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Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
by Vasily Tropinin
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Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
Pushkin, 1822 г.
1799, Moscow, Russia
died Jan. 29 [Feb. 10], 1837, St. Petersburg
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Russian poet, novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer;
he has often been considered his country's greatest poet and
the founder of modern Russian literature.
16-year-old Pushkin reciting his
poem before old Derzhavin in the
Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum
(1911 painting by Ilya Repin).
The early years.
Pushkin's father came of an old boyar family; his mother was
a granddaughter of Abram Hannibal, who, according to family
tradition, was an Abyssinian princeling bought as a slave at
Constantinople (Istanbul) and adopted by Peter the Great,
whose comrade in arms he became. Pushkin immortalized him in
an unfinished historical novel, Arap Petra Velikogo (1827;
The Negro of Peter the Great). Like many aristocratic
families in early 19th-century Russia, Pushkin's parents
adopted French culture, and he and his brother and sister
learned to talk and to read in French. They were left much
to the care of their maternal grandmother, who told
Aleksandr, especially, stories of his ancestors in Russian.
From Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva, his old nurse, a freed serf
(immortalized as Tatyana's nurse in Yevgeny Onegin), he
heard Russian folktales. During summers at his grandmother's
estate near Moscow he talked to the peasantsand spent hours
alone, living in the dream world of a precocious,
imaginative child. He read widely in his father's library
and gained stimulus from the literary guests who came to the
house.
In 1811 Pushkin entered the newly founded Imperial Lyceum at
Tsarskoye Selo (later renamed Pushkin) and while there began
his literary career with the publication (1814, in Vestnik
Evropy, “The Messenger of Europe”) of his verse epistle “To
My Friend, the Poet.” In his early verse, he followed the
style of his older contemporaries, the Romantic poets K.N.
Batyushkov and V.A. Zhukovsky, and of the French 17th- and
18th-century poets, especially the Vicomte de Parny.
While at the Lyceum he also began his first completed major
work, the romantic poem Ruslan i Lyudmila (1820; Ruslan and
Ludmila ), written in the style of the narrative poems of
Ludovico Ariosto and Voltaire but with an old Russian
settingand making use of Russian folklore. Ruslan, modeled
on the traditional Russian epic hero, encounters various
adventuresbefore rescuing his bride, Ludmila, daughter of
Vladimir, grand prince of Kiev, who, on her wedding night,
has been kidnapped by the evil magician Chernomor. The poem
flouted accepted rules and genres and was violently attacked
by both of the established literary schools of the day,
Classicism and Sentimentalism. It brought Pushkin fame,
however, and Zhukovsky presented his portrait to the poet
with the inscription “To the victorious pupil from the
defeated master.”
Orest Adamovich Kiprensky (1782-1836)
Portrait of Vasily A. Zhukovsky, 1815
St. Petersburg.
In 1817 Pushkin accepted a post in the foreign office at St.
Petersburg, where he was elected to Arzamás, an exclusive
literary circle founded by his uncle's friends. Pushkin also
joined the Green Lamp association, which, though founded (in
1818) for discussion of literature and history, became a
clandestine branch of a secret society, the Union of
Welfare. In his political verses and epigrams, widely
circulated in manuscript, he made himself the spokesman for
the ideas and aspirations of those who were to take part in
the Decembrist rising of 1825, the unsuccessful culmination
of a Russian revolutionary movement in its earliest stage.
Exile in the south.
For these political poems, Pushkin was banished from St.
Petersburg in May 1820 to a remote southern province. Sent
first to Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine), he
wasthere taken ill and, while convalescing, traveled in the
northern Caucasus and later to the Crimea with General
Rayevski, a hero of 1812, and his family. The impressions he
gained provided material for his “southern cycle” of
romantic narrative poems: Kavkazsky plennik (1820–21; The
Prisoner of the Caucasus), Bratya razboyniki (1821–22; The
Robber Brothers), and Bakhchisaraysky fontan (1823; The
Fountain of Bakhchisaray).
Although this cycle of poems confirmed the reputation of
theauthor of Ruslan and Ludmila and Pushkin was hailed as
theleading Russian poet of the day and as the leader of the
romantic, liberty-loving generation of the 1820s, he himself
was not satisfied with it. In May 1823 he started work on
his central masterpiece, the novel in verse Yevgeny Onegin
(1833), on which he continued to work intermittently until
1831. In it he returned to the idea of presenting a typical
figure of his own age but in a wider setting and by means of
new artistic methods and techniques.
Yevgeny Onegin unfolds a panoramic picture of Russian life.
The characters it depicts and immortalizes—Onegin, the
disenchanted skeptic; Lensky, the romantic, freedom-loving
poet; and Tatyana, the heroine, a profoundly affectionate
study of Russian womanhood: a “precious ideal,” in the
poet's own words—are typically Russian and are shown in
relationship to the social and environmental forces by which
they are molded. Although formally the work resembles Lord
Byron's Don Juan, Pushkin rejects Byron's subjective,
romanticized treatment in favour of objective description
and shows his hero not in exotic surroundings but at the
heart of a Russian way of life. Thus, the action begins at
St. Petersburg, continues on a provincial estate, then
switches to Moscow, and finally returns to St. Petersburg.
Pushkin had meanwhile been transferred first to Kishinyov
(1820–23; now Chişinău, Moldova) and then to Odessa
(1823–24). His bitterness at continued exile is expressed in
letters to his friends—the first of a collection of
correspondence that became an outstanding and enduring
monument of Russian prose. At Kishinyov, a remote outpost in
Moldavia, he devoted much time to writing, though he
alsoplunged into the life of a society engaged in amorous
intrigue, hard drinking, gaming, and violence. At Odessa he
fell passionately in love with the wife of his superior,
Count Vorontsov, governor-general of the province. He fought
several duels, and eventually the count asked for his
discharge. Pushkin, in a letter to a friend intercepted by
the police, had stated that he was now taking “lessons in
pure atheism.” This finally led to his being again exiled to
his mother's estate of Mikhaylovskoye, near Pskov, at the
other end of Russia.
