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Pushkin's Merry Undertaking and “The Coffinmaker”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Sergei Davydov
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Extract

Tak!—ves' ia ne umru …'

Derzhavin, “Pamiatnik”

Ia skoro ves' umru …2

Pushkin, “Andre” Chénier”

The autumn of 1830, which Pushkin spent in Boldino, was the most fruitful season in his creative life. After his return to Moscow he reported to Pletnev, “In Boldino I wrote as I have not written for a long time,” and presented his friend with a lengthy catalogue of his newest accomplishments. It included the last two chapters of Evgenii Onegin, “The Little House in Kolomna,” the four ”Little Tragedies,” and some thirty poems. The list was followed by Pushkin's “secret confession”: “That is still not all…. I have written five prose tales which are making Baratynskii hee-haw and kick about (“ot kotorykh Baratynskii rzhet i b'etsia”)—and which we shall also publish Anonyme.”

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , Spring 1985 , pp. 30 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1985

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References

1. “Thus! Not all of me shall die…. “

2. “Soon all of me shall die… . “

3. A letter to Petr Pletnev, December 9, 1830. English translations are given according to Thomas J. Shaw, tr. and ed., The Letters of Alexander Pushkin, 2nd ed. (hereafter Letters) (Madison:University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), p. 446.

4. Bulgarin and Belinskii were two among many who denied the Tales artistic value. See Fadei Bulgarin, Severnaia pchela, nos. 255, 286, and 288; and Belinskii, Vissarion, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii(Moscow, 1953–59), 1:139–40.Google Scholar

5. Trans, by Keane, T. in The Captain's Daughter and Other Great Stories (New York: Random House, 1936), p. 140 Google Scholar. All subsequent citations from this tale are to this edition with page numbers given in parentheses.

6. See Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 17 vols, in 21 (Moscow, 1937–59) (hereafter PSS), 14:209;PSS 15:1.

7. Nabokov, Vladimir, trans., Eugene Onegin by Pushkin, Aleksandr, 4 vols. (Princeton University Press, 1975), 3:180 Google Scholar.

8. Nikolai Lerner (1908) calls it shutka (a joke) in Proza Pushkina (Petrograd, 1923), p. 33,and so does Vasilii Gippius in Literaturnyi kritik, 2 (1937): 30; A. S. Iskoz (Dolinin) (1910) calls it a milaia shutka (a good-hearted joke) in S. A. Vengerov, ed., Pushkin (St. Petersburg, 1907–11),4:193; Boris Eikhenbaum calls the tale malen'kii anekdot (a little anecdote) in “Boldinskie pobasenki Pushkina,” Zhizri iskusstva (1919), nos. 316–17 and 318; Leonid Grossman (1923) calls “The Coffinmaker “a skazochka (a little fairy tale) bordering on “anecdote” in “Iskusstvo anekdota u Pushkina, “Pushkin, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1928), p. 64; and recently Richard Gregg characterized this tale as a “ghoulish little entr'acte” in his article “A Scapegoat for All Seasons: The Unity and the Shape of The Tales of Belkin,” Slavic Review, 30, no. 4 (1971): 760. The most extensive treatment of “The Coffinmaker” is S. G. Bocharov's study “O smysle ‘Grobovshchika’ (K probleme interpretatsii proizvedeniia, “Kontekst, 1973: Literaturno-teoreticheskie issledovaniia (Moscow, 1974), pp. 196–230.Dmitrii P. Iakubovich (1925) and N. la. Berkovskii (1962) suggested several likely subtexts for Pushkin's “Coffinmaker.” Iakubovich traces certain aspects of Pushkin's story to Shakespeare and Walter Scott in his article “Reministsentsii iz Val'ter Skotta v ‘Povestiakh Belkina,'” Pushkin i ego sovremenniki,37 (1928): 111–18; and Berkovskii has found the prototype of Adrian Prokhorov in the cynical Athenian undertaker mentioned by Montaigne and Rousseau. See his study “O ‘Povestiakh Belkina,’ “ Stat'i o literature (Moscow-Leningrad, 1962), pp. 310–11.

