И время и место

As is evident from these character sketches, Pushkin was in need of yet a third nickname: “Sem’ raz otmer’, potom otrezh’” (translation: “Measure Seven Times Then Cut,” or “Look Before You Leap”). How many times in later life he got himself in hot water by saying or doing something on impulse; the examples – insulting the principled Karamzin in a epigram, satirizing the powerful Uvarov as a gold-digger – are legion. At this stage, however, the consequences were less dire and often humorous. For example, one of the senior ladies in waiting to Alexander’s wife, the Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna, had a pretty maid, Natasha, and it was not long before Pushkin and his mates became infatuated with her. Once, as the boys were walking in smaller groups through the darkened palace corridor where the ladies’ chambers were located, Pushkin happened to be alone and heard the rustle of a dress nearby. He was certain it was Natasha. Without giving it a thought he rushed up and tried to embrace and kiss her, only to find out as the door suddenly opened that he had in his arms old Princess Varvara Volkonskaia She was insulted, Pushkin mortified. Soon thereafter the tsar himself was informed by the princess’s brother and called the Lyceum’s director, Egor Engelhardt, on the carpet. “What is going to come of this?” complained the sovereign. “Your schoolboys not only steal my ripe apples through the fence and beat the gardener’s watchmen, but now they also pester my wife’s maids of honor.”⁶ The tsar told Engelhardt to have the boy whipped, but luckily he refused and it eventually blew over. In the wake of the brouhaha an unrepentant Pushkin described the princess in an epigram as “an old monkey” (une vielle guenon).

Yet another episode involved Marie Smith, a young widow who was living in the Engelhardt household and participating in school theatricals. Predictably, Pushkin was smitten with her comeliness and before long wrote her a poem, “To a Young Widow” (K molodoi vdove), in which he urged her to forget the dead, as they will not return, and celebrate life with the living. The verses seemed more than a little irreverent, which was the point. In any event, this lady too was offended, but what made the contretemps particularly awkward was the fact that Marie Smith was pregnant. She expressed her indignation to Egor Antonovich, who himself may not have been indifferent to her, and he censured Pushkin for it. Finally, a misadventure without amorous overtones is the one that has come down in Lyceum lore as the “gogel’-mogel”’ affair of 1814. This time three boys, Pushkin, Pushchin, and Malinovskii, smuggled a bottle of rum into the building with the help of Foma, one of the diad’-ki. They then created a grog-like concoction of eggs, sugar, and alcohol which they heated in the samovar. Muffled laughter and noise could be heard from the hall, which brought Frolov, the on-duty tutor, to the scene to investigate. The conspirators had enough time to toss their wine glasses out the window and disappear to their rooms, but one of them, Aleksandr Tyrkov, was discovered clearly in his cups (1,132–133). Frolov told the director, who then reported it to the Minister of Education, Count Razumovskii, the senior state official in charge of the Lyceum. Razumovskii came in person from St. Petersburg, called the boys out of class and gave them a severe reprimand, with the punishment to follow – two weeks on their knees throughout morning and evening prayer services, placement at the end of the dining table, and a sentence citing their names and a description of their crime in the school’s black book.⁷ Despite the apparent seriousness of the offense, Pushkin wrote another impromptu ditty, this one taking the hussar Denis Davydov’s rollicking call to wine and women as its model, in which it is not sobriety that is banished but Foma the diad’ka, who was let go for his part in the affair.