Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations

If Only Pushkin Had Not WrittenThis Filth: The Shade of Barkov and Philological Cover-ups

159 If Only Push­ kin Had Not Writ­ ten This Filth The Shade of Bar­ kov and Phil­ o­ log­ i­ cal ­ Cover-Ups Igor Pilsh­ chi­ kov Mi­ khail Gas­ pa­ rov (1935–2005), a great ­ scholar and a man of wit, no­ ticed sev­ eral times that the ­ Russians’ pref­ er­ ence for a par­ tic­ u­ lar work of­ Pushkin’s had al­ ways been of an ideo­ log­ i­ cal ­ rather than a scholarly or­ purely aes­ thetic na­ ture. “Twenty years ago we hon­ ored Push­ kin for his ode ‘Lib­ erty,’ but now we seem to honor him for ‘Her­ mit ­ fathers and­ chaste ­ wives’ or The Shade of Bar­ kov”—and this is what we call ‘ideol­ ogy.’” Such an ap­ proach is op­ posed to a scholarly re­ search ap­ proach, ­ argued Gas­ pa­ rov, and phi­ lol­ ogy (that is, lin­ guis­ tic and lit­ er­ ary stud­ ies) ­ should with­ stand it.1 The 2008 TV con­ test “Name Rus­ sia” (“Imia Ros­ siia”) added a ­ fourth key text to the three noted by Gas­ pa­ rov: “To the Slan­ der­ ers of Rus­ sia” (“Kle­ vet­ ni­ kam Ros­ sii” [1829]).2 This is a new turn of ideolog­ iza­ tion: if the ode “Lib­ erty” (“Vol’nost’” [1817]) sym­ bol­ ized the ­ left-wing Push­ kin, then “To the Slan­ der­ ers of Rus­ sia” shows Push­ kin as a­ right-wing poet. The op­ po­ si­ tion of “Her­ mit ­ fathers and ­ chaste wives” (“Ottsy pus­ tyn­ niki i zheny nep­ o­ rochny”), com­ posed in 1836, to The 160 Taboo Writings Shade of Bar­ kov (Ten’ Bar­ kova), com­ posed in 1814–15, shows two other cul­ tural pro­ cesses ­ besides ideolog­ iza­ tion at work, ­ namely my­ tho­ log­ iza­ tion and de­ my­ thol­ o­ gi­ za­ tion. The point is that “Her­ mit ­ fathers and­ chaste wives” rep­ re­ sents Push­ kin the Or­ tho­ dox ­ writer, while The Shade of Bar­ kov ­ stands for ­ Pushkin’s li­ ber­ tin­ ism (even ­ though it was writ­ ten be­ fore its au­ thor had the ­ chance to be­ come a lib­ er­ tine). Ivan Bar­ kov (1732–68) was the most no­ to­ ri­ ous Rus­ sian poet, fa­ mous for his ob­ scene odes (in­ clud­ ing an im­ i­ ta­ tion of ­ Alexis ­ Piron’s “Ode to Pri­ a­ pus” [“Ode à Pri­ ape”]), and ­ Pushkin’s poem in the style of Bar­ kov, with his name in the title, ­ points too ex­ pli­ citly to an “un­ pleas­ ant” as­ pect of Push­ kin, the “sym­ bol of Rus­ sia.” The proponents of Push­ kin the re­ li­ gious ­ thinker (like Val­ en­ tin Ne­ pom­ ni­ ash­ chy and his fol­ low­ ers) tend to my­ thol­ o­ gize the poet as an em­ a­ na­ tion of the di­ vine and re­ ject too friv­ o­ lous works of his as well as his ­ earthly—some­ times too ­ earthly— be­ hav­ ior, while the de­ my­ thol­ o­ giz­ ers (Abram Tertz and his im­ i­ ta­ tors) seem to over­ es­ ti­ mate the usu­ ally under­ es­ ti­ mated ­ erotic and lib­ er­ tine as­ pect of Push­ kin.3 From this point of view, de­ my­ thol­ o­ gi­ za­ tion may be­ come just an­ other ver­ sion of my­ tho­ log­ iza­ tion; at the same time my­ tho­ log­ iza­ tion al­ ways goes hand in hand with ideolog­ iza­ tion. To be ­ cleared from all these ex­ ag­ ger­ a­ tions, all four of these key works, in­ clud­ ing the dis­ rep­ u­ ta­ ble The Shade of Bar­ kov, re­ quire a his­ tor­ i­ cal and phil­ o­ log­ i­ cal ­ rather than ideo­ log­ i­ cal or neo­ my­ tho­ log­ i­ cal ap­ proach. The case is par­ tic­ u­ larly dif­ fi­ cult with The Shade of Bar­ kov: it is still ab­ so­ lutely taboo in the eyes of the ma­ jor­ ity of Rus­ sian ac­ a­ de­ mi­ cians. Con­ sid­ ered ei­ ther an au­ then­ tic or du­ bi­ ous work of Push­ kin, it has nev­ er­ the­ less not been in­ cluded in any ac­ a­ demic edi­ tion of ­ Pushkin’s work, even the dubia sec­ tion. An ob­ scene bal­ lad by Push­ kin ti­ tled The Shade...