9. David Bethea and Sergei Davydov, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 96 (1981): 8–21.

10. PSS 8/2: 625.

11. “Are coffins not beheld each day, l the gray hairs of an aging universe? “

12. Keane, The Captain's Daughter, p. 178. Emphases are mine throughout.

13. “Tut nepremenno vy naidete l Dva serdtsa, fakel, i tsvetki; l Tut verno kliatvy vy prochtete /'V liubvi do grobovoi doski'” (Here you are sure to find / two hearts, a torch, and flowerets; / here you will read no doubt the vows of love / “Unto the tomb slab “), Evgenii Onegin, 4:29, trans, by Vladimir Nabokov. My emphasis.

14. PSS 8/2: 625.

15. Compare A. Pauly and G.Wissova, Realencyclopädie ier classischen Altertumswissenschaft,vol. 4, pt. 1 (Stuttgart: Alfred Druckenmüller, 1907), 6/1: 507–509. For illustrations, history and interpretation of this emblem see R. W. Lee, “Van Dyke: Tasso and Antigone,” Studies in Western Art, 3 (1961), especially pp. 16–18.

16. Some of the vignettes were reproduced in la. Grot, , ed., Sochineniia Derzhavina (9 vols,with illustrations) (St. Petersburg, 1864). See 1:16, 170, 752, 778, and 2:379.Google Scholar

17. “With an extinguished torch, with motionless wings, / Ozerov's spirit summons you:Friends, vengeance! …” ( “K Zhukovskomu,” 1816).

18. “In the daytime or at night will you extinguish / My frail torch / And, in exchange for it,present me / With your unearthly one? “

19. Reproduced from Muzei-zapovednik A. S. Pushkina (Moscow, 1982), pp. 198–99.

20. Viktor Vinogradov, “O stile Pushkina,” Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 16–17 (1934): 136.

21. The majority of the topographical references can be found in Volovich, Nina, Pushkinskie mesta Moskvy i Podmoskov'ia (Moscow, 1979)Google Scholar.

22. “The last of the effects of the undertaker, Adrian Prokhorov, were piled upon the hearse,and a couple of sorry-looking jades dragged themselves along for the fourth time from Basmannaia to Nikitskaia, whither the undertaker was removing with all his household” (p. 177).

23. As the drafts to the tale attest, the anagram is clearly intentional; “pokhoronnye drogi “came as a second thought to Pushkin, replacing “drozhki bez ressor” (PSS 8/2: 625). In the article “The Sound and Theme in the Prose of A. S. Pushkin: A Logo-Semantic Study of Paronomasia, “Slavic and East European Journal, 27 (1983): 1–18, I have attempted to show that titles and proper names in Pushkin are particularly productive in generating similar logo-semantic images.

24. PSS 8/2: 635.

25. Tynianov, Iurii, Arkhaisty i novatory (Leningrad, 1929), p. 27.Google Scholar

26. Mentioned in Gukasova, A. G., Boldinskii period v tvorchestve A. S. Pushkina (Moscow,1973), p. 176.Google Scholar

27. The identity of the initials and the year 1799 was suggested already in the article by Bethea and Davydov. See n. 7.

28. May 2, 1830, Letters, p. 411. My emphasis.

29. Letter to E. M. Khitrovo, August 21, 1830. My emphasis.

30. November 4, 1830, Letters, p. 436. My emphasis. While this real Adrian was making good profits in Moscow during the epidemic, the impecunious Boldino squire was allegedly preaching to his serfs in the church that God had visited the cholera upon them because they had not been paying their quitrent. Reported by P. D, Boborykin in P. E. Shchogolev, Pushkin i muzhiki (Moscow, 1928).p. 91.

