Романная одержимость камердинера Александрa Пушкинa

Abstract

The author of the present study attempted at the analysis of the so-called novel mania or obsession of Alexander Pushkin, Russian poet and later Tsars vice-chamberlain. The whole case already started by Pushkin's attack on the original Romantic vision of the world in his narrative poem Gypsies (1824). At first sight, there were several types of his novel texts. In the first place, we could mention his *"flirting” with prose in general and with the novel in particular. The second stage was represented by Eugene Onegin (1830), novel for its intrinsic specular structure (Pushkin's favourite prose motif), though written in verse which was not typical of this genre at that time. The next case are his prose works, such as The Queen oj Spades (1833, 1834) or The Tales of Belkin (1830, 1834), and later the genuine novel or novella structures, more or less finished or completed, such as The Blackamoor oj Peter the Great (1834), Captain's Daughter (1836), The History oj the Village Goryukhino (1830, 1837), Dubrovsky (1832-33, 1841)a nd A Journey to Arzrum (1835).T hen there are novel fragments, such as Kirdjali (1834) and Egyptian Nights (1835, 1837); the next type is represented by extremely short fragments or even just novel intentions, such as Nadenka, Guests Were Going to a Summer House, At the Beginning of 1812, An Epistolary Novel, At the Corner oj a Little Square, A Diary oj a Young Man, My Fate was Decided, I am Going to Get Married... A Novel from a Caucasus Spa, We Spent a Night in the Summer House, I have often Thought about..., The Russian Pelam, A Novel from Roman History, Maria Schoning, In 179* I was Going Back... Crispin is Going to a Guberniya (Pushkin told this story to Gogol: then it became the basis of his Government Inspector or Inspector General), A Devil in Love, a Fręnch text Les deux danseuses etc. Pushkin regarded the novel as a reflection of the state: his construction of the novel reminds of the state construction. Therefore, Puskhin's "idće fixe” is the role of Russian aristocracy after its fatal defeat in December 1825; there is also a sharp contradiction between Faddey Bulgarin (Tadeusz Bułharyn) as a Polish and Russian writer, the Tsars agent and champion of Polish and Russian bourgeoisie, which was just coming into existence, and Pushkin with his idea of the leading state role of aristocracy. Pushkin's prose in general and his novel writings in particular have the two different kernels: one leads to the model of typical West-European poetics (dramatic structures, love intrigues), the other to the paradigm of descriptive, moral-depicting prose characteristic of Slavs in general and of East Slavs in particular. Pushkins novel writing also confirms his position between Romanticism and Realism: realist, historical and descriptive character of his prose and novel, on the one hand, and the romantic topics, such as struggle with fate or the provoking of fate, love experiments, nostalgia and romantic irony, on the other. There is, however, another opposition: between the demiurgical attitude to life (dramatic plots, the dominant role of the event, love for various experiments and for the palimpsestic play with motifs) and the quietest observation of passing or flowing of life which is so typical of Eastern vision of man and the world. His tendency or even obsession to write novels were also dictated by the antiromantic atmosphere of that time (the 1830s) and also by his love for historicity and by the historical and state-formation character of his work (Poltava, The Bronze Horseman, Boris Godunov, The History oj Pugachev). Pushkin's novel obsession was a significant genre feature of the Russian I9th-century literature and fatally anticipated its later Golden Age.