His most famous work is Ammalat Bek, which reflected his deep knowledge of the Caucasus. On arriving in Dagestan, he had rapidly added the Turkic and Persian dialects spoken there to the thirteen or so languages he already knew, and would disappear for days at a time into the mountains, where he could pass as a local. Ammalat Bek is steeped in Dagestani legend, since it reflects the true story of a rebel who was captured by the Russians and sentenced to death. A Russian officer called Verkhovsky intervened to save him, and the two men became friends. But nine years later, Ammalat killed his protector, then dug up his body and chopped off his head. According to legend, Ammalat had been in love with the daughter of one of the local khans and forced to kill the Russian to win her hand. Using these raw materials, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky created an imaginative tissue of journal entries, letters, descriptions and more to tell the story of the failure of Verkhovsky, a sensitive man, to bridge the gap between himself and his Muslim friend. As a work of ethnography, it has some interesting passages, but, as a novel, it is almost unreadable. The writing is overblown, the plot is absurd and the noble heroism of the protagonist seems unlikely. Here, for example, is Ammalat’s reaction to pleading with his beloved to elope with him.
‘Speak not so. If the sacrifice is unusual, my love also is unusual. Command me to give my life a thousand times, and I will throw it down like a copper poull [coin]. I will cast my soul into hell for you – not only my life. You remind me that you are the daughter of the Khan; remember, too, that my grandfather wore, that my uncle wears, the crown of a Shamkhal! But it is not by this dignity, but by my heart, that I feel I am worthy of you; and if there be shame in being happy despite of the malice of mankind and the caprice of fate, that shame will fall on my head and not on yours,’ cries Ammalat, provoking confusion in Sultanetta, who knows not what to do.
‘Torn now by her maiden fear, and her respect for the customs of her forefathers, now by the passion and eloquence of her lover, the innocent Sultanetta wavered, like a light cork, upon the tempestuous billows of contending emotions.’
Despite the apparent impossibility of enduring such prose for long, the book sold in huge numbers, and he was able to support his whole family with the proceeds. At one point, he had 50,000 roubles, a vast sum, in assets just from his writing.
His life, however, was miserable. Holed up in the small town of Derbent on the shore of the Caspian Sea, he amused himself with seducing officers’ wives, with drinking and with writing. In the process, he made himself far more interesting than anything in his books.
A later account of his life by a Russian writer tells how he used to creep out over the rooftops of the town by night, dagger in hand, and into the chambers of the local ladies. The beautiful wife of an officer, who was besotted with him despite being lusted over by the whole garrison, would visit him in secret whenever her boorish husband played cards all night. ‘And so it was this lucky lady who was the object of the most tender and ardent passion of our writer, our unlucky hero upon whom fate had not seen fit to bestow the pleasures of a legal domestic happiness. This woman gave herself to him completely, without holding anything back. Neither the fear of punishment at her husband’s hand for her infidelity, nor fear of obstacles and dangers, no nothing could keep her from meeting her beloved,’ the account says.
One night she dressed in her husband’s uniform to avoid notice as she slipped through the streets to Bestuzhev’s house. But she was spotted by a Georgian junior officer who, guessing what was afoot, tried to force her to submit to him instead. She pretended to consent, stepped back, then hit him in the face and ran off to her lover, telling him all. The next day, Bestuzhev threatened to punish the officer ‘in the Caucasus style’ and the officer was so scared he asked for an immediate transfer.
Although many of these stories of a rake and a cad may have been spread to demean Bestuzhev’s reputation among a public who still remembered his charm, wit and grace in the capital, they succeeded mainly in creating the legend of a Byronic hero who suffered unceasingly, and was irresistible to women. It was an image he did not try to restrain.
‘Not by talent, but by fate I am like Byron,’ he wrote in one of his many letters. ‘What calumny was not cast his way? What did they not suspect him of doing? So it is with me as well. My greatest misfortunes appear to others to be crimes. My heart is clean, but my head is bespattered by disgrace and slander.’
He began to suffer from disease, being cooped up in forts where cholera was rife. In fact, it was a miracle that he survived at all, since in some of the forts the whole strength of the garrison would die over the course of a year. His hopes for freedom were raised by two promotions: the second to ensign, the rank enjoyed by the aristocratic boys sent to join the army in their teenage years.
