SOURCE: "Pushkin's Prose," in Pushkin: A Collection of Articles and Essays on the Great Russian Poet, A. S. Pushkin, The U. S. S. R. Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, 1939, pp. 106-15.

I

In Pushkin's days Russian prose was chiefly imitative. In 1834 Pushkin wrote an article of which the title alone "The Paltriness of Russian Literature"—is sufficient to show how matters stood. In this article he wrote:

"Voltaire and the titans have not a single disciple in Russia, but ungifted pygmies, fungi that grew up at the roots of the oaks: Dorat, Florian, Marmontel, Guichard, Madame de Genlis, hold sway over Russian literature. Sterne is alien to us all except Karamzin."

Pushkin strove to be a philosophical and literary influence in the country. He wrote for his readers and he was not content with writing poetry only. In an anonymous article published in the third issue of Sovremennik (The Contemporary) Pushkin wrote in the name of "Reader from Tver."

"You say that of late an indifference on the part of the public towards poetry, and a preference for novels, stories and the like has been noticeable. But is not poetry always an enjoyment for a few chosen ones while stories and novels are read by all kinds of people everywhere?"

Pushkin began his prose work with an historical novel. The first notes for The Negro of Peter the Great were jotted down in 1827.

It was the age of the great historical novels of Walter Scott, and also the age of new ideas on history. The different countries in their struggles against one another during the epoch of the Napoleonic wars were becoming conscious of themselves as nations. The great struggle was giving rise to a feeling for history.

"In our days," wrote Pushkin, "the word 'novel' means an historical epoch developed in the form of an imaginary story. Walter Scott gave rise to a whole throng of imitators."

Novels were written by Bestuzhev, Polevoi and Zagoskin.

The biography of one of Pushkin's ancestors lies at the basis of Pushkin's unfinished historical novel The Negro of Peter the Great. Peter I bought a Negro called Hannibal. The boy came from Northern Abyssinia. Peter sent him to Paris where the young man studied and served as an officer in the sappers. The tsar had a high opinion of him and wished to establish a position for him among the snobbish aristocracy. In the fragments of his novel Pushkin described his great-grandfather's life in Paris as that of a young man of society. In actual fact Hannibal, while in France, lived the hard life of an impecunious officer. In taking this subject Pushkin wished to tell a somewhat remarkable story. The fact is that Pushkin's great-great-grandfather on his mother's side was also a Pushkin and in the novel he apparently wished to represent the rivalry between his two great-grandfathers, the Negro and the Russian, over a Russian woman.

The novel is written quite realistically. Pushkin avoided the danger of giving a conventional picture of the past. Instead he gave an exact description of Peter's society "assemblies," contrasting the life of old Russia with the semi-Europeanised court of Peter.

In The Negro of Peter the Great Pushkin strove for a new understanding of history. He brought history nearer to himself and to his reader by making it, as it were, part of his own biography.

Pushkin's serene and objective art is always deeply personal.

Tales of Belkin begin with an introduction giving the biography of an imaginary character, Ivan Petrovich Belkin. Belkin is described as an unassuming man of no great education who acquired what learning he had from a village deacon. All the stories of Belkin were written by Pushkin in the autumn of 1830. They include "The Station-master," "Mistress into Maid," "The Shot," "The Snowstorm," and "The Undertaker." There was to have been another story of the series called "Notes of a Young Man." In this unwritten story Pushkin wanted to give a picture of the mutiny of the Chernigov regiment in 1825. But he was obliged to choose more innocent subjects.

The Tales were coldly received by the critics. People even spoke of Pushkin's decline. However, the story called "The Station-master" influenced Gogol and Dostoyevsky.

Pushkin does not tell the reader what his attitude should be toward the station-master. He does not make a hero of him nor does he solicit tears. The station-master's daughter, seduced by the hussar does not come to grief. And yet the reader's sympathy is wholly with the old man and not with the hussar.

Pushkin contrived not to humiliate his hero with pity and it was for this reason that Dostoyevsky ranked "The Station-master" higher than Gogol's "The Greatcoat."

The "Snowstorm" and "The Shot" belonging to the same series are more traditional but are remarkable for their skillful plot.

The author of History of the Village of Goryukhino is, like Ivan Petrovich Belkin, a native of this village.

In the guise of the history of the village, written by a landowner, Pushkin parodied "The History of the State of Russia" by Karamzin.

By reducing the scale of history, he depicted the peasant perfectly naturally. The realistic presentation of the muzhik destroyed the conventionality of the usual presentation of the State. Pushkin strove to give the picture of a village being ruined by the land-steward under the owner's instructions. This is how the "history" ends:

"The meetings of the peasants were abolished. He (the land-steward) collected the quit rent in small installments all the year 'round. In addition he collected unforeseen levies. The peasants did not seem to be paying very much more than formerly but however hard they tried they could not earn or save enough money. In three years Goryukhino became entirely destitute.

