Taboo Pushkin: Topics, Texts, Interpretations

Pushkin and Metropolitan Philaret: Rethinking the Problem

112 Push­ kin and Met­ ro­ pol­ i­ tan Phi­ la­ ret Re­ think­ ing the Prob­ lem Oleg Pro­ sku­ rin The Holy Monk and the Re­ pen­ tant Sin­ ner The topic of ­ Pushkin’s re­ la­ tions with Met­ ro­ pol­ i­ tan Phi­ la­ ret can­ not in it­ self be con­ sid­ ered taboo: dur­ ing the last two ­ decades in Rus­ sia (as well as be­ yond her bor­ ders) more pub­ li­ ca­ tions have been ded­ i­ cated to this sub­ ject than dur­ ing the en­ tire for­ mer his­ tory of Push­ kin schol­ ar­ ship.1 But for all that, in re­ cent times a cer­ tain ap­ proach to the topic that can be ­ called, with­ out much ex­ ag­ ger­ a­ tion, hag­ io­ graphic has be­ come dom­ i­ nant (and, in re­ la­ tion to ­ post-Soviet Rus­ sia, one may even say “ca­ non­ i­ cal”). Ac­ cord­ ing to this ap­ proach, the re­ la­ tion­ ship ­ between Push­ kin and Phi­ la­ ret is made to con­ form to the par­ a­ digm of the life of a saint who mi­ rac­ u­ lously saves a way­ ward sin­ ner. The at­ ten­ tion of the au­ thors of this inter­ pre­ ta­ tion turns out to be con­ cen­ trated ex­ clu­ sively on one epi­ sode in ­ Pushkin’s re­ la­ tions with Phi­ la­ ret—the ­ so-called ­ poetic di­ alogue that took place ­ between the poet and the met­ ro­ pol­ i­ tan in 1830. In brief, the gist of the ­ events that trans ­ pired con­ sists in the fol­ low­ ing: in the ­ spring of 1828 Push­ kin wrote the Proskurin / Pushkin and Metropolitan Philaret 113 pes­ si­ mis­ tic “A vain gift, a ­ chance gift” (“Dar na­ pras­ nyi, dar slu­ chainyi ”), plac­ ing its date of com­ po­ si­ tion, 26 May 1828, at its be­ gin­ ning (this was ­ Pushkin’s date of birth ac­ cord­ ing to the Ju­ lian cal­ en­ dar). At the be­ gin­ ning of 1830 Eliz­ a­ veta Khi­ trovo, the daugh­ ter of the fa­ mous com­ mander Mi­ khail Ku­ tu­ zov and a pas­ sion­ ate ad­ mirer of Push­ kin, made this poem known to a prom­ i­ nent Rus­ sian Or­ tho­ dox ­ Church of­ fi­ cial, Phi­ la­ ret (Droz­ dov [1782–1867]), the Mos­ cow and Ko­ lomna met­ ro­ pol­ i­ tan. The met­ ro­ pol­ i­ tan un­ ex­ pect­ edly re­ sponded to ­ Pushkin’s poem with his own ­ verses. Using the struc­ ture of ­ Pushkin’s poem, he re­ placed ­ Pushkin ’s mes­ sage with a ca­ non­ i­ cal Or­ tho­ dox ex­ pla­ na­ tion of the rea­ sons for the de­ pres­ sion and hope­ less­ ness that may en­ gulf a human being and in­ di­ cated that the only path to over­ com­ ing pes­ si­ mism is to turn to God for help. Eliz­ a­ veta Khi­ trovo gave the ­ metropolitan’s ­ verses to Push­ kin, who in his turn re­ plied in verse to the ­ metropolitan’s an­ swer (dur­ ing ­ Pushkin’s life­ time this poem was ­ printed under the title “Stan­ zas” [“Stantsy”]; now it is pub­ lished with­ out a title and is iden­ tified by its first line: “In times of lei­ sure or idle bore­ dom” [“V chasy zabav il’ prazd­ noi skuki”]).2 Be­ fore the Rus­ sian Rev­ o­ lu­ tion, lit­ er­ ary schol­ ars did not at­ tach any spe­ cial mean­ ing to this “poetic cor­ re­ spon­ dence” and oc­ cu­ pied them­ selves very lit­ tle with the sub­ ject of ­ Pushkin’s re­ la­ tions with Phi­ la­ ret. More often this topic was ad­ dressed by ­ right-wing pub­ li­ cists and ec­ cle­ sias­ ti­ cal writ­ ers. They inter­ preted it in a ­ conservative-panegyric and­ bluntly bio­ graph­ i­ cal man­ ner, as seen for ex­ am­ ple in this text writ­ ten by an arch­ priest: Met­ ro­ pol­ i­ tan Phi­ la­ ret . . . wrote in an­ swer a poem that was pro­ found and truly Chris­ tian. . . . Push­ kin, with the gran­ deur of re­ pen­ tant feel­ ing, wrote to the Arch­ bishop: “I shed ­ streams of un­ ex­ pected tears.” . . . And now he no ­ longer beck­ ons death unto...