The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature

Romanticisms 109

killed in either duel – and Mozart and Salieri, one of the four “Little Tragedies” that Pushkin wrote during the same Boldino autumn, 1830. Salieri too cannot abide the natural superiority (in this case the musical genius) of his junior colleague and rival. His envy of Mozart is not triggered by any single “insult,” nor can it be answered by any single ritualized gesture. Both the confrontation and the insult are cosmic, so the desire to duel (combat between two men, equally armed) is replaced by the need to murder. When the duel becomes a test that goes beyond answering for an isolated deed, no manuals on dueling etiquette will help. The very existence of the superior rival constitutes the insult. This rival is unreachable, living on another plane. The envier can only look ridiculous (and knows he looks ridiculous) when he tries to “settle scores” with this more highly endowed being – regardless of the outcome of their duel.

The most subtle variant on the Silvio model in Russian literature after Pushkin is the duel between Pechorin and Grushnitsky in the “Princess Mary” segment of Lermontov’s novel Hero of Our Time (1840). Grigory Pechorin is a Byronic hero, one degree more burnt out and malicious than his close literary relative, Eugene Onegin. Pechorin’s friend Grushnitsky – a crooked shadow of himself, the double in the mirror he tries to avoid – is a fop, a conceited fool, a bad loser, far more juvenile and melodramatic than Onegin’s na¨ıve friend Lensky (perhaps because Grushnitsky is available to us only through Pechorin’s diary). On a Caucasus mountain cliff, the two men duel over an innocent maiden’s honor. But neither really cares about the maiden. At stake is their own honor, fatally mixed with injured pride. The duel has been rigged by Grushnitsky’s cronies, and Pechorin, knowing this, nevertheless faces his opponent’s bullet, survives the shot and secures his own honor. Pechorin then exposes the deception and brings the humiliated Grushnitsky to admit his guilt. But Grushnitsky refuses to apologize. “I despise myself and hate you!” he shouts; “Shoot!” Pechorin does so. He later averts his eyes from the bloodstained body on the rocks. Did Grushnitsky fail or pass the test that Pechorin had posed for him?

For Romantic ironists of Lermontov’s sort, a duel brought relief. Such unan-chored skepticism is not a dominant note in Pushkin, whom Lermontov worshipped. In no way could Pushkin be called na¨ıve – but his irony was gentler, more forgiving of others, and for all his inflammatory response to attacks on his honor, he retained until the end his faith in the visionary Poet’s ability to transcend the trivial spite of the mob with an inspired poetic word. Lermontov’s prose and worldview are more brittle and bitter. Two lyric poems, each called “The Prophet” [“Prorok”], illustrate this difference between the two Romantic-era poets.

In 1826, Pushkin wrote his “Prophet,” a biblical vision of terrible force. A six-winged seraph appears to a man “tormented by spiritual thirst” in the