by Allan Reid
T.J. Binyon untangles the myth of poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin and examines the real complexity of his character and work.
 |
At a ball, on September 8, 1826, Czar Nicholas I remarked to his deputy minister of education, a certain Bludov, that he had had a conversation with the “cleverest man in Russia” that afternoon. His interlocutor was more than a little surprised to learn that the man in question was the poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837). He had good reason to be, insofar as Pushkin had just arrived from Mikhailovskoe, his estate, where he had been languishing under house arrest for various indiscretions, including personal associations with virtually all the central figures in the recent Decembrist uprising. Add to this the czar’s impression that the poet was at the moment suffering from a serious form of venereal disease and, again, the less than formal attire in which he presented himself to Nicholas, and Bludov ought to have been genuinely dumbfounded.
During the interview, Pushkin told Nicholas with naive frankness (and perhaps a touch of characteristic audacity) that he would have been on the square with the rebels nine months earlier had he been able, but that he would try to change his ways. T.J. Binyon, the author of Pushkin: A Biography, finds it most surprising that Nicholas refers to him as an intellectual and not a poet. Certainly, posterity has remembered him more as a poet, but one with an exceptionally profound understanding of his country, his compatriots, his language, and the nature of poetry and literature.
These, of course, are the things that make up the myth of Pushkin. All are somewhat grounded in his life and work but selectively fertilized and projected beyond their source, whether by Dostoevsky in the famous Pushkin address of 1880, which attributes near-miraculous powers to him, or at various times by Ivan Turgenev, Marina Tsvetayeva, or the organs of the Soviet cultural industry, to name but a few. Scant days after Pushkin’s death, Mikhail Lermontov, generally considered Russia’s second-greatest poet, had begun the process with the underground circulation of his homage to Pushkin, “The Death of a Poet”:
“The Poet is dead: a slave of honor”
“Felled, by slanderous rumor”
“With a bullet in his breast, and by desire for revenge”
“His proud head now hangs down.”
“The Poet’s spirit could not endure “
“The shame of trivial insults,”
“He rose up against the opinions of the world”
“Alone, as before, and killed.*”
A scathing attack on the hypocrisy of Petersburg’s high society, which helped bring about the events that led to Pushkin’s death, this poem immediately ignited the mythmaking machine. Like Pushkin before him, Lermontov would be exiled, and four years later, at the age of twenty-seven, he would die, like Pushkin, in a duel. This is the stuff of legends and myth. That is likely why, although it is possibly the best-known posthumous event in the traditional mythology, Binyon does not mention it. Moreover, the myth of Pushkin did not really coalesce for another thirty-five or forty years.
Immediately upon opening Pushkin, the reader is alerted that the myths are just that; this biography aims to discover and reveal the man who inspired them. Binyon succeeds to a truly remarkable degree. He presents us with a thoroughly demythologized Pushkin: “This ‘ugly descendant of negroes’ as he called himself, was small in stature–just under five foot six. He had pale blue eyes, curly black hair, usually dishevelled, and extraordinarily long, claw-like fingernails–often dirty–of which
 |
he was inordinately proud.” The reader often struggles not to be offended or repulsed by him. Binyon’s Pushkin may not have warts, but he has several cases of venereal disease (in which he almost takes pleasure); he is rude and abrasive; he is superstitious, blasphemous, and frequently base; he is almost always callous about and often toward women; he is morally and financially irresponsible toward himself, his family, his friends, and anyone with whom he interacts; he dissembles and fawns when necessary; and he writes great, truly great, works of literature.
The incident with Nicholas I described above, full of contradictions, implications, and enormous consequences, provides a stellar example of the challenges facing those attempting to examine the real complexity of Pushkin’s character and work. From this point on, the freedom-loving Pushkin would be intimately involved in a complex relationship with the czar, one that would implicate all aspects of his life: literary, social, personal, and financial, to note but the most obvious. He could not have anticipated what this would entail. Looking back, he had not been on the square that fateful day in December 1825 because the organizers and leaders of the failed coup simply did not trust him. Though he was known widely for his belief in freedom from political and moral oppression, they all did not trust him because “he had a big mouth” and was known to be impulsive and egotistical.
Many of these Decembrists were his friends and fellow writers; they had been classmates in a remarkable experiment, which brought together a group of the brightest young members of the nobility for a special education to prepare them for state service. For their participation in the revolt, they received sentences ranging from execution to Siberian exile to prison. While they achieved none of their aims, they changed the course of Russian history by their example and by the fear and anxiety they instilled in the authorities, which led first to retrenchment and much later to reform. It is easy to draw a straight line from them to the Bolsheviks. Binyon’s depiction and analysis of the Decembrist phenomenon are more detailed, accurate, and informative than those found in any standard history of Russia. Fullness and richness of detail and multileveled complexity are typical of practically all episodes in this biography.
