on rereading "the bronze horseman"

Canadian Slavonic Papers

On Rereading "The Bronze Horseman"Author(s): GLEB ŽEKULINSource: Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 29, No. 2/3 (June-September 1987), pp. 228-240Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40868750 .

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GLEB ZEKULIN

On Rereading "The Bronze Horseman"

F. M. Dostoevskii concluded his speech at the unveiling of the Pushkin monument in Moscow with the words:

IlyiiiKHH yMep b iiojihom pa3BHTHH CBOHX chu h ôeccnopHO yHec c C060H B rpo6 HeKOTopyio BejiHKyio TañHy. H bot mu Tenepb 6e3 Hero 3Ty TañHy pa3raAbiBaeM. l

The "razgadyvanie tainy Pushkina" has been going on for the last 150 years and will probably continue to exercise the scholarship of future students of Russian literature for many more years. But according to N. V. Izmailov and O. S. SoloVeva, among others, Pushkin's poèma, "The Bronze Horseman," has puzzled readers more than any other of his "works in verse or in prose, his lyrical, epic and dramatic works."2

The German Slavicist Armin Knigge has examined what appears to be practically all of the available literature on "The Bronze Horseman" and divided it into three groups.3 The first of these groups, or, as he calls them, Interpretationsmodelle, is the 'statehood' conception, formulated by Belinskii and developed and refined by B. Engel'gardt, L. P. Grossman, G. A. Gukovskii and, unexpectedly, D. S. Merezhkovskii, who was philosophically opposed to the others.4 In this conception, Pushkin is

1 . F. M. Dostoevskii, Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh, Tom 10 (Moscow, 1958), p. 459.

2. N. V. Izmailov, " 'Mednyi vsadnik' A. S. Pushkina: Istorna zamysla 1 sozdaniia, publikatsii i izucheniia," in A. S. Pushkin, Mednyi vsadnik (Literaturnye pamiatniki) (Leningrad, 1978); O. S. Soloveva, " 'Ezerskii' i 'Mednyi vsadnik': Istoriia teksta," in Pushkin: Issledovaniia i materialy, Vol. Ill (Moscow-Leningrad, 1960), p. 269.

3. Armin Knigge, PuSkins Verserzählung "Der Eherne Reiter in der russi- schen Kritik: Rebellion oder Unterwerfung, Biblioteca Slavonica, Bd. 23 (Amster- dam, 1984).

4. B. Engel'gardt, "Istorizm Pushkina," in Pushkinist: Istoriko-literaturnyi sbornik, Tom II (St. Petersburg, 1916); L. P. Grossman, Pushkin (Moscow, 1958); G. A. Gukovskii, Pushkin i problemy realisticheskogo stilia (Moscow, 1957); D. S. Merezhkovskii, "Pushkin," in D. S. Merezhkovskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Tom XIII (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1911).



Vol. XXIX, Nos. 2 &3 "The Bronze Horseman" | 229

seen as sympathetic to Peter the Great, the symbol of Russia's national might and aspirations. Consequently, he has no difficulty in resolving the question of Russia's historical fate, which is represented in the poèma on the level of the personal conflict between Peter and Evgenii, in favour of Peter.

The second, 'humane' or 'humanistic' conception was first formulated by V. la. Briusov and developed by A. Makedonov, but, in the opinion of Knigge, refined and properly reformulated by G. P. Makagonenko and I. M. Toibin.5 In it Pushkin is held to side with a private person who has been excluded, due to his apparent insignificance, from the historical order, that is, with Evgenii, the unambitious déclassé petty clerk.

The third conception, which was formulated by S. Bondi and, more recently, by E. A. Maimin, underscores the "tragic insolubility of the conflict."6 It maintains that Pushkin leaves it to history to decide which of the competing truths - that of Peter or that of Evgenii - will ultimately carry the day.

Using as his methodological approach the productive theory of recep- tion as developed by the School of Constance, Knigge refuses to draw any conclusions which would move us closer to solving the problem. Indeed, he remarks (p. 44) that "The Bronze Horseman" "besitzt in besonderem Masse die Eigenschaft aller klassischen Literaturwerke: es widersetzt sich jeder vereindeutigenden Interpretation." This article cannot overcome this resistance to interpretation but will draw attention to two or three points which deserve comment.

