen. The Dandy: From Brummell to Beerbohm. New York: Viking, i960. Moore, Thomas. The Fudge Family in Paris. London: Longman, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1818. Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with Notes on His Life. New York: Harper, 1830.

SELECTED

BIBLIOGRAPHY

139

Morgan, Sydney. La France. Paris and London: Treutell and Würz, 1817. Nakhimovsky, A. D., and A. S. Nakhimovsky, cds. The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985. Newman, John Kevin. "PuSkin's Bronze Horseman and the Epic Tradition." Comparative Literature Studies (1972) 9:173-95. O'Bell, Leslie. Pushkin's Egyptian Nights: The Biography of a Work. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1984. Pavliiiev, L. N. Iz semejnoj xroniki: Vospominanija ob A. S. Puikina. Moscow: Universitetskaja Tipografia, 1890. Perevërzev, V. F. "Puíkin ν bor'be s plutovskim romanom." VPK (1936) 1: 164-88. Pester, Lester [pseud.]. A Dandy's History: His Birth, Parentage and Education, Described by Himself. Boston: n.p., 1819. Povarnin, S. I. "Russkij Pelam A. S. Puikina." In Pamjati A. S. Puikina, pp. 329-50. St. Petersburg: Stasjulevif, 1900. Prévost, John C. Le dandysme en France. Paris: Menard, 1957. Piikler-Muskau, Hermann, Prince von. A Regency Visitor. New York: Dutton, 1958. PuSiin, I. I. Zapiski 0 Puikine. Moscow: GIXL, 1937. PuJkin, A. S. Polnoe sobrante soÜnenij. V. D. Bonf-Bruevif et al., eds. 17 vols. Moscow: AN SSSR, 1937-1959. —— Polnoe sobrante socinenij. B. V. Tomaäevskij, ed. 10 vols. Moscow: Nauka, 1975· Raevskij, N. A. Drug Puikina Pavel Voinovic Naiüokin. Leningrad: Nauka, 1976. Robinson, Charles E. Shelley and Byron. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. Saitov, V. I., ed. Ostaf'evskij arxtv knjazej Vjazemskix. 5 vols. St. Petersburg: Seremet'ev, 1899. Sebunin, A. N. "Puskin i 'ObSiestvo Elizavety5." VPK (1936) 1:53-90. Sipovskij, V. Puikin: Zizn' i tvorcestvo. St. Petersburg: Trud, 1907. Slonimskij, A. L. Masterstvo Puikina. Moscow: GIXL. 1963. Stanton, Domna C. The Aristocrat as Art: A Study of the Honnête Homme and the Dandy in Seventeenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. Stendhal [Beyle, H. M.]. Le rouge et le noir. Paris: Editions de Cluny, 1950. Temperley, H. W. V., ed. The Diary of Princess Lieven. London: Cape, 1925. Todd, William Mills III. Fiction and Society in the Age of Puikin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. Literature and Society in Imperiai Russia 1800-1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978. Toddes, E. A. "K izufeniju 'Mednogo vsadnika'." In D. D. Ivlev et al., eds..

I40

SELECTED

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Puíhnsktj sbornii, pp. 92-113. Uienye zapiski 106, Latvijskogo gosudarstvcnnogo univcrsitcta, 1968. TomaSevskij,B. V. Puíkin: Kniga pervaja (1S13-1S24). Moscow-Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1956. Puíkin: Kniga vtoraja. Moscow-Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1961. Veresaev, V. [Smidovié]. Puikin ν zizni. 2 vols. Moscow: Sovetskij pisateP, 1936. Vickery, Walter. "PuSkin: Russia and Europe." Review cf National Literatures (1972) 3,1:15-39· Vigel', F. F. Zapiski. 2 vols. Moscow: Krug, 1928. Repr. Cambridge, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1974. Xodasevi¿, Vladislav. Stat'i 0 russkojpoèzii. Petrograd: Èpoxa, 1922. Zisscrman, P. I. "Puikin i Velikopol'skij." In P. N. Sakulin, ed., Puikin i tgo sovremenniki (1930), 38-39:257-80.

Index

Alexander I (Emperor), 25, 85, 85-86, 89 Anna Ivanovna (Empress), 12, 22, 40, 70 Annenkov, P. V . , 2

Brummel, George Bryan (Beau), 81, 83,

Aristocratism, 3-19, 21-52,53-76, 77-78, 87,

112, 1267112 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George, ix, ι, 2i, 35, 42, 51, 53, 79, 82-83, 88, 91-93, 105, Ι2ΙΛΙ, 128m

90-91, 98, 107-8, 112, 120 Aristocratic party, 10, 11,13, 25, 40, 67, 78, 90, 91, 92, 107, III, II7, I23«I9 Arzamas, 29, 31-32, 33 Austen, Jane, 83 Autocracy, 10-13, 16-17, 24, 37, 39, 65, 78, 89, 107, 117 Axmatova, Anna, 133R66

