“Verse and Prose” in an Epistle to A.N. Wolf: on the Nature of Pushkin’s Poetic “Litter”

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Introduction

Pushkin’s letter dated September 20, 1824 from Mikhailovskoye to Dorpat opened with a poetic epistle to A.N. Wulf (1805–1881). The verses were followed by a text in which, echoing the verses, Pushkin invited Wulf, who studied at the University of Dorpat, to come to Trigorskoye in winter with his friend, a student of the same university, the poet N.M. Yazykov (1803–1846), whom Pushkin had not yet met:

V samom dele, milyy, zhdu tebya s otverstymi ob’yatiyami i s otkuporennymi butylkami. Ugovori Yazykova da otday emu moye pis’mo; tak kak ya pod strogim prismotrom, to esli vam oboim za blago rassuditsya mne otvechat’, prishli pis’ma pod dvoynym konvertom na imya sestry tvoyey A<nny> N<ikolayevny>.

Do svidaniya, moy milyy.

A.P.^[1]

The letter did not end there, because Wulf’s sister Anna had added her own postscript on the same pages:

Aleksandr Sergeyevich vruchil mne eto pis’mo k tebe, moy milyy drug. On davno sbiralsya pisat’ k tebe i k Yazykovu, no ya dumala, chto eto tol’ko budet na slovakh. Pozhaluysta, otday tut vlozhennoye pis’mo [k] Yazykovu i, ezheli mozhesh’, upotrebi vsë staraniye ugovorit’ ego, chtoby on zimoy syuda priyekhal s toboy. Pushkin etogo ochen’ zhelayet; pokamest’, pozhaluysta, otvechay skoreye na eto pis’mo i prishli otvet ot Yazykova skoreye. <…>

Sentyabrya 20 1824 goda.

Lev tebya tsaluyet^[2].

It is known from this postscript that another poetic message was enclosed in the same letter – K Yazykovu (“Izdrevle sladostnyy soyuz…”)^[3]. When comparing the two messages sent to Dorpat simultaneously, it becomes obvious how intricately Pushkin staged their reception by the addressees, each of whom had to read both texts. The epistle to Yazykov, full of poetic formulas and traditional metaphors, is written in the exalted tone that befits one poet to address another. It is only in the second part of the poem, which was not accidentally excluded at the time of publishing, that the intonation somewhat changes and there appear some mundane details of life – which however remain in most cases poetically stylised. The message to Wulf is another matter. At first glance, it seems to be written «nonchalantly» so to speak, with no poetic artifice, but it demonstrates a particular mastery designed not for its direct addressee, a mastery only a poet could appreciate. The address is organised with implicit slyness: Pushkin is not yet acquainted with Yazykov and writes him a completely proper message, accompanied, however, by another text, ostensibly addressed not to him, but in fact aimed at the subtlety of his poetic ear.