As has been noted by virtually every commentator, Pushkin's main device in composing "The Bronze Horseman" was contrast. He opposed Peter the Great, or, to be exact, Peter's monument, as the symbol of the State or Statehood, to Evgenii, the symbol of an individual. Put slightly differently, he opposed the symbol of the wilful and therefore powerful man to the symbol of the insignificant and therefore powerless man. But the opposition here is not as clear-cut as it has seemed to some. It was not

5. V. Briusov, Moi Pushkin (Nachdruck der Ausgabe Moskau-Leningrad, 1929; rpt. Munich, 1970); A. Makedonov, Gumanizm Pushkina (Moscow, 1937); G. P. Makagonenko, Tvorchestvo A. S. Pushkina v 1830-egody (1833-1836) (Lenin- grad, 1982); I. M. Toibin, Pushkin: Tvorchestvo 1830-kh godov i voprosy istorizma (Voronezh, 1976).

6. S. Bondi, "Mednyi vsadnik," in A. S. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh, Tom III (Moscow, 1960), pp. 517-21; E. A. Maimin, Pushkin: Zhizn i tvorchestvo (Moscow, 1981).



230 I Revue Canadienne des Slavistes Juin-Septembre 1987

the Bronze Horseman's angry pursuit that brought about Evgenii's mad- ness and ultimately death, but the fury of the elemental force. His mind snapped not when he sat astride the marble lion with the water of the Neva lapping at his feet and the kumir na bronzovom kone turning his back to him, but when he was looking, in a suburb of the city, for the house in which lived his Parasha with her widowed mother - and found nothing there:

. . . Tß£ HCe £OM? H nojioH cyMpaHHOH 3a6oTbi Bee XOAHT, XOAHT OH KpyrOM, TojiKyeT rpoMKO caM c coõoio - H Bßpyr, y^apa b jio6 pyicoio, 3axoxoTaji. (II/60-65)7

The mad Evgenii should have rightly addressed his half-hearted threat

",n,06p0, CTpOHTCITb HVAOTBOpHblñ! -

LLIenHyji oh, 3jio6ho 3aApOHcaB, -

Yaco Te6e! . . ." (11/177-79)

not to the Bronze Horseman, the symbol of earthly power, but to the destructive element, in the same way that in an early draft Pushkin made the Bronze Horseman threaten the river:

. . . PÍ3 boa BO3HHKHVH MeAHOK) TJiaBOK)

KyMHp Ha 6pOH3OBOM KOHe, HeBe 6e3yMHoñ b thuihhc

rpO3H HeABHKHOK) pyKOK).8

The elemental force has destroyed Evgenii's prospective happiness much as it has heavily damaged Peter's city.

The confrontation, then, is not between Peter and Evgenii but between Man, however powerful or powerless, on the one hand, and Nature on the other. As the late Tsar Alexander, observing from the balcony of his palace

7. References to the text of "The Bronze Horseman" are from the facsimile of the 1833 edition with numbered verses; references are marked in this text in the following manner: for the Prologue P followed by verse number: thus- P/5; for Part I: 1/5; for Part II: II/5.

8. A. S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobrante sochinenii v desiati tomakh, lorn IV (Moscow, 1963), p. 540.



Vol. xxix, Nos. 2 &3 "The Bronze Horseman" | 231

with sadness and mournfulness the devastations inflicted upon the city, rightly remarks:

. . . "C EoHCHeñ CTHXHeñ

LJapaM He coBjia/jeTb." . . . (I/I 10-1 11)

The city has suffered horribly,

OÕJTOMKH XHHCHH, 6peBHbI, KpOBJIH, ToBap 3anacjiHBOH ToproBjiH, IIOHCHTKH OJie^HOH HHLUeTbl, Fpo3OH CHeceHHbie mocth, Fpoõa c pa3MbiToro Kjiaflonma rijibiByT no yjiHuaM! Hapofl 3pHT Bo>KHH THeB H Ka3HH HCflCT. Ybw! Bee rHÕHeT: KpoB h iiHiija! F ne õy^eT B3HTb? . . . (1/98-106)

but, within a day or two, normal life returns to it:

. . . YTpa jiyn H3-3a ycTajibix, ojie^Hbix Tyn BjiecHyji HaA thxok) ctojihuch H He Hamen y»ce cjieAOB Be^bi BHepauiHen; . . .

