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Alexander Pushkin: Anniversary and Language

A brief story of my discovering Alexander Pushkin and his work, as well as critical notes on the then and now reading habits and the state of language

The role of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin in the development of the Russian language is similar to that of Dante: both men introduced vernacular to literature. The report from Russia Today gives a very quick idea of Pushkin’s life and legacy.

I wrote about Pushkin before; and on the day when literary world and its Russian-speaking part are celebrating the 210th anniversary of his birth I cannot avoid making a contribution.

Discovery of Alexander Pushkin

My discovery of Alexander Pushkin occurred, as with many a Russian, in childhood. I read “Eugene Onegin” when I was 8. It was my grandma who prompted me. We were watching a TV programme where the high-school students had to answer a question somehow related to Tatiana’s letter. They didn’t know the asnwer; my grandmother did. Although it didn’t matter much, I was amazed and proud, but she was very modest about this: “My dear girl“, she said, “this is “Eugene Onegin” by Pushkin, every educated person must know it“.

Despite my age, I took this phrase to heart. For the next couple of years “Onegin” was my table book. Suffices to say, I made my own life as a student easier by learning all the key passages long before it was mandatory, according to the curriculum. I was fascinated by language and flow of the verses (each stanza is composed in the form of a sonnet or a fourteenliner). Learning those parts by heart was unintentional: it was a direct consequence of falling in love with the novel. When years later I wrote A Poem With No End, I could certainly refer to reading “Onegin” as one of examples of this loving reading.

The Waning Interest

As I went on to discover other poets – first, Romanticists like Byron and Lermontov, then Symbolists (Blok, Rimbaud), Futurists (Mayakovski, Severyanin), Surrealists (Eluard, Prevert) – Pushkin’s glow became less radiant. I couldn’t help agreeing with Mayakovski who co-wrote the Russian Futurist Manifesto that, in order for literature to progress, it was necessary to abandon the classical authority figures. I was beginning to realise that Pushkin wasn’t enough for me, despite l the vastness of his work, the importance of his legacy, and the unquestionable influence on the development of my native language.

The final stroke was made by a critical essay on literary methods published by one Russian critic in the first half of the 20th c.; the essay was kindly lent to me by an Economics lecturer at school. Looking at several writers and analysing their methods, the critic concluded that there were two main methods: observation (narration) and experiment. Of the Russian writers then available for his critical analysis, Alexander Pushkin was an observer, while Nikolai Gogol was an experimentator. Further, observational works tended to age whereas experimental works were, by the very nature of their method, “geared” towards the future. Not only did this explain to me why, for all my love for Pushkin’s work, I had always found Gogol more captivating; but it also pointed the direction for me as a writer.

alexander-pushkin-eugene-onegin
Image courtesy: studentsbook.net

An encyclopaedia of Russian reading

Since then – 1996/1997 – I didn’t return to Pushkin much. But as my reading and thinking experience has broadened, I also began to think of things we were barely talked to at school or elsewhere. “Onegin” may be a great example here. The fascination for this work is rooted deeply in Russian conscience for a good reason: comparatively speaking, I cannot imagine an Italian who doesn’t rever Divine Comedy. Yet exactly what fascinates us? We tend to follow the critic Belinsky’s description of “Onegin” as “the encyclopaedia of Russian life“, and it is impossible to disagree with this view. However, now and again I find that we’re more captivated by the mundane side of this life, rather than intellectual. For all the adaptation’s shortcomings, Ralph Fiennes perfectly captured this romantic view of Russian life that many a reader of “Onegin” lovingly treasures: balls and parties, popular rites, romantic letters… but what about these two stanzas from the first chapter of the novel?