More documentary than Hollywood story
he announcement of T.J. Binyon as the winner of the 2003 BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction for the first new full biography of Pushkin in several decades was greeted with considerable surprise by critics and readers, but not because of anything about the work itself. Quite simply, Binyon is known more as a writer of thrillers than as a biographer or scholar, although he does lecture on Russian literature at Oxford. His Pushkin will ensure he is known henceforth as one of the truly great biographers. Less certain, however, is whether the English-speaking world will have the patience to get to know his subject better.
This is a massive book, chock-full of detail, and written–as it should be–more like a documentary than a Hollywood story. While it reads like the very finest of documentaries, it will not appeal to consumers of Hollywood’s generic packaged narratives or their print equivalents. It is a hard but richly rewarding work. It might seem that Onegin, the 1999 film version of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, might have prepared the ground, but despite the excellent production values of the film, its high-profile actors and director, its popular success was quite limited. Its shortcoming was surely a function of the original on which it was based, in particular the transparent simplicity of its plot.
That plot, of course, is not what makes Eugene Onegin great. It has compellingly drawn characters as its backbone, but, like so many of Pushkin’s works, its technical sophistication, rich allusions, remarkable digressions into autobiography, social commentary, cultural references, literary intertextuality, and brilliant combination of parody and irony are what render it unique and powerful. Martha Fiennes’ lush and sensual, almost tactile, transformation of it into celluloid was in many ways superb, but its limited box-office appeal is just another example of the elusiveness of Pushkin and his work.
Eugene Onegin is generally acknowledged to be Russian literature’s first genuine novel, despite having been written in verse, and it may be the best-known of Pushkin’s works in English translation. He also wrote some of the greatest love poems in Russian or any language, mock-heroic epics, Anacreontic verse, a variety of bawdy and blasphemous poems, brilliant epigrams, historical narratives and poems, fairy tales, history, short stories and novellas, a great historical drama in a Shakespearean vein, and much more, although it all still results in a relatively slim oeuvre, if page count is a measure of anything.
His influences, besides his Russian mentors Zhukovsky and Karamzin, include Tasso, Byron, Sterne, Horace, and Scott, to name a few. While it may sound facile to say it, his poetry, if not his prose, is nearly impossible to translate, more so than with many other poets; and that accounts to a great extent for his profile being so much lower abroad than it is in Russia. We know Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Babel, Solzhenitsyn, and Nabokov very well, but Russia loves her poets. In the West, Pasternak is the author of Doctor Zhivago, but in Russia he is a poet. Of all the great Russian poets, Pushkin defies the translator most of all.
Perhaps this study will generate increased interest in Pushkin’s art. Like a tempter, Binyon dangles it in front of us, saying very little about it, only tersely punctuating the narrative with references to what Pushkin was writing, publishing, burning (to avoid political problems), or conceiving at various times. He utilizes passages (in his own, deliberately pedestrian, translations) as introductions to chapters and events, leaving aside all but the briefest critical or interpretative comments. What he does say, however, makes it clear that his appreciation of Pushkin the artist is profound, and he makes the reader anxious to know more. Still, he stays true to his commitment to eschew critical commentary, and perhaps that is just as well. There is a lot of fine critical work on Pushkin available, from Lotman to Tomashevsky, Lednicki to Nabokov. This biography, however, stands alone.
Between the myth and the man
inyon frequently uses specific works to bring out the tension between the poet and the scoundrel, the myth and the man. Among Pushkin’s most revered love lyrics is one of the greatest in the Russian language and perhaps in any language, “I Recollect a Wondrous Moment.” Written in 1825, it was dedicated and hand-delivered to Anna Kern, with whom he was passionately in love and who rejected his advances. The poem is written as a profound expression in pure and ethereal form of a deep, unrequited love, and for the purposes of textual literary criticism and for the myth of Pushkin, that seems to suffice. What followed three years later surely makes one tremble to think what would have happened if Petrarch and Laura had actually ever met. The
 |
crudeness and banality of Pushkin’s comments in a letter after his affections were finally reciprocated in the bedroom are startling when contrasted with the ostensive sentiments of the poem, even for a reader who is not totally naive. The great Russian scholar Roman Jakobson has already explored a similar phenomenon in the life and work of the Czech poet Macha (1810–36), but hardly anyone has heard of Macha, while this poem is considered an iconic expression of genuine affection. It may well have been that, to the extent that Pushkin the man was capable of it at that point in his life.
