Refusing to Love. The Paths of Russian Love from Pushkin to AI. Part I – The Golden Age. Yury Tomin
the momentary weakness,
with passion and with shrewd obliqueness
swaying the artless, waiting on
for unmeant kindness – how he shone!
then he’d implore a declaration,
and listen for the heart’s first sound,
pursue his love – and at one bound
secure a secret assignation,
then afterwards, alone, at ease,
impart such lessons as you please!
It seemed that the poet’s earthly path of true sincere love was complete. In 1828 he shared his new state of mind with an old acquaintance: «I confess, madam, the noise and bustle of Petersburg has become completely alien to me – I can hardly bear it.» Friends also notice the change, seeing as previously indefatigable Pushkin «spent whole days in silence, lying with a pipe in his mouth on the couch.» About what «waves, poems and ice» converged in his soul with what «stone, prose and flame,» we can only guess, for example, referring to a mention in a letter to a friend between times about the «genius of pure beauty,» Madame Kern, «whom with the help of God, I f… the other day.» Reflection came to the decision to marry. Surprisingly, these cold-blooded considerations were swept up by love, which suddenly appeared in the life of a poet now as a fateful lot.
V
Flight from love. Towards the northern Aurora. The fears of the indifferent heart. Anticipation of hell. Involuntary sadness. The reliable source of inspiration. Soul rebirth. Black man. Embodiments of romantic poetry
Natalia Nikolayevna Pushkina-Lanskaya (1812—1863)
Twenty-nine-year-old Pushkin met the young (sixteen-year-old) Natalia Goncharova – an extraordinary beauty,1 fell in love, proposed, got a vague answer and… left, driven by «involuntary sadness.» Five months later, having been in the army in the Caucasus, he paid a visit to Goncharov in Moscow, but met with a cold reception. He admits that «for the first time in his life he was timid» and «did not have the courage to explain himself.
Pushkin leaves for St. Petersburg in "utter despair." By the way, he rushed further abroad "haughty running away," but the Russian tsar did not let him go.2
Tell me: in my wanderings shall my passion die?
Shall I forget the proud, tormenting maiden?
Or at her feet, her young wrath,
As a customary tribute, shall I bring my love?
Another five months pass, and Pushkin receives the news that he is favored. But this does not bring joy, he sinks into reflection and feels «no longer happy.» And yet he makes up his mind and goes towards the «alluring star of beauty.» Then followed the gaining momentum of events and imminent faces – the re-proposal, marriage, family happiness, children, high-society balls, the chamber-junker rank, participation in the fate of his wife’s sisters, intrigues, Madame Poletika, d’Anthès – culminating in the mortal risk foreseen by him of the embodiment of his fatal love in marriage union.
In a letter to his beloved’s mother a month before the engagement, Pushkin finds it necessary to explain the reasons for his hesitations and fears. Let us leave aside «the question of money,» let us pay attention to the anxiety for «her happiness,» and try to delve deeper into the poet’s own involuntary doubts.
Pushkin believes that he may, in time, excite Natalie’s affection. However, another twist of «the quiet indifference of her heart» is also possible. Admiration, temptations, opinions, and in the end – regret, which can cause disgust for the «insidious kidnapper,» and the thought of it for Pushkin – hell:
She will be told that only an unhappy fate prevented her from making another, more equal, more brilliant, more worthy of her union… Will she not then look at me as a hindrance, as a treacherous kidnapper? Will she not feel disgusted with me?
At the same time, it seems that the reference to the imagined torments of hell is not only related to the fear for her possible misfortune. There is a sense of something missing in the letter, but glimpsed in the writer’s mind. Perhaps it is the concealment of a reason that might lead to the necessity of taking a mortal risk for her sake. But what such a risk for the husband of a pretty young wife can think of a sophisticated connoisseur of manners of high society? It turns out that Pushkin had foreseen the most devastating consequences of his passion, which drove him mad, or rather, led all his reasonable intentions.
And yet coming «black thoughts» are not only connected with the anticipation of possible complications for respectable family life in the full of temptations of the capital St. Petersburg. Pushkin’s anxieties are linked more elegantly with the first part of his letter, where he speaks of the delusions of his early youth, which were «too heavy in themselves» and intensified by slander. We may then assume the following picture of what tormented the poet. In Pushkin’s imagination, the sins of his youth collided with the giddiness of love and enclosed him in their grim embrace. This is indicated by the fact that when he received a vague but hopeful answer to his proposal, he was seized by «some involuntary sadness.» What could Pushkin then involuntarily and wistfully think about? About fortune’s goodwill and a phantom chance to redeem the sins of his «sad youth» or about the impossibility of it, regretting that he had not saved himself in spiritual purity for true love? To all appearances, Pushkin saw in this belated gift of love, albeit an illusory one, the hope of achieving spiritual equilibrium.
Having received the approval of his parents and the sovereign, hastening the wedding, he is «stunned that he can use such an expression» as «my happiness.» Pushkin is full of ideas and creative plans, the muses of inspiration are already tamed and do not require sacrifice. For the full harmony of life, he needed the support of true love, flowing into the warmth of the home and the measured joys of family happiness. Vladislav Khodasevich, who analyzed «Pushkin’s poetic household,» noted three «features of the change that happened in Pushkin» following the engagement with Natalia Goncharova. Known for mockery and contempt for family life («marriage binds the soul»), childbirth and cuckolded husbands, he becomes attentive to these things and «speaks (about them) quite seriously, businesslike, at times sympathetically.» Apparently, in the words of Don Juan from the little tragedy The Stone Guest in November 1830, he described the transformation taking place in his soul.
…of debauchery.
I have long been a humble disciple,
But ever since I saw you
I feel like I’ve been completely reborn.
I love you, I love virtue
And for the first time humbly before it
I bow my trembling knees.
Indeed, the poet’s cherished lyre played in full force – the Boldin cycle of works, then Dubrovsky, The Bronze Horseman, the famous fairy tales, The Queen of Spades, The Captain’s Daughter. But as if there was a second part of the «will of God» or another more insidious messenger of fate, which was inevitably brought closer by the same «secret maiden.»
If now, looking at our sketchy acquaintance with Pushkin, we can deduce the main lesson of his love, it is undoubtedly connected to the change that happened to him, when the romantic hero playing with love is reborn into a servant of true love, a priest of «the one beautiful». On this path, however, he is haunted by his own shadow, his «black man.»
In his
V. Sollogub, who knew Pushkin, in his memoirs about Natalya Nikolaevna, wrote that «I have never seen a woman who combined such a completeness of classically correct features and stature. High in stature, with fabulously thin waist, with richly developed shoulders and chest, her little head like a lily on a stem, swaying and gracefully turned on a thin neck, such a beautiful and regular profile I have never seen more, and skin, eyes, teeth, ears! Yes, it was a real beauty, and not without reason, all the rest, even among the most beautiful women pale somehow at her appearance.»
Could Nicholas the First have foreseen thus he would resolve the anguish of the heart, settle down the "cleverest man of Russia", and he himself would be carried away by Pushkin's future wife?