Latin is just now not in vogue, /
But if the truth I must relate, /
Oneguine knew enough, the rogue /
A mild quotation to translate, /
A little Juvenal to spout, /
With “vale” finish off a note; /
Two verses he could recollect /
Of the Aeneid, but incorrect. /
In history he took no pleasure, /
The dustry chronicles of earth /
For him were but of little worth, /
Yet still of anecdotes a treasure /
Within his memory there lay, /
From Romulus unto our day. /

For empty sound the rascal swore he /
Existence would not make a curse, /
Knew not an iamb from a choree, /
Although we read him heaps of verse. /
Homer, Theocritus, he jeered, /
But Adam Smith to read appeared, /
And at economy was great; /
That is, he could elucidate /
How empires store of wealth unfold, /
How flourish, why and wherefore less /
If the raw product they possess /
The medium is required of gold. /
The father scarcely understands /
His son and mortgages his lands.

Tatiana’s Story

If “Onegin” is the encyclopaedia of Russian life, then we can state, without much ado, that the above two stanzas indicate to us the Russian reading circle of Pushkin’s age. Homer and Theocritus, still read at the time of Pushkin, have been all but forgotten by today’s readers. Then how wide is today’s reading circle? Or is it all but focused on contemporary literature?

Similarly, Pushkin tells us about Tatiana:

Romances pleased her from the first, /
Her all in all did constitute; /
In love adventures she was versed, /
Rousseau and Richardson to boot.

What interests me is how this may affect the reading of Tatiana-Onegin love story. To what extent would it be infused by Tatiana’s reading experience? Rather than painting Onegin as a selfish heartthrob who rejected the young woman, perhaps we could find his behaviour mature and “responsible”, so to say. And could Tatiana’s later rejection of him, despite the mutual affection, be once again a vision of a forlorn forbidden love that had itself embedded in her imagination?

Language Today

What makes Alexander Pushkin important for me today is exactly his place in the Russian literary discourse. I am interested in how we read and understand his work – and you may cue in The Death of the Author, if you like. One point that concerns me a lot is the state of Russian language. On the one hand, thanks to the absence of the Iron Curtain and the omnipresence of the Internet, a huge influx of neologisms is obvious. This is not bad at all, if we consider how many neologisms entered the Russian language in Pushkin’s time and later, thanks to his efforts. On the other hand, there are writers who emulate the style of Alexander Pushkin and his contemporaries, as well as of poets and writers of the Russian Silver Age. So, we have a paradoxical situation of two conflicting tendencies co-existing. We have new words and possibly structures entering the language, yet we also cling to and replicate the styles and structures of the bygone times. The question that remains, however, is: what is happening to the Russian language? Is it developing? Or is it caught in between the above two tendencies?

You can read the translation of “Onegin” by Henry Spalding

Other posts in Literature category

As befits an approaching full Moon…

They say that the full Moon and the periods that lead to it are the moments of heightened emotion and restlessness. Indeed, despite a heavy rain outside, I feel like I’d like to catch a train somewhere. Of course, “to catch a train somewhere” also entails taking a camera – but how much are you really going to snap, if it’s raining cats and dogs? I’m also waiting for a delivery from Graze – thanks to the amazing generosity of Paul who shared a promotional code and waxed lyrical about how good the products were. But now I have to wonder, of course, at what point during the day I am going to lay my hands on this natural goodness. On another hand, I’d feel immensely deprived, if the door bell woke me up at 6am. Yet if it woke me up at 7.40, I wouldn’t mind because I was already awake then.

So, as you can gather, I’m anything but certain about what to do, and the fact that I took a couple of days of holiday at work doesn’t help make things clearer. I also know that I need to buy a book for a good friend, although I could possibly do that in any Waterstone’s.

Perhaps, the best course of action forms itself as I drink my morning coffee.

Right now, though, I feel like reflecting on the fact that most of the posts – indeed, most of my texts, be they literary, scholarly, or professional – are not pre-drafted. Very often they’re not even preconceived. Which makes me wonder about the nature of literature, and from where we take our ideas about it. I am convinced – partly being guilty of this myself – that we often dance from a given image. The given image of an author, e.g., would usually be a guy in specs sitting in a room of his own; or someone enlightened by inspiration, as on this portrait by Fragonard. Then Woolf comes along with her essay – and if you visit Heaton Hall and observe claustrophobic boudoirs, you will begin to see why no Shakespeare’s sister could be an author.

