[In the following essay, Beaudoin discusses The Gypsy Girl as a reflection and embodiment of Boratynsky's interest in Friedrich von Schelling's concept of the Absolute and of the poet as an “inspired seer.”]

D'autre part, la civilisation que, grâce à leur action, réalisera la Russie, incarnera le rêve de nos jeunes philosophes, réalisera l'union de la poésie et la vie. Nous connaissons le rôle éminent que la conception romantique assignait à l'art, à la poésie. Toute activité créatrice a son prototype dans la poésie, et le philosophe, en tant du moins qu'il est créateur, est par cela même poéte. … Comprendre par le sentiment aussi bien que par la pensée, voila une formule tres nette de l'aspiration romantique à l'unification et l'intégration de l'esprit humain, à la fusion synthétique et organique de toutes ses <1

Alexandre Koyré, quoting Ivan Kireevskii, succinctly summarized one of the primary leitmotifs in the poetry of E. A. Baratynskii. During the 1820s Baratynskii was attracted to Lovers of Wisdom (liubomudry), particularly for their interest in the philosophy of Friedrich von Schelling and its concept of the Absolute as a fusion of all aspects of existence—a fusion attainable by art, poetry in particular.² For Schelling, a work of art has metaphysical significance in that it is a finite manifestation of an infinite Absolute.³ The logical consequence of this philosophical perception of art is a reinforcement of the poet as an inspired seer. Poets such as Baratynskii consciously applied Romantic philosophy to their poetry. In poems such as “Posledniaia smert'” (1827), “Poslednii poet” (1835), and “Osen'” (1836-37 <1841=) Baratynskii reveals his poetic powers to the reader by detailing the ultimate end of person, poet, and society. In his long poems, he likewise creates plots and situations reflecting a Romantic quest for union with the Absolute. In Eda (1824-25 <1832=), it is the young Finnish girl by the same name who yearns for the pure love which will ultimately fulfill her. In The Ball (Bal <1825-28=) it is Nina, the disenchanted princess, who finds temporary fulfillment in an adulterous relationship. In each work, the narrator intrudes on the tale, breaking the illusion of reality otherwise sustained in the narrative poems. As well, each protagonist finds his or her Absolute ultimately not in love, but in death.

In The Gypsy Girl [Tsyganka (1829-31 <1842=), first published as The Concubine (Nalozhnitsa)], Baratynskii continues the theme of Romantic idealism, on which he had based his earlier verse narratives. Baratynskii considered it his best poem, and indeed it reveals well his ability to represent, as Kjetsaa says, the “light” and “dark” of reality.⁴ Baratynskii felt that he was creating a new form of poetry, and he appended a lengthy forward to the verse tale's first edition, where he maintained that the poet has the right, even the duty, to portray both the good and the bad in life, in order to create real art.⁵ Ivan Kireevskii revealed the basic artistic premise of The Gypsy Girl when he commented on the presence of both a realistic manner of description and a romantic ideal in the poem:

Often the poet can warm the imagination with such sincere poetry and such ideal melancholy by keeping it amidst everyday life and not carrying it away to the ends of the world. In this manner we are transposed to a musical and dreamily spacious atmosphere without tearing ourselves away from the smooth, waxed parquet floor.⁶

Kireevskii's statements echo the Schellingian philosophy of J. P. F. Ancillon, who expounded the notion of the opposition of imagination and the real.⁷ According to Ancillon, imagination (process of thinking) is the ideal, whereas the corporeal, external world is the real. It is a manifestation of the Romantic paradox of Infinite and Finite, and is central to the new form of poetry which the narrative poem was to create. In this new form of poetry, Baratynskii had attempted to create a hero who could encapsulate this tenet of Romantic philosophy. In his “Antikritika” of 1831, published as a response to critics of The Concubine, he defended the originality of his poem against those who felt it to be only an imitation of Pushkin's Onegin:

It is impossible to reply to a general judgment on a poem: everyone has his own taste, his own feelings, his own opinion. Only, finding similarities between Eletskoi and Onegin seems rather strange. Onegin is a disillusioned and satiated man; Eletskoi is passionate and romantic. Onegin has had his day; Eletskoi is only beginning to live. Onegin is lacking because of an emptiness of the heart; he believes that nothing will be able to interest it again. Eletskoi is lacking because of insufficient nourishment for it, and not because of an inability to feel. He is still full of hope; he still believes in happiness and seeks it out. Onegin is immobile; Eletskoi is moving forward.⁸

It should be observed that the idea of a hero withdrawing into the world of Gypsies had already been articulated by Pushkin in his verse tale The Gypsies (Tsygany, 1824). Baratynskii transplants the Romantic ideal of escaping the world of high society to the main protagonist of The Gypsy Girl, Eletskoi. His escape to the world of his Gypsy concubine is an escape to the Physical. Gypsies represent the Physical, the pastoral escape into exoticism—as amply demonstrated by their supposedly simpler lifestyles. In Jungian terms, the Physical is the Eros, frequently portrayed by the feminine. However, the Physical alone is incomplete and therefore cannot be a fusion with an Ideal.

Rather, it is The Gypsy Girl itself which is a reflection of the unity of the Absolute, both in its structure (manner of discourse—prose in poetry/reality in fiction) and its thematics (Romantic idealism). Yet the sought-after infinite Absolute is inherently unattainable within the limitations of finite consciousness, just as it is unattainable within the Physical of the world of the Gypsy concubine. Love itself is a contradiction between the Infinite and the Finite. The result of this observation is Romantic irony, as explained at the time primarily by Friedrich Schlegel. Strohschneider-Kohrs quotes Schlegel about love and Irony:

Die wahre Ironie—da es auch eine falsche giebt—… ; ist die Ironie der Liebe. Sie entsteht aus dem Gefühl der Endlichkeit und der eigenen Beschränkung, und dem scheinbaren Widerspruche dieses Gefühls mit der in jeder wahren Liebe eingeschlossenen Idee eines Unendlichen.⁹

The paradox lies as much in the nature of the love felt: the Other cannot be anything but an Other unless it is internalized and objectified. Yet once this process is complete, the Other can no longer exist as an Other. In the same manner, the author internalizes the passion for the work being created in much the same manner as the reader when reading it. The irony is the continual externalization of the charade.

Romantic irony is present in The Gypsy Girl through the intrusion of the narrator into the tale of a quest for the Romantic ideal of the Absolute, a quest which likewise occurs in Eletskoi's attempt at union with Vera through her objectification, and in the narrator's attempt at union with the reader.

The objectification of the feminine is dependent on quests present within the textual space which are, however, unidirectionally constrained through gender. Even though the protagonist has attempted a fusion with the physical feminine and found it wanting, he still seemingly desires the erotic feminine. Yet this is primarily a façade. What both he and the narrator desire is the completion of themselves in the feminine. They objectify the feminine within the story, which in turn brings the implied reader into a masquerade. In a manner similar to what Kahn has described as “narrative transvestism,” the author undertakes to gain access to the female voice by creating female voices which speak from a male perspective. In The Gypsy Girl, the narrator is felt and present, but the entire premise of the work is a travesty: a poem named after a woman, yet based on the male protagonist's point of view. The suffering of the abandoned women, not only Vera and Sara in The Gypsy Girl but also the Finnish girl in Eda, and Nina in The Ball is caused by the male's quest for completion. The tale is the quest of an ideal union of masculine and feminine, yet the irony is in its illusory nature, just as in transvestism, and the key is the dialectic of its masquerade and the appropriation of the sought-after Other. In art, regardless of gender implications, this dialectic of illusion can be expressed by the inevitable duality of the artist:

… the duality characteristic of the self can be sustained by projection of a portion of the self into something external—be it a work of art or another subject … the other subject, implicitly in the ironic text or explicitly in ironic enactment, serves as the ideal locus for projection, for its refusal to be made material reflects back to the self a truer analogue of its own nature as a process, as necessary and eternal dualism, as irony.¹⁰

In the Romantic text, the dualism is frequently made evident through the use of narratorial intrusion. This intrusion splits the author into two parts, one writing/telling the tale (the implied author), and the other looking on (the author him/herself), witnessing an act of creation. It likewise splits the reader into two similar parts, the dispassionate observer and the emotional participant. “Dédoublement” is a term used by Paul de Man to express the separation of a person into two selves psychologically: one self performing an action, and the other self observing the previous self.¹¹ It should be recalled that the Absolute is the union of spirituality and physicality, which eliminates divisions in one's essence of being. The author and reader, through artistic creation and its fusion of the implied author and implied reader through text, parallel Eletskoi's quest for the Absolute, and even actively take part in it. Yet this union is fundamentally an illusion, and it is ironic to break the illusion through a self-conscious narrator, referred to by Friedrich Schlegel by the Greek term Parabasis.¹² In fact, Schlegel stated that irony is permanent Parabasis,¹³ which allows for the “schwebende” (hovering between self-creation and self-destruction) quality of signification, a discourse where the interlocutors are aware of their link to discourse and how it shapes them, and are aware of its constantly changing frames of reference. Moreover, the irony in a work like The Gypsy Girl is not only philosophical and structural, it is the unmasking of the travesty of a work pertaining to a female ideal viewed from a male point of view while implicating the reader through the inside knowledge of the masquerade. It is with this in mind that deixis can be of use when illustrating the associations of the narrator to the reader, to the characters in the work, and finally, between the characters themselves.

For poetic analysis, pronouns are the most valuable of the orientational features as described by Jonathan Culler,¹⁴ for they are independent, functioning in all types of literary styles.¹⁵ They are purely referring expressions,¹⁶ and are therefore ideal tools with which to uncover where discourse is situated within a work. Pronouns reveal psychological preoccupations and tensions, the manner in which they are treated reveals the point of view and direction. The decoding of the linguistic perspective of the encoder permits a contextually unbiased interpretation of the encoder's psychological stance.¹⁷ The Russian case system as grammatically classified by Jakobson provides a useful starting point from which to analyze the psychological implications of case. In summary, the nominative is a pure naming case; the accusative and the dative are directional cases (the nonindependence of the referent is shown); the genitive and the locative are cases of scope (the referent's extension is limited, with the locative a peripheral case); the instrumental and the dative are peripheral cases (a peripheral status is indicated); the genitive II and the locative II are cases of shaping (the function of the referent is limited: there is a certain containment or process of being contained).¹⁸ Extrapolating from grammatical to psychological nature, the nominative, accusative and genitive cases can be considered psychologically “-marginal,”¹⁹ and the dative, instrumental and locative cases to be psychologically “+marginal.” Implied markers (markers implied by the use of verbal forms but not specifically stated) must also be considered when analyzing the pronouns of a given work. These markers tend to have a weakened structural presence as opposed to those markers specifically mentioned as subjects of the predicate, because Russian normally requires the use of the pronominal subject. A pronominally-based analysis of deictic markers becomes a map whereby the critic can locate the manifestations of travesty and narratorial interference within The Gypsy Girl.

The Gypsy Girl is structured in chapters, which serve the function of increasing the association with a prose tale, as well as facilitating transitions from one portion of the tale to another. The first chapter opens the poem with the lines:

«Prоsaj, Iliцкоj: ty nivisil,
I rassvitait uz davnо;
Pоslо mni vprок tvоi vinо:
Uk! y vstay nasilu s кrisil!