At Mikhaylovskoye.
Although the two years at Mikhaylovskoye were unhappy for
Pushkin, they were to prove one of his most productive
periods. Alone and isolated, he embarked on a close study of
Russian history; he came to know the peasants on the
estateand interested himself in noting folktales and songs.
During this period the specifically Russian features of his
poetry became steadily more marked. His ballad “Zhenikh”
(1825; “The Bridegroom”), for instance, is based on motifs
from Russian folklore; and its simple, swift-moving style,
quite different from the brilliant extravagance of Ruslan
and Ludmila or the romantic, melodious music of the
“southern” poems, emphasizes its stark tragedy.
In 1824 he published Tsygany (The Gypsies), begun earlier as
part of the “southern cycle.” At Mikhaylovskoye, too, he
wrote the provincial chapters of Yevgeny Onegin; the poem
Graf Nulin (1827; “Count Nulin”), based on the life of the
rural gentry; and, finally, one of his major works, the
historical tragedy Boris Godunov (1831).
The latter marks a break with the Neoclassicism of the
French theatre and is constructed on the “folk-principles”
of William Shakespeare's plays, especially the histories and
tragedies, plays written “for the people” in the widest
sense and thus universal in their appeal. Written just
before the Decembrist rising, it treats the burning question
of the relations between the ruling classes, headed by the
tsar, andthe masses; it is the moral and political
significance of the latter, “the judgment of the people,”
that Pushkin emphasizes. Set in Russia in a period of
political and social chaos on the brink of the 17th century,
its theme is the tragic guilt and inexorable fate of a great
hero—Boris Godunov, son-in-law of Malyuta Skuratov, a
favourite of Ivan the Terrible, and here presented as the
murderer of Ivan's little son, Dmitri. The development of
the action on two planes, one political and historical, the
other psychological, is masterly and is set against a
background of turbulent eventsand ruthless ambitions. The
play owes much to Pushkin's reading of early Russian annals
and chronicles, as well as to Shakespeare, who, as Pushkin
said, was his master in bold, free treatment of character,
simplicity, and truth to nature. Although lacking the
heightened, poetic passion of Shakespeare's tragedies, Boris
excels in the “convincingness of situation and naturalness
of dialogue” atwhich Pushkin aimed, sometimes using
conversational prose, sometimes a five-foot iambic line of
great flexibility. The character of the pretender, the false
Dmitri, is subtly andsympathetically drawn; and the power of
the people, who eventually bring him to the throne, is so
greatly emphasized that the play's publication was delayed
by censorship. Pushkin's ability to create psychological and
dramatic unity, despite the episodic construction, and to
heighten the dramatic tension by economy of language,
detail, and characterization make this outstanding play a
revolutionary event in the history of Russian drama.
Return from exile.
After the suppression of the Decembrist uprising of 1825,
thenew tsar Nicholas I, aware of Pushkin's immense
popularity and knowing that he had taken no part in the
Decembrist “conspiracy,” allowed him to return to Moscow in
the autumnof 1826. During a long conversation between them,
the tsar met the poet's complaints about censorship with a
promise that in the future he himself would be Pushkin's
censor and told him of his plans to introduce several
pressing reforms from above and, in particular, to prepare
the way for liberation of the serfs. The collapse of the
rising had been a grievous experience for Pushkin, whose
heart was wholly with the “guilty” Decembrists, five of whom
had been executed, while others were exiled to forced labour
in Siberia.
Pushkin saw, however, that without the support of the
people, the struggle against autocracy was doomed. He
considered that the only possible way of achieving essential
reforms was from above, “on the tsar's initiative,” as he
had written in “Derevnya.” This is the reason for his
persistent interest in the age of reforms at the beginning
of the 18th century and in the figure of Peter the Great,
the “tsar-educator,” whose example he held up to the present
tsar in the poem “Stansy” (1826; “Stanzas”), in The Negro of
Peter the Great, in the historical poem Poltava (1829), and
in the poem Medny vsadnik (1837; The Bronze Horseman ).
In The Bronze Horseman, Pushkin poses the problem of the
“little man” whose happiness is destroyed by the great
leader in pursuit of ambition. He does this by telling a
“story of St. Petersburg” set against the background of the
flood of 1824, when the river took its revenge against Peter
I's achievement in building the city. The poem describes how
the “little hero,” Yevgeny, driven mad by the drowning of
his sweetheart, wanders through the streets. Seeing the
bronze statue of Peter I seated on a rearing horse and
realizing that the tsar, seen triumphing over the waves, is
the cause of his grief, Yevgeny threatens him and, in a
climax of growing horror, is pursued through the streets by
the “Bronze Horseman.” The poem's descriptive and emotional
powers give it an unforgettable impact and make it one of
the greatest in Russian literature.
After returning from exile, Pushkin found himself in an
awkward and invidious position. The tsar's censorship proved
to be even more exacting than that of the official censors,
and his personal freedom was curtailed. Not only was he put
under secret observation by the police but he was openly
supervised by its chief, Count Benckendorf. Moreover, his
works of this period met with little comprehension from the
critics, and even some of his friendsaccused him of
apostasy, forcing him to justify his political position in
the poem “Druzyam” (1828; “To My Friends”). The anguish of
his spiritual isolation at this time is reflected in a cycle
of poems about the poet and the mob (1827–30) and in the
unfinished Yegipetskiye nochi (1835; Egyptian Nights).