31. September 9, 1830, Letters, p. 429.

32. The biographical clue goes even further: Pushkin not only married in the Church of the Ascension but he also was born on the Ascension day, on May 26, 1799.

33. “Have my foolish girls got lovers coming after them? “

34. After his wedding, Pushkin too was to celebrate a housewarming on Arbat No. 53, where he moved with Natal'ia, and thus was once more to become Adrian Prokhorov's immediate neighbor.

35. From a letter to A. I. Kaznacheev (June 1824), Letters, p. 158.

36. From a letter to brother Lev (January-February 1824), Letters, pp. 149–50.

37. It seems very apropos that Pushkin has chosen as an epigraph for chapter 2 of “The Egyptian Nights,” which deal with the “inspired” and “mercenary” aspects of creation. Derzhavin's paradoxical lines: “la tsar', ia rab, ia cherv', ia Bog” (I am a tsar, a slave, a worm, a God). For a detailed treatment of the amateur/professional attitudes of Pushkin see Vladislav Khodasevich, “Vdokhnovenie i rukopis',” O Pushkine (Berlin, 1937), pp. 142–49.

38. Borovkova-Maikova, M. S., ed., Arzamas i arzamasskie protokoly (Leningrad, 1933), p. 84 Google Scholar.All subsequent citations are to this edition with page numbers given in parentheses; the emphasis is mine throughout.

39. “Da spadet s nas ‘besednaia’ pakost', kak s gusia voda! … / Da voskresnem …” Zhukovskii(Svetlana), 35.

40. “Literaturnoesladostrastieinepreoborimaiastrast'plodit'sia “(Uvarov[Starushka],pp. 119–20).

41. “Heavy fruits of nocturnal labors— / Deceased odes, forgotten graves of epic poems!” or “May there be no resurrection / for their deceased prose and verses” (Pushkin [Sverchok]). “K Zhukovskomu” (To Zhukovskii) (1916) and “Khristos voskres …” (Christ has risen) (1816) from Pushkin's letter to his uncle.

42. “Zhalkii skelet Rassuzhdeniia … i gorestnyi pepel dvukh statei” (Zhukovskii, p. 104).

43. See, for instance, the letter to Viazemskii of August 1831: “On August 20, the anniversary of the death of Vasilii L'vovich, the local Arzamasians had a funeral banquet in memory of our club elder, of cheesecakes [V. L.'s Arzamasian nickname was “Vortrushka” (Cheesecake)], into each of which was thrust a laurel leaf. Svetlana [Zhukovskii] pronounced the funeral oration, in which with especial feeling she recalled the ceremony of his initiation into the Arzamas.” Letters, p. 525.

44. Viktor Shklovskii, “Literatura vne siuzheta.” O teorii prozy (Moscow, 1929), p. 227.

45. Arap Petra Velikogo, of which two chapters appeared in print in 1829, remained unfinished.

46. “Kogda zh poidu na novosel'e / (Zasnut’ ved’ obshchii vsem udel)” (When I will go to the housewarming / [To die is, after all, a common lot]) ( “K N. G. Lomonosovu,” 1814); “Ne pugainas, milyi drug, / Groba blizkim novosel'em …” (Don't frighten us, dear friend, / With the coffin's nearby housewarming) ( “Krivtsovu,” 1817). The metaphor survives into the 1830s: “No dolog budet son gostei / Na tesnom, khladnom novosel'e” (But long will be the guests’ dream / At the cramped,cool housewarming) ( “Borodinskaia godovshchina,” 1831).

