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Title
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Pushkin's Duels
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Date
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December 18, 1937
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volume
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2
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issue
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17
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page start
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8
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page end
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11
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content
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en
PUSHKIN'S DUELS
by Edwin Emerson
One hundred years having passed since Russia’s greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin, fell in a duel, this is a fitting occasion briefly to review his career as a duellist.
Small of stature, but hardy, he inherited his fiery temperament and swarthy complexion from his maternal great-grandfather, Abraham Petrovich Hannibal, the son of an Abyssinian sovereign prince, who sent the boy to the Sultan of Turkey as a hostage, where he was released from Seraglio to be adopted by Peter the Great, who had him educated as a prince. As such, Abraham was sent abroad for his studies to France, where he obtained a commission in the royal army and distinguished himself by deeds of valor in the War for the Spanish Succession. Returning to Russia, he served in the imperial army and rose to the rank of General-in-Chief under Empress Elizabeth, who heaped him with honors and wealth. One of his sons from a second marriage to a Livonian noblewoman became an admiral under Catherine II and won a battle over the Turks off Navarino. Another son, Alexander’s grandfather, served with distinction in several Russian wars and rose to the rank of major, but his many escapades brought him under imperial disfavor. Alexander’s father was a man of violent temper, notorious as a spendthrift. Unable to provide fittingly for his son’s education, he obtained a berth for the boy in the newly founded Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoe Selo.
In the lyceum, Alexander excelled first of all in poetry, and secondly in swordplay. Through his association with other sons of noblemen and with the young officers of the Imperial Guard stationed at Tsarskoe Selo, the high-spirited youth early acquired the prevalent notions of aristocratic honor and high-minded private vengeance which governed his conduct throughout his later life. It should be remembered that duelling, though ostensibly forbidden by law in Russia as well as in other countries then, yet was countenanced by high society so that no one calling himself a gentleman could well avoid a duel whenever personal honor was at stake.
So the poet, thanks to his excitable character and fondness for champagne, inevitably found himself drawn into many duels.
Scarcely graduated from the lyceum, he challenged his uncle, Pavel Hannibal, to a sabre duel. During a country festival in their home village, the uncle had stolen his nephew’s dancing partner, whereupon the youth called his uncle out. Relatives intervened and made them put up their swords.
Beginning his career as a writer at St. Petersburg, Pushkin became the best pupil of the most popular fencing master in the capital. He was so lively a swordsman that his fellow fencers called him "The Cricket." One of his comrades, Yakubovich, was notorious for his many duels, in some of which Pushkin served him as a second. He emulated his ruffian friend so well that the wife of one of their close friends lamented in a letter: “Pushkin figures in a duel almost every day.”
Even with his dearest friend and former schoolmate, Kiukhelbeker, the "Cricket" fought a pistol duel in midwinter. Kiukhelbeker shot first and missed. “Shoot! Shoot!” he cried hysterically. But Pushkin pretended that some snow had got into his weapon and threw it to the ground. “Let us go and drink tea!” he proposed, and so the duel ended, the two remaining fast friends for life.
After some sharp words in a theatre with a certain Major Denisevich, who was a stranger to him, Pushkin appeared at the major’s lodgings next morning with two gentlemen, one of whom expressed his readiness to serve as the major’s second in a sabre duel with Pushkin. The major, a general staff officer, well along in years, was loth to fight a youth of nineteen, so he got out of the duel by apologizing for his hasty words of the night before.
During the same winter, Pushkin challenged Baron Korf, one of his former schoolmates, who now lived under one roof with Pushkin, to a sabre duel. This was because Korf had beaten Pushkin’s drunken manservant for a piece of impudence. “I will not fight an old friend for such a trifle,” said Korf, proposing that they drown their differences in champagne. This was done and there the matter ended.
Because of his sharp epigrams and known relations with political malcontents, Pushkin was banished by Czar Nicholas I to the Caucasus, there to remain under charge of General Inzov, a kind old nobleman. At Kishinev in Bessarabia where Pushkin spent more than two and a half years, he cut a wide swath as a roysterer. Quarreling with two officers over a game of billiards, he challenged both to fight him with swords. His friend Liprandi managed to patch up the affair on the ground of its trifling importance. Shortly afterward, Pushkin wanted to call out another army officer, Captain Druganov, because the latter had declined to bout at rapiers with him. This affair ended in a friendly rapier bout.