B nopflflOK npe)KHHH Bee boiiijio. (11/69-73; 75)

Mankind's striving, its will and its ideals, are the force which sustains it and moves it, albeit slowly and with difficulty, towards better times, even if this advance is achieved often at the price of suffering. Hence, Pushkin's hopeful wish with which he ends the Prologue:

KpacyñcH, rpa^ ITeTpoB, h ctoh HeicojieÕHMO KaK Pocchh, fla yMHpHTCH ace c toõoh H noõoKAeHHaa cthxhh; Bpa>KAy h njieH cTapHHHbiñ cboh IlycTb BOJiHbi (J)HHCKHe 3a6y^yT H TineTHOH 3J1OÕOK) He õyzjyT TpeBO)KHTb BeHHbiñ coH IleTpa! (P/84-91)

In his study of "The Bronze Horseman," Valerii Briusov sees the confrontation as being direct between Peter and Evgenii. He claims that



232 I Canadian Slavonic Papers June-September 1987

"Peter is the incarnation of autocracy,"9 as if Peter the Great himself were a character in the poèma. In fact, only the first 20 verses of the Prologue are devoted to Peter, and in those 20 verses he is referred to four times without being named: Na beregu pustynnykh voln stoial on (P/2); / v dal gliadel (P/3); prednim shiroko (P/3); and/ dumal on (P/l 1). In the whole of the work, the name of Peter is used only twice, and that in its adjectival function, i.e., in the genitive case: Petra tvorenie (P/41) and son Petra (P/91). Otherwise, there are only oblique references to him: gradPetrov (P/84); ploshchad Petrova (1/124); and two toponymies: Petrograd and Petropoï (I/I; 92). There is also Peter's monument which is twice referred to as kumir na bronzovom kone (1/163; II/143-4), once as gordelivyi istukan (11/174), and twice as Mednyi vsadnik (11/191; 195).

Pushkin, however, provides a detailed description - a portrait - of Peter in effigy:

(EßreHHH v3Haji . . . Toro,) KtO HenOABH)KHO BO3BbIIIiaJTCH Bo Mpaice mcahok) rjiaBoñ, Toro, Hbeñ BOJieñ poKOBoñ IIoa MopeM ropoA ocHOBajica . . . y>KaceH OH B OKpeCTHOH MITie! Ranas Ay Ma Ha nejie! Kaicafl CHjia b hcm coicpbrra! A b ceM KOHe Kanon oroHb! (11/146; 151-158)

The last four lines each end with an exclamation mark - this is how Evgenii sees Peter in darkness; they are followed by Pushkin's own meditation- apostrophe:

Kyija Tbi cKaneuib, ropAMH KOHb, H Tj't onycTHiiib tw Konbrra? O MomHbiñ BJiacTejiHH cyAböbi! He TaK jiH tw HaA caMoñ 6e3AHoñ Ha BbicoTe, y3Aoñ »cejie3HOH PoccHK) noAHHJi Ha Awõbi? (11/159-164)

The portrait concludes with the reference to lik derzhavtsa polumira (11/168). The scene, the description, and the meditation recall Lomonosov's five inscriptions composed, according to A. A. Morozov,10 between 1743

9. Briusov, Moi Pushkin, p. 67. 10. M. V. Lomonosov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, Bibhoteka poeta (Bolshaia

seria), 2d ed. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1965), p. 530.



Vol. XXIX, Nos. 2&3 'The Bronze Horseman" | 233

and 1747, when plans were entertained by Empress Elizabeth for the erec- tion of two statues of Peter, one standing and one equestrian. The work was entrusted to the architect Carlo Rastrelli who during Peter's life, in 1717, had taken a wax mask of the Emperor's face and who is believed to have sculpted a bust, the only known true likeness of Peter.11 In the end, only the equestrian statue was cast and placed in 1799 in front of the Military Engineering College (Inzhenernyi zamok) on the Field of Mars in St. Petersburg - the poteshnye Marsovy polia mentioned in the Prologue to "The Bronze Horseman." Lomonosov's inscription concludes with the following four lines:

Ho o6pa3OM ero KpacyeTCH cefi rpafl. B3Hpan Ha Hero, Ilepc, TypoK, Pot, CapMaT BejiHHecTBy jiHija repoñcKoro ny^HTca H MepTBoro b mcah õecnyBCTBeHHOH CTpauiHTca.12