(1-4)²⁰

These opening lines emphasize Eletskoi's importance in the poem by placing his name as its second word as well as apostrophizing it. The—marginal “ty” marker immediately following it merely serves to further highlight the importance of the protagonist. Furthermore, the concept of Eletskoi having lost all joie-de-vivre is suggested. Sara, the Gypsy woman, is likewise introduced shortly afterwards “—Net! pust' popliashet prezhde nam / Ego tsyganka …” (6-7). Sara is evidently cast as an object in Eletskoi's existence, unnamed as yet, meant to entertain and dance. The “ego” marker referring to Sara separates her from any existence apart from Eletskoi's. There is only one marker referring to her in this first stanza, the marker “ona” of line 11, which is juxtaposed to the word “son,” and rhymed with the word “pogruzhena” (also referring to “son”): “Ty okhmelen, i v son ona / Uzhe davno pogruzhena.” This is the first of the many references in the poem to sleep and dreams, so closely connected to the concept of masquerade and the Absolute. As Handwerk notes, “Consciousness, therefore, seems necessarily a fall from unity accompanied by a yearning for its restoration […] the task for consciousness, then, is to reconcile itself with its object, to restore the reciprocity by cancelling in some way the difference between them.”²¹

When Eletskoi returns to Moscow from his travels abroad (the subject of which forms a brief digression at the outset of the poem), he proceeds to break all links between himself and “polite” society. This is coexistent with his decision to live with a Gypsy woman, his concubine, and to continue the isolation he felt abroad. Ironically, the withdrawal is inevitably accompanied by a yearning for reunification. In lines 125 to 135, the narrator tells the reader about Eletskoi's Romantic withdrawal from society:

S Mоsкvоj i Russy оn rasstalsy,
Kray cuzii pоsitil;
Tam prоmоtalsy, prоigralsy
I v puth оbratnyj pоspisil.
Svоim pinatam vоzvrasinnyj,
Vsimu risitilsnym vinцоm,
Tyganкu vzyl sibi оn v dоm,
I, оbsim mninsim pоrazinnyj,
Sam rusil оn, nad nim smiysh,
Sо svitоm оstalsnuy svyzh.
Tut nasij pоvisti nacalо.

In these lines, there are four—marginal markers referring to Eletskoi, all of which are in nominative case, and all but one are on-form markers. There is one emphatic pronoun “sam,” in line-first position, stressing the fact that it was Eletskoi's own desire to rupture the links with the “outside world,” while at the same time implying that the narrator is somehow omnipresent in Eletskoi's thoughts—why else should he want to emphasize his hero's independence? The four +marginal markers deal with his Moscow life (129-33) thereby revealing how the character feels about polite society. The use of “nashei povesti” (135) marks the beginning of the main story—how Eletskoi sought to abandon his isolation in his quest for the Absolute. The use of the genitive case proportionalizes the story and renders it a part of the character, the author, the narrator and the reader. The latter is drawn into Eletskoi's quest for the Absolute, thereby creating a union through the illusion of art which ironically closely resembles the same Absolute.

This effect of the active narrator taking part in his hero's quest occurs throughout the poem, as, for example, in lines 109-14:

Imu v gоstinyk stalо dusnо:
Tо bylо glipо, etо sкucnо.
Iz nik Iliцкоj mоj isciz
I na zilannоm im prоstоri
Zitsim оn nоvym zazil vsкоri
Mizdu buynоv i pоvis.

The narrator makes himself known (Eletskoi moi) particularly at points where the main protagonist strives for the Absolute. For Eletskoi, this Absolute is symbolized by his attraction to Vera Volkhovskaia. It is also this Absolute which is sufficient to drive him out of his isolation and cause the ruin of the three protagonists.