A few months later, Pushkin was put in arrest by his best friend in Kishinev, General Inzov, for slapping the face of a Moldavian merchant whose handsome wife had rebuffed Pushkin’s ardor during an evening party. The jealous husband wanted Pushkin’s blood, but General Inzov induced the Moldavian with his wife to leave Kishinev, while Pushkin still was confined at the general’s headquarters. Pushkin spent the fortnight of his arrest lying on his bed and shooting with wax bullets from a duelling pistol at flies on the ceiling.
Scarcely out of arrest, Pushkin drew upon himself a duel with Baron Zubov, one of General Inzov’s aides. During a game of cards, in which Pushkin lost steadily, he intimated that Zubov must have cheated. A pistol duel resulted. While Zubov, who had the first shot, was taking aim, Pushkin nonchalantly nibbled cherries. Zubov mislaid his shot. “Are you satisfied?” asked Pushkin pleasantly, dangling another cherry before his mouth. “Yes,” said the astonished Zubov. “Quite satisfied,” answered Pushkin as he threw down his pistol and left the field. At a reconciliation dinner, that was arranged by the seconds, Pushkin embraced Zubov and Zubov called the poet a brave man.
Because of this affair, General Inzov sent Pushkin away from Kishinev for several weeks. The poet again improved his enforced idleness by much target practice with a duelling pistol. At that time he also acquired his famous heavy cane of iron-wood, wherewith he liked to chop off thistleheads and to thrust at treetrunks to keep his sword-arm in practice. In those days, it will be remembered, sword duels were not fought with such light blades as nowadays.
Shortly after Pushkin’s recall to Kishinev he got into another scrape at an officers’ ball. He had given offence to a newly arrived lieutenant by countermanding the young officer’s request to the orchestra leader for a quadrille. The musicians, afraid of Pushkin’s quick temper, played the mazurka demanded by the poet. The disappointed lieutenant, not having met the poet, complained to his colonel. Thereupon the colonel demanded an apology from Pushkin. The poet refused. A pistol duel with the colonel was the consequence.
Because of the intense cold the pistols of both men misfired. So the duel was postponed to a warmer day. Before it came, common friends brought about a reconciliation.
Pushkin, having fallen under the Czar’s disfavor anew because of a privately distributed blasphemous poem on the Holy Virgin and Arch-Angel Gabriel, was recalled in disgrace and rusticated on his father’s estate Mikhailovskoe under police surveillance. There he wrote the superb canto of his epic poem Eugene Onegin, containing the famous description of his hero’s wanton pistol duel.
In the poem, the duel is preceded by the heroine’s foreboding nightmare of a tragic quarrel between Eugene and her betrothed, the poet Lenski, who on the following day feels driven to challenge Eugene, his best friend, because of Eugene’s cynical conduct toward Tatyana, the heroine. Eugene accepts the challenge very casually and adds insult to injury by bringing to the encounter a French valet as his second. On the approach to the barrier Eugene fires first and shoots Lenski through the heart. Thereafter Eugene’s dreams are haunted by the bloody spectre of his victim.
The motif of Eugene Onegin’s fatal duel, it will be recalled, figures largely in the overture and last act of Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name. The epic itself ends tantalizingly with an exciting situation between the hero of the tale and Tatyana’s husband, who catches Eugene emerging from Tatyana’s bed chamber, where he had just been repulsed by the woman, who once had loved him. Had the poem been continued, it would have meant another duel for its Byronic hero.
The provocations to the duel resulting in Pushkin’s death were far more serious than any of the poet’s previous bloodless encounters. Pushkin, after his marriage to Natalya Nikolaevna Goncharova, a belle of the imperial court, was pardoned by Czar Nicholas, who appointed the poet chamberlain of his court. Ugly rumors arose that Pushkin owed his appointment to the Czar’s infatuation for Natashka Pushkina. Her husband on one occasion smilingly charged the monarch with it and implored him to desist from the flirtation. Meanwhile Baron Georges d’Anthes, a handsome young guardsman from Alsatia, who had been adopted by Baron Louis van Heeckeren, the Dutch envoy to St. Petersburg, likewise had become infatuated with Natashka and carried on an outrageous flirtation with the giddy young woman. St. Petersburg society was agog with gossip over the affair. Pushkin took it very hard and bitterly reproached his wife.
