1. Pushkin, A. S., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 17 vols. (Moscow, 1937–1959), 8.1: 228–29Google Scholar. All Russian quotations are from this volume (hereafter PSS, 17 vols.); all translations of “The Queen of Spades” are from Pushkin, Alexander, Complete Prose Fiction, trans, and ed. Debreczeny, Paul (Stanford, 1983 Google Scholar; hereafter CPF). All other translations are mine.

2. 15 June 1880; Dostoevskii, F. M., Pis'ma, ed. Dolinin, A. S. (Moscow, 1959), 4: 178.Google Scholar

3. See Todorov, Tzvetan, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Howard, Richard (Ithaca, 1975), 25–26.Google Scholar

4. Emerson, Caryl, “'The Queen of Spades’ and the Open End,” in Bethea, David, ed., Pushkin Today (Bloomington, 1993), 32.Google Scholar

5. Gershenzon, Mikhail, Mudrost’ Pushkina (Moscow, 1919), 102.Google Scholar

6. Pointed out by Kashin, N, “Po povodu ‘Pikovoi damy,“’ Pushkin i ego sovremenniki, 1927, nos. 31–32: 34.Google Scholar

7. Vinogradov, Viktor, “Stil' ‘Pikovoi damy, '” Vremennik Pushkinskoi komissii (1936): 87–88 Google Scholar. Karl Heun wrote under the pseudonym Heinrich Clauren. His novella “Gollandskii kupets” was translated in Syn otechestva 101, no. 9 (1825): 3–51, and reprinted in 1832. See also Gribushin, I, “Iz nabliudenii nad tekstami Pushkina: Vyigrysh na troiku i semerku do ‘Pikovoi damy,'” Vremennik Pushkinskoi komissii (1973): 85–89.Google Scholar

8. For other subtexts, see Debreczeny, Paul, The Other Pushkin (Stanford, 1983), 204–9.Google Scholar

9. See Boris Tomashevskii's letter to Andre Meynieux, in Pouchkine, , Oeuvres complétes, ed. Meynieux, A., 3 vols. (Paris, 1953–58), 3: 500–5Google Scholar; and Nabokov, Vladimir, Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin, 4 vols. (Princeton, 1964), 2: 261.Google Scholar

10. See Slonimskii, Aleksandr, “O kompozitsii ‘Pikovoi damy,’” Pushkinskii sbornik pamiati prof. S. A. Vengerova (Moscow, 1923), 171—80Google Scholar; Bicilli, Peter, “Zametki o Pushkine,” Slavia 11 (1932): 557–60Google Scholar; Vinogradov, “Stil’ ‘Pikovoi damy' “; Thomas Shaw, J., “The ‘Conclusion’ of Pushkin's ‘Queen of Spades, '” in Folejewski, Z., ed., Studies in Russian and Polish Literature in Honor of Waclaw Lednicki (The Hague, 1962), 114–26Google Scholar; Kodjak, Andrei, “'The Queen of Spades’ in the Context of the Faust Legend,” in Kodjak, Andrei and Taranovsky, Kirill, eds., Alexander Pus˘kin: A Symposium on the 175th Anniversary of His Birth (New York, 1976), 87–118 Google Scholar; Leighton, Lauren G., “Numbers and Numerology in ‘The Queen of Spades,'” Canadian Slavonic Papers 19, no. 4 (1977): 417–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. The importance of the sequence was pointed out by Burgin, Diana, “The Mystery of ‘Pikovaia Dama': A New Interpretation,” in Baer, Joachim T. and Ingham, Norman W., eds., Mnemozina: Sludia litteraria Russica in honorem Vsevolod Setchkarev (Munich, 1974), 46 Google Scholar; and Nathan Rosen, “The Magic Cards in ‘The Queen of Spades, '” Slavic and East European Journals (1975): 256.

12. PSS, 17 vols., 8.1: 239–40; CPF, 222–23.1 have capitalized only the most direct allusions to cards found by Leighton and have added to them one ace and one seven. See Leighton, , “Gematria in ‘The Queen of Spades': A Decembrist Puzzle,” Slaxnc and East European Journal 21 (1976): 455–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Gershenzon, Mudrost’ Pushkina, 111–12.

