JOHN BAYLEY
Pushkin's Tales
Pushkin is not only Russia's primary and archetypal author but her most
astonishingly versatile one. He was himself fascinated by Mozart, whose
music he deeply admired, and there is something Mozartian about his
genius, which is in the same manner with variety, gaiety and depth. In
one of his "Little Tragedies" - brief "dramas of investigation" as he
called them - he contrasted the temperament of Mozart with that of the
talented and industrious but uninspired composer Salieri, and implied that
genius often prefers to reside in a wholly simple, open and unpretending
personality. Keats said of Shakespeare - and he may have been thinking
of himself as well - that instead of a powerful and distinctive ego he
possessed "negative capability." That sort of capability was certainly
Pushkin's own great gift as a writer.
He was as much at home in prose as in verse. Like Shakespeare he
borrowed a great deal, and he was perfectly happy to take inferior work
and make something wonderful, indeed unique, out of it. He borrowed
a dreadfully bad romantic play written in 1816 by the English author and
journalist John Wilson, who afterwards became the "Christopher
North" of
Blackwood's Maga z ine,
and wrote a savage review of Ten–
nyson's early verses. Pushkin knew hardly any English, but Wilson's piece
had been translated into French, in which he was fluent like all the Rus–
sian gentry class. The City of the Plague, which managed to bring in ev–
ery sort of romantic cliche of the period - mad mothers, duels in grave–
yards, penitent and golden-hearted prostitutes - was not parodies by
Pushkin but purified, and turned into a simple and deeply touching dra–
matic poem. In many of his prose tales and sketches he also borrowed
the romantic properties and techniques of the period - ranging from
sentimental stories for young ladies to the historical novels and tales of
Sir Walter Scott's followers - and here, as we shall see, a strong element
of the mischievous and the parodic sometimes enters, giving piquancy to
his magically clear and straightforward prose style.
Pushkin came late to prose. And when he came to it he wrote it
deliberately, with the intention of exploring what prose fiction and
narrative should be like in Russian, what it could and should attempt to
do. The form was in a sense still untried: there was no equivalent in
Russia of the English essayists - Steele, Addison, Dr. Johnson - who had
Editor's Note: Coypright
©
1992 by David Campbell Publishers Ltd.
