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Pushkin’s “Journey to Arzrum”: The Poet at the Border

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Monika Frenkel Greenleaf
Monika Frenkel Greenleaf*
Affiliation:
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University
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Extract

“Mne nenadobno puteshestvovať. la puteshestvuiu v svoem voobrazhenii,” said Aleksandr Pushkin, not quite ingenuously, toward the end of his life. Pushkin’s chronic desire for travel had so often been frustrated or deflected that his loudly lamented exile in the early 1820s to the Caucasus, Crimea, Bessarabia, and Odessa later came to represent, faute de mieux, the peripatetic freedom of his youth. When in 1829 Pushkin and Petr A. Viazemskii were refused permission to travel to Paris, Pushkin embarked instead on the illicit trip south that would become the basis for his literary “Puteshestvie v Arzrum” six years later. In 1836, with a rueful backward glance at the orientalist fashion that he himself had helped to launch in Russian poetry, Pushkin wrote, “Vinovat: ia by otdal vse, chto bylo pisano u nas v podrazhanie l.(ordu) Bai(ronu), za sleduiushchie nezadumchivye i ne-vostorzhennye stikhi, v kotorykh poet zastavliaet geroia svoego vosklitsať druz’iam: Druz’ia! Sestritsy! ia v Parizhe! Ia nachal zhit’, a nedyshať!” (12:93). Perhaps the exuberant first words of an unfinished drama, “Cherez nedeliu budy v Parizhe nepremenno” represent a vestige of that never-to-be-realized desire (7:251-253). In short, if the south served as an escape valve for dreams of uninhibited motion and adventure, it was also a surrogate, marking the boundaries rather than the fulfillment of that freedom. Not surprisingly, then, the theme of the seductive border crossing is central to the “Puteshestvie v Arzrum” (8:1, 463):

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , Winter 1991 , pp. 940 - 953
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Inc. 1991

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References

1. More typically, he fantasized to Petr A. Viazemskii from his exile in 1826: “Gde zh moi poet? on udral v Parizh i nikogda v prokliatuiu Rus’ ne vorotitsia.” In January 1830 he even requested Aleksandr Benckendorff’s permission to go to China. (A. S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobrante sochinenii, 16 vols. (n.p.: Akademiia nauk, 1937-1959) 13:280 and 14:56). Citations in text will be from this edition, translations by myself unless otherwise indicated.

2. See Levkovich, Ia. L., “Kavkazskii dnevnik Pushkina,” Pushkin issledovania i materiały, (Leningrad: Nauka, 1983), 11:19–26.Google Scholar

3. “V Stavropole uvidel ia na kraiu neba oblaka, porazivshie mne vzory, rovno za deviať let. Oni byli vse te zhe, vse na tom zhe meste. Eto—snezhnye vershiny Kavkazskoi tseli” (PSS 8:1, 447).

4. Although the itineraries of his two sets of travels were quite different, Pushkin relates their landscapes, sometimes quite directly: “Aziatskie stroeniia i bazar napominali mne Kishineva” (8:1, 456).

5. See Seidel, Michael, Exile and the Narrative Imagination (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, Brombert, Victor, The Romantic Prison. The French Tradition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar, and Austin, Paul M., The exotic Prisoner in Russian Romanticism, Kussian Literature 16 (1984): 217–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. The suppression of Boris Godunov, a multiplied censorship, retrospective investigations of “André Chenier” and “Gavriliada,” the financial, as well as critical, failure of “Poltava,” journalistic harrassment by literary critics in the pay of the Third Section, police surveillance of his physical movements and social contacts all revealed the ambivalence lurking in Pushkin’s “special relationship” with the tsar and Nicholaevan society. His personal life in 1828, his “wildest year,” exhibited a similar alternation between freedom and restriction, featuring a series of simultaneous romances, courtships, and abrupt disentanglements enacted on the stage of high society. See Lotman, lu. M., Pushkin, A. S.. Biografila pisatel’ia (Leningrad: Prosveshchenie, 1982)Google Scholar; Vatsuro, V. E. and Gillel’son, M. I., Skvoz’ umstvennyeplotiny (Moscow: Kniga, 1972)Google Scholar, and Akhmatova, A. A., “Neizdannye zametki o Pushkine,” Voprosy literatury (1970) 1:196.Google Scholar

7. Passport restrictions listed in Polnoe sobrante zakonov rossiiskoi imperil for the 1820s and 1830s, for example, apply almost exclusively to merchants, Jews, and foreign residents. For a structural analysis of the nobleman’s options, see Lotman, lu. M., “The Poetics of Everyday Behavior in Eighteenth-Century Culture,” in Nakhimovsky, Alexander D. and Nakhimovsky, Alice Stone, ed., The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 67–94 Google Scholar; and Becker, Seymour, Nobility and Privilege in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb, III: Northern Illinois University Press, 1985), 28–31 Google Scholar.