When Eletskoi first sees Vera, he and the narrator objectify her, as they did Sara in the first stanza. In lines 169 to 226, Baratynskii deals with the impression Eletskoi has of Vera, and with the discovery by Eletskoi of some trace of feeling within himself, climaxing in the final nine lines:

On v samоm оpyti strastij,
I naкоniц sridi pоrокоv,
Kipivsnk rоim vкrug nigо,
I ydоvityk ik urокоv,
I оmracinsy svоigо
V dusi sbirig оn cuvstva plamy
Iliцкоj bitvu prоigral,
Nо, pоbizdinnyj, spas оn znamy
I prid samim sоbоj ni pal.

The passage as a whole has fifteen -marginal markers referring to Eletskoi, twelve of which are in the nominative case. There is a total of six +marginal markers as well. This compares to nine -marginal and five +marginal markers referring to Vera. Thus, 21 out of 35 of the markers refer to Eletskoi, with 15 out of 21 in the -marginal forms. The objectification of Vera Volkhovskaia can be seen in lines 176 to 178:

Svоimi cistymi оcami,
Svоimi ditsкimi ustami,
Svоij spокоjnоj кrasоtоj …

The markers are in the instrumental case, the +marginal equivalent of the -marginal markers used to describe Eletskoi when the narrator describes his past in lines 125 to 138. Objectifying Vera Volkhovskaia makes her even more strongly a part of Eletskoi's quest for completion in the Absolute, rather than a separate being, an Other. The link to the narrator's travesty is unmistakable:

The transvestite engages in a kind of gender megalomania when he annexes every female “you” as a part of “my own [male] me.” He imitates a perceived other and thus makes her a part of himself. He can then adore this ersatz other without being frightened by her difference from him. Simply put, the transvestite man is engaged in creating the perfect woman.²²

Though neither Eletskoi nor the narrator can be described as transvestites, the importance of the concept lies in the appropriation of the female as an object, in the illusory nature of the work of art, and in the love for the Absolute. Like transvestism, the ideal becomes perfect imitation and total appropriation—a compromise of the original quest, because consciousness and reality will not allow the Infinite and its unity of the Absolute.

The motif of illusion is even literally present in this section of The Gypsy Girl with Vera compared to a vision or apparition: “Ona skhodna byla s viden'em / Ego razborchivoi vesny” (181-82). Like a dream, or delicate vision, she disappears in the crowd. In this entire passage, where there are thirty-five markers referring to Eletskoi and Vera, there are also three markers (“toi”/“togo”/“kem”) referring specifically to the “other world” (the Other) from which Vera Volkhovskaia will unite with Eletskoi:

Grazdanкa sфiry tоj оna,
Tоgо zlоpamytnоgо svita,
S кim v оprоmitcivyi lita,
V izbytкi gоrdоm ynyk sil,
Sam v bоj nirоvnyj оn vstupil.

(204-08)

That she dwells in an existence of which Eletskoi currently cannot reach is evident from these markers. The one marker remaining to be mentioned is the “moi” of line 172. Eletskoi, the subject of the action of the passage to come, is claimed by the narrator: “Davno brodil Eletskoi moi.” This happens at the very point at which Eletskoi is about to be caught in a resurgence of feeling, that is, at the beginning of his quest for the (Romantic, and male) Absolute. The similarity between both the poet and hero is thereby intensified, while at the same time the artistic Absolute of the former is seemingly shattered. In a striking parallel to the hero, the narrator does not mention Vera's name, referring to her as “ona” or “devitsa” until line 239 of the poem. Even after that, the majority of the markers objectify her, relating to her gaze and to her face. The narrator intrudes once again in line 259, when he discusses the state into which Eletskoi has fallen:

V sоsidstvi, ni zamicin imi,
Za lipоj timnоj i gustоj,
Stоyl vlyblinnyj nas girоj.

(267-68)

Once again, the narrator breaks the illusion of reality at the point where Eletskoi strives to attain Vera.

It is also significant that Eletskoi first speaks with her at a masquerade, where all is illusion. The narrator at his point even rhymes on with son:

Nо vоt v izvistnоm masкaradi
Dоlzna byts Vira. Ozil оn
I v pоlnadizdi, v pоldоsadi
Liliit diytilsnyj sоn.