But he was still marched unceasingly from skirmish to skirmish, until, finally, he was sent the whole way across the Caucasus to the Black Sea coast. ‘Driven as I am from region to region, never spending two months in one place, without quarters, without letters, without books, without newspapers, now exhausted by military duties, now half dead from illness – will I never be able to take a deep breath . . .? Who will be worse off if I am better off? Is it so difficult to throw a man a grain of happiness?’
Apparently it was; he still hoped for a pardon from the tsar but he should have known he would not get one. The tsar had turned down his case for a medal when he helped defend Derbent in 1830, and was a man who bore a grudge. None of the Decembrists would be allowed to return to their former lives. In 1837, the tsar visited the Caucasus and Bestuzhev hoped he might have a chance to personally plead his case, but it was not to be. The tsar did not stop at the fort where he was based, a request to move to Crimea was blocked and despair closed around him.
‘I embrace you my dear brother. If God does not grant that we meet again, be happy. You know that I have loved you greatly. This, however, is not an epitaph. I don’t think about dying, nor do I long for it to come soon. However, in any event it is best to bid you farewell. When you show this letter to mother, do not reveal this part; why worry her needlessly?’ he wrote in words stripped free of his habitual posing. In fact, for once, he comes across as rather brave.
On 7 June 1837, he was part of a force sent by sea to Cape Adler to subdue the local Circassians. But the soldiers were outnumbered, and were forced to fall back. He volunteered – as was his habit – to run forward to tell the advance party to retreat. He got there just as it was cut off, and landed in the thick of a battle that was to be his last. He was seen leaning against a tree, bleeding heavily, but his body was never found.
Bestuzhev was dead, but his legend continued, especially since Marlinsky – his alter ego – vanished suddenly with no explanation given. The secret of the writer’s real identity had been kept well. Legends abounded as to his fate. One writer recorded being asked if it was true that Marlinsky had changed sides and was leading the mountaineers against the Russians. Another veteran of the Caucasus wars recalled that his brother used to call him ‘Ammalat’.
Alexandre Dumas recounted hearing about Bestuzhev – or Bestuchef, as he called him – when he passed through Russia in the 1850s. In the town of Nizhny Novgorod, he claimed to have met the French wife of the Decembrist Ivan Annenkov, who possessed a bracelet and a jewel which she said Bestuzhev had whittled out of a link of metal chain during their stay in Siberia. ‘These two ornaments were a true symbol of poetry, because it transforms all it touches,’ wrote Dumas.
He later passed down the shore of the Caspian Sea to Derbent, where Bestuzhev had lived for so long. And although he got most of his facts wrong, he did recount a fascinating version of one of the most peculiar episodes of Bestuzhev’s life, which dates from the winter of 1832 – 3.
That year, the townsfolk in Derbent were starving. Bestuzhev, to arm himself against robbers or even cannibals, kept a pistol under his pillow to be secure while he slept. One day, as he and a friend were sitting in his room, Olga Nestertsova, the sixteen-year-old daugh
ter of his landlady, came in to deliver laundry. She may have been his lover, for while ‘frisking’ (as she put it later) she jumped onto the bed, set off the pistol and shot herself.
The bullet passed through her chest, and she lived on for two more agonizing days before drowning in her own blood. While she still lived, she testified that Bestuzhev was not to blame and he was cleared by a trial, but the legend was born that he had shot her in a fit of jealous rage. Although she is unlikely to have been his only lover, if indeed she was at all, she became a symbol of truth and fidelity for the local community.
Dumas recounted hearing the story of the girl, whom he called Oline Nesterzof, while he stood looking at her gravestone, on which was carved a blasted rose and the single word ‘fate’.
According to the story he heard, which had developed over the twenty years since Bestuzhev died, Olga and the poet had lived together for a year in perfect happiness. But one evening he and three friends got drunk, and Bestuzhev boasted of his mistress’s faithfulness. One of his companions wagered that he could seduce her if he tried – a bet that Bestuzhev unwisely accepted. And soon, the friend returned with proof of his conquest. Dumas unleashed all his melodramatic skills to describe what happened next.