Balzac, Honoré de, 80, 82 Baratynskij, Ε. Α . , 4 4 Barbey D'Aurevilly, Jules, 80, 87, 90, 92, ΠΙΠ22 Baudelaire, Charles, 80, 82, i3i»4 Baylev, John, ι, 122η3 "Beginning o f an Autobiography" ("Naíalo avtobiografii," Puäkin), 22, 51 Belinskij, Vissarion, m Bclkin Taies, The (Povesti Belkina, PuSkin), 61 Benkendorf, Α. X., 17-19, 66, 116 Bcppo (Bvron), 79, 83, 127m Blagoj, D . D . , 3, 6, 7 Boris Godunov (Puikin), 2, 37, 66 Borovoj, Ja., 41 Bowra, C . Μ . , χ Broglio, Sylvester, C o u n t , 25

93, 105, 107, 110, 116, 133M3, 135/236 Bulgarin, F. V . , 5, 17-19, 44, 67, 108, 110,

Caadaev, P. Ja., 27-28, 42, 82, 87, 95, 132η 47 Captain's Daughter, The (Kapttanskaja doika, Puikin), 2, 63-66, 120 Carlyle, Thomas, 81 Catherine the Great, 12, 15, 23, 46, 65-66, 70, 84 Censor, x, 17, 19, 45-46, 63, 74, 105, 113, 119 Chateaubriand, François René, V i c o m t e de, χ Constitutional monarchy, 34-35, 77 Contemporary, The (Sovremennik), 16-17, 4$ C o r n Law riots, 27, 60 Crisp, Quentin, 131^22, 133x63

Dandyism, xii, 27, 32, 37,53, 67, 77-102, 113, I27W1, I28HI-4, ΠΟΠ22 Debreczeny, Paul, 115, 122η3 Decembrists, x, 2, 7-10, 25, 30-31, 33-34, 36-39, 53, 73, 107, 120, 123*19

142

INDEX

Dcl'vig, Anton, Baron, i-, l8, 44, m Disraeli, Benjamin, lx, 82 Dubrovskij (PuSkin), 2, 64-66, 108

Egyptian Nights (Egipetskie noti, PuSkin), 67, 79, 99, 114-15 Elizabeth Akkscevna (Empress), 25 Elizabeth Petrovna (Empress), 22, 101 Emancipation of the serfs, 13, 32, 34, 40, 46, 49, 50 England, 2-5, 27, }4, 41, 47, 60, 65, 78, 8586, 88-89, 90 Eugeni Onegin (Evgenij Onegin, PuSkin), I, 5Î, 78, 80, 96, 120, 127m Exclusivcness, 90, 117 Ezerskij (PuJkin), 51, 68

Fashion, 14, 2}, 56, 77, 81, 84, 86, 88, 9192, 94-95, 97-98, 100, 104, 116, 135*136 Fejnberg, Il'ja, 40, 121m Fingernails, 95-96 Frank, S. L., 32, 35, 37,55, i23»i6

Cannibal, Abram Petrovif, 22 Genealogies, 21, 22-23, 43,51, 68-69, 72, 74 Gleason, Abbot, 122m Green Lamp, The (Zelénaja lampa), 31 Gnedif, Ν. I., 33 Gordin, Ja. Α., Ι23«ι6 Gregg, Rjchad, 68, 127116 Grossman, Leonid, 79

Heine, Heinrich, χ History of Pugaiev (Istorija Pugaiëva, Puskin), 63-65 History of the Russian State (Istorija rossijskogo gosudarstva, Karamzin), 21 History of the Village cf Gorjuxino (Istorija sela Gorjuxina, PuSkin), 2, 61

"In Refutation of the Critics" ("Oproverienie kritikam," PuJkin), 42

Jakubovií, L. Α., 96 Journey from Moscow to Petersburg

(Pute-

iestvte iz Moskvy 1» Peterburg,

PuSkin),

39, 45 Journey from Petersburg to Moscow (Puteiestvie iz Peterburga ν Maskvu, RadiSfev), 45

Karamzin, Ν. M. (as historiographer), 4, 21, 28, 42 Kaverin, P. P., 27-28, 82, 87, 95 Keats, John, 1 Kiprenskij, Ο. Α., 96, 132Λ38 Korf, Μ. Α., Baron, 27-28 Kunvcin, A. P., 26, 30-31

Leopardi, Giacomo, Count, 1 Lieven, Dorothea, Princess, 84, 97 Liprandi, I. P., 96 Literary Gazette (Literaturnajagazeta), 17-18, 21, 44-45 Lotman, Ju., 7, 104, 108, 110 Lycée, 24, 25-26, 29