At this juncture Pushkin received an anonymous document wherein he was styled a cuckold. Others in high society received identical documents. Convinced that either Baron von Heeckeren or his protege, the guardsman, had written or instigated the anonymous documents, Pushkin at once challenged Baron d'Anthes to a duel. D'Anthes accepted, but his adoptive father begged for a fortnight's delay, wherein to settle their family affairs. Pushkin consented. Meanwhile friends of both parties got busy to hush up the scandal. To avert the duel, d'Anthes went so far as to announce his betrothal to Pushkin’s sister-in-law, Ekaterina Goncharova. He followed up this announcement with a hasty marriage to the compromised girl. Pushkin consented to call off the duel, but would not attend the wedding and furthermore closed his house to the bridegroom.
Ekaterina’s husband, however, continued to meet Natashka Pushkina at society functions and court balls, where he once more pursued her with attentions thus reviving gossip about her. Exasperated, her husband forbade her to speak to d’Anthes. The giddy young woman now so far forgot the proprieties as to grant her brother-in-law a clandestine “farewell” rendez-vous. This promptly was reported to Pushkin in another anonymous letter. Natashka confessed the rendez-vous to her husband, but insisted that she had granted it only to repulse d’Anthes.
Infuriated beyond measure, Pushkin in a formal letter to Baron van Heeckeren charged him with having contrived the rendez-vous and scathingly referred to the “abject conduct” of d’Anthes, whom he called van Heeckeren’s “Bastard.” This time d’Anthes could no longer avoid a duel. His adoptive father wrote a pompous letter to Pushkin, demanding satisfaction in his foster son’s name. For himself he reserved further action.
When Pushkin was consulted about the conditions of the duel he told the seconds: “The bloodier, the better.” Principals and seconds met at dusk on January 28, 1837, on a snowy field on the bank of the Black River in the outskirts of St. Petersburg. The distance between the two duellists was measured at twenty paces. Two capes were laid on the snow as barriers. Pushkin reached his barrier first and raised his pistol, but at that instant d’Anthes, still striding toward his barrier, fired. Pushkin fell mortally wounded on his cape, with his head and the barrel of his pistol in the snow. Both seconds ran to him and d’Anthes approached. After a few seconds of silence Pushkin raised himself on his left elbow, saying: “Wait! I have enough strength to take my shot.”
D’Anthes returned to his barrier, stood sidewise and covered his breast with his right hand and arm. Pushkin recovered his pistol, took steady aim while lying in the snow and fired. His bullet pierced d’Anthes’ right arm and chest. A metal button on d’Anthes’ tunic and a rib deflected the bullet from a more vital organ; still, d’Anthes staggered and fell. Pushkin shook his head at a suggestion of forgiveness and reconciliation, muttering: “No. If we both live we shall fight again.” The wounded men were taken in sleighs to the nearest surgeon. The two seconds gave themselves up to the authorities.
Pushkin died from the gangrened wound in his abdomen two days later at his home. D’Anthes recovered, but lost his lieutenant’s commission in the Horse Guards, was cashiered from the army, and together with his wife was deported under police guard from Russia. His foster father, Baron van Heeckeren, for his part in the affair, was recalled from his diplomatic post at the Czar’s request. Neither Czar Nicholas nor his Czarina would receive the envoy for a farewell audience. The two seconds were court-martialed and sentenced to two months’ confinement in the guardhouse, but retained their rank and grade in the army. After Pushkin’s death the Czar paid all the poet’s debts, which were considerable, and granted his widow and orphaned children a handsome allowance. Natashka Pushkina was made a lady of the Czarina’s bedchamber.
For Pushkin’s funeral a young lieutenant of hussars wrote a threnody, wherein he called the poet’s slayer a murderer. For the authorship of that poem, which bristled with condemnation of “hangmen of freedom, cowering behind the sovereigns’ throne, lusting to trample with servile feet the hopes of an embittered people,” the young officer was banished to the Caucasus. He was Lermontov, who, exchanging the sword for the lyre, soon won renown as Russia’s most inspired poet after Pushkin. Like him, too, Lermontov lost his life in a pistol duel, while still in exile.