"Goryukhino was a dismal sight, the market place empty, the songs of Arkhip the Bald were heard no more and the children went out begging. One half of the peasants was busy in the fields and the others became farm hands. The day of the patron saint became in the words of the records 'not a day of rejoicing but an anniversary of sorrows and of prayers of distress.'"

It was impossible to continue in this strain. This would have been still more unacceptable to the censor than the story of a mutiny in the army.

The work was abandoned. Many years later our great satirist Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote "The History of a Certain Town" which clearly echoes Pushkin's History of the Village of Goryukhino.

Of all Pushkin's prose works the one that was most popular during his lifetime was the story entitled The Queen of Spades.

People wrote enthusiastically about it and declared that in it the Russian literary language had been created.

This was perhaps the only one of Pushkin's later works that met with success. Pushkin wrote:

"My The Queen of Spades is in great fashion. Card players punt on the three, the seven and the ace. At court a resemblance has been detected between the old countess and princess Natalia Petrovna, and apparently no offense is taken."

This story has a perfectly worked-out plot and is remarkable for its economy of words and the range of its dramatic action.

It cannot be doubled that when he wrote it Pushkin knew Stendhal's Red and Black. The type of the young man out for success was bound up in those days with the figure of Napoleon.

The idea of the "Napoleon" who considers himself above good and evil is met with again in Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.

"Napoleonism" as an exaggerated thirst for personal success was a typical phenomenon in Pushkin's time as well.

Pushkin makes Hermann resemble Napoleon and at the same time describes him as a mean character.

The Queen of Spades is an independent solution of those problems with which European art was then concerned. The solution of these problems and the method of solving them differs profoundly from those resorted to by Stendhal and Balzac.

In The Queen of Spades Pushkin attained the greatest simplicity of language. He uses the shortest possible sentences and hardly ever resorts to the use of adjectives.

The following is a passage from this story:

"It was a terrible night. The wind howled, wet snow fell in large flakes; the street lamps burned dimly; the streets were deserted. From time to time a sleigh driver, looking out for a belated fare, went slowly by, urging on his wretched nag.

Hermann stood there without his overcoat, feeling neither the wind nor the snow. At last the Countess's carriage drew up. He saw the old woman in a sable coat being lifted into the carriage by two footmen; then Lizaveta, in a light cloak, with fresh flowers in her hair, flitted by. The carriage door banged. The carriage rolled heavily, over the wet snow. The porter closed the doors. The lights in the windows went out."

II

The circumstances under which The Captain's Daughter was written were extremely difficult: Pushkin wrote under the eye of four censors.

The scene of the story is an out-of-the-way fortress somewhere in the steppes not far from present-day Soviet city Magnitogorsk.

The fortresses on the river Yaik were utterly insignificant from the military point of view. They were commanded by officers who, as Catherine herself said, were large landowners tilling the land with the labour of their garrisons.

One of these officers, Stupishin by name, commanding the Verkhneyaitsk fortress, wrote to the Bashkirs during the insurrection:

"Bashkirs, I know all that you are planning. Know this, however, if any rumours come to my ears that you—thieves and rogues—are waiting for those other thieves to come to you and are supplying them with cattle and food and yourselves with arms. I shall come out against you with my men and shall punish you with cannons and hang you up by the legs and by the ribs and shall burn your houses, corn and hay and destroy your cattle. This day a Bashkir has been caught near Verkhneyaitsk with thievish Tatar letters from the miscreant and this Bashkir has been brought before me and I have commanded that the nose and ears of this Bashkir thief be cut off and I am sending him to you thieves with this letter from me."

Stories of the cruelties of Russian colonizers remained in Pushkin's notes but could not be included in the text owing to the censorship.

In the notes presented to Nicholas I as material which Pushkin hesitated to publish, there was the following passage: "The punishments inflicted in Bashkiria by the general Prince Urusov were unbelievable. About 130 persons were put to death by every kind of torture." After this Pushkin crosses out the following words which remained only in the rough copy: "Some had stakes driven through them, others were hung up by the ribs on hooks, others were quartered."

"The remainder," continues Pushkin in the clean copy, "to the number of about a thousand, were pardoned after their noses and ears had been cut off. Many of these must have been alive during Pugachov's rebellion."

The old Bashkir who brought the anonymous letter to the Belogorsk fortress is one of these pardoned rebels.

The old man was caught. The question arises as to what is Pugachov's strength.

