The Poet's Fate

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837) is Russia’s greatest poet, and every Russian writer that Western readers have taken to their hearts have recorded their debts to him. This includes prose writers such as Gogol — to whom Pushkin, with prodigal generosity, gave the plots of Dead Souls and the Inspector General — and Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky.

Indeed, Pushkin’s popularity is so great that every Russian government in the last two hundred years has found it necessary to have him on board. Even the Bolsheviks, who might have been expected to jettison Pushkin as an aristocratic irrelevance, chose instead to promote him as a noble victim of the Tsar, and to emphasize his love of folklore and his peasant nanny. Yet in the West, his work remains chiefly known through opera: Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, for instance, or Tchaikovsky’s Yevgeny Onegin and Queen of Spades. Why should that be?

The most obvious answer is that the clarity and simplicity of Pushkin’s language have made him peculiarly resistant to translation. The poetry of striking metaphors always translates easily; yet Pushkin often writes without imagery of any kind, relying on effortless, colloquial vigor and an extraordinary felicity of form which is hard to capture in English. The Russian language has a case structure which enables his meaning to remain clear whatever the order of his words, while English is uncomfortable with the least distortion of word order to achieve rhyme.

Without his shapeliness, Pushkin’s miraculous lucidity can sound pretty flat in English. But if that is the case, what is there to make Pushkin of interest to someone who loves poetry, but cannot read him in Russian?

The answer lies in the paradoxes that make the man himself such an intriguing figure. The great twentieth century poet Marina Tsvetaeva, whose poetry I first translated more than 25 years ago, gave me a central insight into these contradictions. For Tsvetaeva portrays Pushkin as a quintessential outsider. When she visited the Pushkin monument in Moscow as a child, she found the blackness of the stone a revelation and extrapolated: “A black giant among white children ... The Russian poet — is a Negro.”

As the child of a feckless Russian aristocrat and a descendant of the African slave who became a favorite of Peter the Great, Pushkin had swarthy skin, black curls and a volatile temperament; his school friends often attributed his wild behavior to his African descent. Pushkin’s own sketches often exaggerated his African appearance. Indeed, it was an inheritance in which he generally took great pride. But in a poem “To Yurev,” written in 1820, he impudently made fun of it as a sexual disability.

While I, always an idle rake,

Ugly descendant of a Black

Reared in a wilderness, can take

No pleasure in the pains of love.

Whenever I have won a beauty

It is through shameless, hot desire

That leads a nymph, still innocent

To flush in an embarrassment

She does not fully understand

And stealthily observe a satyr.

Pushkin’s literary talents and lively wit were recognized while he was still at school, but even his closest friends distrusted his sharp tongue, and mistook his ebullient clowning for irresponsible frivolity. His inner loneliness, formed in a childhood he himself described as “intolerable,” remained unknown to them.

In his poem “The Prophet,” Pushkin speaks of the poet as a man God touches with the fire of truth. In the 200 years since Pushkin’s death, it is this aspect of his personality that has made him an iconic figure, both for those who opposed the Tsar, and for those who opposed the Soviet regime after the Tsars. As the writer Evgenia Ginzburg attests, many took Pushkin’s poetry into the prison camps; in the long decades when Anna Akhmatova was not allowed to publish her poetry, she drew on Pushkin’s verse for strength.

Those interested in politics in Pushkin’s day, however, did not quite trust him enough to confide in him their secret plans. Yet they valued his poems — written in praise of freedom — for which he was sent into exile in Southern Russia at the age of 21. Pushkin was never taken into the confidence of the Decembrist conspirators, though he knew all five hanged by Nicholas I and his dearest friend, Ivan Pushchin, was sent to Siberia when the revolt failed.

However, it was not politics that was to kill Pushkin at the poignantly early age of 37. It was a duel with an admirer of his wife. But before we come to that, there are contradictions to ponder in the poet’s attitudes towards women, as a necessary background to his marital relationship.

