Pushkin

How sad, that by the untimely thunder

Of Jehovah’s wrath it was struck!

From a letter to Wiegel, October 1823

KISHINEV WAS THE CAPITAL OF BESSARABIA, which lies between the rivers Dniester and Prut, the Danube delta and the Black Sea. It had been colonized successively by the Greeks, Romans and Genoese, had been annexed by the principality of Moldavia in 1367, become part of the Ottoman empire in 1513, and had been ceded to Russia in 1812 by the Treaty of Bucharest. When Pushkin arrived on 21 September 1820, he found a bustling, lively, colourful town, very different from the decaying imperial pomp of Ekaterinoslav. At that time it had some twenty thousand inhabitants. The majority were Moldavians, but there were also large Bulgarian and Jewish colonies, numbers of Greeks, Turks, Ukrainians, Germans, and Albanians, and even French and Italian communities; the relatively small Russian population consisted mainly of military personnel and civil servants. The old town, ‘with its narrow, crooked streets, dirty bazaars, low shops and small houses with tiled roofs, but also with many gardens planted with Lombardy poplars and white acacias’,

(#litres_trial_promo) was spread out along the flat and muddy banks of a little river, the Byk. On the hills above was the new town, with the municipal garden, the theatre and the casino, administrative offices, and a number of stone houses in which the governor, the military commander, the metropolitan and other notables lived.

Initially Pushkin put up in a small inn in the old town. At the beginning of October, however, he moved into a house rented by Inzov: a large, stone building in an isolated position near the old town, on a hill above the Byk. Inzov and several officials lived on the upper floors; Pushkin and his servant Nikita inhabited two rooms on the ground floor, through whose barred windows he looked out over an orchard and vineyard to the open country and mountains beyond. The walls were painted blue; one was soon disfigured with blobs of wax: Pushkin, sitting naked on his bed, would practise his marksmanship by – like Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street – picking out initials on the wall with wax bullets from his pistols. Another of Inzov’s officials, Andrey Fadeev, was obliged to share this room on his visits to Kishinev. ‘This was extremely inconvenient, for I had come on business, had work to do, got up and went to bed early; but some nights he did not sleep at all, wrote, moved about noisily, declaimed, and recited his verse in a loud voice. In summer he would disrobe completely and perform in the room all his nocturnal evolutions in the full nudity of his natural form.’

(#litres_trial_promo) On 14 July and 5 November 1821 earthquakes struck Kishinev. The second, more severe, damaged the house. Inzov and the civil servants moved out immediately, but Pushkin, either through indolence or affection for his quarters – the first independent lodging he had had – stayed put, living there by himself for several months.

The day after his arrival Pushkin presented himself to Inzov, who introduced him to some members of his staff: Major Sergey Malevinsky, the illegitimate son of General Ermolov, then commanding the Russian armies in the Caucasus; and Nikolay Alekseev, who was to become a close friend. Ten years older than Pushkin, he knew many of the latter’s friends in St Petersburg, and, with a taste for literature, ‘was the only one among the civil servants in whose person Pushkin could see in Kishinev a likeness to that cultured society of the capital to which he was used’.

(#litres_trial_promo) That evening Malevinsky took him to the casino in the municipal gardens, which also served as a club for officers, civil servants and local gentry. A rudimentary restaurant was attached to the club, run by Joseph, the former maître d’hôtel of General Bakhmetev, Inzov’s predecessor. It became a regular port of call for Pushkin, who heard from a waitress, Mariola, the Moldavian song on which he based his poem ‘The Black Shawl’.

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The following day Pushkin dined with his old friend and fellow-member of Arzamas, General Mikhail Orlov, recently appointed to the command of the 16th Infantry Division, whose headquarters were in Kishinev. Here he met Orlov’s younger brother, Fedor, a colonel in the Life Guards Uhlans, who had lost a leg at the battle of Bautzen, together with several of Orlov’s officers: Major-General Pushchin, who commanded a brigade in the division; Captain Okhotnikov, Orlov’s aide-de-camp; and Ivan Liprandi, a lieutenant-colonel in the Kamchatka regiment, and one of Orlov’s staff officers. Liprandi was an interesting, somewhat mysterious character, who soon became another of Pushkin’s intimates.