47. “The Coffinmaker” is not the only work with this “otherworldly” theme. Kamennyi gost‘(The Stone Guest), the noble cousin of the lowly “Coffinmaker,” was written during the same autumn of 1830. In it the dead Commander responds to Don Juan's impious invitation. Trapped in Boldino between Cupid and Hymen, Pushkin bade farewell to his Don Juanian past in several love poems in which the parting with the memories of beloved women is rendered in sepulchral imagery: “Uzhty dlia svoego poeta / Mogil'nym sumrakom odeta” (To your poet, you are already clad in the duskof the grave) ( “Proshchanie” [Farewell], addressed to Elizaveta Vorontsova). The poem “Dlia beregov otchizny dal'nei” (For the shores of your distant country) addresses a dead woman (Amalia Riznich): “Tvoia krasa, tvoi stradan'ia / Ischezli v urne grobovoi—/A s nimi potselui svidaniia… / No zhdu ego; on za toboi …” (Your beauty, your sufferings / Have vanished in the sepulchral urn— / And with them the reunion kiss … / But I wait for it; you owe it me). The poem “Zaklinanie” (Invocation), a solemn counterpart to “The Coffinmaker.” also invokes a dead woman from her grave: “O, esli pravda, chto v nochi, / Kogda pokoiatsia zhivye, / I s neba lunnye luchi /Skol'ziat na kamni grobovye, / O, esli pravda, chto togda / Pusteiut tikhie mogily,— / la ten’ zovu,ia zhdu Leily: / Ko mne moi drug, siuda, siuda!” (Oh, if it is true that in the night, / When the living rest, / And from the sky lunar rays / Glide over the tombstones, / Oh, if it is true, that then /The silent graves are emptied,— / 1 call the shade, I wait for Leila: / To me, my friend, come here.come here!). For a detailed treatment of the “otherworldly” theme in Pushkin see Mikhail Gershenzon, “Ten’ Pushkina, Stat'i o Pushkine (Moscow, 1926). pp. 69–95; and more recently Sayelii Senderovich, “On Pushkin's Mythology: The Shade-Myth,” A. Pushkin: Symposium II (Columbus.Ohio: Slavica, 1980), pp. 103–15. Three years later Pushkin returned to Boldino and to the “otherworldly “theme in The Queen of Spades. But in “The Coffinmaker” Pushkin's treatment of the Gothic theme is different; it is more in the vein of his early burlesques, and an Arzamasian smile—not unlike the one that smiled at Adrian from Kurilkin's skull—is visible through the macabre.

48. The “wish of death” is a recurrent theme in the Tales. Silvio desires to kill the Count, Vyrin wishes to see Dunia “in her grave” rather than in the arms of the Hussar, Vladimir desires to kill himself, and Adrian impatiently waits for the death of Triukhina. All these are mortal sins for which Pushkin metes out his “poetic justice “: Silvio, Vladimir, and Vyrin perish de facto, while Adrian collapses in his dream in Kurilkin's osseous embrace: “come corpo morte cadde” (Dante), PSS 8/2: 636.

49. “Derzhavin has died! The extinguished torch is barely smoking, oh, Pushkin! / Oh. Pushkin,the great one is no more! The Muses are weeping over his dust! / … The sorrowful Muses have forgotten their Cupid, … / Who will dare to take over his sonorous lyre now? Who, Pushkin!” My emphasis.

50. Derzhavin, “Na smert’ sobachki Milushki, kotoraia pri poluchenii izvestia o smerti Liudovika XVI upala s kolen khoziaiki i ubilas’ do smerti” (1973).

51. “To Del'vig “: “We both made our appearance early / … Near Derzhavin's grave site, /And we were hailed with clamorous rapture. “

52. “The old man Derzhavin noticed us / And, gravebound, gave us his blessings” (VIII, 2).

53. V P. Gaevskii, Sovremennik, 8 (1863): 370, and F. N. Glinka, Vospominanie o piitecheskoi zhizni Pushkina (Moscow, 1873), p. 13; both quoted by Ernest J. Simmons, Pushkin (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1937), p. 56. Compare also V V. Veresaev (Smidovich), Pushkin v zhizni, 1:77, as well as Derzhavin's alleged words to Sergei Aksakov: “Moe vremia proshlo, teper'vashe vremia…. Skoro iavitsia svetu vtoroi Derzhavin—eto Pushkin, kotoryi uzhe v litsee pereshchegolial vsekh pisatelei.” S. T. Aksakov, Znakomstvo s Derzhavinym (1852), quoted in Oleg N.Mikhailov, Derzhavin (Moscow, 1977), p. 290.

