Victor Hugo Notre Dame R Gregg

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    American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

    Pukin, Victor Hugo, the Perilous Ordeal, and the True-Blue HeroAuthor(s): Richard GreggSource: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 438-445Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/308849 .

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    PuskinandVictorHugo 439lottery numbers which would make him a rich man. The condemned manrefuses (233).The episode takes up barely a page. But its fertilizing capacity appears tohave been considerable. For the jailer's attempt in solitary surroundings toextort from the hero three numbers which will make his fortune prefiguresthe indigent Germann's vain attempt to extort from the old Countess-alsofated to die-the secret of the three cards.3Moreover, the hope expressedby Hugo's supplicant that the dead person's ghost will visit his rooms on theday after the execution to disclose the winning numbers patently foreshad-ows the Countess' ghostly visit to Germann's chambers after her death todisclose information of a very similar sort.The second Hugolian anticipation may be said to supplement the first,illuminating, as it does, the same pivotal scene from a different angle. Afew hours after the jailer's fruitless visit the hero falls asleep and has adream. It is night. He and some unnamed friends are in his study (cabinet).Alarmed by a sinister noise emanating from another room and suspectingthe presence of a nocturnal intruder, he leaves the study with his compan-ions, passes through the bedroom, traverses the salon and reaches thedining room, noting as he goes various household appurtenances (a stove,the wallpaper, portraits, a staircase). Their quest comes to an end whenbehind the door of an armoire they discover a little old woman of "hid-eous" appearance, standing rigid, motionless and mute. Repeatedly theyask who she is and what she wants. No answer. Pushed by one of them, shetopples to the floor "like some dead object." They prop her up, and thequestioning continues. "As if deaf," however, the old woman remains si-lent. Finally she half opens one eye. Exasperated beyond endurance thehero shouts: "Ah! Enfin! Repondras-tu, vieille sorciere?" Still no answer.The eye closes. The dream ends when, coming to life, as it were, the oldwoman blows out the candle and the hero feels in the dark the sharpimprint of three teeth on his hand (236).Germann's nocturnal entry into the old Countess' room is of course byno means a replica of the scene just summarized. But the correspondencesbetween the oneiric and the "real"episodes seem too many and precise tobe coincidental. The midnight intruder, the prolonged passage from roomto room, the various items retailed (kabinet, portrety, oboi, lestnica, pecka,spal'nja), a repellent and moribund old woman at the end of the quest, thefutile, frustrating questioning, the old woman's imagined or apparent deaf-ness, her abrupt fall to the floor as if dead, and the close similarity of theangry expostulation: "Staraja ved'ma! [...] tak ja z zastavlju tebjaotvecat' " (VIII [1], 239-42)-taken together these correspondences leavesmall doubt that Puskin had been more impressed by Hugo's novella thanhis dismissive remarks suggest.4

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    440 SlavicandEastEuropean ournalIILike the first of our parallels the second shows similarities which arelargely concentrated in a single pregnant scene. Its main features may besummed up paradigmatically as follows.In love with a young woman of inferior social standing, the hero, afledgling poet, whose verse efforts have recently been jeered by a hostileaudience, abruptly finds himself prisoner of a band of outlaws headed by alower-class demagogue, whose claims to royal status are transparentlyfalse. Surrounded by hostile captors and facing the gallows, he hears therebel leader's ultimatum: join the forces of sedition or be hanged. Afterone attempted intervention fails, his life is spared when the beneficiary ofan earlier act of his generosity intercedes. Set free, he is able to defend thehonor of his would-be fiancee, who is also threatened by the outlaws.No reader of The Captain'sDaughter will fail to recognize in this descrip-tion Petr Grinev, army officer, wooer of the modestly circumstanced MasaMironova, and novice poet (a "song" of his has recently been derided bySvabrin), who in Chapter VII falls into the hands of Pugacev's mutinousrabble. Standing before a gibbet, he is told that he must swear allegiance tothe royal impostor or face execution. After Savelic's offer to die in hismaster's place has been ignored, Grinev's life is spared when Pugacev

