A Pushkin Collage

By CHRISTOI'HER FULKERSON
The per sonalities of creative artists
ar e a sou rce o f endless fascination. Each of
th e g rea t ar tists of the pas t or present
seems to have a n abundance o f talen ts and
qu alities too vast to sift through. Yet, if we
compa re t he as pec ts o f th ese arti sts '
character, severa l disti nct psychological

A lexa1lder Pushkin as a buy ill an 1822 engraving

by E. Heitmann.
types, or artistic archety pes, ca n bedist ingu ishe d . Beethoven created works of
Herculean power and nu mbing su btlety;
M ichelan gelo is arg ua bly his co u n terpar t
in th e visu al arts. Though they nominally
belong to di ff erent ar tis t ic disciplines,
Goethe and Wagner share a commitment
to o rigi na lity, to se ns ual beauty, and to an
ecu rne nis m o f talen ts-each embracing
se veral arts, sciences , and philosophies o f
th eir d ay-that makes them close co lleagu es. For th eir sha red ability to make
a ny s tyle t hey touch ed un iquely th eir
own, S travi ns ky and Picasso ha ve o ft en
been co m pare d, as have, for diff e re n t
reasons, Deb ussy and Monet. A crafty
se nse for co nfir m ing for an aud ience the
impo rt ance of their ow n emotions sets
Pu ccin i ap art; Hem ing way would be the
Pucci ni o f lite ra tu re. Bu t the greates t
reveren ce has always been acco rded to
artists of th e type w ho are a t once focu ses

of thei r cultu res and voices for all h umanity, protean ta lents able to work in any
gen re of th eir disciplin e, producing those
achingly beau tiful works of art w hich give
the world clear visions of landscapes that
ar e actually ete r na l my steries. Mozart
was su ch an arti st, and he did have at least
one dose counterpart in the person of a
write r barely known in t he Eng lis hspeaking wo rld . Th e Mo zart of literature
w as t he Afro-Russian poet Alexan d er
Sergey evich Pu sh kin .
Pus hki n wa s a child pr odigy and a
tech nical wizard; he wa s pampered by the
arist ocracy th ough he was con troversial
at cou r t; he enjoyed trem endou s popu larity and pro fessio nal infl ue nce in his yo u th,
th o ugh he fell o ut o f fash ion in his thirties; he marri ed late (for his era ) to a
woma n who wa s his int ellect ual inferior,
and, afte r a brilliant and prolific career,
died yo u ng, in mo ra lly suspect circums ta nces , and was r ush ed into his g rave.
Dur ing his lifeti m e, Pu sh kin wa s known
to anyo ne w ho was anyone, ye t in h is last
yea rs kept o nly a tiny gro up of fri ends and
w as a pariah in the most gen teel circles.
Af ter his u n timely death, Pu sh kin beca me
th e idol and indeed proclaime d prophet of
the people wh o spea k the lan g uage in
which he co mposed th eir most cherished
poe try, sho rt s to ries, novels, fairy tales,
plays, and , once th ey had been wedded to
mu sic, their mo st beloved songs, operas,
a nd ballets . H is wor ks are mo re than
rev ered by Rus sian spe ake rs- they hav e
th e sta tus of gos pel. Since Pu shkin's days,
ge ne ra tions o f Ru ssian s ha ve com mitted
w hole plays, man y even the entirety o f his
grea t novel in ve rse, Eugene Onegin, to
w ord-for-word memory. His characte rs
are not o nly w e ll known to Rus sian
s pea kers - t hey a re rea l people . Some
Russian mu sical wo rks based o n Push kin
includ e Ruslan and Lyudmila by Glinka;
Rusalka and The Stone Guest by Dargomizhsky; Boris Go.lu"ov by Mussorgsky;
Eugme O negi" , M azeppa, and The Quem of
Spades by Tchaikovsky; M ount and 5alieri,
The Tale of the Tsar 5alta" and The Golden
Cockerel by Rim sky -Ko rsakov; A leko and
The Miserly K"ight by Rachm an inoff ; and
The Firebird and Maora by Str av insky.
Pu sh kin 's t ext s we re so r eve r ed th a t