Yet it was during this period that Pushkin's genius came to
its fullest flowering. His art acquired new dimensions, and
almost every one of the works written between 1829 and 1836
opened a new chapter in the history of Russian literature.
He spent the autumn of 1830 at his family's Nizhny Novgorod
estate, Boldino, and these months are the most remarkable in
the whole of his artistic career. During them he wrote the
four so-called “little tragedies”—Skupoy rytsar (1836; The
Covetous Knight), Motsart i Salyeri (1831; Mozart and
Salieri), Kamenny gost (1839; The Stone Guest), and Pir vo
vremya chumy (1832; Feast in Time of the Plague)—the five
short prose tales collected as Povesti pokoynogo Ivana
Petrovicha Bel ki na (1831; Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich
Belkin); the comic poem of everyday lower-class life Domik v
Kolomne (1833; “A Small House in Kolomna”); and many lyrics
in widely differing styles, as wellas several critical and
polemical articles, rough drafts, and sketches.
Among Pushkin's most characteristic features were his wide
knowledge of world literature, as seen in his interest in
such English writers as William Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Sir
Walter Scott, and the Lake poets; his “universal
sensibility”; and his ability to re-create the spirit of
different races at different historical epochs without ever
losing his own individuality. This is particularly marked in
the “little tragedies,” which are concerned with an analysis
of the “evilpassions” and, like the short story Pikovaya
Dama (1834; The Queen of Spades), exerted a direct influence
on the subject matter and techniques of the novels of Fyodor
Dostoyevsky.
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Natalia
Nikolaevna Pushkina-Lanskaya (née Goncharova),
wife of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin
Painting by Alexander Brullov (1831).)
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Natalia
Nikolaevna Pushkina-Lanskaya (née Goncharova),
wife of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.
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Last years.
In 1831 Pushkin married Natalya Nikolayevna Goncharova and
settled in St. Petersburg. Once more he took up government
service and was commissioned to write a history of Peter the
Great. Three years later he received the rank of
Kammerjunker (gentleman of the emperor's bedchamber), partly
because the tsar wished Natalya to have the entrée to court
functions. The social life at court, which he was now
obliged to lead and which his wife enjoyed,was ill-suited to
creative work, but he stubbornly continued to write. Without
abandoning poetry altogether, he turned increasingly to
prose. Alongside the theme of Peter the Great, the motif of
a popular peasant rising acquired growingimportance in his
work, as is shown by the unfinished satirical Istoriya sela
Goryukhina (1837; The History of the Village of Goryukhino),
the unfinished novel Dubrovsky (1841), Stseny iz rytsarskikh
vremen (1837; Scenes from the Age of Chivalry), and finally,
the most important of his prose works, the historical novel
of the Pugachov Rebellion, Ka pi tan ska ya dochka (1836;
The Captain's Daughter), which hadbeen preceded by a
historical study of the rebellion, Istoriya Pugachova (1834;
“A History of Pugachov”).
Meanwhile, both in his domestic affairs and in his official
duties, his life was becoming more intolerable. In court
circles he was regarded with mounting suspicion and
resentment, and his repeated petitions to be allowed to
resign his post, retire to the country, and devote himself
entirely to literature were all rejected. Finally, in 1837,
Pushkin was mortally wounded defending his wife's honour in
a duel forced on him by influential enemies.
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Pushlin was died. 29. 01. 1837
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Alexander Pushkin 29.
01. 1837
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Assessment.
Pushkin's use of the Russian language is astonishing in its
simplicity and profundity and formed the basis of the style
ofnovelists Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, and Leo Tolstoy.
His novel in verse, Yevgeny Onegin, was the first Russian
work to take contemporary society as its subject and
pointedthe way to the Russian realistic novel of the
mid-19th century. Even during his lifetime Pushkin's
importance as a great national poet had been recognized by
Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol, his successor and pupil, and it
was his younger contemporary, the great Russian critic
Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky, who produced the fullest
and deepestcritical study of Pushkin's work, which still
retains much of its relevance. To the later classical
writers of the 19th century, Pushkin, the creator of the
Russian literary language, stood as the cornerstone of
Russian literature, in Maksim Gorky's words, “the beginning
of beginnings.” Pushkin has thus become an inseparable part
of the literaryworld of the Russian people. He also exerted
a profound influence on other aspects of Russian culture,
most notably in opera.
Pushkin's work—with its nobility of conception and its
emphasis on civic responsibility (shown in his command to
the poet-prophet to “fire the hearts of men with his
words”), its life-affirming vigour, and its confidence in
the triumph of reason over prejudice, of human charity over
slavery and oppression—has struck an echo all over the
world. Translated into all the major languages, his works
are regarded both as expressing most completely Russian
national consciousness and as transcending national
barriers.
Dimitry Dimitriyevich Blagoy
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Alexander Pushkin by Orest Kiprensky
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EUGENE ONEGIN
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Type of work:
Poem
Author: Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)
Type of plot: Impressionistic romance
Time of plot: Nineteenth century
Locale: Russia
First published: 1833
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Pushkin's lyric poem describing the eccentric life of Eugene
Onegin reworks the Don Juan legend familiar to readers of Byron.
Regarded as the inspiration for the great Russian novels of the
nineteenth century, Pushkin's romantic lyric has the world-weary Onegin
duel with and kill his only friend and spurn the love of a worthy woman,
only to fall in love with her after she has despaired and married
another.