(295-98)

The first words Vera Volkhovskaia expresses in the poem deal with the same question:

'Я кaк оbmanutay snоm!
Sкaziti, radi Bоga, кtо vy?»

(332-33)

Eletskoi refuses to break the illusion until the last possible moment by removing his mask.

At this point in the plot, however, Sara cannot experience sleep or dreams (406). She realizes that he has dreams of another (415). The more Eletskoi becomes involved with his Absolute, the more Sara recognizes her own Finite and the less she can share in the Romantic ideal. She becomes so alienated, that she reverts to third-person markers to refer to herself:

… Sara znait,
Kaкy zdit ii sudsba
Za tо, ctо sluzit, ugоzdait
Tibi pо vоli, кaк raba:
Sо znatnоj barysnij svоiy
Ty оbvincaisssy, a s niy
Prоstisssy, i ii na dvоr
Mitlоy vymitut, кaк sоr.

(440-47)

She proceeds to deictically invert her discourse until line 462. If one analyzes the deictic markers in the sections spoken by Sara during this passage, one sees that the overwhelming number of markers refer to Eletskoi. The third-person narration effaces the Sara of the present, as contrasted to the Sara of lines 1041-46, who uses the first-person while thinking about her own version of the Absolute which she might have attained through the use of magic:

… Ty mоj: pridi,
Prizmiss оpyts к mоij grudi!
Ocniss оt lytоgо ugara,
Pridi, i vsë zabudu y.
Uznaj miny, uznaj: y Sara!
Я Sara priznyy tvоy.

In lines 452-62 however, where Sara reminds Eletskoi of the time he invited her to live “forever in feasts and song,” she speaks from Eletskoi's point of view, further distancing herself from her past happiness. She is objectified completely and is already within male domination. Having achieved this state, she can no longer be an Other, and remains as only the physical feminine, appropriated by the male, her essence removed. Whereas it is love for Vera which is giving Eletskoi a sense of the Infinite, it is the power of her Finite which is driving Sara to despair.

The narrator intrudes again in line 506, immediately before describing Eletskoi's inability to speak with Sara about his dreams and desires. Son is seen again in line 559, where it is rhymed with kotil' on of line 556:

Kaк castо v siridini bala,
Kоgda uz muzyкa igrala
Ils pоpurri, ils коtilsоn
I Vira sо svоim tanцоrоm,
Nasкuca pоslym razgоvоrоm,
Pоgruzina v stоrоnnij sоn,
Glazami mоlca prоvоzala
Sridi blistatilsnоgо zala …

(554-61)

Once again, it is in the dream-world of balls and masquerades where the Absolute is sought after by Eletskoi and Vera.

The next occasion where the narrator intrudes begins at line 659 and ends at line 685. In this segment of The Gypsy Girl in addition to the narrator, there are markers referring to Vera, Eletskoi, and to “nature,” which is beyond the control of man. The marker referring to the narrator, “moei” of line 660, occurs when the narrator is about to discuss the effect Eletskoi has had on Vera Volkhovskaia. There is in this section the rhymed connection between “o nem” and (“zabyt'e”) “svoem” (668-69), again indirectly relating to the concept of dream. The state of passivity present in Vera Volkhovskaia is emphasized by the number of +marginal markers referring to her (seven), as opposed to the five -marginal markers. The markers referring to Eletskoi merely serve to reinforce how dependent Vera is on her new love. The narrator reminds the reader through the dramatic closure of this chapter how temporary her situation really is. Life, in its entirety, will be removed. Romantic posturing requires the knowledge that all is finite and a mastery of Romanticism's inherent irony.

