Russian literature. A short introduction

poem ‘I remember the wonderful moment:/You appeared before me/ Like a fleeting vision’, which was to have a long drawing-room afterlife as a romance set to music by Glinka). Pushkin followed Karamzin, too, in his intensive interest in the psychology and language of women: this can be seen not only in the prominence of female protagonists in his work, but also in the fact that some of his ‘costumed confessions’ were made in female dress (as with the last line of ‘Monument’, where the advice to avoid demeaning squabbles fits with contemporary expectations that ladies remain calm under all circumstances).

At the same time, though, the inspiration that the salon offered Pushkin was often fused with unease, or even irritation, at the limits of polite language, and particularly at the demand that strong emotion be voiced in a safely conventional way. This unease can be sensed in another very famous love poem, ‘I loved you’ (1829):

I loved you; love as yet, perhaps

Has not burned out in my heart;

But may it trouble you no longer,

I do not wish to sadden you with anything.

I loved you wordlessly, hopelessly,

Tormented now by timidity, now by jealousy;

I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,

As God grant you be loved by another.

This poem is quintessentially ‘Pushkinian’ in its dignified plainness and apparently self-explanatory directness; it is sometimes used (not wholly accurately) as an instance of the poet’s distaste for metaphor. But in fact, there is a good deal more here than first meets the eye or the ear. Among many buried associations is the point that the opening lines of the poem evoke ‘feminine language’ – the new language of the emotions that Sentimentalism had seen as women’s particular domain. Great rhythmic emphasis is placed on verbs such as ‘to trouble’ and ‘to sadden’, as well as on the metaphor of love as flame (this hackneyed