54. Pushkin, “Vospominaniia” (1835–36). “Derzhavin. “

55. Not only does the expression “yellow house” stand in Russian for “insane asylum,” but Derzhavin's house on Fontanka, which served as the meeting place of “Beseda,” was adjacent to a madhouse. In Dashkov's (Chu) description of Derzhavin's funeral and the grotesque resurrection,the members of “Beseda,” deserting the graveyard in panic, find refuge in the “yellow house” on Fontanka which they mistake for Derzhavin's. See Arzamas i arzamasskie protokoly, p. 201. Compare also Viazemskii's (Asmodei) epigram on this occasion: “Kogda besedchikam Derzhavin predkontsom / Zhilishcha svoego ne zaveshchal v nasledstvo, / On znal ikh tverdye prava na zheltyi dom /I prochil im sosedstvo” (When Derzhavin before his death / Did not will his dwelling to the ‘Besedians,'/ He honored their firm rights for the ‘loony bin’ / And intended them as neighbors). V. E.Vasil'ev, M. I. Gillel'son, and N. G. Zakharchenko, eds., Russkaia epigramma vtoroi poloviny XVII nachala XX v., 2d ed. (Leningrad, 1975), p. 271.

56. “The humble sinner Dmitrii Larin, / Slave of our Lord, and Brigadier,” Evgenii Onegin,2:36, Nabokov's translation.

57. Pp. 184–85. My emphasis.

58. “In the kitchen and parlor were placed the master's wares—coffins of all colors and of all sizes.” Behind the prosy facade of Pushkin's sentence, Derzhavin would most likely recognize another of his famous poetic lines: “Gde stol byl iastv, tam grob stoit” (On the table once laden with victuals now stands a coffin) from “Na smert’ kniazia Meshcherskogo” (On the Death of Prince Meshcherskii)(1779). Pushkin used these lines of Derzhavin as an epigraph for chapter 4 of Dubrovskii.

59. “Kak! zhiv eshche Kurilka zhurnalist? /—Zhivekhonek! vse tak zhe sukh i skuchen. I … i—Fu! Nadoel Kurilka zhurnalist! / Kak zagasit’ voniuchuiu luchinku? / Kak umorit’ Kurilku moego?” (What! Kurilka is still alive? / —Very much alive! But just as dry and dreary, I … I —Ugh! Enough with Kurilka the journalist! / How to extinguish the smelly ‘taper'? / How to exterminate my Kurilka?) (1825). Pushkin's epigram goes back to the divination song: “Zhiv. zhiv kurilka,/ Zhiv, zhiv, da ne umer. / U nashego kurilki / Nozhki tonen'ki, / Dusha koroten'ka” (Alive,alive is the splinter, / Alive, alive, he did not die. / Our splinter has thin legs, / short soul). The participants sing this song while passing a burning splinter. Those who complete the song before the “kurilka” is extinguished will have their wishes fulfilled. Compare Vladimir Dal', Tolkovyi slovar',2nd ed. (1881), 2:222 ( “kurit “’); Slovar’ iazyka Pushkina (Moscow, 1956), 2:438; and T G. Tsiavlovakaia's commentary to this epigram in Dmitrii D. Blagoi et al., eds., Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii(Moscow, 1959), 2:685.