Yet the concept of dream reoccurs in lines 748-49, where “sne” is rhymed with “mne,” referring to Eletskoi, while he was speaking to Vera:

… Vy li gоvоrili?
Я ls slysal vas? i ni vо sni!
Я ni lybim … Zacim zi mni
Davnо vy etо ni vnusili?

(747-50)

The reference to dreams returns again in line 824, where Vera's decision to flee with Eletskoi is made “ni vo sne, ni naiavu,” but rather in transition between the Other and the appropriated object, an alternate state which is in communion with the Absolute. This is the closest their union will ever bring them. To borrow from Strohschneider-Kohrs, both can now contemplate the Infinite.

The remainder of The Gypsy Girl deals with the the relationship between Eletskoi and Sara. The household containing Sara has become the a self-destructive Romantic retreat—a world of feasts and pleasure with no spirituality, an incomplete Romantic ideal. The inadequacy of such an existence is felt when Eletskoi first sees Vera Volkhovskaia. The irony of the Romantic position is thereby demonstrated. Withdrawal and appropriation merely leads to a greater desire for communion. In Vera Volkhovskaia Eletskoi seems to see the Absolute—the fusion of all possible desires on not only a physical level, but also on a spiritual level. Rather than mastering the irony of his situation, realizing that his quest cannot ever be achieved, thereby acknowledging its ephemeral quality, Eletskoi flees into the tantalizing world of dreams and illusion.²³ Sara, however, realizes fully the role that she has played in the simple eroticism portion of the equation:

Ty razlybil—y vsë lybila;
Ty gnal bizzalоstnо miny—
K tibi y, zlоbnоmu, lasкalass,
Kaк sоbacоnкa.

(1016-19)

In her desperation, she inadvertently kills the object of her love. It is a standard trope that the poison she unwittingly administers to Eletskoi was given to her by an old Gypsy woman who appeared from the blizzard raging outside, symbolic of powers beyond her control. Yet to attain her Absolute for a few moments, Sara had to kill Eletskoi and ruin Vera's life as well as her own. She was never capable of possessing the Other, as she had been herself objectified by it. As for Vera Volkhovskaia, she is, according to Mann, just at the beginning of her existence and as such still has to experience the disappointment and the rebirth that Eletskoi undergoes.²⁴ In the structure of this poem, however, it would seem more logical to conclude that Vera, like Sara, could never have achieved her Absolute, because its entire premise is a male travesty. As was the case with Sara, the cycle must progress further into despair.

Through poetic form, Baratynskii permits both himself and the reader to deal with the irony of the Romantic Absolute. Through pronominal deixis, one can uncover the nature of the quest for the Absolute in male and female terms, thereby revealing the appropriation of the female ideal as a part of its male self and the narrator's associations within his own tale. The existence of the Romantic ideal is dependent on the knowledge of its illusory nature, hence the linguistic parallels between the narrator's intrusions and the objectification of both Vera and Sara. The masquerade suggests that the Ideal is not attainable in a conscious state, since it would imply a communion with that which cannot exist in Reality. Hence Eletskoi dies, the only version of the Absolute is achieved in the domain of dreams, and the artistic fusion occurs on a subconscious level between the implied author and the implied reader, while the illusion of reality is broken by narratorial intrusion. The Absolute being unreachable, the only escape is its ironic and incomplete achievement: the atomization of Vera and Sara, the escape to the physical exotica of the Gypsy world, the narrated poem.

The concept of Art itself—the Romantic ideal of the Absolute, where the Infinite and Finite can be united—is representative of only a part of that Infinity, and language, as used by Baratynskii in his The Gypsy Girl functions most probably on a subconscious level. Yet the enthusiast of Schelling has created a deep work which ends on a fitting Romantic notion of the illusory nature of existence:

Taк rizvyj vitir inоgda
Listок upadsij pоdymait;
S nim vsitsy v svitlyk nibisak,
Nо, vdrug utiknuv, оpusкait
Igо оpyts na dоlsnij prak.