8. Sterne, Laurence, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, ed. Petrie, Graham (Baltimore: Penguin, 1974)Google Scholar. See Seidel, Exile and the Narrative Imagination, on Sterne as “expatriated adventurer.”

9. Turner, Victor W., The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969), 94–130 Google Scholar: “The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae (threshold people) are necessarily ambiguous since this condition and these persons elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural space. . . . Their ambiguous and indeterminate attributes are expressed by a rich variety of symbols in the many societies that ritualize social and cultural transitions.”

10. See excerpts from contemporaries’ memoirs about Pushkin’s dress, violations of social and military decorum, and laughter en route to Arzrum, particularly those of Potokskii, N. B. and Pala-vandov, Prince E. O., in Veresaev, V., Pushkin v zhizni (Moscow: Sovetskii pistael’, 1936), 10–12 Google Scholar.

11. See Hokanson, Katya’s excellent study of “Russian orientalism” (M.A. thesis, Stanford University, 1988), 56–76 Google Scholar.

12. Ibid., 65.

13. See Komarovich, V. L., “K voprosu o zhanre ‘Puteshestviia v Arzrum,’ Vremennik Pushkinskoi komissii III (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1937), 326–338 Google Scholar; he identifies as its generic model François René Chateaubriand’s “journey of a poet,” the Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem et de Jérusalem à Paris, whose avowed aim was research to supplement his poetic work in progress, Les Martyres. ( Chateaubriand, , Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1968), 53)Google Scholar.

14. Chateaubriand finds a Greek translation of his own Atala on the roadside in an equally improbable manner. Other parodistic moments—such as the citation of Horace’s Ode 14 in book 2 (“Eheu fugaces, Postume”), the apostrophe about Roman Catholic missionaries, the rush to overtake the army, the “civilized European’s” resorting to a stick to reinforce his wishes, and his being mistaken for a doctor—are cited by Komarovich, “K voprosu,” 334-337.

15. “Iz Feodosii do samogo Iurzufa ekhal ia morem. Vsiu noch’ ne spal. Luny ne bylo, zvezdy blistali; peredo mnoiu, v tumane, tianulis’ poludennye gory. . . . ‘Vot Chatyrdag,’ skazal mne kapitan. Ia ne razlichal ego, da i ne liubopytstvoval” (8:1,437). The “Otryvok iz pis’ma k D.,” a description of Pushkin’s travel impressions in 1820, was written for Anton A. Del’vig’s almanac Severnye tsvety in 1824, published in 1826, and then paired with an excerpt from I. M. Murav’ev-Apostol’s Puteshestvie po Tavride as a prose frame for a new edition of “Bakhchisaraiskii fontan” in 1830.

16. “Monastyr’ na Kazbeke” (1829) was one of the travel poems that Pushkin published in 1832. See Izmailov, N. V., “Liricheskie tsykly v poezii Pushkina kontsa 20-30-kh godov,” in Ocherki tvorchestva Pushkina (Leningrad: Nauka, 1975), 213–269 Google Scholar; and Komarovich, “K voprosu.”

17. I have borrowed the notion of the “notes of a gentleman” from Tynianov, Iurii M., who first pointed out the parodistic thrust of the preface in “O ‘Puteshestvii v Arzrum’,” Vremennik Pushkinskoi komissiill (Moscow-Leningrad: Nauka, 1936), 56–73 Google Scholar. Not only had satirical intent been attributed to Pushkin by the French, but Russian critics, Faddei V. Bulgarin and Nikolai N. Nadezhdin among them, had bewailed the nonepic results of Pushkin’s trip to the front (in the Severnaia Pchela, 1830, no. 35 and Vestnik Evropy, 1830, no. 2). Hence Pushkin’s reaction in the preface: “Priekhať na voinu s tem, chtob vospevať budushchie podvigi, bylo by dlia menia s odnoi storony slishkom samoliubivo, a s drugoi slishkom nepristoino.” His rejection of the Chateaubriand conception of a “poeťs journey” is also slightly indirect: “Iskať vdokhnoveniia vsegda kazalos’ mne smeshnoi i nelepoi prichudoiu: vdokhnoveniia ne syshchesh’; ono samo dolzhno naiti poeta.” In the end, he claims to have found what he, as a “chelovek, ne imeiushchii nuzhdy v pokrovitel’stve sil’nykh” desired: simply a “radushnyi i gostepriimnyi” reception (8:1, 443-444).