Results and Discussion

<Iz pis’ma k A.N. Vul’fu>

               1             Zdravstvuy, Vul’f, priyatel’ moy!               a

               2             Priyezzhay syuda zimoy,                             a

               3             Da Yazykova poeta                                       B

               4             Zatashchi ko mne s soboy –                       a

               5             Pogulyat’ verkhom poroy,                          a

               6             Postrelyat’ iz pistoleta.                                B

               7             Layon, moy kurchavyy brat                        c

               8             (Ne mikhaylovskiy prikazchik),                   D

               9             Privezet nam, pravo, klad...                        c

               10          Chto? – butylok polnyy yashchik.              D

               11          Zapiruyem uzh, molchi!                              e

               12          Chudo – zhizn’ anakhoreta!                       F

               13          V Troyegorskom do nochi,                          e

               14          A v Mikhaylovskom do sveta;                    F

               15          Dni lyubvi posvyashcheny,                         g

               16          Noch’yu tsarstvuyut stakany,                     H

               17          My zhe – to smertel’no p’yany,                 H

               18          To mertvetski vlyubleny^[4].                           g

The friendly epistle <Iz pis’ma k A.N. Vul’fu> (From a letter to A.N. Wulf) opens with a greeting: Zdravstvuy, Vul’f, priyatel’ moy! (Greetings, Wulf, my buddy!) Works of this genre often included a direct appeal to the addressee. While retaining the features of a real person, such an addressee was at the same time endowed with properties that are possible only in the poetic world (compare it: O G<alich>, G<alich>! pospeshay! / Tebya zovut i son lenivyy, / I drug ni skromnyy, ni spesivyy, / I kubok, polnyy cherez kray!^[5]; Tak, lyubeznyy moy Goratsiy, / Tak, khot’ rad, khotya ne rad, / No teper’ ya muz i gratsiy / Promenyal na vakhtparad…^[6]; Gde ty, bespechnyy drug? gde ty, o Del’vig moy, / Tovarishch radostey minuvshikh, / Tovarishch yasnykh dney, nedavno nado mnoy / Mechtoy veseloyu mel’knuvshikh?^[7]). However, in Pushkin’s epistle, Wulf is simply priyatel’ (buddy), and the word is used in the literal dictionary meaning. Other characters in the poem are equally specific: Layon (Lion i.e. Leo), Pushkin’s brother, and the unnamed Mikhailovsky prikazchik (the steward of Mikhailovskoye). The word prikazchik (steward, manager) itself is even more inappropriate in a poetic context than such a mundane detail as pistolety (pistols). No less «prosaic» are all the verb forms of the first sestain: priyezzhay (come to, drive to), zatashchi (drag in), pogulyat’ (to saunter, to ride), postrelyat’ (to shoot), deliberately and specifically referring to village entertainment – horseback riding, shooting. There is even a slight rudeness inherent in colloquial speech in the imperative zatashchi. All this turns out to be possible both because of the genre nature of the text and in spite of it. On the one hand, the friendly epistle of the Golden Age of Russian poetry occupies a borderline position between poetry and everyday life, due to which it is easily saturated with everyday details. On the other hand, Pushkin’s prosification clearly violates the laws of high poetry, even in its most liberal forms (compare, for example, the description of various dishes in K.N. Batyushkov’s epistle: Tebe podnosit viny / I porter vypisnoy, / I sochny apel’siny, / I s tryuflyami pirog – / Ves’ Amal’tei rog, / Vovek neistoshchimyy, / Na zhirnyy tvoy obed!^[8]). It is no coincidence that the poem was included in a letter to Wulf and was not intended for print. Pushkin’s address to his brother Lev Sergeyevich is also heard in the same register in the draft of the epistle addressed to him:

Chto zhe? budet li vino?

Layon, zhdu ego davno –

Znayesh’ li kakogo roda?

U menya zavedeno:

Zhazhdy polnaya svoboda

I terpimost’ vsyakikh vin –

Sam sebe ya gospodin…^[9]

