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Introduction
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
There is perhaps no literary relationship more fascinating and deserving of study than that between Alexander Pushkin (–), Russia ’s greatest poet, and Fyodor Dostoevsky (–), its greatest prose writer.1 It was purely a literary and cultural relationship, for the writers did not know each other: Pushkin died in a duel in January of on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, when the sixteen-year-old Dostoevsky was still attending boarding school in Moscow. Dostoevsky first arrived in Petersburg in May of , just a few months after Pushkin’s death, to prepare for the School of Engineering entrance exams. Even before this, Dostoevsky had been an enthusiastic admirer of Pushkin’s writings.2 He reacted strongly to the news of Pushkin’s premature death.Joseph Frank comments: “How intimately he [Dostoevsky] identified with the great creator of modern Russian literature may be judged from his reaction on hearing of Pushkin’s death in February : he told his family that, if he were not already wearing mourning for his mother,he would have wished to do so for Pushkin.”3 Better known than the response of the admiring adolescent,however,is the tribute that the mature author,a year before his own death, paid to the great poet at the dedication of a Pushkin monument in . In his speech preceding the dedication, perhaps the most famous by a Russian author, Dostoevsky proclaimed Pushkin not only a great writer but a prophet,someone who had expressed the Russian soul better than any other artist, and who surpassed even Shakespeare in the universality of his genius. Intentionally or not, Dostoevsky was taking part in the canonization of Pushkin, at whose shrine Russians would increasingly come to worship. In the following excerpt from the speech, Dostoevsky hones in on the uniqueness of Pushkin’s genius. Introduction The third point which I meant to emphasize in speaking of the signi ficance of Pushkin, is that peculiar and most characteristic trait of his artistic genius, which is to be found nowhere and in no one else; it is the faculty of universal susceptibility,and the fullest,virtually perfect reincarnation of the genius of alien nations. I stated in my address that Europe has brought forth the greatest artistic geniuses—the Shakespeares, the Cervanteses, the Schillers—but that in none of them do we perceive that faculty which is revealed in Pushkin.4 It is not only a question of susceptibility , but precisely of amazing completeness of incarnation. In my evaluation of Pushkin I could not help emphasizing this faculty as the most characteristic of his genius, which, among all universal artists, belongs only to him, and by which he differs from all of them.5 Unqualified worship of one’s literary idol is hardly the recipe for an interesting and fruitful literary relationship. Fortunately, despite the veneration , Dostoevsky’s relationship with Pushkin was, especially in the first part of his career, quite competitive: the great poet was the master who had to be challenged if the younger writer was to carve out his own literary space.Precisely because he recognized Pushkin’s literary achievement , Dostoevsky needed to engage him, critically and creatively, in order to say something of his own.6 And nowhere is this more true than in his responses to some of Pushkin’s greatest masterpieces, both in poetry and prose: The Bronze Horseman (Mednyi vsadnik), The Covetous Knight (Skupoi rytsar’),“The Stationmaster” (“Stantsionnyi smotritel ’”),and The Queen of Spades (Pikovaia dama).Dostoevsky’s relationship to Pushkin was different in a number of ways from the one that Harold Bloom described between the English Romantic poets and the intimidating Milton. Yet Bloom’s view of the ephebe’s (the strong younger writer’s) need to reinterpret, rewrite, and correct his great precursor aptly describes Dostoevsky’s literary relationship with Pushkin.“Poetic influence—when it involves two strong, authentic poets—always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet,an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation. . . . The poet confronting his Great Original must find the fault that is not there. . . . The tessera represents any later poet’s attempt to persuade himself (and us) that the precursor’sWord would be worn out if not redeemed as a newly fulfilled and enlarged Word of the ephebe.”7 What makes this encounter more intriguing and the study of this encounter more rewarding is the different nature and magnitude of their geniuses. As Leatherbarrow has Introduction noted, the writings of...