Rakehell Genius

PUSHKIN--Ernest J. Simmons--Harvard University Press ($4).

Russian Reds and Whites cannot live together in amity, but one parti-colored dead man they proudly own in common. Last week, on the hundredth anniversary of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin's death, for once both Reds and Whites sang together like so many harmonious morning stars. Arid for once, the burden of their song was praise: praise for Pushkin, Russia's No. 1 poet. To most U. S. readers, Pushkin is still only a funny name. Much of his poetry has been translated, but most of it reads like doggerel.* To that the all- Russian retort is: non-Russians will have to take Pushkin on faith, be satisfied with the Red-&-White assurance that Pushkin is indeed Russia's Poet. Last week the circumstantial evidence in Pushkin's favor was further bolstered up by a scholarly, 484-page biography, by a critical manifesto by four Marxist writers,+- by nationwide commemoration exercises in U. S. colleges.

Not all of his contemporaries agreed that Pushkin was great, but posterity has made it nearly unanimous. Called "the founder of Russian literature," compared to Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Pushkin in his own day seemed more Byronic than anything else. So avidly did he pursue his rakehell career that it seems a miracle he had any energy left for writing, that he lasted as long as he did (38 years). Pushkin was born into the old nobility, but he also had black blood: his maternal great-great-grand father was an Abyssinian ras. Pushkin's parents were social, impecunious, improvident. They paid little attention to their swart, stocky son, left him in the haphazard hands of tutors. Pushkin's real educator was his nurse Arina, who filled him full of folklore.

When Tsar Alexander I founded his Lyceum at Tsarskoe Selo to train gentlemen's sons for the government service, 12-year-old Pushkin was sent there because it was free, spent six precocious years annoying his masters, writing light and scurrilous verse, getting into scrapes. He paid little attention to study. Once, when called on to solve an algebra equation, Pushkin guessed the answer was zero. Bellowed the master: "Fine! In my class, Pushkin, everything ends in zero with you. Take your seat and write verses." He graduated from the Lyceum without honors but with a rising reputation as a poet. Rejoining his family in St. Petersburg, Pushkin plunged into gay life with a whoop, for three years hardly came up for air. Five feet six, curly-haired, stocky, with blubber nose and lips, long gilt fingernails, he was not handsome, but his bursting energy made him popular with a fast young set who called him "Cricket" and "Spark." Drinking, drabbing, dicing and duelling filled his nights and days. On the side, he wrote a six-canto poem, Ruslan and Liudmila, many a dangerously political verse. The Tsar's police soon had him under surveillance, but were never able to prove that he was a member of any secret society. And in fact he never was. But his scurrilous verses offended the Tsar, who had him "transferred" (Pushkin was technically in the civil service) to the south of Russia.

An incurable optimist, Pushkin was glad it was not Siberia, did not realize he was banished till several years had gone by without his recall. He passed his days as usual, kept in duelling trim by shooting patterns on his bedroom wall with wax bullets, by twirling a heavy iron cane wherever he went, to strengthen his trigger hand. And he wrote verse: pornographic, blasphemous, lyric, political, and his masterpiece, Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse form. Once, as a punishment for some escapade, Pushkin was sent off to inspect a locust-ravaged district, write a report on conditions there. He wrote two. The unofficial one:

The Locust

Flew and flew--

And sat down.

It sat and sat,

Ate all around;

Again it flew.

When Nicholas I became Tsar, Pushkin's tireless hopes rose again. Unluckily for him, the Decembrist Revolt numbered many of his good friends, all of whom seemed to have subversive Pushkin poems among their papers. Though not directly implicated in the conspiracy, Pushkin was again under suspicion. He was allowed to lay his case before the Tsar. After an hour-long interview Pushkin emerged, seething with loyalty. He was free to go anywhere in Russia, except St. Petersburg.

Everything he wrote in future was to be submitted not to the regular censor, but directly to the Tsar. What Pushkin did not understand was that the Tsar thought him too potentially useful to be imprisoned, too dangerous not to be watched. But until he discovered that he was not really free, Pushkin was overjoyed, dove into his old gay life with more zest than ever. He even got permission to visit St. Petersburg, gambled away 17,000 rubles in two months.

And then the hardened libertine fell in love--by his own count, for the 113th time. Natalya Goncharova's family was not nearly as good as Pushkin's; she had no dowry; she was 13 years younger than he; but she was a beauty. That was enough for Pushkin. After a long and arduous courtship, he married her. Natalya made him a decorative and submissive wife, presented him with several children. But she never returned his love, and though apparently she was technically faithful, her flirtatiousness nearly drove Pushkin wild. On her side, Natalya never understood or cared for Pushkin's poetry, was hurt and annoyed by his fits of literary hibernation. Pushkin himself hastened the inevitable end. He challenged a young Frenchman, Baron d'Anthes, who had been making violent love to Natalya, but was robbed of his prey when d'Anthes sidestepped him by marrying Natalya's sister. When d'Anthes later returned to the attack, so did Pushkin; and this time the duel took place. Both men were hit, Pushkin fatally. Seven years after that, still-beauteous, Natalya married a major general in the cavalry. This time she was really happy.

*Latest edition: The Poems, Prose and Plays of Pushkin (Random House, $3.50), an anthology by various translators, bitterly attacked by Critic Max Eastman for mistranslations, general inadequacy.

+-Pushkin: Homage by Marxist Critics, Ed. by Irving D. W. Talmadge (Critics Group $1.50).

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