So, gradually we begin to think of an author – or writer – as someone who must live in certain conditions, surrounded by certain things. Further, it begins to appear as if he also must write in specific conditions. Again, this may be taken from contemplating the 17th c. paintings (right) or photographs in modern magazines. And at the same time we absolutely love the fact that the poet Blok or the painter Modigliani were producing their masterpieces in a bar. Thus is formed the image of an inspirational setting. Add to this Henry Miller’s protagonist who composes his texts between having sex and looking for money – and the lovely image of a poor promiscuous artist is shaped.

There is nothing wrong with this image, as such. But there’s a rub, and I will illustrate it on a less demure example. Like many people out there, I am fascinated by the idea of sex on the beach. It’s awesome, and I can’t quite choose between the action taking place when the sun is in full blaze, or at the sunset. Either way, my ideal setting would involve some rocks in the distance, the gentle roaring of the ocean, the pleasant warm wind, seclusion, and the soft sand.

There’re soft sands, in Majorca, for example. But, minus this, the dream place could be found somewhere closer to home, and back in the day when I read the article that shattered the dream I was in Russia. One day I came across an article that unveiled the sad truth of life to me.

So, you’re dreaming of sex on the beach?” – it read. – “Then brace yourself, for there is nothing romantic about it. The sand is nothing like that luxurious white powder you see on the screen. On a real beach the sand is coarse, and your skin will be burning, and your body will be aching, and there’ll be no pleasure or satisfaction – unless you lie on a big towel. But that isn’t remotely romantic“.

I said this article has shattered the dream. It hasn’t really; instead, it inadvertently pointed out to a gap between the ideal and reality. As much as we may question the reality, one thing is certain: the sand IS coarse, and if you don’t want your romantic time on the beach to turn into a nightmare of applying plasters, you have to take precautions.

Same with writing. Try and do some writing in a bar where you are deafened by music, laughter, and loud voices. What we probably don’t understand is that both the poet and the painter were eating, drinking, and meeting their friends at those bars. Writing came as a bonus; it was a natural consequence of a stimulus. I very much doubt that Blok would go to the bar with a precise idea of composing The Unknown Woman. The visits to the bar, however, made the poem possible.

And then there were Surrealists with their automatic writing. Everything you read in this post or elsewhere on the blog is automatic. The editing is usually minimal and mostly concerns the structure of the phrase, plus adding links, pictures and other media. At the moment, I don’t even know what it is that I’m going to write next. It is correct to say that I wasn’t even going to contemplate our understanding of writing in this post, but as I am contemplating it, I state that I didn’t have a precise idea of what I was going to write. This feels somewhat surreal, and the fact that it’s raining outside and I feel both relaxed and restless makes this post a strong reference to Surrealist study of dreams, hypnosis, and automatic creativity. Yet even though I don’t know what I’m going to write, I feel myself in control of the flow of the piece, even though there is no precise structure for this piece. As one of the speakers at Futuresonic said, blogging made him produce short pieces, half-related to one another, which in turn affected the fluidity and coherence of his oral presenations. For me, real-time blogging is a perfect illustration to the flow of thought, provided this is what you pursue and don’t mind sharing. Many texts were written on the subject of “how I write”, but little do we know, unless we go to the archives, about exactly how the process goes (check out Sholokhov’s draft of Quiet Flows the Don, for example). The beautiful thing about blogging for me is that it can show just that.

It’s taken me an hour to write this post. The delivery from Graze still hasn’t arrived; my slumberish yet creative state of mind is growing stronger; and by all accounts it looks like I’ll spend the day indoors. Although I may somewhat object to pre-writing blog posts, I don’t mind pre-publishing them. And I know that the mood like the one I’m in is precious and has to be caught and used to the fullest.

Illustrations:

Jean-Honore Fragonard, Inspiration (1769)
Jan Brueghel Younger and Peter Paul Rubens, Allegory of Sight (1618)

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