For sure, Pushkin was crude, rude, impulsive, self-centered, and precocious. The comparisons with Mozart in his audacious baseness combined with exceptional genius are unavoidable. (Small wonder that Pushkin wrote one of his “little tragedies” on the subject of Mozart and Salieri.) Binyon exercises admirable restraint in suspending psychologisms that would attempt to supply motive or cause for his subject’s actions where they are not explicitly given. When it is justifiable, he identifies them. Pushkin frequently comments, for example, on the inadequacies of his looks and stature, or on his African physiognomy, all of which disturbed him, and Binyon brings this out, but only as far as Pushkin did. While he generously avoids the potential psychoanalytic cornucopia he is afforded when Pushkin equates the creative process with both sexual and excretive bodily functions, he lays it on the table for those who are inclined to pursue that line of inquiry on their own. For the rest of us, there is a wink and a chuckle, and a little more of the myth is taken away.
Pushkin is written carefully and deliberately; it manifests in the best possible way the author’s background in writing thrillers. Binyon painstakingly builds up the story, weaving and unraveling historical detail, delineating characters with a skill and sensitivity that would make many a novelist envious. The book outlines potential developments and real conundrums in the poet’s life, gradually gaining pace and intensity as it moves toward its conclusion. It starts slowly, but Binyon wants readers to know as much as possible about everything going on around the poet: about his family, upbringing, social class, school and schooling; the literary and sexual politics of his time; how card games were played and how loan sharks operated; and many, many more crucial details of daily life. Those who’ve read of the decline of Russia’s gentry, whether in Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades,” Tolstoy’s War and Peace, or Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, get a close-up and exquisitely elaborated exploration of its early stages from the end of the eighteenth century. The gambling, overspending, and profligate and seemingly pointless lifestyles of the wealthy, soon-to-be-poor are brilliantly animated and brought to life.
Pushkin’s ancestry hardly made it apparent that he would eventually be considered Russia’s greatest poet and the founder of the Russian literary language. On his mother’s side Pushkin was a descendant of a slave of African, probably Cameroonian, origin who came to be known as Abram Petrov Hannibal (Gannibal in Russian) and had been presented to Peter the Great in 1704. Heretofore he was generally held to have been from Ethiopia and was occasionally referred to as Peter I’s Arab, but Binyon makes the case for the specific location he asserts, a good example of the thoroughness of his research. Hannibal eventually attained a very high rank in the military and was recognized and rewarded for it. On his father’s side Pushkin descended from the traditional Russian nobility, but both sides of his family had fallen on relatively hard times before his parents married.
Gambler and dueler
ushkin and his wife belonged to a part of the nobility that had known better times and could not keep up with the lifestyle their inclinations demanded. In many ways they were an allegory for the decline of the Russian nobility. Money is one of the dominant motifs of the book; Pushkin was plagued by money problems all his life. Some he caused himself, whether by gambling, which he did all his life and without thinking of the consequences, or through foolish business ventures or publishing contracts. Indeed, Pushkin was constantly in debt; he gambled more irresponsibly than Dostoevsky (who was pathologically compulsive in his addiction) and was not unlike the young Tolstoy. Unlike those two, he never quit and never recovered financially.
Some of his financial problems were not entirely his fault. His wife, Natalya, had expensive tastes and little appreciation of the subtleties of cash flow problems; both his family and his in-laws had serious financial problems that implicated him whether through promised but unrealized inheritances or the assumption of their debts. The situation was unmanageable, and it appears that it was only his audacity that allowed Pushkin to get through it all. The stress was intense, and Binyon allows for the possibility that his final duel may have been partially a recognition that he needed a drastic way out of his situation.
Besides money, we are constantly reminded of Pushkin’s penchant for dueling and the deficiencies of character that led to his participation in so many encounters. He was quick-tempered, vindictive, motivated by pride, and surprisingly courageous. While dueling was illegal, it was not uncommon (as we know from War and Peace, for example), and Pushkin was fond of it as a means of dispute resolution. Its significance is magnified by its presence in such works as Eugene Onegin and “The Shot,” and by the fact that he ultimately died in a duel, in a manner not unlike that described in his works. A trio of factors is formed by the addition of the element of sex. There was simply a lot of sex–including visits to brothels and adulterous and other extramarital affairs–in Pushkin’s life, and in the life of his peers.
Constant gratuitous involvement with money, sex, and violence: The jaded views of Pushkin’s Byronic or Sternean characters are not entirely figments of the poet’s creative imagination. Occasionally some of these things would come together
| Besides money, we are constantly reminded of Pushkin’s penchant for dueling and the deficiencies of character that led to his participation in so many encounters. |
in comical juxtaposition. As a young man Pushkin often could not afford to dress in the prescribed manner, so he would dress outlandishly, presumably to dissemble an attitude of disregard. He once showed up at a dinner while he was on service exile in the south wearing transparent breeches with nothing under them. Binyon describes the scene with reserve, while allowing its implicit humor to assert itself in full view.