"We are just going to find out his real strength," said the Commandant, "Vasilisa Yegorovna, give me the key of the storehouse. Ivan Ignatyich, bring the Bashkir and tell Yulai to bring the whip."

"Wait, Ivan Kuzmich," said the Commandant's wife, getting up. "Let me take Masha out of the house, she will be terrified if she hears the screams and, to tell the truth, I don't care for the business myself."

We see from this that torture was frequently inflicted in the fortress. It is shown what an everyday matter these frightful things were.

When the Commandant orders the Bashkir to be tortured, Grinev, who is telling the story, remarks:

"The Commandant's order did not surprise or alarm us."

Pushkin did not describe the torture scene, but he gave an exact description of the Bashkir. This is one of the most detailed descriptions in Pushkin's works.

I glanced at him and shuddered. I shall never forget that man. He seemed to be over seventy. He had neither nose nor ears. His head was shaven; instead of a beard, a few stray gray hairs stuck out; he was small, thin and bent, but his narrow eyes still had a gleam in them.

'Aha!' said the Commandant, recognizing by the terrible marks one of the rebels punished in 1741. 'I see you are an old wolf and have been in our snares. Rebelling must be an old game to you, to judge by the look of your head. Come nearer; tell me, who sent you?'

The scene itself is not given although it is said that tortures and extortion of evidence were regularly practised in the fortress. The inclusion of a torture scene would not have been permitted. But instead of it Pushkin gave a description of unparalleled power:

But when the old man was made to put his hands round a pensioner's neck and was lifted off the ground and Yulai brandished the whip, the Bashkir groaned in a weak, imploring voice and, nodding his head, opened his mouth in which a short stump could be seen instead of a tongue.

When I recall that this happened in my lifetime and that now I have lived to see the gentle reign of the Emperor Alexander, I cannot but marvel at the rapid progress of enlightenment and the diffusion of humane principles. Young man, if my notes ever fall into your hands, remember that the best and most permanent changes are those due to the refinement of manner and morals and not to any violent upheavals.

This sentiment has frequently been ascribed to Pushkin himself, but quite falsely. Pushkin has an ironic attitude towards Grinev. This last passage is of the nature of an insertion required by the censor. Its meaning would be clear to Pushkin's contemporaries as torture had not been abolished in his time.

The story of the Commandant ends as follows when he is brought to the gallows:

"The old Bashkir, whom we had questioned the night before, was sitting astride on the cross beam. He was holding a rope and a minute later I saw poor Ivan Kuzmich swing in the air."

The fact that the execution of the Commandant was carried out by the same Bashkir who had been tortured brings out Pushkin's idea of retribution.

The hero of the story, the young nobleman Grinev, is a simple lad. Pugachov comes into the story and saves the hero who has once done him a service. This service was a very small one. Properly speaking it was not Grinev who saved Pugachov in the snowstorm but Pugachov who saved Grinev. Pugachov is simply and good-naturedly grateful for the hareskin jacket which the young lieutenant had given him.

The epigraph at the head of the chapter entitled "The Rebel's Camp" is worth noting:

The lion has just had a meal.
Ferocious as he is, he asked me kindly:
'What brings you to my lair?'

Sumarokov.

Actually this is not Sumarokov's text but Pushkin's. Pushkin wrote these lines himself. With the help of these lines Emelyan Pugachov is called a lion. In this chapter Emelyan tells a story about himself in which he compares his fate to that of an eagle. Pugachov is given the attributes of a leader and is described with the imagery of folk song. Pushkin sees in him a leader of the people. He describes him in detail and with affection. In the following scene a picture of Pugachov is given:

We were left alone. We were both silent for a few minutes; Pugachov was watching me intently, occasionally screwing up his left eye with an extraordinary expression of slyness and mockery. At last he laughed with such unaffected gaiety that, as I looked at him, I laughed, too, without knowing why.

Pushkin in this story does not arouse any ironical feelings with regard to Pugachov nor any pity for him because his Pugachov himself is cheery and has a sense of humour.

Pushkin shows Pugachov in an environment of the folk song of which he himself was so fond.

In the History of the Pugachov Rebellion Pushkin links up Emelyan with Stepan Razin, whom he himself called "the only poetical figure in Russian history."

Another link between the Pugachov and Razin rebellions was given by Pushkin in his history and met with the disapproval of Tsar Nicholas.

Wives and mothers stood on the banks trying to recognize among them their husbands and sons. In Ozernaya an old Cossack woman (Razina) wandered along the banks of the Yaik pulling in floating corpses with a boathook and muttering 'Are you my child, my own little one? Are you my Stepan, my Stepushka? Are those your raven locks that the fresh water laps upon?' And seeing the face of a stranger would quietly push the corpse away from her.

The Cossack was given the name of Stepan Razin and this was evidently not by chance.