In his work, Pushkin portrayed amazingly modern women, for instance in “The Gypsies,” written while he was in exile in Southern Russia, and much under the influence of Lord Byron.  He had seen first hand the nomadic Gypsies on the Bessarabian steppes, and knew the encampment he describes there:

They sleep at peace under the skies

Between the wheels of van and wagon

Old carpets hang; their supper fries

Upon an open fire; their horses

Graze the bare field; behind the tent

A tame bear sprawls at ease....

Probably he had also enjoyed the favors of gypsy women. What his readers take away from the poem is Zemfira’s taunting independence, which prefigures Bizet’s Carmen. A Russian, Aleko, joins her tribe because he has fallen in love with her. She gives him her love for a time, but soon tires of him. Goaded by her readiness to admit she has fallen in love with another man, Aleko kills both Zemfira and her new lover. He is unpunished for the crime, but sent away by Zemfira’s father in verse of resounding dignity. The Gypsies have no laws

To punish those who damage us

But we don’t live with murderers ...

In Pushkin’s masterpiece, Yevgeny Onegin, again, it is his heroine Tatyana’s fearless candor and intelligence we remember. Pushkin also loved her for those very qualities, as he admits. In his own life however, he was not drawn sexually to women of unusual intelligence or independence, though he included some among his friends. He once wrote the first names of all the women he had ever loved into the album of the younger sister of a woman he hoped to marry. Yet in spite of enjoying love-affairs with some of the most beautiful women of his day, he once confided to a friend that he preferred prostitutes to the pursuit of women of his own class, because there was less lying and wheedling. In some of his poems, this preference for sexual function over sentiment takes the form of a bawdy obscenity reminiscent of Chaucer.

But despite such occasional masculine crudity, Pushkin looked for gentleness and beauty when he decided to take a wife. The woman he chose was Natalya Goncharova, a 17-year-old girl who loved balls and clothes and took little interest in literature. Natalya’s mother would have preferred a wealthier and more fashionable husband for her daughter. But although Natalya’s beauty attracted many gallants, there was no money for her dowry, and her father was known to be of questionable sanity. So it was that Pushkin gained Natalya’s cold, timid hand, and the clockwork of his destruction was set in motion.

What Natalya thought of her marriage we do not know, and generations of Pushkin’s admirers, including Akhmatova, have condemned Natalya’s vanity, extravagance and her habit of confiding petty social triumphs to her husband. Pushkin was indulgent, though he often longed to retire with his wife and children to his estate in the country, where they could all live more cheaply.

Natalya was certainly no intellectual, but she was well enough educated by the standards of the time. Though she knew of her husband’s literary eminence, she was not much excited by it. Pushkin’s disappearance for hours at a time into his study left Natalya lonely. And when he emerged, he was more likely to rush off to a friend with his new poem than give her the flattering attention she craved. Money was a problem for the Pushkins from the outset, and there were pressing creditors to deal with when Pushkin was away from home. Nevertheless, Natalya defended Pushkin loyally from the criticism of her family, and the poet’s letters to Natalya suggest a tender relationship. An unusually intimate poem describes how even her sexual coldness appealed to him:

Much dearer are you to me, modest love,

When you give in to my long pleading

Shyly cold, and unresponsive to my pleasure

You make me the more painfully happy

Even though you take no notice, until

At last you find yourself roused to move

Little by little, and are brought to share

My passion finally against your will.

What Natalya enjoyed more than anything else was dressing up in wonderful clothes and flirting with Guards officers at Court balls. This stretched Pushkin’s slender financial resources and threw him into debt. But once at court, Natalya was, by common consent, the most beautiful woman in Russia; she was often compared to a Renaissance Madonna. She was about 5’6” — which made her much taller than her husband — and had a slender waist, a full bosom, and sweet, even features. Some Moscow wits, even at the outset, spoke of a marriage between Beauty and the Beast, but she and Pushkin seem to have enjoyed a teasing relationship of some intimacy.

