VARIETT
117
Pushkin's death all over the
country. He is a combination of
Byron and Shakespeare for the
Russian people. He was a liberal
in thought and married to a
noblewoman who. it
is
alleged.
was a mistress of the tsar. He
was killed in a duel. which. as
the story goes, was a frame-up.
Both the opera and the ballet
were based on Pushkin's works
and the music was by the great
Tchaikovsky. The opera was
((Eugen Onegin," a romantic
storry of two young men of posi–
tion whose friendship was
broken up over a misunder–
standing and lovers' quarrel
which resulted in a duel in
which the poet was killed. It
was significant of Pushkin's own
end and oddly enough was writ–
ten by him.
The sequence of relative pro–
nouns here in the sentence before
the last, each one depending on
the one before, is a very fine bit
of writing, but it only prepares for
the climax. It drags us by a series
of hitches up an incline like the
hump on a roller-coaster, from the
top of which we suddenly dip into
a dizzying and breath-depriving
excitement. What is it that makes
the next sentence so startling? Not
syntax, for the syntax is
no~mal.
Not logic: no mere fallacy is in–
volved. We cannot assign the
manoeuvre to any of the familiar
categories of rhetorical or logical
errors. The device is original and
daring; it takes us a moment to
grasp it; but then we become aware
that the trick consists of first ex–
plaining that the opera which Mr.
Davies calls
Eugen Onegin
(though
this is neither its Russian nor its
English form) is based on Push- ·
kin's poem; then of indicating a
striking parallel between the ·cir–
cumstances of Pushkin's death and
the poem; and then of suddenly
making the point that, by some
scarcely believable coincidence, the
poem was written by Pushkin. But
to paraphrase the passage thus is.
to rob it of all its thrill. The whole
effect depends on the quickness of
the shift in the sense and on the
simple phrase, oddly enough at
once arresting and casual. Only
a bad writer of genius could
have hit upon and placed this
phrase. It is as if a long red carpet
on which we had been walking on
our way to some ceremony of state
had suddenly been pulled out from
under us.
Yet there is at least one ex'ample
even bolder of Mr. Davies' ability
to baffle and to dazzle :
The peace of Europe, if main–
tained, is in imminent danger of
being a peace imposed by the
dictators, under conditions where
all of the smaller countries will
speedily rush in to get under
the shield of the German aegis,
and under
.
conditions where,
even though . there be a concert
of power, as I have predicted
to you two years ago, with "Hit–
ler leading the band."
Here the opening is weighty and
portentous: a veteran man of
af–
fairs with a large experience of
Europe is about to deliver a con–
sidered opinion. The first indica–
tion of anything queer comes with
the shield of the German aegis;
but although this gives us pause
for a moment, we immediately re-