In such an environment, the appositive poeta (the poet) stands out in contrast: Da Yazykova poeta / Zatashchi ko mne s soboy… (And Yazykov the poet / Drag in here with you). The contrast is accentuated by the unexpected rhyme pistoleta (compare the description of Lensky’s death in the sixth chapter of the novel Eugene Onegin (1826): Vot pyat’ shagov eshche stupili, / I Lenskiy, zhmurya levyy glaz, / Stal takzhe tselit’ – no kak raz / Onegin vystrelil... Probili / Chasy urochnyye: poet / Ronyayet, molcha, pistolet, / Na grud’ kladet tikhon’ko ruku / I padayet. Tumannyy vzor / Izobrazhayet smert’, ne muku. / Tak medlenno po skatu gor, / Na solntse iskrami blistaya, / Spadayet glyba snegovaya. / Mgnovennym kholodom oblit, / Onegin k yunoshe speshit, / Glyadit, zovet ego... naprasno: / Ego uzh net. Mladoy pevets / Nashel bezvremennyy konets! / Dokhnula burya, tsvet prekrasnyy / Uvyal na utrenney zare, / Potukh ogon’ na altare!..^[10]), juxtaposing the high and the low, the poetic and the mundane. The shift towards everyday life extends to the obligatory attribute of a friendly epistle – wine, which was a traditional symbol of fun, liberty and the Greek symposium. In Pushkin’s poem, symbolic wine turns into a very specific butylok polnyy yashchik (a crateful of bottles), and the “symposium” loses its philosophical or literary overtones, becoming a reckless party of young people. The krugovaya chasha (chalice to pass around) or chasha druzhby (chalice of friendship) – the enduring attributes of a poetic feast – is being replaced by the unexpected personification tsarstvuyut stakany (glasses reign). This is how the poetics of “everyday life description”, focused on verisimilitude, arises. Therefore, it is especially interesting that everyday details are not directly borrowed from non-literary realm, but represent transformed motifs characteristic of a friendly epistle. The “naked word” does not displace traditional images, but enters into their structure – and it is no coincidence that the word poeta is rhymed not only with the “prosaic” noun pistoleta, but also with the poetic anakhoreta (i.e. hermit).

The hero’s exalted naming, “anakhoret”, refers to the traditional chronotope of a friendly epistle, the “small world”, a haven of rural solitude set against the hustle and bustle of the city. In Pushkin’s poem, an imaginary place of hermitage acquires geographical specificity – these are Troegorskoye and Mikhailovskoye. At the same time, as in the classical examples of the genre, it remains a space of freedom and joy, whither the lyrical subject summons his friends. Gaining social, household and biographical accuracy, the world of epistle does not lose touch with its genre basis. The temporal characteristics of the chronotope, while also transforming, still remain recognisable. In K.N. Batyushkov’s My Penates, an exemplary friendly epistle, night is a time of love, and day is a time of creativity and feasting. Pushkin’s days spent in Trigorskoye are devoted to love, and therefore the exquisite eroticism of Batyushkov, the enjoyment of passion turns into a cheerful light flirtation. The nights in the epistle to Wulf are devoted to feast, which becomes a carefree libation. The motive of creativity also appears in the poem, but only in a collapsed form: it is introduced by mentioning the “profession” of the poet Yazykov. The last two verses, which contain an obvious pun, enliven the ubiquitous idioms. The expressions smertel’no p’yany (fatally drunk) and mertvetski vlyubleny (cadaverously in love), exchanging adverbial epithets, sound like an elegant pun. And at the same time, the playful ending of the poem creates the image of an anacreontic utopia – eternal love and eternal feast^[11].

The described strategies of prosification of the text are combined with other, purely poetic ones, less obvious, but no less responsible for the emergence of meaning. The epistle to Wulf consists of 18 astrophic verses in trochaic tetrameter. Rhyming divides them into a sestain and three quatrains of varying structure: in the final, the alternate rhyme is replaced by an enclosed one. This free form is typical for a friendly epistle, imitating casual friendly chatter. The orientation towards spoken word is clearly manifested at the moment when the poet simultaneously introduces the imperative molchi! (be quiet!), a question and exclamations:

Chto? – butylok polnyy yashchik.

Zapiruyem uzh, molchi!

Chudo – zhizn’ anakhoreta!

The rhyming structure of the poem also serves to imitate everyday language. The first sestain is organised by an excessive repetition of rhymes connecting the first, second, fourth and fifth verses (moy – zimoy – soboy – poroy), and the rhyme of the verses of the third and sixth suddenly returns in the twelfth and fourteenth verses (poeta – pistoleta – anakhoreta – sveta). The stringing of the lines highlights the “chatty” nature of Pushkin’s epistle. The arrangement of the endings of the last two quatrains (molchi – nochi – posvyashcheny – vlyubleny), in accordance with the norms of rhyming in the Golden Age, is not perceived as a single rhyme, but nevertheless is connected by consonance: the vowels “I” and “y” sound similar (not coincidentally they sometimes are even considered a variant of one phoneme). The rhyming uniformity of most of the text emphasises the last quatrain with a sharp change in rhyme, focusing attention on it.