The situation between them changed in 1835, however, when Natalya attracted the attentions of Baron Georges d’Anthes, a French officer of her own age whom the Tsar had admitted into a Guards regiment. D’Anthes was a strikingly handsome Frenchman, who loved dancing as much as Natalya did. He also had a rich patron in the person of Baron Van Heeckeren, the Dutch Ambassador, who had announced his intention to adopt d’Anthes as his son (so that D’Anthes could inherit Van Heeckeren’s title and wealth).

Things were not quite as they seemed to Natalya, however, as she responded to d’Anthes charm and flattery. A new cache of letters from Baron d’Anthes to Van Heeckeren, as discussed by Serena Vitale, Vadim Stark, M.I. Pisareva and S.V. Slivanskaya, establish beyond doubt that Van Heeckeren, a man of fifty who had never shown any interest in women, was passionately in love with his protégé. And, whether for material advantage or emotional need, d’Anthes encouraged this attachment. For even as d’Anthes pursued Natalya, he was assuring Van Heeckeren that he stood equal to Natalya in his affections. Of d’Anthes homosexual proclivities, Natalya, of course, knew nothing, or she might have behaved with more circumspection.

Instead, Natalya allowed herself to be tricked into a private meeting with d’Anthes at a friend’s house, which was fortunately interrupted by a small child. Natalya, who usually confided the progress of her flirtations to Pushkin did not at first mention the risky encounter to her husband.

From this point on the story has many mysteries. The challenge Pushkin sent to d’Anthes in Autumn 1836 was precipitated by an anonymous certificate, sent to Pushkin and also circulated among his friends. This purported to elect him to the Honourable Society Of Cuckolds and made reference to Naryshkin, whose wife had been the mistress of the former Tsar.

It has never been satisfactorily established who sent out those certificates. In our own century, handwriting experts have arrived at two different identifications, and in any case whoever wanted them sent need not have written them out. It is equally uncertain what they were intended to achieve, apart from incensing Pushkin. In Soviet times, a good deal of effort was expended in implicating the Tsar, but an absolute Monarch has little need for such tricks.

Pushkin always believed that Van Heeckeren was responsible, though his motive cannot have been to provoke a duel between d’Anthes and Pushkin. Indeed, so much did the Ambassador want the duel stopped, that he approached a friend of Pushkin’s to mediate, and gave him the astonishing news that d’Anthes intended to marry Ekaterina, Natalya’s older and plainer sister. Incredulous as Pushkin was, he agreed to withdraw his challenge.

In fact, recent research suggests that there was a more logical explanation for d’Anthes engagement to Ekaterina. It is likely that Ekaterina had been seriously compromised and was perhaps pregnant by him. Certainly d’Anthes was not marrying Ekaterina to protect Natalya’s reputation, as

contemporary St. Petersburg gossip, largely favorable to the handsome d’Anthes, would have liked to believe — rumours were only ignited as a result. In fact, Natalya herself was so badly hurt by the match that she could not speak of it without her voice breaking.

Now that we know for certain the intensity of the sexual relationship between the crafty old Van Heeckeren and his lover d’Anthes, it is possible to speculate rather differently about the anonymous certificates. We know from d’Anthes’ letters that Van Heeckeren was bitterly jealous of his lover’s attachment to Natalya. Van Heeckeren helped arrange a meeting between d’Anthes and Pushkin’s wife only because d’Anthes had assured him his love for Natalya would ebb once he possessed her. It may be that Van Heeckeren hoped that, by framing the certificates as they were, Pushkin would believe the Tsar was his rival and thus have no redress but to remove his wife from St Petersburg.

If that was the intention, the plan failed. The unlikely wedding between Ekaterina and d’Anthes took place. But d’Anthes continued to meet Natalya at salons and balls and to flirt with her, unashamedly, even after his marriage to her sister. Natalya brightened up at these attentions, and even encouraged them, while Pushkin continued to smoulder with rage at his new brother-in-law. A duel became inevitable in January 1837 and this time Pushkin was very careful to keep it secret so that nothing should prevent it.

