И время и место

Another more elaborate example is the “philosophical ode” entitled “Moustaches” (Usy) of 1816.¹⁵ In this humorous send-up of the ultra-serious odic genre Pushkin tries on two voices, one the older Derzhavin’s, the other the hussar officer and war hero Denis Davydov’s. Davydov was renowned for his flamboyantly bushy moustaches, which he was forever twirling. The moustache was the most salient attribute of the hussar; it was as though all the hussar’s legendary daring (udaV) was located in this hirsute outgrowth, as the biblical Samson’s strength was reputed to be in his hair. The poem opens with the voice of Derzhavin warning Davydov, in the phrasing of Derzhavin’s most famous valedictory lines, that the river of time (reka vremen) sweeps everything away in its path. Then, for the next several stanzas, the voice zone of Davydov, though still the addressee, takes over. Now we see the moustache through the eyes of its owner and his personal mythology: it is so long it wraps around his ear; it is sprinkled with rum and wine; glistening with kohl (hair crème), it has never known the razor; in the heat of battle, it helps its owner keep a cool head, as he grabs a saber in one hand and his hairy talisman in the other; and then, when more peaceful times have come, it accompanies the hussar in his conquests of the fair sex, as again one hand caresses the breast of a beauty and the other twirls the moustache. This is all very funny and very much in the spirit of hussar bravado. In the last stanza, however, as expected, there is a turn back to the viewpoint of Derzhavin, who reminds the dashing warrior and lover that his ruddy cheeks will fade, his black curls will turn grey, and – the punch line – old age will pluck out his moustaches. The point here is this is neither Derzhavin nor Davydov talking, although the recording of their voices is virtually perfect. It is Pushkin, the fledgling, who either has no moustache or only the beginning of one. He uses both voices against each other in order to assert his own, which plays behind the scenes and is present in the humor and, equally important, the implicit challenge. I see youth and age, says this voice; I am the confidence that doesn’t take sides and can make a joke out of their claims to ultimate authority.

There is one genre at which Pushkin failed miserably during these apprentice years – the love lyric – and there is good reason. Almost none of the poems he wrote about love as a teenager did he include in his first book of collected verse that appeared in 1826. However well Pushkin masters the conventional phrasing and poetic form, what is “his” cannot not yet stand out in this context. The wit that is already his trademark in his humorous verse can get no foothold in the flood of hot feelings that is adolescence. In his verses to Ekaterina Bakunina, the older sister of a classmate, his language is one-sidedly elegiac:

Итак, я счастлив был, итак, я наслаждался,
Отрадой тихою, восторгом упивался…
И где веселья быстрый день?
Промчался летом сновиденья,
Увяла прелесть наслажденья,
И снова вкруг меня угрюмой скуки тень!

(1,148)

[And thus, I was happy, and thus, I took pleasure
In quiet bliss, drinking ecstasy to the full…
And where now is the fleeting day’s joy?
It bas flown
It has flown by like a dream,
Pleasure’s charm has faded,
And again I am surrounded by the shadow of gloomy boredom!]