JOHN BAYLEY
215
Pushkin's own instinct might well have been to let the story finish with–
out a happy ending, unfolding it to a natural conclusion as he had done
in the case of his verse novel
Eugene Onegin.
But where prose was con–
cerned he found himself much more in the grip of contemporary fashion
and genre.
And yet the
Tales of Belkin,
"The Queen of Spades" and
The Cap–
tain's Daughter
are not only as much masterpieces as his tales in verse, but
carry the same unmistakable and original stamp of his style and personal–
ity. That personality is still somewhat baffiing to western readers, accus–
tomed as they are to the idea of a "great writer" taking life and his art
much more seriously than Pushkin seems to. The Russians can see
Pushkin's experiment and inspiration everywhere in their literature, but
for us it is not so easy. We may feel dissatisfied by what seems so simple
or even obvious, to the point of saying with Flaubert, isn't this rather
flat? But Pushkin is an acquired taste, and as we acquire it we begin to
realize more and more the subtleties that lie beneath the simplicity of his
manner. It is significant that even English and American writers who dis–
cover Pushkin today - the poet and novelist D . M. Thomas is one of
them - can find him as inspiring now as Russian authors have always
done; and as apt to oblige in complementing and leading on their own
thoughts and ideas. Pushkin can seem like his own
improvisatore
in
Egyptian
Nights,
just as in another sense he is like the aristocratic Charsky, who ev–
ery
now and then retires from his worldly life in own into the country
and there scribbles down a load of "rubbish." But he also has an un–
doubted resemblance to the great queen Cleopatra, whom Pushkin, like
Shakespeare, portrays as being at once infinitely and poetically seductive,
and also sublimely commonplace and down to earth. The most engaging
moment in that medley is when the ingenuous young lady's suggestion
for a subject is drawn from the urn, and the
improvisatore
deferentially asks
which lover she had in mind, "for the great queen had many." Pushkin's
own powers of story-telling are almost equally varied.