There is a certain correspondence between Lomonosov's and Pushkin's imagery of the fear evoked by Peter's statue: Evgenii, too,

C 6OH3HbK> AHKOH Ha JIHUe (11/136) H B3OpbI AHKHe HaBejl (11/167) (Ha Toro) Kto HenoflBHHCHO BO3Bbiuiajica Bo Mpaice müahok) rjiaBoñ. (II/151-152)

And, perhaps stretching the point a little, Pushkin's lik derzhavtsa polumira (11/168) is not far from Lomonosov's velichestvo litsa geroiskogo. Lomonosov's inscription enumerates Peter's achievements:

FpeMHiuHe no BceM KOHijaM 3eMHbiM noóeflbi, H poccoB Hpe3 Becb cbct TopacecTBOBaBLiiHX cjieAw,

CoõpaHHe HayK, HcnpaBjieHHbi cynbi, IIpeMeHHoe b peKax TeneHHe boaw,

riOKpblTblH (JUIOTOM nOHT, CpeAH BOJIH rpa^bl HOBbI, H npoHHe ACJia (. . .)13

In another of the five inscriptions, speaking of Peter, Lomonosov writes: prostër v rabotu ruku.14

11. A. A. Morozov, in ibid., p. 530; P. Kann, Leningrad (Moscow, 1959), pp. 45-46.

12. Lomonosov, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, p. 225. 13. Ibid., p. 224. 14. Ibid., p. 223.




In the Prologue to "The Bronze Horseman" Pushkin wrote:

OTCenb rpo3HTb Mbi 6yAeM uiBe^y, 3Aecb 6yAeT ropoA 3ajio>KeH,

CioAa no HOBbiM hm BOJiHaM Bee (})jiarH b tocth 6yAyT k HaM (P/12-12; 18-19)

and also twice kumir s prostërtoiu rukoiu (1/162-3; 11/143). Since the inscriptions were published in Lomonosov's Sochineniia in 1751 and in Sobrante sochinenii in 1757, it is more than probable that Pushkin had read them.

Critics agree on the contrast between the Prologue and the body of the poèma; the Prologue is written in the manner of an ode, in an exalted and enthusiastic style. Contrary, however, to the view held by some, it is not the use of Church-Slavonic lexicon which creates this impression. Church-Slavonicisms are actually few in the Prologue: otsel' grad (twice); polnoshchnyi (twice); blato; the demonstrative pronoun sei (which Pushkin idiosyncratically and widely used in both his poetry and prose all through his life). There are also poeticisms, rather than Slavonicisms, such as zalozhit' gorod rather than osnovaf; voznëssia instead of podnialsia; lampada instead of lampa', nedvizhnyi (an adjectival formation from the noun stem dvig-) instead of the present participle passive form nedvizhimyi' nekolebimyi (marked as poetical in Smirnitskii) instead of nepokolebimyi; and umiritsia instead of smiritsia or umirotvoritsia. There is one case of truncation or loss of the long adjectival ending: veshni vody, and two instances of extended reflexive particle: reka neslasia and odelasia Neva; finally, there are two instances of adjective formation in imitation of the Church-Slavonic: tëmnozelënyesady and porfironosnaia vdova. The solemn odie tone is achieved by a saturation with poetic figures, of which metonymies, epithets, and personifications are the most frequent. To enumerate them all would mean to repeat all of the 91 verses of the Pro- logue proper, omitting only its last five-verse stanza which serves as the transition from the Prologue to the story and enables Pushkin to change drastically the tone and the mood. A few tropes must suffice as examples. The well known quatrain:

H nepeA MjiaAiueio CTOJiHijeH IloMepKjia cTapaa MocKBa, KaK nepeA hobok) ijapHqeñ Ilop(J)HpoHOCHa5i BAOBa (P/39-42)



Vol. xxix, Nos. 2 &3 'The Bronze Horseman" | 235

which, incidentally, is the only simile in the Prologue, or the sequence of three personifications:

B rpaHHT OAejiacfl HeBa; MocTbi noBHCJiH HaA BOAaMH; TeMH03ejieHbiMH ca^aMH Ee noKpbijiHCb ocTpoBa (P/35-38)

or, again, the daring metor»ymical use of epithets:

BeperoBOH ee rpaHHT (P/46) Orpafl y30p nyryHHbiH (P/47)

and, finally, the beautifully playful extended personification:

H He nycicaíi TbMy HOHHyio Ha 3OJioTbie Heõeca, OAHa 3apH cMeHHTb ApyryK) CneiiiHT, AaB hohh non naca (P/55-58)

The odie tone of the Prologue harks back to Lomonosov and to the spirit of his literary theory and practice. According to Ilia Serman, Lomo- nosov was the first to construct the ode in the new manner, giving the poet, as the author of the exposition, the right to speak in the name of the nation as a whole and thus to express not the personal views and biases but the common national feelings, ideals, and attitudes towards the incident on the occasion of which the ode was being written.15 The structure of the Lomo- nosovian ode acquired a definite form which consisted of three parts of unequal length; in the first part the poet's persona appeared and the theme was set; in the second part the exposition of the theme was presented; and in the third part the poet's persona reappeared to draw, as it were, the lesson from the exposition. At the same time, Lomonosov codified the form of the ode-stanzas of ten verses each, in iambic tetrameter, with a set sequence of rhymes: ababecdeed. Furthermore, according to Serman, Lomonosov in his odes strove to achieve the unification of the Russian and the Church-Slavonic and thus to create the language of the new literature and to establish the boundary which divided poetry from the rest of literary activities.

15. Istoriia russkoi poezii v dvukh tomakh, Tom I (Leningrad, 1968), pp. 72-78. All this Lomonosov formulated in his Kratkoe rukovodstvo k ritorike and in Ritorika.




In the Prologue to "The Bronze Horeseman," Pushkin follows the structure of the first part of the Lomonosovian ode in content, tone, mood, and, of course, meter. In the spirit of the Lomonosovian reform, he then introduces the innovations required by the new kind of literature he was in the process of formulating. Perhaps the main need of the new literature was the revaluation of prose in relation to poetry; it is well documented that Pushkin turned his attention by the end of the 1820s to the prezrennaia proza, as he jokingly called it in "Graf Nulin."

The subtitle of "The Bronze Horseman" is "A Petersburg Tale" (Peterburgskaia povest). In his remarkable Introduction to the Blackwell's Russian Texts edition of "Po vesti pokoinogo Ivana Petrovicha Belkina,"16 Professor Boris Umbegaun, in characterizing the novelty of Pushkin's prose, lists the following features which distinguished "The Tales of Bel- kin" from the preceding and contemporary prose: "The Tales of Belkin" was written in the manner of rapid narrative; the subject was treated with extreme conciseness; the action developed logically, without digressions, and stopped at the exact moment when the theme was exhausted; action dominated in the work and descriptions were used only sparsely and in order to explain and enhance it; characters were presented in a laconic manner but without sacrificing their individuality; there was no overt philosophizing. Umbegaun further states that, before Pushkin, there were two kinds of poetry: poetry written in verse and poetry written in prose; in both could be found the same style, devices, and language. Pushkin's new prose, on the other hand, was characterized, in contrast to his poetry, by a sobriety, almost a dryness of style; the word order did not deviate from that of common speech; the sentences were short, simple, and clear; the epithets were restrained and concrete, rarely doubled and never tripled. As far as the language and the syntax were concerned, Pushkin followed Lomonosov's codification of Russian literary language which was a com- promise between the spoken Russian and the written Church-Slavonic: he drew from prostorechie as easily as from Church-Slavonic, used archaic or bookish forms, but remained always within the boundaries of educated spoken Russian. In this manner, Professor Umbegaun concluded, Pushkin created a language which unified the existing variety of styles that each had a definite function and a limited field of action, and showed that this unified language had infinite possibilities of stylistic expression.

The two parts of "The Bronze Horseman," the actual story, are written in a manner and style which correspond closely to the features of Pushkin's

16. (Oxford, 1960), pp. xi-xxvi.