50

Da rg o m izh s ky and Rimsky -Ko rsakov

anticipated Debu ssy (who wa s add icted to
Boris GoJunov) in se tti ng whole in tac t
play s to m usic, crea ting the ope ra tic gen r e
)oseph Kerman calls the "su ng play."
Pu shkin w as born in to one of the
oldes t fa milies of th e Ru ssian gentry, in
Moscow, o n May 26th, 1799. His mother
w as a granddau ghter of Abram C annibal,

Group of Russian writers from the 18 305 in a

confnnporarytrlgravirlg: (I. to r.]N ikolai Gnedich,
Vassily Z hUKOVSky, Alexander Pushkin. Ivan
Krylov.

born a prin ce in Ab yss inia, so ld into

slave ry and pu rch ased , freed, and ev entually pr omot ed to Eng ineer Gen eral by
Peter the G rea t, the awesome wes te rnizing T sar wh o left at least as stro ng an
impression o n th e Rus sian mind as did the
Sun Kin g o n th e Fr ench. All his life ,
Pu shkin remain ed proud of his ancient
lineage and his Afri can blood - to which
h e att ribut ed his pass iona te natu regoin g so far as to put an ancestor named
Pu sh kin in hi s h isto ric al pla y Baris
Godunov and to w rite a large fr agment of
a nov el on the s ubjec t of The M oor of Peter

the Great.
In the decad es pr ior to the Napoleo nic

Christopher Fulkmo" is " composer ""d

conductor living in San Francisco.

San Francisco Opera

wars, all genteel Ru ssians were weened as

Fran cophiles (Fre nch wa s the first langu age of the no bility ) and Alexan der
Serge yevich 's childhood was no diffe rent.
At the age of tw elve, however, he joined
the first class of pu pils at the exclusive
Lycee of Tsarskoe Selo (T he Tsa r's Village). Vladimir Nabokov, like all Ru ssian
wr ite rs obsessed with Push kin, was very
proud to have been educated at thi s same
eve n tually famou s schoo l. While still a
stude nt at T sar skoe Selo th e neophyte
Pushk in began to pub lish vers e. His few
letters surviving from this period alrea dy
ind icate the variet y of h is episto lar y
expres sion. Commanded, as the Lycee's
preeminent poet, to versify on the arrival
of th e Tsar, his manner to ward thos e in
po wer is q uite con ventional, bu t not
unconscious of how to promote a career.
" If the feelin gs of love a nd gratitude
towa rd ou r great monarch are not completely unwort hy of my lofty subject, how
happy [ wo uld be if His Excellen cy ...
wo uld be so kind as to present to the
Sovereig n Emperor the feeble produ ction
of an ine xperienced vers ifier! Relyi ng
up on your ex t re me in du lgence," etc .
When addressing a companion, ho wever,
th e "inex perienced versi fier" loosens his
cravat. To the poe t Pete r Vyaze ms ky, he
wri tes , " . . .don't yo u complain if my lett er
makes Your Bardic High ness yaw n; it's
your own fau lt: why did you stir up the
unfortunate Tsarskoe Selo hermit, whom
th e mad dem on of paper-blo tching wa s
already egg ing on . . . " He quite irreverently add resses th e oldest member of the
Pushkin clan as the ancient Nesto r and
adds , somewhat prophetically, th at "Fate
seems to have destined me to on ly two
kinds of lett ers-prom isory and excusatory . . ."
Even befor e his g raduation from th e
Lycee, Pushkin was rega rded as a rival by
such literary giants of th e Russian literary
establishment as Zh ukovs ky and Bat yu sh kov . In 181 6 he wrote to Zhukovsky, "My
dear Mr. Zhukovsky, [ hope th at [ sha ll
have the pleasu re of seeing you tomorrow ... " After readin g Pus hkin's Ruslan
and Lyudmila of 18 20, Z hukovsky pre sented the young man with his portrait,
inscr ibed "To a victo rious pupil from a
defeated ma ster ." No t content to have
taken the young er ge neration, as well as
the older poe t, by sto r m, Pushkin wrote to
Vyazemsk y, "Z h ukovsky infu riates mewhat has he come to like in thi s (T ho mas )
More, this prim imi tator of deform ed