Meynieux, André, 17 Mickiewicz, Adam, 55, 73 Middle class, 4, 11, 15-17, 19, 67, 108, m , 112-13, 117 Mikkelson, Gerald E., 6-7, 11, 121m, 123η i6 Moers, Ellen, 81 Montesquiou, Robert de, 131W22 Morgan, Svdnev, Lady, 84 Moscow Telegraph (Moskovsktj Telegraf), 1718 Murav'ëv, Ν. M., 31

NaSfokin, P. V., 95, 108, 136x46 Nicholas I (Emperor), 2, 19, 37, 39, 46 Nobility, xi, 14-17, 21-52, 53 Northern Bee (Sevemaja píela), 17, 44, 50 "Notes on Russian History o f the Eighteenth Century" ("Zametki po russkoj istori 1 XVIII veka," PuSkin), 12, 34-35, 37, 42 Novel in Letters, A (Roman ν pis'max, PuJkin), 58, 97, 103

INDEX

143

O'Bell, Leslie, 115, ι_34»ι8 Ode " F r e e d o m " ("Vol'nost' " ) , 30 Officers o f the Guard, 27-29, 83, 86, 89-90 Olenina, A. A. (Annette), 84, 93 " O n Eternal Peace" ( " O vefnom mire"), 33

Sakulin, P. N., 6 Sebunin, Α. Ν., 1 Secret police, χ, i7, 18-19, 86, 113 Secret societies, 3, 31, 37, 125Π23 Sevyrëv, S. P., 18 Shelley, Percy Bvsshe, ix, 121m

Society, svet, grand monde, 3-4, 8, 11, 14,

Orlov, F. F . , 82, 96, 107 Orlov, M . F., General, 31, 33, 37, +1, 82,

23, 32, 83, 87-88, 9 0 , 1 0 0 , 105, 107,

no,

I I 6 , I27WI, I3OHI5-I6, Ι 3 Ι Λ 2 3

96

Paul I (Emperor), 89, 98 Peasant uprisings, 36-37, 63, 6 4 - 6 6

Pelham (Bulwer-Lytton),

79, 103-5,

107,

109-12 Perevërzev, V .

F., 104,

Sojuz blagotUnstvija (Philanthropic society), 9, 1 0 7 Sosnickij, I. I., 95 Stanton, Domna, 82 Stendhal, Henri Beyle, x, 57, 79, 82-84 Sumptuary laws, 89, 97-98

110-13

Peter II (Emperor), 22 Peter t h e G r e a t , 12-13,

40-41,

44,58,

7?, 9 8 , ΙΟΙ Petronius Arbiter, 103, 113, 116-17, 135Λ19, 135" 36 70,

Philosophical

(Caadaev), 28

Letters

Philosophical Views of Reform, The (Shelley), ix Poe, Edgar Allen, 1 Polevoj, Ν. Α., 17-19, 4 3 - 4 4 , 46,

m

Polish Rebellion o f 1831, 73 Poltava (PuJkin), 2

Tacitus, 103, 113 "Tale from Roman Life, A " ("Povest' iz rimskoj zizni," Puikin), 113 Thackerav, William Makepeace, 81, 103 T o d d , William Mills III, 122m, 3 " T o Licinius," ("Liciniju," Puikin), 32 Tolstoj, Ja. Ν., 95, 132x48 Tomaicvskij, Β. V . , 3, ιΐ5 Turgenev, Α. I., 28, 30 Turgenev, Ν. I., 30-31, i23»i9

Protection o f the nobility (ograzdenie dvorjanstva), 20, 35, 39, 4 0 , 43, 66, 102 Pugafëv, Emel'jan, 64-67 P u S i i n , I. I . , 2 4 - 2 6 , 31, 38, · 3 5 » 2 3

V i c k e r y , W a l t e r , 35-36, 4 5 - 4 6 ,

Puikin, Sergej L'vovii, 23, 92, 97

Vjazemskij, P. Α., Prince, 5, 17, 28, 35, 38, 4 0 , 42, 4 4 Vscvoloiskij, Nikita, π

Radiííev, Aleksandr, 45-57 107, m ,

2, 16-17,

43*44, 53,

67,

74,

113

Red and the Black,

i2i»i

V i g e l ' , F . F . , il, 29, 32, 97-98

Puikin, Vasilij L'vovif, 22-23, 97-98

Raznoiincy, xi,

Velikopol'skij, I. E., 95 Venevitinov, Α. V . , 18

The (Stendhal), 79, 83

Wilson, Edmund, 1

Reform Bills, T h e , 27 "Russkij Pelam", ( " T h e Russian Pelham," Puikin), 67, 78-79, 96, 104, 111-13 Rvleev, Kondratij F., 5

Zavadovskij, A. P., 96, 107, 112 ZavalijSin, Dmitrij Irinarxovif, 9 Zukovskij, Vasilij, 32