Nicholas also knew what he was about when he wrote in the margin: "Better omit, has no relation to the matter in hand."

In another place Pushkin associates three names—those of Razin, Pugachov and Peter I.

Here is this curious passage:

When Pugachov sat in the Exchange Court idle Moscovites, during the afternoon, came to have a look at him to try and catch some saying of his so as later to spread it 'round the town. One day he sat thinking. The onlookers stood 'round in silence waiting for him to say something.

Pugachov said: The saying goes that Peter I during the Persian campaign, learning that Stenka Razin's grave was not far distant, made a special journey to it and ordered the mound to be dug up, so as to see something of him, if only his bones . . .' It is well known that Razin was quartered and burned in Moscow. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable story, especially Pugachov telling it.

Pushkin could not give a full picture of the Pugachov rising in The Captain's Daughter. He did not show the generalship displayed in Pugachov's battles or the bravery of the Bashkirs about whom he wrote in the History of the Pugachov Rebellion saying that "in one battle they were all killed, all except one man who was forcibly spared."

But Pushkin succeeded in giving the characters of Pugachov's followers. One of Pugachov's captains was the miner Khlopusha who was branded and had had his nostrils cut out. This Khlopusha, in answer to Pugachov's remark that he would order Shvabrin to be hanged, raises the following objection: "You were in a hurry to put Shvabrin in command of the fortress and now you are in a hurry to hang him. You have already offended the Cossacks by putting a gentleman over them; do not now frighten the gentry by hanging them at the first accusation."

In order to satisfy the requirements of the censorship it was necessary to refer to Catherine in the story. Pushkin hated and despised Catherine. He was well read in the literature about her, however, and in depicting the empress he described her according to the most official notions and thus satisfied the censor.

It must be remembered that when Mironova came to St. Petersburg it was probably the middle of September (according to the old calendar), and that the weather was so cold that the lady with whom she was staying was afraid that the young girl would catch cold after her early autumn walk.

Nevertheless the empress took a morning walk in the garden dressed in a light summer dress.

Why had she to run the risk of catching cold? Because she had stepped straight out of her portrait and Pushkin did not want to change her dress.

It would have been impossible to write a story about the times of the Pugachov rebellion without bringing in Catherine, especially as Nicholas held his grandmother's memory in great respect. The engraver Utkin was presented in 1827 with a valuable signet ring for an engraving of the portrait painted by Borovikovsky in 1791.

The landscape on the engraving was the work of Cheskin. The picture portrayed Catherine with a dog. When still unfinished it was sent to the English artist Scott, who corrected the dog's legs.

The picture was an entirely official portrait of Catherine and was known to everyone at the time.

Pushkin described Catherine exactly according to this portrait, although in it Catherine is shown as she was in 1791, while the supposed meeting between her and Mironova must have taken place about the year 1774.

Pushkin, in my opinion, purposely did not add anything to or take anything away from the portrait and he wanted to make this obvious.

Catherine, according to Pushkin's description, was "wearing a white morning dress, a night cap and a warm jacket" just as she is in the portrait. Pushkin added only a single detail, the warm jacket.

The jacket worn out of sight under the dress enabled Pushkin to dispense with giving her a dress suitable to the season, thereby preserving a description of her that was the official one, and not his own.

The consequence is that Catherine remains a portrait and all the reader's interest is centered on Marya Ivanovna who has come to ask the Empress for her lover's pardon.

The Captain's daughter herself is very charmingly described, but she is not, however, the real centre of the story. The story ends with Pugachov. With a nod of the head he bids farewell to Grinev from the scaffold. Pugachov dies calmly and heroically.

We have seen that Catherine is just indicated in Pushkin's story as a silhouette after Cheskin's official engraving. But the raft of hanged men floating down the Volga is described in detail and with feeling. This new drift of ideas in the story evinces itself also in the style. The whole story is full of ballads.

The folk songs in the story are centred around Pugachov. The fortress is described in an old soldier's song. For Masha Mironova there are mournful marriage songs and a new folk song which shows, as Pushkin rightly pointed out in some of his rough notes, the influence of artificial songs, in particular those of Sumarokov.

Each group of people thus has its environment of song. Pushkin's simplicity becomes the simplicity of the people. The story ends with an ironical description of the flourishing of the Grinev family. Their family estate is in the hands of ten joint-owners. The picture given of this village seems to hint at his picture of the Village of Goryukhino.

The Captain's Daughter has become a popular classic in Russia. It is universally known. In it Pushkin succeeded in making his reader feel the same towards its heroes as he does himself.

His new, historically correct understanding of the peasant rising placed Pushkin outside the set of people with whom he was connected socially. And it was at this point that his life was cut short.