    recognizes in him the benefactor of a few months before (the fur coatincident) and sets him free (VIII [1], 325). No longer a prisoner, he is ablelater on to protect his beloved Masa from the dishonorable designs ofSvabrin.What makes this comparison more than an exercise in mere replicationis the closeness with which the same paradigm fits another, earlier-andmore famous-historical novel. For in Book II of Notre Dame de Pariswe find another neophyte, frustrated poet (his verse has recently beenheckled by a hostile audience), pursuing a beautiful girl of the lowerclasses (Esmeralda) through the city streets and intervening on her behalfwhen she is threatened with forceful abduction. Shortly thereafter he fallsprisoner to a band of rabble (brigands, beggars, cripples, thieves) headedby a bogus King ("le Roi de Thunes" ). Standing before a "portablegibbet," and threatened with immediate execution, he is ordered to swearloyalty to the outlaws. After other possibilities of rescue have been ex-hausted, his life is spared when the person whom he had earlier sought tohelp (Esmeralda again) recognizes in him her would-be benefactor andsuccessfully intercedes on his behalf (260-77). In view of these correspon-dences it is not perhaps surprising that, onomastically too, Puskin fol-lowed in the steps of the French novelist, "Petr Grinev" being little morethan a Russianization of Pierre Gringoire, the name of Hugo's belea-gured young poet.5

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    PuskinandVictorHugo 441III

    Assuming that the likelihood of a genetic link connecting the two epi-sodes has been shown, I would now like to move in the opposite direction,as it were, and call attention to a fundamental difference which marks theperformance of the two "Peters." As Caryl Emerson has shown, Grinev'svicissitudes as, successively, benefactor, foe, captive and suspected ally ofPugacev (to say nothing of his obstacle-strewn courtship of Masa) may beseen to exemplify a rite of passage from callow, untested youth to proven,fully mature manhood (64-5). And here, too, his experience invites com-parison with his French counterpart. For, as we have just seen, youngGringoire's mettle is also variously tested when his verse is publically de-rided, a helpless maiden is assaulted before his eyes, a pseudo-king com-mands his allegiance and, later on, he sues for the maiden's hand in mar-riage. However-and the divergence is as deep as its implications areintriguing-if in Puskin's tale of patriotism and valor Grinev consistentlyresists all temptations and overcomes all obstacles, Gringoire just as consis-tently does the exact opposite: his verse fiasco leaves him suicidally despon-dent; his attempted rescue of Esmeralda fails; terrified before the gibbet,he accedes to the "king's"demands; and when, later on, he presses his suitwith Esmeralda, she declines, bluntly explaining that to become her hus-band "il faut etre homme [. . .] un homme qui pourra me proteger" (118).Plainly in her eyes Gringoire is not such a man.Puskin's procedure-conscious or other-is plain. Replicating the formsof the ordeal in question (the verse fiasco, the imperilled maiden, thethreatening impostor, etc.) he reversed the directional signs on each. Norwas Notre Dame de Paris the only source which he used in this manner. InFebruary, 1832, about six months after he read Hugo's novel, documentscame into his hands which, Soviet scholarship has established, supplied himwith the ur-protagonist for a historical novel about the Pugacev uprising(Makogonenko, 8). This was M. A. Svanic, dvorjanin, army officer, andparticipant in Catherine's campaign against the Cossack impostor, who,like Puskin's hero, fell into the enemy's hands and, like Grin6v, was or-dered to acknowledge Pugacev as his sovereign. Here, however, the similar-ity ends. In contrast to his fictional counterpart Svanic swore allegiance toPugcev and served him for some time before being taken prisoner, broughtto trial, officially disgraced, and sent into permanent exile.The long and convoluted process by which the turncoat of history wasreplaced by the loyalist of fiction, and the heroic fission which resultedtherefrom (the historical Svanic eventually became the odious Svabrin,rival of Grinev and traitor to the crown) has been traced more than once indetail and needs no reiteration here (Oksman, 149-85; Makogonenko, 6-20). The possible psychological implications of that transformation remain