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Q uotes from California Magazine

J ul y. 1986
Reservations: (4 15) 392-3434

lHE 1\.1ARKHorKINS lNTERCONTINENTAL SAN ffiANClSCO

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51

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O rienta l imagination?" Th ese utterances

ar e n ot cont rad ict or y-Pu sh kin did
re spe ct Zh ukovsky as a com petent literatician, but was indeed out raged with an y
superficial Orientalism . Wh en gain ing an
understanding of Pushkin th e man and
artis t as see n through his lett ers, it must
be remem bered tha t he is in all cas es
respondin g to the pr ecise circumst ances at
ha nd , in a mann er ap pr opria te to h is
relation ship to the person he is addressing. He has no allegiance to any th eor y of
life or art, but a de ep commitment to
h u man e valu es in bo th, va lues w hich
were to deepen throughou t his life.
After g raduation in 181 7, Pushkin
became a clerk in t he Foreign Office.
However, like many such positions held
by the gen try , this job in volved no work.
He led th e life of a dissolute sensualis t. "As
yo ur hist or ian," he wrote in 181 9 to his
fr iend Pavel Ma nsur ov, "I shall tell you
about your fellows. Everyth ing is going as
before: the cha mpagne, th an k God, is
lus ty -the actresses likewi se-the form er
gets drunk up , and th e latt er. . . Amen .
Amen. Th at's as it oug ht to be." Before
lo ng, ho wever, T sar Alexande r I became
a w a re of so m e of Pu sh ki n 's pro torevolutionary verses and the poe t wa s
commanded to lea ve S1. Pe t ers burg .
Im med iat ely u pon being transferred to
Ekat erinoslav "! became bored," he writes
to his bro ther Lev in September 1820 , "I
went boating on th e Dnep r, I took a swim,
and I caug h t a feve r, as I usually do.
Ge ne ral Raevsky, who wa s en ro ute to the
Ca ucasus with a son and tw o da ug ht ers,
found me .. . his son pr oposed to me a

Nathalie Pushkin, the poet's wife, in an 1844

engraving by V. Gay.
jour ney t o the C a uca s ia n water in g
places." Th ese tw o months in the Caucasu s w er e some of the happiest moments in
Pushkin's life. It wa s through the Raevskys tha t he firs t came to kn ow Byro n,
w hom he im mediately esteemed, as did
an y would-be mod ern, mea ning Ro mantic, poet of th e time. "Poet r y somber,
heroic, pow erful, Byron ic is yo ur tru e
desti ny-kill the ma n of old in yourself,"
he exhor ted his fr iend and fellow poet
Anton Delvig in 18 21,
Push kin wrote a series of verse tales,
among them the master piece en titled,
au tobiograp hically enough, The Prisoner of
the Caucasus, on the pattern of Byro n's

Statue of Peter the Great ("The Bronze Horseman") on Senate Square in St. Petersburg, as j f appeared
in 1810,

