И время и место

Before getting started let us recall what the eleven-year-old boy Sasha Pushkin first saw when he and Uncle Vasilii L’vovich entered one of the three imposing wrought-iron gates leading to the Great or Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo on 9 October 1811 (OS). However occluded by two centuries of myth-making, the basic facts speak for themselves: the impressionable boy would have seen an architectural and landscape ensemble dazzling not only by Russian, but indeed by European and world standards. The Catherine Palace, the emperor’s summer residence, was an immense three-story Baroque edifice extending more than a football field in length; when viewed from within, its seemingly endless enfilade of parqueted chambers created the impression of a veritable Versailles-like hall of mirrors without the reflecting glass. In the northeast corner of the building was an archway connecting the Lyceum, whose four floors had housed the grand duchesses prior to marriage in Catherine’s time but now were newly renovated for the school, to the palace. Other visual marvels in the immediate vicinity included, some 500 meters to the north, the Quarenghi-designed Alexander Palace, chastely classical where the Catherine Palace was voluptuously baroque, a gift to her favorite grandson and future tsar by Catherine the Great; the Cameron Gallery, a grand arcade constructed by the Scottish architect Charles Cameron that extended southeast from the western end of the Catherine Palace and was elegantly lined with ionic columns interspersed with the busts of the greats from ancient and modern history; the Chinese Pavilion that was part of an elaborate oriental complex; several royal bathhouses inspired by the luxury of Nero and set on a wedding cake of terraces flowing south from the Great Palace; charming combinations of grottos, marble bridges, greenhouses, chapels, theatres, and reception halls; and of course, no less stunning than the architectural landmarks and designed with them in mind, the vast parks, beautifully carved around swan-festooned lakes with miniature islands and dotted here and there with monuments to Russian military victories, that were in the Dutch style during the time of Elizabeth and in the English style during the time of Catherine II. In short, this aestheti-cized space was alive with history and myth. The parks’ meandering paths and viewing sites were the perfect hideouts for a budding versifier.

In the company of his peers young Sasha Pushkin did not immediately stand out for his poetic craft. Numerous Lyceans tried their hands at verse, and of these Aleksei Illichevskii was considered the most promising to start with. Pushkin had two nicknames: the first, and best known, was “Frenchman,” which he earned because of his excellent command of the language, but which another classmate, Modest Korf, suggests may have had a pejorative coloring given the context (the Napoleonic wars). The second was “Mixture of Monkey and Tiger” (pomes’ obez’iany s tigrom). This latter sobriquet is particularly telling, as it foregrounds both Pushkin’s external features (he calls himself vrai singe in the 1814 “Mon Portrait”) and his love of pranks, on the one hand, and his sharp claws and fierce fighting spirit, on the other. An 1812 character report made by his professors cites many of the traits that made up this strange breed of tiger monkey: his talents are more “brilliant” than “substantial,” his mind “ardent” and “subtle” rather than “profound”; his diligence is “mediocre”; he is “well read” in both French and Russian literature, but his knowledge is “superficial”; he displays “pride” together with “ambition,” which at times causes him to seem “withdrawn”; “heated bursts of irritability, flippancy, and a special kind of witty loquaciousness” are characteristic of him; at the same time his “good nature” is noticeable, as he recognizes his faults.³ In his dealings with others Pushkin often found himself in awkward situations from which to extricate himself required tact; unfortunately, despite his essentially good heart, it was tact that he didn’t have. Close friend Ivan Pushchin says it with the greatest clarity: