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acquaintance; and, if you see her and get to know her, – to the sovereign of my imagination, Minerva in the hour of lust, in whom everything is not earthly, apart from the gaze, in which there glows the spark of earthly desire. Happy is he who will fan the spark: in it the fire of poetry glows.’⁸¹ In December Turgenev told Vyazemsky of Pushkin’s new verses; he had written ‘an epistle to a masturbator, and, really, it can be read even by the most bashful … How Sofya’s roses fade, because she allows no one to pick them.’ In January he sent Vyazemsky the poem in question, together with a request for enough striped black velvet to make a waistcoat, since it was unobtainable in St Petersburg. ‘Pushkin’s verses are charming!’ Vyazemsky replied. ‘Did he not write them to my lustful Minerva? They say she deals in that business.’⁸² Vyazemsky was right; the poem, ironically enitled ‘Platonic Love’, was addressed to Sofya Potocka. In 1825, when preparing his verse for publication, Pushkin wrote on the margin of the poem’s manuscript: ‘Not to be included – since I want to be a moral person.’⁸³

* I.e. La Pucelle: the Charites were the daughters of Zeus, goddesses personifying charm, grace and beauty.

* Grisier was a friend of Alexandre Dumas, who mentions him in The Count of Monte Cristo, and based a novel, Le Maître d’armes (3 vols, Paris, 1840–1), on his experiences in St Petersburg.

       Duelling had been banned in France from 1566, in England from 1615, and in Russia from 1702. The relevant ukase of Peter the Great runs: ‘Inhabitants of Russia and foreigners residing there shall not engage in duels with any weapon whatsoever, and for this purpose shall not call out anyone nor go out: whosoever having issued a challenge inflicts a wound shall be executed’ (Duel Pushkina s Dantesom-Gekkerenom, 104). However, in all three countries there always had been a very wide gap between ban and enforcement. This was especially true of Russia, where the authorities would usually turn a blind eye to rencontres which did not have a fatal result; in the case of those which ended with the death of one combatant, the fate of the survivor often depended on the arbitrary whim of the tsar. Ivan Annenkov, a lieutenant in the Chevalier Guards, who killed an officer of the Life Guards Hussars in a duel, was, on Alexander’s orders, given the extraordinarily light sentence of three months in the guard-house. And when, in June 1823, General Kiselev, the chief of staff of the Second Army, killed Major-General Mordvinov, Alexander took no action at all: Kiselev remained in his post and underwent no punishment.

* Elizaveta Markovna was related to Praskovya Osipova, the owner of Trigorskoe: her brother, Petr Poltoratsky, had married Ekaterina Vulf, the sister of Praskovya’s first husband, Nikolay Vulf.

* The theatres were also closed from the Monday of the first week of Lent to the Sunday after Easter.

* The phrase is an adaptation of a line in a poem of 1820, ‘Extinguished is the orb of day …’ [‘Pogaslo dnevnoe svetilo …’], II, 146.

† The known other members are Sergey Trubetskoy, Fedor Yurev, Dmitry Barkov, Yakov Tolstoy, Aleksandr Tokarev, Ivan Zhadovsky, Aleksandr Ulybyshev, and Prince Dmitry Dolgorukov.

* I.e. Krylova: the Russian for wing is krylo.

* Vyazemsky had almost filial feelings for Karamzin: after his father’s death in 1807 (his mother, an O’Reilly, had died in 1802) Karamzin, whose second wife was Vyazemsky’s illegitimate half-sister, had come to live on the family estate at Ostafevo, near Moscow, and had acted as the young prince’s guardian.

* Pushkin later added a manuscript note to this line: ‘An inaccuracy. Chevalier Guards officers, like other guests, appeared at balls in undress and low shoes. A just remark, but there is something poetic about the spurs’ (VI, 528).

* Pythia was the priestess of Apollo at Delphi, who ‘delivered the answer of the god to such as came to consult the oracle, and was supposed to be suddenly inspired by the sulphureous vapours which issued from the hole of a subterranean cavity within the temple, over which she sat bare on a three-legged stool, called a tripod’ (Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. London, 1984, 539).

       5 ST PETERSBURG 1817–20

      III: Triumph and Disaster

      Thus, an unconcerned dweller in the world,

      On the lap of idle quiet,

      I celebrated with obedient lyre

      The legends of dark antiquity.

      I sang – and forgot the insults

      Of blind fate and of my enemies,

      Flighty Dorida’s treacheries,

      And the loud slanders of fools.

      Borne on the wings of invention,

      My spirit soared beyond the earth’s confine;

      But meanwhile an invisible thunder-storm’s

      Cloud gathered over me! …

      Ruslan and Lyudmila, Epilogue

      AT THE LYCÉE Pushkin had begun his first long poem, the mock-heroic epic Ruslan and Lyudmila. He continued to work on it – slowly and spasmodically, most productively when confined to his bed – in St Petersburg, reading excerpts to his friends as he progressed. ‘Pushkin is writing a charming poem and is maturing,’ Batyushkov told Vyazemsky in May 1818;¹ and in autumn wrote to Bludov in London: ‘The Cricket is beginning the third canto of his poem. What a marvellous, rare talent! Taste, wit, invention and gaiety. Ariosto at nineteen could not have done better. I see with grief that he is letting himself be distracted, harming himself and us, lovers of beautiful verse.’² In December Vyazemsky heard of further progress from Turgenev: ‘[Pushkin], despite his whole dissolute way of life, is finishing the fourth canto of his poem. If he were to have three or four more doses of clap, it would be in the bag. His first dose of venereal disease was also the first wet-nurse of his poem.’³ The fifth canto was written in the summer of 1819 at Mikhailovskoe; in August Fedor Glinka, the fellow-member of the Green Lamp, read the first two in manuscript. ‘O Pushkin, Pushkin! Who/Taught you to captivate with miraculous verse?’ he exclaimed.⁴ In February 1820 Pushkin, ill again, revised the fifth and worked on the sixth and final canto while convalescing. He completed this a month later, and immediately read it to Zhukovsky, who in admiration presented his young rival with his portrait, bearing the inscription: ‘To the pupil-conqueror from the conquered teacher on that most solemn day when he completed Ruslan and Lyudmila. Good Friday, 26 March 1820.’⁵

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