14. PSS, 17 vols., 8.1: 239, 244, 245, 247, and CPF, 222, 226, 227, 229.

15. Emerson, “'The Queen of Spades’ and the Open End,” 6.

16. PSS, 17 vols., 8.1: 234, and CPF, 217 (emphasis mine).

17. CPF, 217 (emphasis mine).

18. PSS, 17 vols., 8.1: 243, and CPF, 225 (emphasis mine).

19. PSS, 17 vols., 8.1: 235, and CPF, 219 (emphasis mine).

20. Slonimskii, “O kompozitsii ‘Pikovoi damy, “’ 176.

21. Kodjak, “'The Queen of Spades’ in the Context of the Faust Legend,” 89.

22. Rosen, “The Magic Cards in ‘The Queen of Spades, '” 255.

23. “For us, charades and logogriphs are child's play, but in Karamzin's time, when lexical detail and play with devices were in the foreground, such games were a literary genre.” Tynianov, Iurii, “Literaturnyi fakt” (1924), in Poetika, isloriia literatury, kino (Moscow, 1977), 275 Google Scholar. Similar anagrammatic jeux d'esprit were a favorite pastime among Pushkin's friends. The readers of their school journal, Litseiskii mudrets, readily solved A. Illichevskii's conundrums such as the following “charade-logogriph” (Illichevskii's own term): “Sadovniki v sadu sadiat menia, / Poety nadmogiloi. / Otkin’ mne golovu, —i votuzh vitiaz’ ia, / Khotia po pravde khilyi. / Otkinesh’ briukho mne, ia stanovlius’ travoi, / II’ kushan'em pered toboi. / Slozhi mne briukho s golovoi—/ Ia stanu pred toboi s tovarom, / Ni slova ne skazal ia darom, / Poimi zh menia, chitatel’ moi.” (The gardeners plant me in the garden, / the poets over the grave. / Cut off my head—I become a legendary warrior, / though, to tell the truth, a wimpy one. / Remove my belly—I turn into grass / or food before your very eyes. / Attach the belly to my head—/ I stand before you with my wares. / Not a word I said in vain; / understand me, my reader?). Grot, K. Ia., Pushkinskii litsei, 2d ed. (St. Petersburg, 1998), 333 Google Scholar. The answer to the charade is “kiparis” (cypress); its components: “Paris, ris, kipa” (Paris, rice, stack). For Pushkin's use of anagrammatic riddles, see my articles “The Sound and Theme in the Prose of A. S. Pushkin: A Logo-Semantic Study of Paronomasia,” Slavic and East European Journal 27 (1983): 1–18; and “'The Shot’ by Aleksandr Pushkin and Its Trajectories,” in Clayton, J. Douglas, ed., Issues in Russian Literature before 1917: Selected Papers of the Third World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies (Columbus, Ohio, 1989), 62–74.Google Scholar

24. The fact that the ace is discovered as the last card of the series is conclusive proof of the infallibility of Pushkin's 3–7-1 sequence and, by the same token, of the shortsightedness of the interpreters of this phrase. See Slonimskii, “O kompozitsii ‘Pikovoi damy, ' “ 176; Kashin, “Po povodu ‘Pikovoi damy, '” 33–34; Vinogradov, V V., Stil’ Pushkina (Moscow, 1941), 588 Google Scholar; Chkhaidze, L. V., “O real'nom znachenii motiva trekh kart v ‘Pikovoi dame,'” pushkin: lssledovaniia imaterialy (Moscow-Leningrad, 1960), 3: 458 Google Scholar; Shaw, “The ‘Conclusion’ of Pushkin's ‘Queen of Spades, '” 119; Sidiakov, L. S., Khudozhestvennaia proza A. S. Pushkina (Riga, 1973), 117 Google Scholar; Bocharov, S. G., Poetika Pushkina (Moscow, 1974), 187 Google Scholar; Rosen, “The Magic Cards in ‘The Queen of Spades, '” 255; Kodjak, “'The Queen of Spades’ in the Context of the Faust Legend,” 89; L. Leighton, “Numbers and Numerology in ‘The Queen of Spades, '” 427, and many others.

25. PSS, 17 vols., 8.1: 249, and CPF, 230 (emphasis mine).

26. Rosen, “The Magic Cards in ‘The Queen of Spades, '” 262.

27. Cf. A. Griboedov, “Chto za tuzy v Moskve zhivut i umiraiut” (Gore ot uma, act 2, scene 1). There is a secondary sound association between the puzastyi muzhchina and tuz: a chubby little fellow is also called butuz in Russian.

28. Rosen, “The Magic Cards in ‘The Queen of Spades, '” 262.

29. Weber, Harry B., “'Pikovaia dama': A Case for Freemasonry in Russian Literature,” Slavic and East European Journal 12 (1968): 443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30. “Khudozhestvennyi mir Pushkina,” in Koka, G. M., ed., Pushkin ob iskusstve (Moscow, 1962), 18 Google Scholar. This arch is reproduced by Rosen, “The Magic Cards in ‘The Queen of Spades, ' “264.

31. Rosen, “The Magic Cards in ‘The Queen of Spades, '” 263; suggested by Shaw, “The ‘Conclusion’ of Pushkin's ‘Queen of Spades, '” 120.

32. Kodjak, “'The Queen of Spades’ in the Context of the Faust Legend,” 97.

33. PSS, 17 vols., 8.1: 236, and CPF, 219 (emphasis mine).

34. Those who might take my delicate leg twisting for leg pulling should find reassurance in Pushkin's words to Prince Viazemskii: “Aristocratic prejudices are suitable for you but not for me—I look at a finished poem of mine as a cobbler looks at a pair of his boots: I sell for profit. The shop foreman judges my jack-boots (botforty) as not up to the standard, he rips them up and ruins the piece of goods; I am the loser. I go and complain to the district policeman.” From a letter to Viazemskii, March 1823, in Thomas Shaw, J., trans, and ed., The Letters of Alexander Pushkin (Madison, 1967), 111 Google Scholar. My incredulous arbiter may turn for additional solace to Pushkin's parable “Sapozhnik” (The cobbler, 1829): “A cobbler, staring at a painting, / Has found the footwear on it flawed. / The artist promptly fixed the failing, / But this is what the cobbler thought: / ‘It seems the face is slightly crooked … / Isn't that bosom rather nude?’ / Annoyed, Apelles interrupted: ‘Judge not, my friend, above the boot!'” (trans. Rosanne Shield, unpublished manuscript).