Born in 1790, the son of an Italian émigré and a Russian baroness, he had made a name for himself in military intelligence during the Napoleonic wars. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel at twenty-four, and seemed on the verge of a brilliant career, but after a duel – one of several – which resulted in the death of his opponent, was transferred from the guards to an army regiment and posted to Kishinev. Pushkin, who would describe him as ‘uniting genuine scholarship with the excellent qualities of a military man’,

(#litres_trial_promo) was immediately attracted to him, pestered him with questions about his duels, and borrowed books from his library. The day after meeting Pushkin, Liprandi dined with Prince George Cantacuzen and his wife Elena, the addressee of Pushkin’s Lycée poem, ‘To a Beauty Who Took Snuff.’ They asked Liprandi to bring Pushkin round to see them; though protesting that his acquaintance with the poet was very short, the next day he, Fedor Orlov, and Pushkin called on the Cantacuzens, stayed for dinner, and remained drinking until well after midnight.

Pushkin soon had a wide circle of acquaintances and friends among the civilians and officers in the town. Some he had known, or heard of, earlier: a Lycée friend, Konstantin Danzas, now an officer in the engineers, was stationed here, as were the cousins Mikhail and Aleksey Poltoratsky, both cousins of Anna Kern, whose beauty had so impressed Pushkin at the Olenins in St Petersburg. They were attached to a unit of the general staff which was carrying out a military topographical survey of Bessarabia. Another member was Aleksandr Veltman. Later a well-known novelist, at this time he dabbled in poetry, and, cherishing a profound admiration for Pushkin’s work, initially held himself timidly aloof from him, fearing a comparison between their achievements. Chance, however, brought them together; Pushkin learnt of his verse and, calling at Veltman’s lodgings, asked him to read the work on which he was then engaged: an imitation Moldavian folk-tale in verse, entitled ‘Yanko the Shepherd’, some episodes of which caused him to laugh uproariously.

Among the local inhabitants he frequently visited the civil governor, Konstantin Katakazi: ‘Having yawned my way through mass,/I go to Katakazi’s,/What Greek rubbish!/What Greek bedlam!’ he wrote.

(#litres_trial_promo) Most evenings a company gathered to play cards at the home of the vice-governor, Matvey Krupensky; here Pushkin could satisfy his addiction to faro. Krupensky’s large mansion housed not only the province’s revenue department, but also, in a columned hall decorated with a frieze emblematic of Russian military achievement, the town’s small theatre. At the beginning of November, a twenty-year-old ensign, Vladimir Gorchakov, who had just arrived in Kishinev and was attached to Orlov’s staff, attended a performance given by a travelling troupe of German actors. ‘My attention was particularly caught,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘by the entrance of a young man of small stature, but quite strong and broad-shouldered, with a quick and observant gaze, extraordinarily lively in his movements, often laughing in a surfeit of unconstrained gaiety and then suddenly turning meditative, which awoke one’s sympathy. His features were irregular and ugly, but the expression of thought was so fascinating that involuntarily one wanted to ask: what is the matter? What grief darkens your soul? The unknown’s clothing consisted of a closely buttoned black frock-coat and wide trousers of the same colour.’

(#litres_trial_promo) This was Pushkin; during the interval Alekseev introduced Gorchakov to him, and the two were soon deep in reminiscences of the St Petersburg theatre and of their favourite actresses, Semenova and Kolosova.

Another prominent member of Kishinev society was Egor Varfolomey, a wealthy tax-farmer and member of the supreme council of Bessarabia. He was extremely hospitable: it was very difficult to visit him and not stay to dinner; but for the young officers and civil servants the main attractions of the house were the informal dances in his ballroom and his eighteen-year-old daughter, Pulkheriya. She was a pretty, plump, healthy, empty-headed girl, with few powers of conversation, whose invariable reply to advances, compliments or witticisms was ‘Who do you think you are! What are you about!’ – Veltman, in a flight of fancy, surmised that she might be an automaton.

(#litres_trial_promo) Nevertheless, Pushkin, for want of a better object for his affections, fell in love with her during his stay in Kishinev. It was hardly a passionate affair, and did not prevent him from languishing, during the next three years, after many others: Mariya Schreiber, the shy seventeen-year-old daughter of the president of the medical board, for example; or Viktoriya Vakar, a colonel’s wife with whom he often danced; or the playful, dark-complexioned Anika Sandulaki. He sighed from afar after pretty Elena Solovkina, who was married to the commander of the Okhotsk infantry regiment and occasionally visited Kishinev, and made a determined assault on the virtue of Ekaterina Stamo, whose husband Apostol, a counsellor of the Bessarabian civil court, was some thirty years older than her. ‘Pushkin was a great rake, and in addition I, unfortunately, was considered a beauty in my youth,’ Ekaterina remarked in her recollections. ‘I had great difficulty in restraining a young man of his age. I always had the most strict principles, – such was the upbringing we all had been given, – but, you know, Aleksandr Sergeevich’s views on women were somewhat lax, and then one must take into account that our society was strange to him, as a Russian. Thanks to my personal tact […] I managed finally to arrange things with Aleksandr Sergeevich in such a way that he did not repeat the declaration which he had made to me, a married woman.’

