Refusing to Love. The Paths of Russian Love from Pushkin to AI. Part I – The Golden Age - Yury Tomin 2 стр.

It seemed that the poets 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 (18121863)

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

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 wifes sisters, intrigues, Madame Poletika, dAnthès  culminating in the mortal risk foreseen by him of the embodiment of his fatal love in marriage union.

In a letter to his beloveds 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 poets own involuntary doubts.

Pushkin believes that he may, in time, excite Natalies 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 writers 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. Pushkins 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 Pushkins 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 fortunes 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 «Pushkins 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.

Indeed, the poets 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 Captains 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 diary entries Pushkin follows with interest the development of the scandal surrounding the marriage of Bezobrazov and, perhaps anxiously, tries some of the circumstances on himself. The wedding of the handsome aide-de-camp with the maid of honor Lyubov Khilkova was sponsored by the imperial couple. Soon, however, it became known that the maid of honor was having an affair with the sovereign, that her husband was terribly jealous, beating her, and a dagger flashed. The story was loud and instructive. For example, P. A. Vyazemsky wrote to their mutual friend with Pushkin: «Here we all complained about the flat prose of our everyday life, but, on the contrary: romantic poetry is made in person and such that it will shut up Hugo and Dumas. Jealousy, the dagger, criminal love, all this is now the currency of our drawing-room conversation, and all the familiar faces and circumstances of yesterday. Who could have imagined that poor Lyuba Khilkova, the cold, sensible, measured, perfect, exemplary piece of ice of the Winter Palace, would be the heroine of such a tragic tale! So much for the marriage of love! Now none of the girls would dare to marry for love.» He was exiled to the Caucasus, she went to her brother in Moscow and four months after the wedding she had a miscarriage.

In 1837 Mikhail Lermontov, who became famous for his defiant poem on Pushkins death, was exiled to the Nizhny Novgorod Dragoon Regiment commanded by Bezobrazov. And four years later Bezobrazov would come to Lermontovs funeral and carry his coffin.

VI

The relay of Romanticism. Love-passion. The two ways of romantic love. Love-aspiration. The kidnappers of love. Faithful dreams. Flattery instead of love. Passing the baton

Young Lermontov delved into Pushkins «wonderful songs», rewrote poems, and shared with Pushkin his knowledge of people. At the same time, Lermontov was distinguished by close attention to his own mental states, the depth of which he discovered in a combination of feelings of love and awareness of his sharp mind and poetic talent. All the turbulent events of his youth turned into a struggle of internal forces in such a way that he found «the root of torment in himself.» For Lermontov, love is the strongest passion, the focus of his heartfelt impulses as an expression of the true «I»:

And in the proud soul of the romantic hero, vain rejected love will undoubtedly «revolt, breathing revenge»:

Yu. Lotman, analyzing the work of Lermontov, points to two ways of love of the romantic hero. Firstly, the romantic scheme of love contains the impossibility of contact: love always appears as deceit, misunderstanding, betrayal. Secondly, the impossibility of breaking through the line of incomprehension in love created, next to tragic real love, an ideal love-aspiration, in which the object could in no way be endowed with the features of an independent personality: it was not another I, but an addition to mine I  anti-I my ideal otherness This is not a person, but the direction of my movement.

If one carefully read this poem, written in the fateful 1841 ten years after the passionate love for N. F. Ivanova, then, according to Lotman, it expresses (through love, but not real love; through love, but for another; through love not for her, but for something in the object of love; for something connected with the lover himself) the poets love-aspiration for his ideal I.

Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (18141841)

After happiness soon changed with Ivanova, one can trace the transformation of Lermontovs passionate love into love-aspiration, starting with attraction to Varvara Lopukhina, expressed in a poem written in 1832:

Natalya Feodorovna Ivanova (1813-1875)

Biographers know that, carried away not by the bright beauty, but by some original charm of the seventeen-year-old Varenka Lopukhina, student Mikhail Lermontov felt the sincere sharing of his love. It is also known that the relatives of Lopukhina prevented the rapprochement of the lovers, and then three years later, His Majesty the ball, which became an invisible companion of any noticeable love in high society, entered into the matter of chance. A certain Bakhmetiev, retired major, a 37-year-old landlord, who thought of marriage, saw an undoubted indication from above that Varenka Lopukhina hooked her ball scarf on the button of his coat.

This love has remained with Lermontov forever  «faithful dreams» have preserved that image, «that look full of fire,» and, regretting the bitter fate of his beloved, he prayed for the salvation of her «beautiful soul»:

Varvara Alexandrovna Lopukhina-Bakhmeteva (18151851)

Now his own soul was not filled with vengeance, but sorrow. However, this saved love did not pacify, but rather exacerbated the peculiar struggle of the poet romantic with high society, where love is relegated to coquetry, passion for external beauty and fashionable intrigue.3 With the help of his exceptional talent, as well as his vanity and pride, Lermontov managed to achieve, if not a sincere love, then a flattering recognition of high society.

There was a time when I aspired to be admitted to this society as a recruit. I did not succeed; the aristocratic doors were closed to me. And now I no longer enter this same society as a petitioner, but as a man who has won his rights. I arouse curiosity, they harass me, they invite me everywhere, but I dont even show that I want this

Not only did he insult all this world in his poems before, but now he made sure from the inside that nowhere is there so much meanness and ridiculousness. However, the great world and, above all, the crowned one paid him in the same way. It is not known what the retired major Bakhmetyev thought of Lermontovs death in the duel, but Nicholas First muttered in a mundane way: Death to a dog, but in public he said: Gentlemen, I have received news that the one who could replace Pushkin has been killed. Six years later, there was another duel where Sofia Bakhmetyevas brother was killed, trying to defend the honor of his well-educated, but untimely pregnant sister.

VII

Mask, I love you. Achilles heel. The saving hope. Precious needs of the heart. We are a single link in an infinite chain. Overcoming doubt. The transformation of love. About the rebirth of Don Juan. Poets and philosophers. Illusions of the romantic ideal. The first dimension of Russian love

Ten years after Lermontovs death, a well-read woman who knows fourteen foreign languages, femininely charming and independent in her way of life, a distant relative of the kidnapper of Lermontovs love, enters the society of Russian literati and the final scene of romantic love for the first time. And again there was not without a ball, this time a masquerade ball. Sophia Bakhmetyeva, hiding her face with a mask, managed to enchant two outstanding people, not alien to poetic inspiration, with a conversation at once. During the following meeting and chat over tea, one of them  Ivan Turgenev  was disappointed to see the face of a Chukhonian soldier in a skirt, while the other  Alexey Tolstoy was carried away and fell passionately in love.