The epistles of the Golden Age of Russian poetry often reproduced the artistic style of the poet to whom it was addressed, and N.M. Yazykov, as mentioned above, was one of the intended readers of the text. Therefore, Pushkin, according to the laws of the genre, focuses on the poetics of this addressee, bringing the rhythmic structure of the poem in accordance with it. Yazykov’s favourite meter was the iambic tetrameter in the recognisable original version, which the poet himself would later describe as follows: Moy boykiy yamb chetverostopnyy, / Moy govorlivyy skorokhod… (My mettlesome iamb four-footed / My loquacious speedy messenger)^[12]. The mettle and the speed of the skorokhod arose due to the Yazykov’s favourite techniques – the omission of two metric accents in a tetrametric verse and the use of enjambment, unusually frequent for the lyrics of the era^[13]. In Yazykov’s poetry, the same features are inherent in another disyllabic meter, the trochaic tetrameter. Here are fragments from the Song that demonstrate the rhythmic and syntactic features of the verse, which eventually became a kind of “calling card” of the poet:

Pust’ svobodny i legki

Mchatsya yunosti dosugi!

Peyte, brat’ya, peyte, drugi,

Udalyye bursaki! (The metrical accents on the first and fifth syllables are omitted.)

<…>

Vsya beseda gordo vstan’:

Burse nashey znamenitoy (enjambment)

Slava! Leyte punsh serdityy

V bogatyrskuyu gortan’! (The metrical accents on the first and fifth syllables are omitted.)

 

[Za razgul’nuyu krasotku,

Za svobodu nashikh dney!]

Ulybnis’, bursak, i pey (enjambment)

Sokrushitel’nuyu vodku. (The metrical accents on the first and fifth syllables are omitted.)

 

Drugi-brat’ya! vot ono –

Volkhov, Tibr i Ippokrena:

V nem ogon’, i shum, i pena –

Blagodatnoye vino!^[14] (The metrical accents on the first and fifth syllables are omitted.)

Pushkin also writes his poem in trochaic tetrameter, which is rare in the epistle genre, but characteristic of the songs for which Yazykov was known. Due to the meter, the last eight verses of Pushkin’s text sound like a bacchic song, echoing recognisable Yazykov’s motifs and creating a mood of feasting delight, softened, however, by facetious intonation (compare with the “Bacchic” eight-line stanzas by A.D. Illichevskii and Pushkin himself: Mezhdu vinom i krasotoyu / Reshit’, chto luchshe, mudreno, / No zhit’ v soglas’ya s tem i toyu, / Priznat’sya, ya b xotel ravno. / Ne sprashivajte zhe, chto slashhe; / To svy’she prostoty’ moej: / No ot vina vostorgi chashhe, / Ot nej porezhe, da zhivej^[15]; Ya lyublyu vecherniy pir, / Gde vesel’ye predsedatel’, / A svoboda, moy kumir, / Za stolom zakonodatel’, / Gde do utra slovo pey / Zaglushayet kriki pesen, / Gde prostoren krug gostey, / A kruzhok butylok tesen^[16]). The mismatch of meter and rhythm also “works” to approximate this form, since a two-stress verse requires a melodious manner of reading. The technique of skipping two stressed syllables is employed in seven verses: the third (Da Yazykova poeta), the sixth (Postrelyat’ iz pistoleta), the eighth (Ne mikhaylovskiy prikazchik), the eleventh (Zapiruyem uzh, molchi!), the thirteenth (V Troyegorskom do nochi), the fourteenth (A v Mikhaylovskom do sveta), the eighteenth (To mertvetski vlyubleny). It is curious that for the first time such a rhythm appears precisely in the line Da Yazykova poeta, which also ends with an enjambment:

Da Yazykova poeta

Zatashchi ko mne s soboy^[17].