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52

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The Pushkin family estate at M ikhayJovskoye, to which the poet was exiled in 1824.
O rien tal tales. Here Push kin him self has
fallen prey to a Briton 's O rien talism , just
as Zhukovsky had . Still,alth oug h Pu sh kin
was to bath e himself in Byronism for a
shor t time, th e onl y lasting effect s of thi s
im m e rs ion w e r e in tech ni ca l matte rs
relating especially to the use of poetic
mete r. By th e ti m e h e wro te Eugene
Onegin, this and a mis t of Romantic iro ny
were all th at remained of his Byro nic
bapti sm.
For tw o years, Push kin did a litt le
official wor k in Kishinev and returned to
the life of pleasu re he had led in SI.
Pete rsburg. He spent mu ch of his time
with the group of revolutiona ries even tually to be kn ow n as th e De cem br ist s.
Though it was not completed un til 1831, it
was in 1823 in Kish inev th at he began to
write his gr eate st work, th e "novel in
verse " Eugene Onegin, called by Edmu nd
Wilson "perhaps the most influen tial an d
w ithin Rus sia the most widely popu lar
work o f Russian liter at ure."
Eugene Orregin is a stor y classical in its
spirit and in its humanity, ye t Rom ant ic in
its m ethod s. It is a sati r e o f Ru ssian
provincial and city life in th e 18205. It is
par tly au tobiog raphical: th e narrat or is
Pushkin him self . "The hero of m y novel,
w ithou t pre ambles, for thwith, I'd like you
to meet : O negin, a good pal of mine . . ."
Pu shki n mak es frequ ent mention of his
. own wo rks in Onegin and eve n nam es his
'ow n fr iends and mistresses among the
characters, clearl y establishing himself as
the first -person na r rato r. Furthermore,
O negi n him self sh ares qu alit ies of his
"pal" Pu shkin, and can from time to time
be iden tified with his aut ho r. "He had
e no u g h k no wl ed ge of La t in," w r it es

54

Pu sh kin of O negin, "to mak e ou t epigraphs, descan t on [uven al, pu t at the

bottom of a letter vale. . ." Like his creat ion O ne g tn. Pu sh k in u sed th e La tin
farew ell in letters and conversation, a
habi t he adopted fro m Voltaire. Onegin,
like Pus hkin, is a Byroni c figure, a young,
aloof rom antic, cyn ical beyond his years,
success ful w ith the fair sex, yet bored
with his lifestyle. Edmu nd Wilson, who
did more to mak e English-speaker s aware
of Pushkin 's greatness tha n an y other
cr iti c, sa id o f O negin that Pus hkin
"neither exalts him in the perver se Romantic wa y nor yet, in exposing his weakne sses, hands hi m over to conve n tiona l
moralit y .. . Pu sh kin's 'novel in verse '
came out of his deepest self-know ledge."
Thou gh Zhu kovsky's tran slat ion of Don
Juan influenced th e rhythms of the novel,
it is "the opposite o f Don Jua n in being a
w o r k o f u n wa ver ing co ncen t ra t io n ."
Eugene Onegin, th en , is at once classical
and Rom antic; per so nal. yet universal;
satir ical, yet. ultim ately , unjudgmental.
Like its creat o r, it accep ts the human
condition as it is, w ithou t an y preconceived pro gr am .
The firs t epistolary mention of the
no vel is to th e author's fr iend Vyazemski ,
whom we have met . After working o n th e
text for six months, Pu sh kin says "as for
what I am doing, I am writing, not a novel
but a novel in verse- a devil of a dif fer ence."
In 1823, Pu sh kin wa s tran sferred to
the relatively mor e Eu ropean port-City of
Odessa, wher e he wor ked steadily an d
became even more dissolu te, exhilarating
in It alian oper a, champag ne, and love
affairs with two marr ied women simul-

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taneously. These were Amalie Rizn ich,