(1206-10)

Notes

1. This article is a revised version of a paper read at the annual conference of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) in San Francisco, 1991. The author also wishes to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its continued support during the research and completion of this work.

2. Alexandre Koyré, Études sur l'histoire de la pensée philosophique en Russie (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1950), p. 7.

3. Alexandre Koyré, La philosophie et le problème national en Russie au début du XIXe siècle (Saint-Amand: Gallimard, 1976 <1929=), p. 132.

4. Frederick Copleston, Fichte to Nietzsche, Vol. 7 of History of Philosophy (New York: Doubleday 1962), p. 121.

5. Geir Kjetsaa, Evgenii Baratynskii: Zhizn' i tvorchestvo (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1973), p. 396.

6. E. A. Boratynskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Petrograd: Imperatorskaia Akademiia Nauk, 1915), pp. 74-81. This more physical opposition was propogated in Russian literary circles by J. P. F. Ancillon, a great popularizer of Schelling's thought. In an article translated into Russian under the title Aesthetic Discourses of Mr. Ancillon (1813), Ancillon states that “poetry is the power of expressing ideas by means of the word, or the power to present, with the help of language, the infinite in finite and defined forms, which in their harmonizing functions would speak to the feelings, the imagination, and the intellect.” See Lauren Gray Leighton, ed. and trans., Russian Romantic Criticism. An Anthology (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 61. The “reality” of art is therefore indebted to the illusion of unity which it attempts to create and sustain.

7. I. V. Kireevskii, Kritika i estetika (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979), p. 111.

8. Leighton, Russian Romantic Criticism, p. 152.

9. Boratynskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, pp. 221-22.

10. Ingrid Strohschneider-Kohrs, Die romantische Ironie in Theorie und Gestaltung (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1960), p. 82.

11. Gary J. Handwerk, Irony and Ethics in Narrative. From Schlegel to Lacan (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1985), p. 50.

12. Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight. Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 214.

13. Ibid., p. 218

14. Ernst Behler, Klassische Ironie, romantische Ironie, tragische Ironie. Zum Ursprung dieser Begriffe (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971), p. 80.

15. Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics. Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975), p. 165.

16. E. G. Etkind, “Opyt o mestoimenii v sisteme poeticheskoi rechi,” in Forma kak soderzhanie (Würzburg: Jal-Verlag, 1977), p. 29.

17. William Croft, Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations. The Cognitive Organization of Information (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 127.

18. The importance of pronouns in analyzing poetic texts is excellently discussed by Roman Jakobson in his “poeziia grammatiki i grammatiki poezii” (1961) translated in its entirety in Roman Jakobson, Language in Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1987), pp. 121-44.

19. Roman Jakobson, Russian and Slavic Grammar (The Hague: Mouton, 1984), p. 95.

20. Daniel Laferrière, Five Russian Poems: Exercises in a Theory of Poetry (Englewood: Transworld, 1977), p. 64.

21. E. A. Baratynskii, Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1989), pp. 275-306. The line numbers of quotations from this edition of Tsyganka are given in parentheses.

22. Handwerk, Irony and Ethics in Narrative, p. 47.

23. Madeline Kahn, Narrative Transvestism: Rhetoric and Gender in the Eighteenth-century English Novel (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991), p. 16.

24. John Vignaux Smyth, A Question of Eros. Irony in Sterne, Kierkegaard, and Barthes (Tallahassee: Florida State Univ. Press, 1986), p. 202. The terminology used here is borrowed from Smyth, where he discusses Kierkegaard's annoyance with the concept of natural, unmastered irony as represented by Wilhemine in Schlegel's Lucinde. Kierkegaard argues that unmastered irony (the Romantic ideal) cannot be extended to adult sensuality, since then both must be mastered (defeminized). To defeminize the Other is to appropriate it in much the same manner as the transvestite transforms it into illusion.

25. Iu. V. Mann, Poetika russkogo romantizma (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), p. 189.