Vol. XXIX, Nos. 2 &3 "The Bronze Horseman" | 237

prose described above. There is compactness and an almost total lack of the digressions which were used so lavishly in, for example, Evgenii Onegin. There are only two digressions, one of which begins with

. . . B tot rpo3HbiH rofl rioKOHHbiH ijapb eme PoccHeñ Co cjiaBOH npaBHJi (1/106-108)

and ends 8 verses farther down with

Ha 3Jioe õeflCTBHe numen. (I/113)

and the other is the four verses containing a sharply ironic remark about Count Dimitri Khvostov's poetry (11/85-88). This lack of distractions adds to the speed of the narrative. The subject of the tale is treated concisely, the action develops logically and stops abruptly when the theme is exhausted. The two characters, Evgenii and the statue, are presented in a laconic manner; 17 verses are devoted to the portrayal of Evgenii, of which 10y2 are taken up by the discussion of the protagonist's name, but it is precisely these 10y2 verses that individualize the hero more than the remaining 6l/2. There are 14 verses devoted to the description of the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, of which three refer, quite properly, to the horse, and four are the poet's apostrophe of the moshchnyi vlastelin sudby. These four verses individualize the protagonist more than the seven descriptive ones. The action progresses rapidly in a linear manner, with indications of precise chronology. The story begins in November - dyshal noiabr (1/2) - (the exact date is 6 November 1 824 in the evening), Neva vsiu noch rvalasia k moriu (1/71) and Poútru (I/75), on the 7th, the inundation started. It ended the following morning - vodasbyla (11/15) - and Evgenii, looking in vain for Parasha, went out of his mind. The night came - noch- naia mgla na gorod trepetnyi soshla (11/65) - and the following morning - utra luch (11/69) - that is 9 November, everything returned to normal, except for Evgenii, who for weeks and months- proshla nedelia, mesiats (11/97) - wondered through the city. Towards the end of the following summer, the summer of 1825 - Dni leta klonilis k oseni (11/120-121) - Evgenii had his late evening encounter with the Bronze Horseman - vo t'me nochnoi (11/129); v tëmnoi tishine (11/141); vozvyshalsia vo mrake mednoiu glavoi (11/152); v okrestnoi mgle (11/155) - and in the not precisely defined Spring- proshedsheiu vesnoiu (11/217) - his body was found on a small island down the Neva. Such exact chronology fits Pushkin's new prose style more than his poetry style.




These characteristic features of prose are enhanced by the unusually frequent use of enjambment. In the Prologue's 96 verses are four enjambments; in the 163 verses of Part I - 24 enjambments, plus two dubious ones; in the 222 verses of Part II - 49, plus three dubious ones; in all - 77 enjambments, not counting the five dubious ones, in 481 verses, or about 16 per cent. The enjambments are not regularly dispersed through Parts I and II, but rather clustered, and in the passages where these clusters appear, the reader is almost tempted to abandon the beautifully flowing iambic tetrameter and read them as prose.17

The prose style characteristics are enhanced still more by the use of prosaism. Here are a few examples: Itak, domoi prished, Evgenii striakhnul shinel] razdelsia, leg, no dolgo on zasnut'ne mog (1/27-29); or the introduction of Evgenii's thoughts, first as an internal monologue, then by direct speech:

>KeHHTbCH? Hy ... 3a ne m tkq hct!

Oho h thacjio, kohchho, HO HTO )K, OH MOJIOA H 3AOpOB, TpyzjHTbCH fleHb h HOHb totob; Oh Koe-KaK ceõe ycTpoHT IIpHIOT CMHpeHHblH H npOCTOH H B HeM Ilapainy ycnoKOHT. "IIpOHAeT, 6biTb MoaceT, toa Apyroñ -

MecTeHKO nojiyny - Ilapauie upenopyny xo3hhctbo Hame H BOcnHTaHHe peõflT . . . H CTaHeM >KHTb - h TaK ao rpoõa Pyica c pyKoñ aohacm mm o6a, H BHyKH Hac noxopoHHT . . ." (1/49-62)

Or such expressions as: pushche svir epela (1/83); kak zver' ostervenias' (1/86); on strashilsia (. . .) ne za sebia (1/132-133); dozhdemu v litso khlestal (1/136); blizëkhon'ko k volnam (1/146); vkrug nego voda i bol'she nichego

17. The influence of prose on Pushkin's poetry has been noticed by Tynianov (Iu. Tynianov, Arkhaisty i novatory [Moscow, 1929], pp. 273-75) and later by Izmailov (N. V. Izmailov, "Iz istorii zamysla i sozdaniia 'Mednogo vsadnika'," in Pushkin i ego sovremenniki, Vols. 38-39 [1930], p. 171), but, as Sandomirskaia points out {Pushkin: Itogi i problemy izucheniia [Moscow and Leningrad, 1966], p. 400), "these considerations and remarks by Tynianov only indicate an interesting and fruitful problem, but have not been elaborated by him." Sandomirskaia failed to mention that the first to write on this subject was P. Bitsilli.