the great sens ual love of his life, and th e
obje ct, af ter her death, of some of his most
beautiful vers es, and the Countess Elizabeth Vorontsova. Not su rprising ly, bu t
very unfortun ately, no letters to eithe r of
th ese wom en su rv iv e. Ale xa n d e r
Ra e vsk y, Pu shk m 's o ld colleague in
Byron, was also one of th e Countess'
lovers, an d a treach ero us one. In 1824, the
poet was su dden ly expelled fr om Odessa
an d ordered to live per m anently on hi s
mother's estate in Mikha ylovsko ye in th e
province of Pskov. After qu ar reling w ith
his parents, with wh om he had never been
dose, Pu sh kin lived alon e at Mikhaylovskoye with his old nurse. One of hi s best
kn ow n lyrics, "Win te r Evening: ' w as
written to her and captu res th e mood of
that per iod. "T he sto rm covers th e sky in
darkn es s, spin n in g th e snow y w h irl winds; now it howls like a wild be ast , now
it cries like a child, no w it sudde nly ru stle s
the thatch on a ram shackle roof now, like
a belated traveler, it knocks at our w indew . Our tumble-down hu t is gloomy and
dark. Why, little old lady, ha ve you fallen
silen t by the window ?" Here nature is an
image for Pu shkin and his life.
In 1825, du ring the Decembrfst up rising , Alexande r Pu shki n was in Pskov, safe
from blame, at his mother's. But th e ne w
T sar was clearl y awa r e of Pu sh ki n' s
connection wit h th e revolu tion ari es. As
the critic Prin ce Mirsky obse rved, "by a
ma st er stro ke of clever policy, (he) summoned the poet to Moscow (Sept ember
1826 ).. gra n ted him a fu ll pardon , an d
prom ised to be his speci al patron an d
protector." T his was indeed the act of an
enligh tene d despot-aware of the poet's
popular it y, gre at gifts and troublesome
temperament, Tsa r Nich olas I kep t Pus hkin within easy observation, yet in an
environ ment in w hich he cou ld w rite as
much as h e liked. Bu t the protection of his
clemen t pr ince becam e ins ufferable to
Pu shktn, who se spirit languish ed . The
ne xt fo ur years saw the completion of a
few new wo rks, while others dragged on
or wer e lef t incom plete. Severa l of h is best
efforts we re sh elved by th e censor, including Boris GodunoD, and th ough Pus h kin
pract ically inv en ted the now-co m mon
Ru ssian habit of circu lating his work in
man uscript, he cou ld n ot receive pub lication fees for them. The two censors most
odious were Shishkov and Benkendorff.
The latter was the leader of Pushk in's
per secution and furthermore abused him

San Francisco O pera

Baron Geerges D'A nthes in a contemporary

engraving.
for his black anc est r y. "I avail m yself to
speak to you of a completely personal
matter," Pu shkin wrote him,
about a
y ear ago in one of ou r jo u r na ls was
prin ted a sa tir ical article in which a certain
man of letters wa s spoken of...it add ed
th at h is m other was a mulatto whose
father, a poor pi ckaninn y, had been
bou gh t by a sailor for a bottle of rum ...
Peter the Gr eat little res embled a drunken
sailor...'"
Our poet made several attempts to
settle do wn, and ha ving been on ce
refused, was finally accepted by and in
18 31 married the eighteen year- old
beauty Nathalie Goncharova. The period
before the wedding was spe n t at T sars koye Selo . His financial affairs w ere a
wreck, bu t Pushkin trie d to make plans for
his com ing family life. From the "Ts ar's
Village " he w rote to Benkendorff, "1make
bold to disturb Your High Excellency with
a most humble r equest for pe r mission to
publish in a sepa ra te book the poems of
min e w hich have alre ady been publi shed
during the last three yea rs." This is a
groveling Pushktn we have n ot see n since
the da ys of the Lycee. In the same let ter
we find evidence of the poet's humiliating
situation and its effect on his art, 'T he
Sovereign's trust places on m e the obligation to be a most strict cens or toward
myself." Her e, Pushkin is not speakin g in
fo rm aliti es; h e is ac knowledg in g t he
condi tio ns of h is pat ronage.
H

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A romantic vision of Alexander Pushbn .

