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JOHN BAYLEY
Scott. Pushkin also borrowed from that source - the denouement of
The
Captain's Daughter
bears a strong resemblance to that of
The Heart
of
Midlothian,
with Catharine the Great substituted for Queen Caroline–
but Pushkin's style and approach have nothing in common with Scott's.
It was Bestuzhev, the man who called for "plain water," who most
closely imitated Scott, producing a Russian equivalent of that leisurely
and relaxing medium, full of cliche and of the picturesque. The Waverley
novels operated by sweep and volume, not by any discrimination of sen–
tence or phrase. Pushkin's contemporaries and successors, even Lermontov
in
A Hero
if
Our Time,
use the flow of imperfections and flowery cliches
that were part of the new "spontaneity" of prose - its equivalent of the
dashing artlessness of modern ballad and poetic romance - and it is this
that Pushkin avoids, although without seeming to try to do so. His prose
sounds prosaic, but never vapid or banal. Its spare elegance, which
already seemed old-fashioned in Pushkin's time, is that of the eighteenth
rather than the nineteenth century. This was remarked on by his friends
and contemporaries; and it is significant that when the
Tales of Belkill
first appeared it was accorded none of the widespread popularity that had
greeted the first appearance of Pushkin's poems.
It must have seemed very simple, perhaps too simple, but this
simplicity concealed a remarkable degree of subtlety. Lermontov saw it
and made use of it. His exceedingly clever novel makes a very
sophisticated use of multiple narrators, and this device is also the main
technical feature of the
Tales of Belkin.
Pushkin, like other writers,
probably got the basic idea from Scott, who had used it in the Waverley
novels to maintain the appearance and convention of anonymity. Indeed
it had become a common convention, though seldom so effectively and
expertly handled as it is by Pushkin and Lermontov, or as it was to be by
Emily Bronte in
Wuthering Heights.
The Victorians acquired an appetite
for this sort of narrative mystification; but Pushkin's first audience were
somewhat bamed, and certainly did not appreciate at first the finer points
involved. They read the stories as short and rather simple-minded exercises
in sentiment, romance and melodrama; and they were surprised and
disillusioned when the word got around that they had been written by
Russia's foremost poet.
In fact the first reader to really appreciate the
Tales of Belkin
was not
Russian at all but French, and himself a writer. Prosper Merimee had
traveled widely in eastern Europe and Russia, and had learned the lan–
guages. Although young - four years younger than Pushkin - he already
had a reputation, and Pushkin himself may well have read his early tales,
so the influence was not all one way. Brief and sensational pieces,
whether in the form of tales or dramas, like Pushkin's own "Little