(#litres_trial_promo) She was one of the seven children of Zamfir Ralli, a rich Moldavian landowner with estates to the west of Kishinev. Pushkin got to know the family very well during his stay in Kishinev: they were his closest friends among the Moldavian nobility, and he was especially intimate with Ivan, Ekaterina’s brother, a year younger than himself, who shared his literary tastes. Another Kishinev beauty was Mariya Eichfeldt, ‘whose pretty little face became famous for its attractiveness from Bessarabia to the Caucasus’.

(#litres_trial_promo) She had a much older husband: Pushkin christened the couple ‘Zémire and Azor’, after the French opéra comique with that name on the theme of Beauty and the Beast. He flirted with her in society, but refrained from pressing his advances further, as she was Alekseev’s mistress: ‘My dear chap, how unjust/Are your jealous dreams,’ he wrote.

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At the beginning of November General Raevsky’s two half-brothers, Aleksandr and Vasily Davydov, came to stay with Orlov. ‘Aleksandr Lvovich,’ Gorchakov noted, ‘was distinguished by the refinement of a marquis, Vasily flaunted a kind of manner peculiar to the common man […] They were both very friendly towards Pushkin, but Aleksandr Lvovich’s friendliness was inclined to condescension, which, it seemed to me, was very much disliked by Pushkin.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Orlov was about to visit the Davydov estate at Kamenka – some 160 miles to the south-east of Kiev, not far from the Dnieper – and the brothers also extended an invitation to Pushkin. He accepted with alacrity; Inzov gave his permission; and in the middle of November he left with the Davydovs. Passing through Dubossary, Balta, Olviopol and Novomirgorod, they arrived in Kamenka three days later. General Raevsky and his son Aleksandr were already there, having travelled down from Kiev; Mikhail Orlov and his aide-de-camp Okhotnikov soon followed, bringing with them Ivan Yakushkin, who ‘was pleasantly surprised when A.S. Pushkin […] ran out towards me with outstretched arms’: they had been introduced to one another in St Petersburg by Chaadaev.

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Kamenka was one of the centres of the Decembrist movement in the south; the other, more important, was Tulchin, the headquarters of the Second Army, where Pestel was stationed. The gathering here, ostensibly to celebrate the name-day, on 24 November, of Ekaterina Nikolaevna, the mother of General Raevsky and of the Davydov brothers, was in effect a meeting of a number of the conspirators: Orlov, Okhotnikov, Yakushkin and Vasily Davydov. The party dined luxuriously each evening with Ekaterina Nikolaevna, and then retired to Vasily’s quarters for political discussions.

Orlov and Okhotnikov left at the beginning of December. Pushkin had intended to accompany them, but was prevented by illness. Aleksandr Davydov made his excuses to Inzov, writing that ‘having caught a severe cold, he is not yet in a condition to undertake the return journey […] but if he feels soon some relief in his illness, will not delay in setting out for Kishinev’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Inzov replied sympathetically, thanking Davydov for allaying his anxiety, since, he wrote, ‘Up to now I was in fear for Mr Pushkin, lest he, regardless of the harsh frosts there have been with wind and snow, should have set out and somewhere, given the inconvenience of the steppe highways, should have met with an accident [but am] reassured and hope that your excellency will not allow him to undertake the journey until he has recovered his strength.’

(#litres_trial_promo) He enclosed with his letter a copy of a demand for the repayment of 2,000 roubles, which Pushkin had borrowed from a money-lender in November 1819 to pay a debt at cards.