Thus, the unobvious adoption of Yazykov’s poetic techniques: the recognisable version of the song verse, the indicated enjambment and the motif proximity of the friendly epistle to Yazykov’s favourite genre of bacchic song (wine, love, feast and friendship are included in the thematic complex of both forms) – diversify the poetics of the work.

Finally, the ultimate punchline introduces a pun referring to a completely different tradition. The final witticism, based on wordplay, is characteristic of all sorts of “trifles” and “trinkets”, i.e. small forms of “light poetry”, such as an epigram or a madrigal. The humorous poems of the Arzamas members were full of puns. P.A. Vyazemskii was considered a recognised wit, who resorted to this poetic technique in a variety of genres, including the epistle genre (compare: Pust’ belykh negrov prekratitsya / Prodazha na svyatoy Rusi. / No kak ni bud’ ya v slove prytok, / Vsego nel’zya spustit’ s pera; / Bud’ v etot god nam v zle ubytok / I pribyl’ v byúdzhete dobra^[18]).

Conclusion

Thus, the conspicuous prosification of Pushkin’s text masks the poetic techniques themselves. As a result of combining these opposing strategies, “prose” enters the poetic text, expanding the possibilities of poetry itself. Such a combination can be found in a number of Pushkin’s unpublished poems: <Zapiska Zhukovskomu> (Shtabs-kapitanu, Gete, Greyu...), <Zapiska Zhukovskomu> (Rayevskii, molodenets prezhnii…) (1819), <V.L. Davydovu> (1821?), <Iz pis’ma P.A. Vyazemskomu> (1825), <Iz pis’ma k E.I. Velikopol’skomu> (1826), K Yaz<ykovu> (1826) etc. It is here, on the poetic periphery, that the style that Pushkin referred to in Eugene Onegin as the flamandskoy shkoly pestryy sor (Motley litter of Flemish school) is being developed. After classical studies by Yu.N. Tynyanov (1921–1922) (Tynyanov, 1977, pp. 52–75), V.M. Markovich (1963) (Markovich, 2023, pp. 10–27), S.G. Bocharov (1974) (Bocharov, 1974, pp. 26–105), Yu.M. Lotman (1975) (Lotman, 1995, pp. 393–462), Y.N. Chumakova (1969–1999) (Chumakov, 1999) the text of the novel in modern Pushkin studies is perceived primarily as an “encyclopedia” of poetry of the Golden Age^[19]. It is necessary to clarify in what way and on what rights this “motley litter” enters the poetic world. This naming itself grows in the way described above:

Poroy dozhdlivoyu namedni

Ya, zavernuv na skotnyy dvor...

T’fu! prozaicheskiye bredni,

Flamandskoy shkoly pestryy sor!^[20]

The conspicuous deliberate “prose”, framed by a “naked” word, ends with an ellipsis, a sharp colloquial interjection T’fu! (mimics spitting) and is unexpectedly resolved by referring to a metaphorical series in which the elements of the paintings of the so called Minor Dutch are likened to the motley litter of everyday life. Metaphor turns the mundane into poetry.

Thus, poetic experiments that existed on the border of literature and everyday life allowed Pushkin to expand the sphere of the poetic. The unit of this combination, its atom in the text of the analysed epistle to Wulf, is Troegorskoe, which combines the actual name of the estate and its poetic adaptation to the metric norm of the text.