18. Tynianov, Iurii M., “O ‘Puteshestvii v Arzrum’”; Piotr Bitsilli, “Puteshestvie v Arzrum,” Belgradskii pushkinskii sbornik (Belgrade: Russkago Pushkinskago Kommiteta v Iugoslavii, 1937), 247–264 Google Scholar; Komarovich, V. L., “K voprosu o zhanre ‘Puteshestvia v Arzrum”; Krystyna Pomorska, “Structural Peculiarities in ‘Puteshestvie v Arzrum’,” in Alexander Pushkin Symposium, ed. Kodjak, Andrej and Taranovsky, Kivill (New York: New York University Press, 1974), 119–129.Google Scholar For a more “realistic” approach, see Olcott, Anthony, “Parody as Realism: The Journey to Arzrum ,” Russian Literary Triquarterly, 10 (1974): 245–259 Google Scholar; Makogonenko, G. P., Tvorchestvo A. S. Pushkina v 1830-e gody (1833-1836) (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1982)Google Scholar. A prose genre analysis is provided by Roboli, T., “Literatura puteshestvii,” Russkaia proza, ed. Eikhenbaum, Boris and Tynianov, Iurii (Reprint; The Hague: Mouton, 1963)Google Scholar; and more recently, by Wachtel, Andrew, in “Voyages of Escape, Voyages of Discovery: Transformations of the Travelogue,” in proceedings of the University of California, Berkeley conference Russian Literary Mythologies: From the Golden Age to the Silver Age, “ Paperno, Irina, Gasparov, Boris, and Hughes, Robert, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

19. Concerning Pushkin’s problems with the censorship, see Vatsuro, and Gillel’son, , Skvoz’ umstvennye plotiny, 216–272 Google Scholar.

20. See Grossman, Leonid’s discussion of orientalist publications in Russia in “Lermontov i kul’tury vostoka,” Literalurnoe nasledstvo 43–44 (Moscow, 1941): 673–744 Google Scholar. See also Pedrotti, Louis, Jozef-Julian Sekowski: The Genesis of a Literary Alien (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965)Google Scholar.

21. See Hokanson, Russian Orientalism, 36-55, on Uvarov and Senkovskii’s careers as Russian orientalists. My discussion of orientalist discourse is much indebted to Edward Said’s study Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979). Said seems to be largely unaware of the subjecťs Russian ramifications (see p. 1).

22. Chaadaev, Petr I., Lettres philosophiques addressees à une dame (Paris: Librairie des cinq continents, 1970)Google Scholar. The first letter was written and privately circulated in 1829.

23. Pushkin’s review, “O vtorom tome ‘Istorii russkogo naroda’ Polevogo” (11:127).

24. Said, Orientalism, 49-92. See also Carter, Paul’s argument against Anglo-Australian historicism and geography in The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (New York: Knopf, 1988): 34–68 Google Scholar.

25. Said, Orientalism, 85, 89.

26. Ibid., 172.

27. See ibid., 123-166 for specific documentation.

28. Byron, , Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, “Beppo,” Don Juan, in Poetical Works, ed. Page, Frederick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; de Lamartine, Alphonse, Voyage en Orient (1835, reprint Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1959)Google Scholar; Hugo, Victor, Odes et Ballades. Les Orientales (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1829, 1968)Google Scholar.

29. Said, Orientalism, 170-178, 177.

30. Hugo, preface to Les Orientales (1968), 319-323. Unlike the others, Hugo did not actually travel to the east.

31. Byron, , “The Giaour,” Poetical Works, 1099–1119.Google Scholar

32. Byron’s Leilas, Zuleikas, Gulnares, and so forth are stereotypes of the exotic feminine, defined and doomed by their sensuality and passiveness; yet despite the strong individuality of Pushkin’s “southern” heroines, the plot of each intercultural sexual encounter conforms to the orientalist paradigm. See Marcus, Steven, The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth Century England (New York: Basic Books, 1967)Google Scholar.

33. Byron did not need to travel to Russia himself to “suppose [Juan] then at Petersburgh,” satirize “Moscow’s climes” and Catherine’s court. See Don Juan, canto XI, st. 42-canto XII, st. 49.

34. See my manuscript, “Pushkin’s Byronie Apprenticeship: A Problem in Cultural Syncretism,” which is part of my current work on Pushkin and romantic fashion.