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    442 SlavicandEastEuropean ournalhowever to be explored. Why did Puskin, initially fascinated by the ten-sions inherent in a young officer's apostasy under pressure, change hisplans? Why, rejecting both his literary model (Gringoire) and his historicalsource (Svanic), did he create instead the infallibly stalwart, intrepid, andvirtuous Grinev? Why, in still other words, did he sacrifice psychologicalinterest for political orthodoxy?To this question Soviet scholars have offered a simple answer. Fearfulthat tsarist censors would prohibit a novel whose hero is a gentry classrenegade, Puskin purged his protagonist of all his seditious tendencies andtransferred them to the despicable Svabrin (Oksman, 171).6 Plausible onthe face of things, this theory is nonetheless open to one important objec-tion. Is it likely that Puskin, who had consigned The Bronze Horseman tothe "long drawer" rather than surrender to the demands of the censor,would radically change the design of an entire novel simply in order tomeet possible objections from that same quarter? Unless we are to convicthim of cynicism or cowardice, must we not suppose that some kind of innerassent was necessary for him to whitewash his protagonist so thoroughly?For want of specific evidence we cannot of course know the reasonsbehind this putative assent. And while the increasingly conservative politi-cal stance which some have ascribed to the poet during the years of thenovel's gestation is a possible factor,7a broader and more suggestive frame-work is provided by the public roles which Puskin was forced to play at thattime. An overage kammerjunker, he had been thrust into the increasinglyhostile milieu of the Imperial Court; a staunch patriot, his loyalty wassuspected by a Tsar,8 whose own legitimist credentials were not whollywithout taint;9 a nationally acclaimed poet, he was beginning to feel thebarbs of ideologically hostile critics; a very macho husband, the persistentrumours of his wife's infidelity were deeply wounding. Under these circum-stances is it surprising that the example of Pierre Gringoire-an ambitiousyoung poet, whose verse is publically disparaged; an outsider who, thrustinto a hostile milieu, must swear fealty to a pseudo-monarch; a lover,whose suit is spurned and whose virility is impugned-should have struck asensitive chord in Puskin the writer and left, as we have seen, a mark on hisart? Or-to push the argument one step further-is it surprisingthat, as ifto exorcise his private demons, Puskin should, after several false starts,have written a success story in which the hero is a true-blue patriot who isexonerated of all charges of disloyalty, a suitor whose future wife staunchlyresists all attempts against her honor, a loyal subject whose sovereign per-sonally intercedeson his behalf, and a maligned poet whose verse is eventu-ally appreciated by a distinguished audience.10Thus (one conjectures) didPuskin's inner qualms collaborate with external pressures to remake theimage of his soldier-hero.

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    PuSkin nd VictorHugo 443IV

    Although the two comparisons which have been my concern here mightseem to have nothing in common save the authors which they share, this isnot quite true. For, however different in concept and spirit Hugo's sprawlingmedieval epic is from his contemporary indictment of capital punishment,and however remote Puskin's Faustian story of black-magical dabbling mayseem from his realistically conceived and carefully researched historicalnovel, the narrative skein of all four works may be seen to intersect at certainpivotal points. First, all four of our heroes are or become pariahs, outsiders,or misfits; second, at a crucial moment all four must in a drunken, festive orotherwise carnivalesque atmosphere face an alien or malevolent crowd;11third, at some point each is tempted by or succumbs to a life of outlawry orcrime; fourth, sooner or later each is incarcerated or taken prisoner; fifth, ina climactic confrontation each is threatened by-or threatens anotherwith-violent death. In the firstthree of our heroes the ordeal "overcomes,"as it were, the individual. In the last, as we have seen, Puskin, havingjettisoned plans for a tale of pusillanimity, betrayal and (one assumes) even-tual rehabilitation, hit on a scheme at once simpler and more in keeping withthe didactic aim, which, somewhat surprisingly, was present in his mindalmost from the beginning. In an "introduction," composed in 1833, butlater excised, a patriarch (then Svanic, later Grinev) bequests to his grand-son an account of his experience as a young officer, expressing the hope thathis story will prove beneficial to the youth (VIII [2], 927). Exactly how theexample of a craven renegade could have been "of use" to the narrator'sgrandson the surviving plot outlines do not make clear. Indeed the difficul-ties inherent in making the traitor of history the hero of an edifying tale maywell have been (yet another) factor in Puskin's decision to change his narra-tive plans radically. Whatever the case, the implicit didacticism of the com-pleted version and the largely youthful readership which Grinev's perilousordeal has over the years attracted, indicates that the hope expressed in thesuppressed introduction has in a sense been fulfilled. Whether that fate-habentsuafata libelli-would have pleased Puskin himself is another matter.

    NOTES1 Puskin found Les Orientales "brilliant"but "strained"(XI, 175) and strongly disapprovedof Cromwell (XII, 138-41). Elsewhere he complained that Hugo's poetry in general had"no life, i.e., no truth" (XV, 29). For a short overview of Puskin's views on Hugo seeRobert A. Maguire (106-7).2 In a letter to V. A. Vjazesmskaja Puskin acknowledged "a great deal of talent" in thework, but placed it below the now-forgotten L'histoire d'un Ane by Jules Janin (XIV, 81).Elsewhere he is even more ambivalent, seeing in it both "fire and dirt" (XI, 94).