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Principal Characters
Tatyana Larin (ta-tya'na la'nn), also called Tanya Larina (tan'ya
la'nn-э), the reserved, withdrawn older daughter of the well-to-do Larin
family. Her parents despair of her marriage prospects, but she falls in
love at first sight with Eugene Onegin and, unable to write grammatical
Russian, sends him a passionate letter written in French. Although he
tails to encourage her, she turns down several other proposals of
marriage. When her family takes her to Moscow, she picks up beauty hints
at a ball and attracts the attentions of a retired general, who
persuades her to marry him. Years later she again sees Eugene, who falls
in love with her and writes her pleading letters. She reads them and
preserves them to read again, but she gives him no encouragement and
remains faithful to her general to the end of her life.
Eugene Onegin (eu-ge'niy 6-ne'gin), the hero of this narrative poem,
with many resemblances to its author. Brought up in the aristocratic
tradition, he is a brilliant, witty man of the world. Successful in many
light love affairs, he is bored with living. City life, with its opera
and ballet, has lost its appeal. A stay on the country estate willed to
him by his uncle wearies him after several days. He is finally persuaded
by his friend, Vladimir Lensky, to accompany him on a visit to the Larin
family. There he finds the conversation dull, the refreshment too simple
and too abundant, and Tatyana unattractive. Visiting her later, after
receiving her love letter, he tells her frankly that he would make her a
very poor husband because he has had too many disillusioning experiences
with women. He returns to the lonely estate and the life of an
anchorite.
When Vladimir takes him under false pretenses to Tatyana's birthday
party, he gets revenge by flirting with her sister Olga, engaged to
Vladimir. His jealous friend challenges him to a duel. Eugene shoots
Vladimir through the heart.
Olga Larin (oly'ga la'rin), also called Olenka (б-1ёп'кэ), the pretty
and popular younger daughter of the Larin family, betrothed to Vladimir
Lensky. At a ball she dances so often with Onegin that her fiance gets
angry. Though she assures him that she means nothing by her flirtation,
he challenges Onegin to a duel and is killed. Later she marries an army
officer.
Vladimir Lensky (vla-di'mlr len'skiy), a German-Russian friend of
Eugene, brought up in Germany and influenced by romantic illusions of
life and love. Although his reading of Schiller and Kant sets him apart
from most other young Russians, he and Eugene have much in common. He
tries to get his friend interested in Tatyana Larin, even to inviting
him to her big birthday party, which he describes as an intimate family
affair. In resentment Eugene avoids Tatyana and devotes himself to Olga.
After the challenge is given, Vladimir is too proud to acknowledge his
misjudgment and is killed.
M. Guillot (gil-yo'), Eugene's second in the duel.
Zaretsky (za-ret'skiy), Vladimir's second.
The Prince (called Gremin in the operatic version), a fat, retired
general and Eugene's friend. Seeing Tatyana at a ball in Moscow, he
falls in love with her and proposes. She accepts. Later he invites
Eugene to his house, where the latter meets Tatyana again.
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The Story
Eugene Onegin was brought up in the aristocratic tradition. Although he
had little classical background, he had a flashing wit and he was
well-read in economics. He had become an accomplished man of the world
by the time he reached young manhood. In fact, he had been so successful
in love and so accustomed to the social life of Moscow that he
habitually felt a supreme boredom with life. Even the ballet had lately
failed to hold his attention.
Eugene's father had led the usual life. He gave balls regularly and
tried his best to keep up his social position by borrowing recklessly.
Just as he was declared a bankrupt, Eugene received word that his uncle
was dying. Since he was the heir, he left in haste to attend the dying
man. Grumbling at the call of duty, he was nevertheless thankful to be
coming into an inheritance.
His uncle died, however, before he arrived. After the relatives had
departed, Eugene settled down to enjoy his uncle's handsome country
estate. The cool woods and the fertile fields charmed him at first, but
after two days of country life his old boredom returned. He soon
acquired a reputation as an eccentric. If neighbors called, Eugene found
himself obliged to leave on an urgent errand. After a while the
neighbors left him to himself.
Vladimir Lensky, however, remained his friend. At eighteen, Vladimir was
still romantic and filled with illusions of life and love. He had been
in Germany, where he was much influenced by Kant and Schiller. In Russia
his German temperament set him apart. He and Eugene became more and more
intimate.
The Larins had two daughters, Olga and Tatyana. Olga was pretty and
popular, and although she was the younger, she was the leader in their
group. Tatyana was reserved and withdrawn, but a discerning observer
would have seen her real beauty. She made no effort to join in the
social life. Olga had been long betrothed to Vladimir; the family
despaired of a marriage for Tatyana.
On Vladimir's invitation, Eugene reluctantly agreed to pay a visit to
the Larins. When the family heard that the two men were coming, they
immediately thought of Eugene as a suitor for Tatyana. He, however, was
greatly bored with his visit. The refreshments were too ample and too
rustic, and the talk was heavy and dull. He paid little attention to
Tatyana.
After he left, Tatyana was much disturbed. Having fallen deeply in love,
she had no arts with which to attract Eugene. After confiding in her
dull-witted nurse, she wrote Eugene a passionate, revealing love letter.
She wrote in French, for she could not write Russian grammatically.
Eugene, stirred by her letter, paid another visit to the Larins and
found Tatyana in a secluded garden. He told her the brutal truth: He was
not a good man for a husband, for he had too much experience with women
and too many disillusionments. Life with him would not be at all worthy
of Tatyana. The girl, making no protest, suffered in silence.
On his lonely estate Eugene lived the life of an anchorite. He bathed
every morning in a stream, read, walked and rode in the countryside, and
slept soundly at night. Only Vladimir called occasionally.
That winter the Larins celebrated Tatyana's name-day. When Vladimir
represented the gathering as only a small family affair, Eugene
consented to go. He felt betrayed when he found the guests numerous, the
food heavy, and the ball obligatory. For revenge, he danced too much
with Olga, preventing Vladimir from enjoying his fiancee's company.