35. See Tynianov’s admirable analysis of “Puteshestvie v Arzrum” as a covert satire on Paskevich’s exploits, in “O ‘Puteshestvii v Arzrum’,” 63-72, as well as his historical novel, Smerť Vazir-Mukhtara (Kishinev: Literatura Artistike, 1984) for a suggestive depiction of the cult of Ermolov among Pushkin’s contemporaries.

36. “Legkii, odinokii minaret svidetel’stvuet o bytii ischeznuvshego seleniia. . . . Vnutrenniaia lestnitsa eshche ne obrushilas’. la vzobralsia po nei na ptoshchadku, s kotoroi uzhe ne razdaetsia gólos mully. Tarn nashel ianeskol’ko neizvestnykh imen, natsarapannykh na kiprichakh slavoliubymi puteshestvennikami” (8:1, 448). “My vstretili eshche kurgany, eshche razvaliny. Dva, tri nadgrobnykh pamiatnika stoialo na kraiu dorogi. . . . Tatarskaia nadpis’, isobrazhenie shashki, tanga, issechennye na kamne, ostavleny khishchnym vnukam v pamiať khishchnego predka” (8:1,449). Even in the capital city of Arzrum, “pamiatniki sostoiat obyknovenno v stolbakh, ubrannykh kamennoi chalmoiu ... v nikh net nichego iziashchnogo: nikakogo vkusu, nikakoimysli. . . .Odin puteshestvennik pishet, chto izo vsekh aziatski khgorodov, vodnom Arzrume nashel on bashennye chasy, i te byli isporcheny” (8:1,478). “Ia poprosil vody sperva po-russki, a potom po-tatarski. On menia ne ponial. Udivitel’naia bespechnosť ! v tridtsati verstakh ot Tiflisa, i na doroge v Persiiu i Turtsiiu, on ne znal ni slova ni po-russki ni po-tatarski” (8:1, 460).

37. Consider the concluding lines of “Bakhchisaraiskii fontan” (4:170):

Сии надгробные столбы,
Венчанны мраморной чалмою,
Kазалось мне,
завет судьбы Гласили внятною молвою. Где скрылись Ханы? Где Гарем?
Kругом все тихо,
все уныло,
Все изменилось.

38. This hissingly alliterative phrase accompanies Paskevich so frequently that it contributes to the aura of derision that Tynianov first detected in Pushkin’s treatment; see “O Puteshestvii v Arzrum.”

39. I borrow the phrase city of life from Zweig, Paul’s stimulating chapter on “The Flight from Women” in The Adventurer (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 61 Google Scholar. The phrase “demon of impatience,” on the other hand, is Pushkin’s (“Demon neterpeniia opiať mnoiu ovladel,” 8:1, 462); Pomorska sees it as the journey’s surreal leitmotive.

40. Dante, , Purgatorio, Canto 9, 19-78, trans. Singleton, Charles S. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 89–91 Google Scholar. See my article, “Illegibility in ‘Journey to Arzrum’,” forthcoming in Pushkin Symposium III, ed. Kodjak, Andrey (New York: New York University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, on the Dantean structure of Pushkin’s journey.

41. Turner, The Ritual Process, 96.

42. The dervish, a Muslim religious ascetic who expressed divine “possession” by his whirling dance, was adopted, for example, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in “Kubla Khan” (1816) as a prototype of the romantic poet (“His flashing eyes! His floating hair!”). Pushkin probably had in mind the dialogue between the Pacha and the captive, “Dervise,” who throws off his disguise to reveal himself as the hero Conrad himself, in Byron’s “The Corsair.” (Byron, Collected Works, Canto 2, 64-195).

43. The circumstances of Griboedov’s patronage by Ermolov, then Paskevich, the cause for his transfer to the Persian capital, the behind-the-scenes maneuvers of English diplomats in Persia, and the circumstances of Griboedov’s death were long suppressed and a cause for speculation. See Davydov, Denis’s Zapiski Denisa Vasil’evicha Davydova, v Rossii tsensuroiu ne propushchennye (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1962)Google Scholar, begun in 1828, first published in Brussels in 1863.

44. Zweig, The Adventurer, 89-114.

45. Cited in Bitsilli, “ ‘Puteshestvie v Arzrum’,” 255.

46. Chaadaev introduced the equation of Petersburg and Egypt by signing his first Philosophical Letter “Necropolis.”

47. Pushkin’s last unfinished story “Egipetskie nochi” (1835) takes this logic to its conclusion. See my “Illegibility in ‘Journey to Arzrum.’”