Vol. xxix, Nos. 2 &3 "The Bronze Horseman" | 239

(1/158); tela valiaiutsia (11/47); sneslo ikh vidno (11/60); za svoim dobrom neprikhodil (II/102-3); raz on spal (II/l 19)' pokhoronili radi Boga (II/222). To this could be added the sparse use of almost intimate colloquialisms, such as pokoinyi tsar, bednyi, bednyi moi Evgenii (11/89), proshedsheiu vesnoiu.

All this leads to the suggestion that the subtitle Peterburgskaia povesf deserves attention. Was not Pushkin, rather than playfully reminding us of his earlier ambivalent use of the subtitle 'roman v stikhakW for Evgenii Onegin and 'povesf v stikhakft for GrafNulin (published in 1828, together with Baratynskii's "Bal" in one volume with the title "Dve povesti v sti- khakh"), now saying that in this poèma he was trying, once again, to take a step forward in the development of Russian literature by blurring the line that divides poetry from prose and by emphasizing the unitary character of literature, as long as it was art?

The ambivalence of "The Bronze Horseman" raises a final question. Is it possible that as Pushkin matured as a poet and prose-writer - and "The Bronze Horseman" is a most convincing example of his mastery - so he matured as a human being? The lack of pathos which characterizes "The Bronze Horseman" indicates an unwillingness to reveal emotional bias, and the lack of philosophizing - an unwillingness to impose a particular interpretation or point of view. Pushkin showed the same discretion in his novel Kapitanskaia dochka, the first outline of which he drew up in 1833, the same year that he wrote "The Bronze Horseman." In the juxtaposition of Pugachev/Grinev, as in the juxtaposition of Peter the Great/Evgenii, Pushkin broke with the romantic notion that man has the power to control history, and presented the 'new' view that the historical process is stronger than the power of Man to change his historical situation. As G. Krasnov remarked in 1984,18 Pushkin, towards the early 1830s, began to understand life as a continuous ever-changing onward movement in time. Hence, his unwillingness to pass categorical judgements, to propose definitive solu- tions, or even to take sides. The open-endedness of "The Bronze Horse- man" is the sign of Pushkin's open-mindedness, and, what is more, of his willingness to leave it to the reader to interpret and to form a judgement. And so, in spite of the times being often horrible - byla uzhasnaia pora (P/92) - and the story being s&d-pechalen budet moi rasskaz (P/96) - the reader does not put down the poèma with a feeling of anger or despair.

18. G. V. Krasnov, Pushkin: Boldinskie stranitsy (Gorkii, 1984); see also V. Meilakh, Tvorchestvo A. S. Pushkina: Razvitie khudozhestvennoi sistemy (Lenin- grad, 1984).




It was Professor P. Bitsilli who said in 1926, in what is one of the best studies of Pushkin's poetry,19 that it is "the harmony of symbols, together with the harmony of instrumentation and the rhythmic unity, that con- stitute the integrity (edinstvo) of Pushkin's works, (. . .) to look for it in something else is to waste time and effort." The perfection of the structure, its profound simplicity, its impeccable musicality, in short, its beauty produces in the reader of "The Bronze Horseman" a feeling of complete satisfaction. Perhaps Aleksandr Bestuzhev-Marlinskii summed up better than anyone the impact of Pushkin's art when he wrote:20

TojIbKO HCTHHHbie TaJiaHTH 3peK)T H My>KaK)T C JieTaMH, TOJlbKO B HX

npoH3BefleHHflx Hcne3aeT c roAaMH awmhwh iohouicckhh iuiaMeHb h

ycTynaeT MecTO poBHoñ TeruioTe h He ocjienHTejibHOMy, ho Jiyne3ap- HOMy cBeTy, - h KOHeu, hx nonpHma osHaMeHOBbiBaeTca TBopeHHHMH rjiy6oKHMH, KaK Mope, h BejiHnecTBeHHbiMH, KaK 3Be3AHoe He6o b th-

xyio h flCHyio hoht».

For me, "The Bronze Horseman" is just such a tvorenie.

19. P. Bitsilli, Etiudy o russkoi poezii (Prague, 1926), p. 112. 20. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii A. Marlinskogo v deviati tomakh, Tom II

(Moscow, 1978), p. 36.



on rereading "the bronze horseman"

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