35. CPF, 223.

36. Rabkina, N, “Istoricheskii prototip ‘Pikovoi damy, '” Voprosy istorii 43, no. 1 (1968): 213–16Google Scholar. Pushkin acknowledged the link between the princess and the Countess in his diary entry of 7 April 1834.

37. Grigorenko, V. et al., eds., Pushkin v vospominaniiakhsovremennikov, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1977), 2: 195.Google Scholar

38. In his commentary to Eugene Onegin, Nabokov erroneously attributed this novel by the Swedish romantic writer Clas Johan Livijn to its German translator la Motte-Fouque (Nabokov, Eugene Onegin, 3: 97). The original title of Livijn's novel is Spader Dame, en Beraltelse i Bref, Funne pa Danviken (1824). Pushkin could have been familiar with the novel in a French translation. Moreover, its Swedish title and a brief plot summary appeared in Moskovskii telegraf (\825). See D. M. Sharypkin, “Vokrug ‘Pikovoi damy, “’ Vremennik Pushkinskoi komissii (1972): 128–31; and Douglas Clayton, J., “'Spader Dame, ’ ‘Pique-Dame, ’ and ‘Pikovaia dama': A German Source for Pushkin?” Germano-Slavica, 1974, no. 4: 5–10.Google Scholar

39. Gershenzon, Mudrost’ Pushkina, 102–3.

40. Chkhaidze, “O real'nom znachenii motiva trekh kart v ‘Pikovoi dame, '” 459.

41. Gary Rosenshield, “Choosing the Right Card: Madness, Gambling, and the Imagination in Pushkin's ‘The Queen of Spades, '” PMLA 109 (1994): 1004. I have to admit that I fail to understand this argument. If gambling was what Germann really desired, as Rosenshield claims, why should selecting the ace and winning 367, 000 rubles have prevented him from gambling again at some future point? The true gambler Chaplitskii continued to gamble after his fabulous bet on the three cards the Countess had revealed to him.

42. Vinogradov, “SuT ‘Pikovoi damy, '” 96–97.

43. CPF, 223.

44. Noted by Vinogradov, “Stil’ ‘Pikovoi damy, “’ 103.

45. A number of these frames were also pointed out by Rosen.

46. CPF; 212.

47. See Nikolai Osipovich Lerner, Proza Pushkina, 2d ed. (Moscow, 1923), 47, and Shaw, trans, and ed., The Letters, 362, 394. The confusion of the ace with the queen and their gender could also have been facilitated by Germann's possible misunderstanding of the French phrase from Tomskii's tale: “au jeu de la Reine” (the queen's game—fern.), which Germann might have associated with aujeu de l'araignee (the spider's game—masc.). This pun was mentioned by Rosen, “The Magic Cards in ‘The Queen of Spades, '” 273n*. The German engineer's French was probably not as good as that of his aristocratic friends.

48. Vinogradov, “SuT ‘Pikovoi damy, ' “97.

49. PSS, 17 vols., 8.1: 247; CPF, 230 (emphasis mine).

50. Ibid., 217.

51. Between 3: 00 A.M. when Germann enters Liza's room and the moment he kisses her good-bye in the morning, another winter night, long and dark enough to accommodate a Dantesque pause, passes imperceptibly. We learn from the tale's epilogue that Liza has married and is bringing up a poor relative, perhaps “her own illegitimate daughter by Germann.” Suggested by Cornwell, Neil, Pushkin's “The Queen of Spades,” Critical Studies in Russian Literature (London, 1993), 62–63.Google Scholar

52. Burgin, “The Mystery of ‘Pikovaia Dama': A New Interpretation,” 46–56.

53. Gershenzon, Mudrost’ Pushkina, 98.

54. CPF, 213.

55. Gershenzon, Mudrost’ Pushkina, 98.

56. Shaw, “The ‘Conclusion’ of Pushkin's ‘Queen of Spades, '” 125n23.

57. PSS, 17 vols., 8.1: 241, and CPF, 224.

58. CPF 228.

59. See Cornwell, Pushkin's “The Queen of Spades,” 88–89.

60. CPF, 228.

61. CPF, 217. Noted by Shaw, “The ‘Conclusion’ of Pushkin's ‘Queen ofSpades, '” 121.

62. Dostoevskii, Pis'ma, 4: 178.

63. “Letter to John Murray Esq” (1821), in Nicholson, Andrew, ed., The Complete Miscellaneous Prose (Oxford, 1991), 141 Google Scholar. See Shaw, trans, and ed., The Letters, 281.

64. PSS, 17 vols., 15: 110, 322.

65. CPF, 215.