Vladimir became jealously angry and challenged Eugene to a duel. Through
stubbornness Eugene accepted the challenge.
Before the duel, Vladimir went to see Olga. His purpose was to reproach
her for her behavior, but Olga, as cheerful and affectionate as ever,
acted as if nothing had happened. More lighthearted but somewhat
puzzled, Vladimir prepared to meet Eugene on the dueling ground.
When the two friends met, Eugene shot Vladimir through the heart.
Remorseful at last, Eugene left his estate to wander by himself. Olga
soon afterward married an army man and left home.
In spite of the scandal, Tatyana still loved Eugene. She visited his
house and made friends with his old housekeeper. She sat in his study
reading his books and pondering his marginal notes. Eugene had been
especially fond of Don Juan and other cynical works, and his notes
revealed much about his selfishness and disillusionment. Tatyana, who
had hitherto read very little, learned much bitterness from his books
and came to know more of Eugene.
At home, Tatyana's mother did not know what to do. The girl seemed to
have no interest in suitors and had refused several proposals. On the
advice of relatives, the mother decided to take Tatyana to Moscow, where
there were more eligible men. They were to visit a cousin for a season
in hopes that Tatyana would become betrothed.
From her younger cousins Tatyana learned to do her hair stylishly and to
act more urbanely in society. At a ball a famous general, a prince, was
attracted to Tatyana. In spite of the fact that he was obese, she
accepted his proposal.
After more than two years of wandering, Eugene returned to Moscow. Still
indifferent to life, he decided to attend a fashionable ball, simply to
escape from boredom for a few hours. He was warmly greeted by his host,
whom he had known well in former times. While the prince was reproaching
him for his long absence, Eugene could not keep from staring at a
queenly woman who dominated the gathering. She looked familiar. When he
asked the prince about her, he was astounded to learn that she was
Tatyana, his host's wife.
The changed Tatyana showed no traces of the shy rustic girl who had
written so revealingly of her love. Eugene, much attracted to her,
frequently went to her house, but he never received more than a cool
reception and a distant hand to kiss.
Finally Eugene began to write her letters in which he expressed his
hopeless longing. Still Tatyana gave no sign. All that winter Eugene
kept to his gloomy room, reading and musing. At last, in desperation, he
called on Tatyana unannounced and surprised her rereading his letters.
Tatyana refused to give in to his importunate declarations. Why had he
scorned the country girl, and why did he now pursue the married woman?
She would rather listen to his brutal rejection than to new pleadings.
She had once been in love with Eugene and would gladly have been his
wife; perhaps she was still in love with him. Perhaps she had been wrong
in listening to her mother, who had been insistent that she marry the
prince. But now she was married, and she would remain faithful to her
husband until she died.
Critical Evaluation
Pushkin called Eugene Onegin a "novel in verse." Well aware of European
literary models, and especially attracted to Lord Byron's long narrative
poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan, Pushkin mixed the
distinct qualities of prose and verse into a landmark work of Romantic
literature.
Pushkin follows the novel-of-manners tradition in several respects. In
Eugene Onegin he offers a picture of Russian society as well as a tale
of individuals. The story moves from the Europeanized salons of St.
Petersburg to the gentry's country estates to the aristocratic circles
of Moscow. It alternates scenes of social occasions and private
interviews. Like a novel of manners, Eugene Onegin concerns characters
that the reader is meant to care about. Penetrating the recesses of
Tatyana's and Eugene's hearts, and presenting their love letters for
inspection, Pushkin allows the reader to see events, themselves, and
others through their eyes as well as the narrator's. Finally, like a
novelist, Pushkin arranges his characters as paired reflections
(Vladimir is a younger Eugene, Tatyana a deeper Olga) who switch
positions like dancers in a minuet (for example, in the city Eugene
loves Tatyana as vainly as she loves him in the country).
Pushkin is a novelist, then, but he is also a poet. He has a poet's care
for the exact arrangement of words. He tells the story in eight books
composed of 399 stanzas; each stanza has fourteen lines (three quatrains
and a couplet) of iambic tetrameter with a complicated pattern of
varying rhymes. Like a sonneteer arranging a sequence, Pushkin the poet
carefully crafts each stanza internally even as he fits it into the
unfolding narrative.
Eugene Onegin brims with lyrical passages about the beauty of the
countryside as the seasons change, the glorious ideals of youth, and the
power of romantic passion. Though these lyrical sections digress from
the narrative development, they add texture and atmosphere to preceding
and following scenes. Like all great poets, Pushkin has an eye for
symbol and metaphor. All the characters reveal themselves by the books
they read: Eugene remains, like the cynical hero in Byron's works, aloof
from life; Tatyana expects love to be the permanent exchange of noble
souls described by epistolary novelists; Lensky explores the heights and
depths of emotion glorified by romantic and sentimental poems. The
seasons likewise mirror the state of the characters' hearts. It is in
the spring that Eugene first arrives in the country to start a new life;
the fateful name-day party and duel occur in winter; in the spring come
Olga's wedding and Tatyana's visits to Eugene's estate; Tatyana's
marriage and Eugene's hopeless proposition are winter events.
At times the poet-narrator intrudes upon the world of the characters,
reminding readers of the literary conventions that dictate how a novel
in verse develops. He shares with them the agonies and ecstasies of
writing this story. He juxtaposes the characters' individual emotional
reactions to events with a transcendent objectivity hard won by his own
experience. The narrator's intrusion is another of the complexities that
enrich Eugene Onegin and reward repeated readings.