60. In the same “Reminiscences” Pushkin describes another irreverent episode involving Derzhavin which, I believe, captures well the bizarre nature of deflation found in “The Coffinmaker. “Awaiting Derzhavin at the Lyceum, Pushkin's friend Del'vig decided “to kiss the hand which had written ‘The Waterfall.'” When the bard finally arrived, his first words were: “Gde, bratets, zdes'nuzhnik?” (Where, buddy, is the latrine?) in consequence of which the little baron lost his desire to kiss the bard's hand. The grotesque reduction of “The Waterfall” into a “latrine” seems to be similar in nature to Pushkin's deflation of Derzhavin's poetic canon in his prose. Thus not only the epigraph to the tale, from “The Waterfall,” but also the very nature of the deflation seems to come courtesy of the old bard Derzhavin whose genius “Ei-bogu, … dumal po-tatarski” (By golly, … thought in Tatar) (Pushkin's letter to Del'vig, July 1–8, 1825), and who in his eccentric life and art “lomalkanony, kak ‘varvar'” (was breaking the canons like a barbarian) (Boris Tomashevskii, Pushkin[Moscow-Leningrad, 1961], 2:347). Gogol’ too spoke in similar terms about Derzhavin's poetic boldness. Commenting upon Derzhavin's lines from “Aristipova bania,” “I smert', kak gost'iu ozhidaet,/ Krutia zadumavshis’ usy” (He awaits death as if it were a lady visitor, / Pensively twisting his moustache), Gogol’ asked: “Who else would dare to combine such business as awaiting death with such trifle as twisting one's moustache?” ( “V chem zhe, nakonets, sushchestvo russkoi poezii i v chem ee osobennost'” in Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1959), 6:165.

61. In the letter to Del'vig, Julyl-8, 1825; Letters, p. 225.

62. “Derzhavin's idol, 1/4 gold and 3/4 lead, has not yet been assayed. His ‘Ode to Felitsa'stands alongside ‘The Noble Lord,’ and the ode ‘God’ alongside the ode ‘On the Death of Meshcherskii,’ the ‘Ode to Zubov’ was discovered not long ago. Kniazhnin is serenely enjoying his fame;Bogdanovich is numbered in the choir of great poets; Dmitriev, too… . We do not know just what Krylov is, Krylov who is as much above La Fontaine as Derzhavin is above J. B. Rousseau” (Pushkin'sletter to A. A. Bestuzhev, end of May-beginning of June 1925; Letters, p. 222). “My dear, have respect for the father Derzhavin!” Pushkin admonishes his friend Viazemskii, who in his anniversary necrology to Ozerov of 1826 returned to Derzhavin's “gray hair” and “grave” with typical Arzamasian irreverence: “How long ago is it that the Russian Muses mourned the death of their favorite Derzhavin whose hair turned gray in his fame? … Derzhavin concluded his walk of life and paid his last dues to nature at an age when he suffered the most important of losses—the loss, so to say,of all that was alive in life.” (See Pushkin's “Zametki na poliakh stat'i P. A. Viazemskogo ‘O zhizni i sochineniiakh V. A. Ozerova'” (1826).

63. Quoted in Viktor Shklovskii, “Literatura vne siuzheta,” O teorii prozy (Moscow, 1929),p. 242.

64. Boris Eikhenbaum, “Problema poetiki Pushkina” (1921), O poezii (Leningrad, 1969),p. 24.

65. Siniavskii, Andrei (Terts, Abram), Progulki s Pushkinym (London, 1975), p. 89 Google Scholar.

66. Kolosova, N. V. et al.. eds., Boldinskaia oseri (Moscow, 1974), p. 435 Google Scholar, and Chereiskii, L. A..Pushkin i ego okruzhenie (Leningrad, 1975)Google Scholar. The misquotation in the opening line is Pushkin's. The complete text of Derzhavin's last poem contains an acrostic, reading “R-u-i-n-a ch-t-i” (discovered by Morris Halle).

67. “Thus! Not all of me shall die; a great part of me, / Having escaped corruption, shall live after death. “

68. “Not all of me shall die; my soul in the sacred lyre / Shall outlive my dust and escape corruption. “