A few days later Pushkin wrote to Gnedich: ‘I am now in the Kiev province, in the village of the Davydovs, charming and intelligent recluses, brothers of General Raevsky. My time slips away between aristocratic dinners and demagogic arguments. Our company, now dispersed, was recently a varied and jolly mixture of original minds, people well-known in our Russia, interesting to an unfamiliar observer. Women are few, there is much champagne, many witty words, many books, a few verses.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Though there may have been few women in Kamenka, Pushkin made the best of the situation and enjoyed an affair with Aglaë Davydova, Aleksandr Lvovich’s thirty-three-year-old wife. It was a short-lived liaison. The difference in age and social position between the two led Aglaë to treat him with a patronizing condescension that was as distasteful to Pushkin in his mistress as it had been in her husband. When Liprandi dined with Davydov and his wife in St Petersburg in March 1822 he noted that she ‘was not very favourably disposed towards Aleksandr Sergeevich, and it was obviously unwelcome to her, when her husband asked after him with great interest’, and added: ‘I had already heard a number of times of the kindness shown to Pushkin at Kamenka, and heard from him enthusiastic praise of the family society there, and Aglaë too had been mentioned. Then I learnt that there had been some kind of quarrel between her and Pushkin, and that the latter had rewarded her with some verses!’

(#litres_trial_promo) The affair had indeed broken off acrimoniously, and Pushkin, hurt and insulted, gave vent to his feelings with four extraordinarily spiteful epigrams. One, commenting on her promiscuity, wonders what impelled her to marry Davydov; another, coarse and excessively indecent even by Pushkin’s standards, portrays her as sexually insatiable; the least offensive, and the wittiest, is in French:

To her lover without resistance Aglaë

Had ceded – he, pale and petrified,

Was making a great effort – at last, incapable of more,

Completely breathless, withdrew … with a bow, –

‘Monsieur’, says Aglaë in an arrogant tone,

‘Speak, monsieur: why does my appearance

Intimidate you? Will you tell me the cause?

Is it disgust?’ ‘Good heavens, it’s not that.’

‘Excess of love?’ ‘No, of respect.’

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Pushkin did not leave Kamenka until the end of January 1821, then travelling, in the company of the Davydov brothers, not to Kishinev but to Kiev, where he put up with General Raevsky, and met the ‘hussar-poet’ Denis Davydov, cousin both of the Davydovs and of General Raevsky, famous for his partisan activities during the French army’s retreat in 1812 – the model for Denisov in War and Peace. ‘Hussar-poet, you’ve sung of bivouacs/Of the licence of devil-may-care carousals/Of the fearful charm of battle/And of the curls of your moustache,’ he wrote.

(#litres_trial_promo) In the second week of February he and the Davydovs set off for Tulchin, some 180 miles to the west. His St Petersburg acquaintance General Kiselev was now chief of staff of the Second Army here: he was to marry Sofya Potocka later that year. ‘I had the occasion to see [Pushkin] in Tulchin at Kiselev’s,’ wrote Nikolay Basargin, a young ensign in the 31st Jägers. ‘I was not acquainted with him, but met him two or three times in company. I disliked him as a person. There was something of the bully about him, an element of vanity, and the desire to mock and wound others.’

(#litres_trial_promo) After a week in Tulchin Pushkin, still avoiding his official duties, returned to Kamenka with the Davydovs, arriving on or about 18 February.

During his first stay on the estate he had begun a new notebook, copying into it fair versions of his Crimean poems ‘A Nereid’ and ‘Sparser grows the flying range of clouds’, and continuing to work on The Prisoner of the Caucasus. Now, lying on the Davydovs’ billiard table surrounded by scraps of manuscript, so engrossed in composition as to ignore everything about him, he produced the first fair copy of the poem, adding at the end of the text the notation ‘23 February 1821, Kamenka’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Despite this achievement, he was often in a bleak mood. ‘Beneath the storms of harsh fate/My flowering wreath has faded,’ he had written the previous day.

(#litres_trial_promo) He was isolated from his family and his closest friends, from the literary and social life of the capital; the best years of his poetic and personal life were being wasted in a provincial slough. Melancholy was to recur ever more frequently during his years of exile: ‘I am told he is fading away from depression, boredom and poverty,’ Vyazemsky wrote to Turgenev in 1822.

(#litres_trial_promo) Constantly deluding himself with hopes of an end to his exile, or at least of being granted leave to visit St Petersburg – ‘I shall try to be with you myself for a few days,’ he wrote to his brother in January 1822

(#litres_trial_promo) – he was as constantly brought to face the reality of his situation. When, a year later, he made a formal application to Nesselrode for permission to come to St Petersburg, ‘whither,’ he wrote, ‘I am called by the affairs of a family whom I have not seen for three years’,