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    444 Slavic and East European Journal3 L. P. Grossman has suggested that an anecdote about Cagliostro and his alleged ability topredict three winning lottery numbers may have supplied Puskin with the idea of theCountess' secret (Grossman, 68). Since we have no proof that Puskin knew of thatanecdote (Cagliostro's name appears nowhere in his writings), Hugo's novella, which wasstill relatively fresh in his mind when he wrote "The Queen of Spades," plainly deservespriority. Other possible sources for the motif are noted by Debreczeny (215-6).4 In view of these correspondences one may surmise that the single, half-closed eye ofHugo's oneiric old woman ("elle a ouvert un oeil a demi") (236) may have inspiredGermann's hallucinatory perception of the dead countess "winking [priscurivaja]a singleeye" at him as she lies in state at the funeral (VII [1], 247).5 Iu. G. Oksman has plausiblyargued (170) that the hero's last name derives from a historical

    personage, A. M. Grinev, an officer in Catherine's army, who, according to archivalmaterial available to Puskin, was suspected of treason, placed under arrest, and ultimatelyexonerated. But the two putative sources, the Russian and the French, far from beingmutually exclusive, may well have reinforced each other. Thus, one may conjecture, thereason why Puskin ultimately hit on "Grinev"after several other names (Svanic, Basarin,Valuev, Bulanin) had been rejected, was precisely his memory of Hugo's hero-a hypothe-sis which is strengthened by the fact that, as a Christian name, he chose the Russianequivalent of Pierre, not, like Oksman's candidate, a name beginning with the letter "a."6 Makogonenko has offered an alternate explanation, namely, that the tsaristgovernment'ssuppression of the "cholera uprisings"among the peasantry in the Novgorod area in 1831,taken in conjunction with Pugkin's own investigations of the Pugacev rebellion, had con-vinced him that the defeat of any peasant revolt was a historical necessity. He therefore hadno choice but disassociate his positively conceived hero from this "senseless" undertaking(7-20). Though ingenious, this view of Pugkin as a kind of Marxistavant la lettre,who intu-itively understood the necessity of a proletarian revolution, is not altogether convincing.7 For a perceptive discussion of Pugkin'spolitical views in the 1830'ssee Sam Driver (53-76).8 As is known, Pugkin, even as a kammerjunker,continued to be under police surveillance.9 To Pugkin's well-known antipathy for the Romanovs as upstarts and interlopers there isthe fact, doubtless known to him, that Nicholas was in all likelihood not a "biological"Romanov at all, since the Emperor Paul was widely believed to be the son of Catherine'slover Saltykov. It also should be remembered that in December 1825 many Russiansconsidered that Konstantin, not Nicholas, was the rightful heir to the throne. Furtherclouding the picture were the obscure circumstances of Alexander's reported death andthe belief among some that he was not dead at all.10 Although the only poem of Grinev's which is reproduced in the novel is a decidedly weakperformance and may well have been parodically conceived, his verse was, we are told,eventually to find favor in the eyes of none other than Sumarokov himself (VII [1], 300).The possibility that this was intended as a satirical barb directed at the fustian tastes ofthat overrated (in his time) poet cannot be excluded.11 In "The Queen of Spades" this occurs on the third night of Germann's "duel" withC(ekalinskij, when in a festive atmosphere an excited crowd gathers around the twocontestants to witness Germann's downfall (VIII [1], 251). In Le Dernier Jour d'unCondamne it is the jeering, howling Parisianrabble, who surround the condemned manas he is led to the guillotine (238-39).

    WORKS CITEDDebreczeny, Paul. The Other Pushkin: A Study of Alexander Pushkin's Prose Fiction. Stan-ford: Stanford University Press, 1983.

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    Puskin and Victor Hugo 445

    Driver, Sam. Puskin: Literature and Social Ideas. New York: Columbia University Press,1989.Emerson, Caryl. "Grinev's Dream: The Captain's Daughter and a Father's Blessing." SlavicReview 40 (1981).Grossman, L. P. Ltjudy o Puskine. Moskva: L. D. Frenkel, 1923.Hugo, Victor. Romans I. Paris: Aux Editions du Seuil, 1961.Maguire, Robert A. "A. S. Pushkin: Notes on French Literature." American Slavic and East

    European Review 17 (1958): 101-109.Makogonenko, G. P. "Kapitanskaja docka" A. S. Puskina. Leningrad: Xudoiestvennajaliteratura," 1977.Puskin, A. S. Polnoe sobranie socinenij. Moskva-Leningrad: AN SSSR, 1937-59.Puskin, A. S. Kapitanskajadocka. Ed. Ju. G. Oksman. Moskva: Izdatel'stvo "Nauka," 1964.Vinogradov, V. V. "Stil' 'Pikovoj damy.' "Puskin: VremennikPuskinskoj kommissii 2 (1936):74-147.