The presence of an intrusive narrator suggests that Eugene Onegin
contains strong autobiographical elements. Pushkin wrote the work over a
period of eight years (1832-1831). He began the work while in virtual
exile on the family estate after a youth of living rakishly and writing
passionate poetry, a life-style that had cost him a government
commission. Vladimir and Eugene are versions of him: Lensky his youthful
dedication to poetry, Onegin his weariness with society. Not until 1826
did Pushkin live and work again in St. Petersburg; in 1830 he
reluctantly reentered government service after marrying a beautiful,
ambitious younger woman. During these years he wrote the middle parts of
Eugene Onegin in fitful bursts, completing it only in 1830 during three
intensely creative months of isolation at a country estate. The poem's
movement from city to country mirrors Pushkin's own journey. His
caricatures of country bumpkins and city pseudosophisticates mirror his
own hesitant participation in Russian society. The poem's attention to
the varieties of love—its innocence, intensity, and mercurial
nature—mirrors his own experience of requited and unrequited affection.
Eugene Onegin concerns as much the state of Russia's soul, however, as
it does the state of Pushkin's own soul. In Tatyana and Onegin Pushkin
created characters who had a deep influence on other Russian writers of
the nineteenth century. Tatyana is the prototype of the spiritual,
melancholy woman who needs a love more profound than any man can give
her. She anticipates heroines like Ivan Turgenev's Anna Odintzov
(Fathers and Sons) and Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Eugene is the first
of the superfluous men, like Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov and Tolstoy's Ivan
Ilyich, who despairingly realize that their lives have no meaning
outside the social role they play. Though attracted passionately to each
other, these melancholy women and superfluous men cannot save themselves
or their lovers. Their efforts to connect fail by chance, by choice, or
by circumstance. The world about them is no help. Country society is
dull, cliquish, and petty; city society cares only for status,
reputation, and show. The community offers the individual no pattern for
spiritual health or emotional communion. Indeed, it isolates individuals
and insulates them from true feeling by providing conventional
expectations and roles.
Technically, Pushkin's novel in verse highlights the literary
conventions that manipulate readers; themati-cally, the work depicts the
social conventions that manipulate women and men. Though rooted in the
experience of a writer now dead and mirroring a society now equally
dead, Eugene One gin remains a powerful work for modern readers. It
takes up universal themes and eternal hopes and fears. Tatyana embodies
the unflinching hope that demands that life and love measure up to
expectations while Eugene embodies the constant fear that life and love
can never meet those expectations. The poet-narrator embodies the
continuing desire to control this chaos of hopes and fears with the
inexhaustible resources of art.
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THE CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER
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Type of work:
Novel
Author: Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: About 1774
Locale: Russia
First published: Kapitanskaya dochka, 1836 (English translation,
1878)
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One of the first pure examples of Russian realism, The Captain's
Daughter is an exciting and concisely told narrative with a gallery of
characters ranging from simple Maria to the cruel rebel Pougatcheff. The
novel was written as the result of Pushkin's appointment to the office
of crown historian, which gave him access to state archives and the
private papers of Empress Catherine II.
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Principal Characters
Piotr Andreitch Grineff (pyo'tr an-dre'ich gri-nef), a young officer in
a Russian regiment. A kindly and generous young man who falls in love
with the commandant's daughter, he goes to great lengths to protect her
from harm and fights a duel when a fellow officer criticizes a love poem
he has written for her. At first his parents do not approve of the girl,
but they later give their consent to the marriage.
Maria Ivanovna (та'гуэ I-va'navng), the captain's daughter, a lovely
girl very much in love with Piotr. When he sends her to his parents for
her protection, she so impresses them that they change their minds about
not allowing their son to marry her. She saves her lover from exile in
Siberia by appealing to the empress.
Alexey Ivanitch Shvabrin (alek-sa' Ivan'ich shva'bnn), an officer in the
same regiment with Piotr. A suitor rejected by Maria, he is jealous of
her love for Piotr. When the rebel Pougatcheff takes the Bailogorsk
fortress, Shvabrin deserts to the rebel side. He does everything in his
power to separate Maria and Piotr. He accuses Piotr of being a spy for
the rebels and is responsible for his rival's sentence of exile.
Emelyan Pougatcheff (ё-тё-lyan' pooga'chaf), a Cossack rebel leader who
claims to be the dead Emperor Peter III. He is cruel and ruthless, but
after the capture of the Bailogorsk fortress he spares Piotr's life and
sends him away under safe conduct because the young officer had sometime
before given the rebel, disguised as a traveler, a sheepskin coat to
protect him during a snowstorm.
Savelitch (sa-ve'lich), Piotr's old servant, whose intervention saves
his master from several predicaments. He is faithful, loyal, and shrewd.
Vassilissa Egorovna (va-si'li-sa e-go'rsvna), the captain's wife, a very
capable woman who runs her household and her husband's regiment with
great efficiency. When she protests against her husband's murder by the
Cossack rebels, she is killed.
Captain Ivan Mironoff, the commanding officer at the Bailogorsk fortress
and Piotr's superior. Captured when Cossacks under Emelyan Pougatcheff
seize the fortress, he and his aides are hanged by order of the rebel
chief.
Captain Zourin, who rescues Piotr, his family, and Maria from death at
the hands of the renegade Shvabrin.
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The Story
Although Peter Andreitch Grineff was registered as a sergeant in the
Semenovsky regiment when he was very young, he was given leave to stay
at home until he had completed his studies. When he was nearly seventeen
years old, his father decided that the time had arrived to begin his
military career. With his parents' blessing, Peter set out for distant
Orenburg, in the company of his faithful servant, Savelitch.