 

 

^{1 Pushkin, A.S. (1937). The Complete Collection of Works (Vol. 13: Correspondence, 1815–1827, p. 109). Moscow; Leningrad: Academy of Sciences of USSR. (In Russ.)}

^{2 Ibid.}

^{3 Pushkin, A.S. (2019). The Complete Collection of Works (Vol. 3, book 1, p. 473). Saint Petersburg: Nauka Publ. (In Russ.)}

^{4 Ibid., p. 7. The endings are marked by authors – E.G., V.Z.}

^{5 Pushkin, A.S. (2019). The Complete Collection of Works (Vol. 1, p. 110). Saint Petersburg: Nauka Publ. (In Russ.) Addressing Lyceum professor A.I. Galich and inviting him to a feast indicate that communication in the poetic world cancels the rules of the real world.}

^{6 Boratynskii, E.A. (2002). Complete Collection of Works and Letters (Vol. 1, p. 87). Moscow: Yazyki Slavyanskoy Kul’tury Publ. (In Russ.) The emphasis added – E.G., V.Z. Delvig turns into lyubeznogo Goratsiya, the periphrastic naming is a sign of transition into the world of poetry.}

^{7 Ibid., p. 118. Moscow: Yazyki Slavyanskoy Kul’tury Publ. (In Russ.) The emphasis added – E.G., V.Z. Bespechnost’ is a typical quality of the addressee (and sometimes the author) of a friendly epistle.}

^{8 Batyushkov, K.N. (1977). Experiments in Poetry and Prose (pp. 275–276). Moscow: Nauka Publ. (In Russ.) Amalthea in ancient Greek mythology is a goat who suckled Zeus with her milk.}

^{9 Pushkin, A.S. (2019). The Complete Collection of Works (Vol. 3, book 1, p. 342). Saint Petersburg: Nauka Publ. (In Russ.)}

^{10 Pushkin, A.S. (1937). The Complete Collection of Works: (Vol. 6, p. 130). Moscow; Leningrad: Academy of Sciences of USSR. (In Russ.) The emphasis added – E.G., V.Z. In the context of the novel, everyday stylistics is combined with a periphrastic poetic language, forming a polyphonic unity of the ordinary and the sublime.}

^{11For the poetics of the friendly message genre, see (Grekhnev, 1994; Virolaynen, 2003).}

^{12 Yazykov, N.M. (1964). Complete Collection of Poems (2nd ed., p. 310). Moscow; Leningrad: Sovetsky Pisatel Publ. (In Russ.)}

^{13 The end-stopped style is typical of the classicists, in the lyrics of the Golden Age, hyphenation is possible, but statistically limited. See about this (Matyash, 2006; 2016).}

^{14 Yazykov, N.M. (1964). Complete Collection of Poems (pp. 265–266). (In Russ.) The emphasis added by authors – E.G., V.Z.}

^{15 Illichevskii, A.D. (1827). Experiments in the Ontological Genre (p. 80). Saint Petersburg: V Tipografii Departamenta Narodnago Prosveshcheniya Publ. (In Russ.)}

^{16 Pushkin, A.S. (2004). The Complete Collection of Works (Vol. 2, book 1, p. 65). Saint Petersburg: Nauka Publ. (In Russ.)}

^{17 The emphasis added by authors – E.G., V.Z.}

^{18 Vyazemskii, P.A. (1986). Poems (p. 152). Leningrad: Sovetskiy Pisatel’ Publ. (In Russ.) The emphasis added – E.G., V.Z.}

^{19 Compare: “Eugene Onegin is a text that could be used to reconstruct the literary culture of the Russian Golden Age if all other texts of the era were lost” (Virolaynen, 2024).}

^{20 Pushkin, A.S. (1937). The Complete Collection of Works: (Vol. 6, p. 201). Moscow; Leningrad: Academy of Sciences of USSR. (In Russ.)}

About the authors

Elena N. Grigorieva

St. Petersburg State University

Author for correspondence.
Email: e.grigoreva@spbu.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1992-5914
SPIN-code: 7977-7990

PhD in Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of History of Russian Literature

7-9 Universitetskaia nab, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation

Veniamin T. Zolotukhin

nstitute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House)

Email: ilyaplatonovich@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9666-9697
SPIN-code: 8323-4958

PhD in Philology, Unior Research Assistant at the Pushkin Studies Department

4 Makarova nab, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation

References

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