STEPHANIE SANDLER
THE LAW, THE BODY, AND THE BOOK: THREE POEMS ON THE DEATH OF PUSHKIN
... the Cheated Eye Shuts Arrogantly-in the Grave- Another way-to See- Emily Dickinson
No fact of Alexander Pushkin's life or work was so important in constructing modern mythologies of Pushkin as his death. As a preliminary effort toward understanding those modern myths, I propose here to consider three nineteenth-century poems on Pushkin's death, all written soon thereafter. Mikhail Lermontov's "Smert' poeta" ("The Death of the Poet," 1837) de- fined Pushkin's death as an act of social violence and created a powerful discourse about Pushkin's death based on moral judgment. His definition itself constituted a symbolic act in Russian political and cultural life: "Smert' poeta" attained great authority for succeeding generations' writings about Pushkin's death and about the political context of his life. Less well-known accounts by Vasilii Zhukovskii and Countess Evdokiia Rostopchina will show more personal and strictly historical responses, foreshadowing the unorthodox responses of some of Pushkin's later readers. At the time of his death in a duel in 1837, Alexander Pushkin was admired as Russia's great national poet. Though his fame had declined during the 1830s, crowds who waited for news of the dying poet revealed how much Pushkin was loved and how pro- found was Russia's loss. The transformation of the death into tributes to his greatness began at once,l and Lermontov's "Smert'
1. For a survey of nineteenth-century poems about Pushkin, see R. V. Iezuitova, "Evoliutsiia obraza Pushkina v russkoi poezii XIX veka," Pushkin: Issledovaniia i materialy, 5 (1967), 113-39. An excellent anthology of nineteenth-century poems to Pushkin is Russkie poety o Pushkine: Sbornik stikhotvorenii, ed. V. Kallash (Moscow: tip. G. Lissnera i A. Geshelia, 1899). What happens in the first third of the twentieth century, through the 1937 Jubilee, can be seen in the anthology poeta" was penned instantly-some have even claimed that it was begun as Pushkin lay dying. Copies were circulated quickly and widely. Lermontov's poem, written when he was twenty-three years old, brought him immediate fame, as well as the special notoreity reserved for victims of state repression (the poem led to his first exile to the South).2 "Smert' poeta" made Lermontov into Pushkin's heir apparent.3
Pushkin v russkoi poezii, ed. S. Fomin (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1937). 2. The tale of Lermontov's authorship and of his exile has been told many times. See, for example, V. A. Manuilov and L. N. Nazarova, Lermontov v Peterburge (Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1984), pp. 112-27, and I. S. Chistova, "'Smert' poeta,"' in Lermontovskaia entsiklopediia, ed. V. A. Manuilov (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1981), pp. 511-13, where there is also an excellent listing of scholarship about the poem. 3. The point has been made by many, including G. P. Makogonenko, Lermontov i Pushkin (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1987), in an introductory essay entitled "Naslednik Pushkina," pp. 3-12. Makogonenko quotes an apt comment from Alexander Herzen: "The pistol shot that killed Pushkin awakened the soul of Lermontov" (p. 10; cited from A. Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii, 30 vols. [Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk, 1954-56], VII, 224).