Of the two men, Pushkin was most eager for a murderous outcome. D’Anthes would have preferred to give his opponent a superficial leg wound. In the event, the Frenchman wounded Pushkin in the abdomen, while Pushkin’s bullet ricocheted off a button. Pushkin was brought home to endure two agonizing days in his apartment on St. Petersburg’s Moyka embankment. At first, he wanted to keep Natalya away, so she would not to witness his pain. But once he realized he was going to die, he sent for her and assured her, with great generosity, that she had no cause to blame herself. A messenger arrived from the Tsar, inviting him to die as a Christian, and promising to look after Natalya and his children financially.

Vast crowds of people came to the Moika for news of the poet. This alarmed both the police and the Tsar, and after Pushkin’s death, obituaries were censored, and a planned Requiem in St. Isaac’s Cathedral was cancelled by Imperial decree. The Tsar, however, kept his promise to look after Natalya. Indeed, considering how unconcerned the Tsar had been at Pushkin’s poverty while the poet was alive, he was extraordinarily generous to his widow. He paid off all the family debts, and made Natalya a substantial allowance. It was at the Tsar’s personal request that Natalya returned to Court after two years, and a portrait was painted of her in the dress she wore for the costume ball of 1839.

Five years later, Natalya married P.P. Lanskoy — who had been a close friend of D’Anthes — and Lanskoy’s subsequent career advanced very swiftly. The Tsar was a frequent visitor to their home, and was the godson to their first child. By an extraordinary irony of history, one of Pushkin’s grandchildren married a grandchild of Nicholas I. When the marriage was declared morganatic, the couple came to live in England, and in due course their descendants married into the families of the Duke of Westminster and the Marquess of Milford-Haven.

Pushkin’s own triumph was to be loved so generally that prisoners of both Tsars and Communists took his poems into their prisons. As he predicted in “Exegi Monumentum:”

I’ve set up for myself a monument, though not in stone.

No hands have made it, and no weeds will grow

Along the path to where the stubborn

Head soars above Alexander’s column.

I shall not die altogether. Lyrics of mine

Although my flesh decays, will hold my spirit

And I’ll be known as long as any poet

Remains alive under the moon.

News of me then will cross the whole of Russia

And every tribe there will have heard my name:

The Slavs, the Finns, and those in the wild Tungus,

The Kalmucks on the plain.

And they will all love me, because my songs

Evoked some kindness in a cruel age,

Since I once begged for mercy to assuage

The wrongs of the down fallen.

So, Muse, obey God’s orders without fear

Forget insults, expect no laurel wreaths;

Treat praise and slander with indifference.

And never argue with a fool.

In Russia, Pushkin’s name has entered the spoken idiom. It is commonplace for a child to be scolded: “Who do you think will close the door after you, Pushkin?” At the bicentenary of his birth, it is time for Pushkin to take his rightful place on the world stage, too: as triumphant an example of poetry victorious over this world’s celebrities as you will find. Akhmatova expressed this triumph most memorably: “All the beauties, ladies in waiting, mistresses to the salons, Dames of the Order of St. Catherine, members of the Imperial court, ministers, aides-de-camp, gradually began to be referred to as ‘contemporaries of Pushkin’, and at length have been simply laid to rest (with their dates of birth and death garbled) in the indexes to editions of Pushkins works.”  RL

“All that brought joy to my life, all that gave me the greatest 

pleasure, vanished with him ... 

I did not write a single line 

without imagining him standing before me. What would he say of it? What would he notice? What would make him laugh?”

 Nikolai Gogol

“The sun of our poetry has set! Pushkin passed away in the blossom of his years, amidst his great endeavour! ... Each Russian heart knows the price of this irreparable loss and each Russian heart will be torn to pieces. Pushkin! Our poet! Our joy, our people’s glory! ... Is it possible that we won’t we have Pushkin anymore?! One cannot get used to this thought!” 

 Andrei Kraevsky, the Russian editor who dared to break a silence imposed by Russian censors after Pushkin’s death.