The trip was not without incident. One night, the travelers put up at
Simbirsk. There, while his man went to see about some purchases, Peter
was lured into playing billiards with a fellow soldier. Zourin, and
quickly lost one hundred rubles. Toward evening of the following day,
the young man and Savelitch found themselves on the snowy plain with a
storm approaching. As darkness fell, the snow grew thicker, until
finally the horses could not find their way and the driver confessed
that he was lost. They were rescued by another traveler, a man with such
sensitive nostrils that he was able to scent smoke from a village some
distance away and to lead them to it. The three men and their guide
spent the night in the village. The next morning, Peter presented his
sheepskin jacket to his poorly dressed rescuer. Savelitch warned Peter
that the coat would probably be pawned for a drink.
Late that day, the young man reached Orenburg and presented himself to
the general in command. It was decided that he should join the
Bailogorsk fortress garrison under Captain Mironoff, for his superior
felt that the dull life at Orenburg might lead the young man into a
career of dissipation.
The Bailogorsk fortress, on the edge of the Kirghis steppes, was nothing
more than a village surrounded by a log fence. Its real commandant was
not Captain Mironoff but his lady, Vassilissa Egorovna, a lively, strict
woman who saw to the discipline of her husband's underlings as well as
the running of her own household.
Peter quickly made friends with a fellow officer, Shva-brin, who had
been exiled to the steppes for fighting a duel. He spent much time with
his captain's family and grew deeply attached to the couple and to their
daughter, Maria Ivanovna. After he had received his commission, he found
military discipline so relaxed that he was able to indulge his literary
tastes.
The quiet routine of Peter's life was interrupted by an unexpected
quarrel with Shvabrin. One day, he showed his friend a love poem he had
written to Maria. Shvabrin criticized the work severely and went on to
make derogatory remarks about Maria until they quarreled and Peter found
himself challenged to a duel for having called the man a liar.
The next morning, the two soldiers met in a field to fight but they were
stopped by some of the garrison, for Vassilissa Egorovna had learned of
the duel. Peter and his enemy, although apparently reconciled, intended
to carry out their plan at the earliest opportunity. Discussing the
quarrel with Maria, Peter learned that Shvabrin's actions could be
explained by the fact that he was her rejected suitor.
Assuring themselves that they were not watched, Shvabrin and Peter
fought their duel the following day. Wounded in the breast, Peter lay
unconscious for five days after the fight. When he began to recover, he
asked Maria to marry him. Shvabrin had been jailed. Then Peter's father
wrote that he disapproved of a match with Captain Mironoff's daughter
and that he intended to have his son transferred from the fortress so
that he might forget his foolish ideas. As Savelitch denied having
written a letter home, Peter could only conclude that Shvabrin had been
the informer.
Life would have become unbearable for the young man after his father's
letter arrived if the unexpected had not happened. One evening, Captain
Mironoff informed his officers that the Yaikian Cossacks, led by Emelyan
Pou-gatcheff, who claimed to be the dead Emperor Peter III, had risen
and were sacking fortresses and committing outrages everywhere. The
captain ordered his men to keep on the alert and to ready the cannon.
The news of Pougatcheff's uprising quickly spread through the garrison.
Many of the Cossacks of the town sided with the rebel, so that Captain
Mironoff did not know whom he could trust or who might betray him. It
was not long before the captain received a manifesto from the leader of
the Cossacks ordering him to surrender.
It was decided that Maria should be sent back to Orenburg, but the
attack came early the next morning before she could leave. Captain
Mironoff and his officers made a valiant effort to defend the town; but
with the aid of Cossack traitors inside the walls, Pougatcheff was soon
master of the fortress.
Captain Mironoff and his aides were hanged. Shvabrin deserted to the
rebels. Peter, at the intercession of old Savelitch, was spared by
Pougatcheff. The townspeople and the garrison soldiers had no scruples
about pledging allegiance to the rebel leader. Vassilissa Egorovna was
slain when she cried out against her husband's murderer.
When Pougatcheff and his followers rode off to inspect the fortress,
Peter began his search for Maria. To his great relief, he found that she
had been hidden by the wife of the village priest and that Shvabrin, who
knew her whereabouts, had not revealed her identity. He learned from
Savelitch that the servant had recognized Pougatcheff as the man to whom
he had given his hareskin coat months before. Later, the rebel leader
sent for Peter and acknowledged his identity.
The rebel tried to persuade Peter to join the Cossacks but respected his
wish to rejoin his own forces at Orenburg. The next day, Peter and his
servant were given safe conduct, and Pougatcheff gave Peter a horse and
a sheepskin coat for the journey.
Several days later the Cossacks attacked Orenburg. During a sally
against them, Peter received a disturbing message from one of the
Bailogorsk Cossacks; Shvabrin was forcing Maria to marry him. Peter went
at once to the general and tried to persuade him to raise the siege and
go to the rescue of the village. When the general refused, Peter and
Savelitch started out once more for the Bailogorsk fortress. Intercepted
and taken before Pougatcheff, Peter persuaded the rebel to give Maria
safe conduct to Orenburg.
On the way, they met a detachment of soldiers led by Captain Zourin, who
persuaded Peter to send Maria, under Savelitch's protection to his
family, while he himself remained with the troops in Orenburg.
The siege of Orenburg was finally lifted, and the army began its task of
tracking down rebel units. Some months later, Peter found himself near
his own village and set off alone to visit his parents' estate. Reaching
his home, he found the serfs in rebellion and his family and Maria
captives. That day, Shvabrin swooped down upon them with his troops. He
was about to have them all hanged, except Maria, when they were rescued
by Zourin's men. The renegade was shot during the encounter and taken
prisoner.
Peter's parents had changed their attitude toward the captain's
daughter, and Peter was able to rejoin Captain Zourin with the
expectation that he and Maria would be
wed in a month. Then an order came for his arrest. He was accused of
having been in the pay of Pougatcheff, of spying for the rebel, and of
having taken presents from him. The author of the accusations was the
captive, Shva-brin. Though Peter could easily have cleared himself by
summoning Maria as a witness, he decided not to drag her into the
matter. He was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in exile in
Siberia.