represented in an 18 3 7 engraving by N.
Konoshchenko.
At last Boris Godunov was allowed to
be pr int ed , as a speci al roya l wedding
favo r, after five years o f suppression. It
met with h ar sh criticism .
Pushkin's marriage was at fir st quite
a happy one, but Nat ha lie wa s cold and
no t embar ras sed by any intellectua l pretensions. Worse th an thi s, it soo n became
clear th at hi s p resence a t court wa s
tolerated in orde r tha t h is bea u tifu l wife
cou ld be in vited to social eve n ts. In fact, to
facilitat e th is, Nicholas mad e Pu sh kin a
"gen tleman of the chambe r" in 1834, a
title usua lly give n to men in their ea rly
twenties and an honor th e poet deeply
resented . To h is friend Pavel Nashchokin
Pushkin wrot e " Here a re so m e o t he r
pieces o f news fo r you : I've been a Kammerjunker since th e mon th of January .
The Bronu Horseman was not pas sed ..."
P ush kin a ll but aba n do ned poetry, at
w hich he h ad no t wo rked much since his
en ga gem ent to Nathalie, and de vot ed
him self to writing prose stories and to
hist ories that would never be completed.
He beg an to fe el inc r easi ng ly s t ifled
("Pus h kin died fr om lack of ai r: ' sa id
Mayak ovsk y lat er ), bu t, afte r repeated
refusa ls was allowed to star t a literary
journal. The COr/temporary, in 1836. Like
eve rythi ng Pu sh kin did aft er 1831, this
effort met with no publ ic success.
T h e poe t' s t r agi c e n d par alleled

58

exactly tha t of one of his ow n characters,

Lens ky in Eugene O tug in. H e beca me
exasperatingly jealous of the att en tions
pai d Nat ha lie by t h e Baro n Geo rg e
D'Anthes, a Fren chm an in th e Russian
serv ice. Pu sh kin cha llenged him to a duel,
but th is eve nt wa s ci rc u m ve n t ed by
D'Anthes's sudden marriage to Na thalie's
si s ter, m akin g Pu shk in ' s s u s p icio n s
appear ridiculou s. But just a few days aft er
th e wedding, he learned that Na thalie and
D'Ant hes h ad aga in secr e tly met, an d
Pu shkin d emanded sa tis fac tion in an
un ambiguous lett er to th e Baron's father.
"Baro n!" he writes, "Perm it me to su mmarize w hat has jus t taken place . . .1 am
oblig ed to point ou t. .. that you r ro le has
n o t be en altoge ther seem ly. You, th e
representative of a crowned head, have
patern ally acted as you r son's pander .. .
like an obscene old wom an , you go and lie
in wa it for my wife on every corner, in
o rd e r to t ell h e r of the love o f yo u r
bastard, and when, ill w ith syphillis, he
was kep t hom e, you wou ld say he was
dying of love fo r h er. . ."
From a comm un icat ion such as th is
D'Anthes cou ld not sh rink. Satisfactio n
was gra n ted o n Jan uary 27, 1837. Pushkin's last letter is grim in its trivialit y.
"Dear Madam e, Alexand ra Osipovna, I
reg ret extremely that it will be impossible
for me to come at yo ur invita tion tod ay."
T h at afte rn oon, in a Fren ch duel cl
volontt, Pushkin and D'Anthes approached
each othe r, pist ols in ha nd . As a seriou s
duelis t, Pu sh kin allowed his adversa r y to
fire first , in order that he, Push kin, migh t
advan ce to the barriere, th e limit of th e noman's-land uncrossa ble by each, and fire
at point-blank range.
Bu t by accep ting D 'Anthes's fire,
Pu sh kin accepted h is projectile as well.
Mortally wou nded, Alexander Ser geyevich Push kin, and indeed the Golden Age
of Russian poe try, died tw o days later. As
Prince Mirsky observed, "for fear o f pu blic
demon stration s o f sy mpa th y, his coffin
was hu rr ied away in the night from St.
Pe tersbu rg to th e monast ery near Mikhaylovskoye, which he had chosen for
h is burial place ." T he pa ra llels bet wen
Push kin's and Mozart's lives and pe rso nalities are num erou s and of ten striking,
bu t nowh ere mor e haunting than in the
fact that before leaving fo r his fatal due l.
Push kin took a few minu tes' time to pu t
th e finishin g touches on The Stone Guest,
his drama based on the same legen d th at

inspired Moz ar t's Don Giovanni.

San Francisco Opera