There are so many fascinating characters in this book that it is hard to select any for special mention. The outstanding Polish poet Mickiewicz, Pushkin’s classmates and friends Kuchelbecker and Delvig, also both poets, and Natalya’s mother come to mind as highly memorable. Binyon has a unique ability to allow such figures to speak for themselves and does so convincingly and artistically, while retaining his scholarly objectivity. The elaborate scholarly apparatus in the form of copious endnotes and explanatory footnotes validates the accuracy of his work.
Passionate attention is paid to Nicholas I, always destined to play the role of the villain of nineteenth-century Russia. In this book, however, he appears much more ambiguous and complex. He is a tyrant, to be sure, but he is also genuinely interested in understanding what is going on around him; he suffers fools poorly and has a sense of duty and morality that transcends the immediate. Binyon does not relate all the nastiness of his reign because that is not central to this book’s concern. Similarly, Vladimir Dahl (1801–72) and the poet Vasiliy Zhukovsky (1783–1852) are brought to life with great strokes of inspired prose. Zhukovsky, in particular, is shown as a complex figure who made a huge difference in Pushkin’s life.
The villains
here are two outright villains in this story, and Binyon does not disguise his disdain for them. They are Pushkin’s killer, Baron George D’Anthes, and his adoptive father, Baron von Heeckeren, whose role in the poet’s demise was less direct but still pivotal. Binyon spins out the details of the series of often sordid and tawdry events that led to the tragic duel. That he does not hide his dislike of them is obvious, but he is careful in examining the forensics of the situation, and Pushkin gets his fair share of blame.
D’AnthŠs has frequently been seen as a victim of circumstance, but Binyon leaves no room for this option. He is at the very least a cad of the first order. Blame is not the only issue, however, for these two have no obvious redeeming qualities; they are simply despicable. D’Anthes, for example, proposed to and married Pushkin’s sister-in-law to demonstrate that he was not in love with Natalya; meanwhile he was still insinuating his feelings toward the latter with little subtlety–or success.
The other notable character, of course, is Natalya (1812–63). Just as Binyon does not conceal his dislike of the two barons, he is obviously fond of Natalya, although it is not as easy to see why. Perhaps he just wants to clear her name of the tarnish it has acquired over time, part of both the mythologizing and demythologizing processes. The standard image of Natalya is that of a capricious coquette, with little real affection for her husband and no appreciation of his vocation. Binyon leaves unchallenged the matter of her flirtatiousness and even her superficiality. It would be tempting to count the number of times he repeats the word flirt or its derivatives from the point in the book where she and Pushkin are married. He uses it like a recurring motif in a musical composition, never allowing the reader to let it out of mind. Like the ominous tolling of a bell it signals what is to come, reminding us of how the practice has been viewed by most commentators.
Binyon does not try to make Natalya better than she was, but he makes the case that she was better than we have come to know her. Arguing that she loved her husband and never betrayed him, he allows us to recognize that when Pushkin was her age, he was no more commendable in his behavior. Traditional accounts often present the possibility that she had been the czar’s mistress, but Binyon dispels that possibility as well.
If anything is missing in all of this, it is a sense of Pushkin as father. We are told that he loved his four children, and there are indications of his concern for them. The only comment by him expresses affection; after all, he had become a paterfamilias and seemed to accept the responsibility, even if that did not mean always being at home.
Binyon makes it clear from the outset that the book will look at everything there is to look at. He gives as much information as he possibly can; he does not glamorize or prettify and tries to let the facts speak for themselves. They do, but it takes a while to learn their language. It soon becomes clear, for example, that gambling, impulsiveness, whoring, and carousing are much more important to the story of this life in its early years than poetry is. Poetry is there, and the precocious emergence of Pushkin’s career is marked and noted, but it is overshadowed by the other things he is doing, many of which are simply adolescent, and certainly politically incorrect, in today’s parlance.
At the end, we still are unsure how to connect the man and the myth. There are still huge questions about his politics, personal values, and the relationship of his art to his life. He is not fully there for us, but that is, I believe, what makes this such a great book: Binyon has told us all he could and will say no more. After that there is the literature, and it is surely as great as Russia believes it to be. The dynamic process of coming to know Pushkin’s writings will be informed and enhanced by familiarity with this biography, but it is also worth the effort for all the richness of its historical, social, and cultural observations. Pushkin is a superbly well-told story of a remarkable individual. 
*My “unpoetic” translation.
Allan Reid is professor of Russian and chair of the Department of Culture and Language Studies at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Canada, as well as president of the Canadian Association of Slavists. He has written on Bakhtin, Lotman, Babel, Aksyonov, and Gorbanevskaia.