Maria, however, was not one to let matters stand at that. Leaving
Peter's parents, she traveled to St. Petersburg and went to Tsarskoe
Selo, where the court was located. Walking in the garden there one day,
she met a woman who declared that she went to court on occasion and
would be pleased to present her petition to the empress. Maria was
summoned to the royal presence the same day and discovered that it was
the empress herself to whom she had spoken. Peter received his pardon
and soon afterward married the captain's daughter.
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Critical Evaluation
The longest of Alexander Pushkin's completed prose tales, The Captain's
Daughter was based on true events which Pushkin wrote as history in his
Istoria Pugachev (1834; The History of the Pugachev Rebellion). The
astonishing quality about The Captain's Daughter is the style. Although
written in 1836, and the first modern Russian novel, it possesses a
brisk, lean style more suggestive of twentieth century fiction than that
of the early nineteenth century. Pushkin wastes no words, yet his scenes
are vivid, his characters fully fleshed and remarkably alive, and his
tale recounted in a suspenseful and moving manner. The first-person
narration is realistic and adds to the verisimilitude of the story. The
naive, romantic illusions of the young protagonist are described by the
narrator in a thoroughly disarming and often humorous manner. The entire
story is seen through Peter's eyes, allowing the reader to share his
enthusiasms, his impetuousness, and his fears, as well as his youthful
ardor and romantic spirit. A sense of the vitality of youth pervades the
book.
The accounts of action, such as the duel or the siege of the Bailogorsk
fortress, are vivid and well paced. Throughout the novel, Pushkin writes
with extraordinary ease and vitality, bringing to life in a few strokes
situations and characters. A sly humor is an integral part of the
narrative. When the hero notes that his French tutor was sent from
Moscow with the yearly supply of wine and olive oil, readers know
precisely where that unlucky tutor fits into the household. Many of the
characters possess a humorous side to their nature. The ill-fated,
henpecked captain and his talkative but kindly tyrant of a wife are both
portrayed with a light touch. Old Savelitch, Peter's servant, is the
truest comic figure in the novel; devoted to his young master, as to
Peter's father before, the old man would willingly sacrifice his life
for Peter, but he never hesitates to talk back to Peter or even to the
rebel Cossack leader if he feels that he is in the right. Even
Pougatcheff, self-styled pretender to the throne, is presented with a
great deal of humor; in a sense, he is the only character in the book
who does not take himself completely seriously, and this, at least in
part, is the result of an ironic realization of the precariousness of
his existence.
Many scenes in the novel possess a double-edged humor, from the absurd,
aborted, and then finished duel between Peter and Shvabrin to the
moment, in the midst of horror, when old Savelitch dares to present an
itemized list of destroyed and stolen goods to the man who holds all of
their lives in his hands. The deaths of the captain and his wife are
handled with a certain grotesque humor. As in Shakespeare's tragedies,
this humor serves to heighten the horror of certain dramatic scenes,
such as the fall of the fortress and the butchering of the innocent at
the hands of the rebels. Despite the terrible events portrayed in the
novel, the book is not grim. It is a romantic tale of action and
romance, and the ending is appropriately happy. Even the conclusion,
with its scenes of mistaken identity, possesses a charming humor.
At the same time, the realism of the portrayals of the duplicity of
human nature, the traitorous villainy of Shvabrin, the cowardice of the
garrison when they all throw down their arms in the face of the enemy,
and the pettiness of many of the minor characters is shocking. The
brilliant construction of the novel, the alternating light and dark
scenes, sweeps the reader along, never letting him be quite sure of
where he is. Pushkin seems to delight in catching the reader off guard,
of making him laugh and then gasp with horror and then hurling a piece
of slapstick at him before he has recovered from the shock. The scene of
the captain's fat wife being dragged naked from her house to the
gallows, screaming and shouting abuse at the Cossacks, is both funny and
horrible. Shvabrin, completely despicable, is shown to be absurd as he
struts and postures during his brief glory, and then, even more so, when
he falls. Pushkin is extremely deft at showing both sides of human
beings, the noble and the phony, the absurd and the courageous, the
hateful and the loving.
The Russian land is an important part of this novel. The vast spaces
almost become another character, as the hero flies across them in sleds
and carriages or on horseback. Pushkin carefully builds a sense of
intense patriotic fervor throughout the narrative, culminating in the
scenes with the empress. The empress is seen as the Mother figure of all
Russia, wise and warm, quick to understand and forgive and to come to
the aid of her "children."
Frequently, in the course of the book, words and phrases refer to the
Russian people as one large family; underlings call their masters and
mistresses "Father" and "Mother," and the land is referred to as the
Great Mother of them all. The empress and the land are inseparable. In
the light of this powerful sentiment, the daring of Pougatcheff to
attempt to usurp the throne becomes all the more shocking, as Pushkin
intended, because to attack the throne is to attack all of Russia and to
undermine the structure of the entire country.
The Captain's Daughter exerted a tremendous influence on Russian
fiction; it showed novelists the possibilities of Russian themes and
Russian settings, and, above all, it illustrated the narrative
capabilities of the Russian language. Never before had Russian prose
been used in fiction in such a lean, vigorous, and completely
unpretentious manner. The perfection of the book was awesome but also
inspiring to the writers who followed Pushkin. It can be said that the
great period of Russian fiction begins with The Captain's Daughter. (The
other great formative influence on Russian fiction, Nikolai Gogol's Dead
Souls, did not appear until 1842.) The great tragedy for Russian
literature and the world is that the year after writing this novel,
Pushkin was killed at the age of thirty-seven in a duel.
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Drawings by A. Pushkin
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Self-portraits
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