‘The young girl entered the poet’s chamber. No one knows what happened there. A shot was heard, then a cry; then, finally, Bestuchef came out, pale and frightful. In the chamber, Oline lay on the ground, dying, bloodied; a bullet had passed through her chest. A fired pistol was close by her. The dying girl could still speak; she asked for a priest to be found. Two hours later, she was dead. The priest swore under oath that Oline Nesterzof told him that she had wanted to take the pistol from Bestuchef ’s hands, and the pistol had gone off by accident. She was shot, she died pardoning Bestuchef for this accidental murder,’ wrote Dumas, full of the passion of the tragedy.
The priest then supposedly testified at Bestuzhev’s trial, and his testimony alone acquitted the poet of murder. But, Dumas assures us, Bestuzhev was never the same again. He was overcome by a need for danger, and would throw himself into the thick of battle. But he lived a charmed life and, despite his wish for death, he was spared again and again. Dumas was enthralled by the tale. ‘Finally, in 1838, he made an excursion in the land of the Abazertskys: they attacked the village of Adler. At the moment of entering in the forest, it was clear that this forest was occupied by a mountaineer force three times stronger than the Russians. The mountaineers had, as well, an advantage in their position, because they were dug into the forest. The colonel gave the order to retreat. The retreat was sounded. Bestuchef commanded the riflemen along with another officer, Captain Albrand. Instead of obeying the trumpet call, these two forced their way into the forest in pursuit of the mountaineers. Captain Albrand returned, but Bestuchef did not.’
Dumas claimed to have received these details from a certain ‘Prince Tarkanof ’, an eyewitness to the battle. Apparently, fifty soldiers were sent to hunt for the writer but all that was ever found was his watch.
The story shows how successful Bestuzhev’s effort to present himself as a Byronic hero had been, while also showing how well the secret of his literary alter ego had been kept. Dumas clearly knew of Bestuzhev’s past as a poet in St Petersburg and wrote about him as one who had written some good verses, but does not appear to have realized that he was a novelist, nor that Marlinsky and Bestuzhev were the same person. If he did, he kept it very quiet, since he went on to publish translations of two of Marlinsky’s novels, including Ammalat Bek, under his own name. He claimed to have come across the manuscripts in Derbent, and did not feel the need to mention that they had already been published to vast acclaim in Russia. He called them Sultanetta – the name of the heroine of Ammalat Bek, and the woman for whom Ammalat killed his Russian friend – and La Boule de neige.
The translator of an American version of the novels in 1906 subtly condemned Dumas for it. ‘In “Sultanetta” Dumas evidently struggled against assimilating the story of the Russian novelist whose romance he admits, under a somewhat specious plea, that he “rewrote”, ’ the translator said. By that time, the secret of Marlinsky’s identity was out, but his novels had been all but forgotten. So much so that the translator did not even bother to record his name.
Bestuzhev is a writer in the unfortunate position of being more interesting for who he was, than for what he wrote. But many of his imitators do not even have that distinction. Following his lead, they produced reams of trash, which revelled in the oriental details of Marlinsky and Pushkin, often with semi-pornographic overlays.
One Elizaveta Gan wrote an erotic fantasy in the first person called A Recollection of Zheleznovodsk, which purported to be the memoir of a lady who had stayed at this spa resort. She enjoyed horseback riding in the wilds around the town, but was ambushed by Circassians and fainted out of fear. On coming to her senses, she had been slung over the back of a horse, and was being carried deep into the mountains. ‘So my dream had come true: fate was casting me into that country which I had desired to see for such a long time – into the canyons, the refuge of the wild sons of nature. I was going to see the Caucasus in all its charm and terror.’
It was a Mills and Boon novel with a colonial twist, and you can almost see the society ladies flicking forward through the pages to the inevitable bed scene. A dark figure enters her quarters and foils her escape plan. ‘Lightning flashed. I saw the prince, and his eyes gleamed more dreadfully than all the sky’s lightning.’ The lady saves her virtue by seizing the prince’s dagger and killing herself with it, only to wake up in her own bed to find it was all a dream. Nevertheless, she refused to apologize for her over-active imagination and promised to ‘keep having such dreams every night and describe them in even greater detail’.
These novels have been extensively studied by Susan Layton, whose rather dry Russian Literature and Empire cannot hide its joy whenever it records another erotic thriller. She describes another such book plotted around a harem love triangle in Abkhazia, in which the son murders the father and the sex slave hurls herself into the sea while lightning flashes. In a rather uncomfortable afterword, the author then goes on to lecture his audience on the importance of civilized Russians colonizing the Caucasus to stop such irrational foreign behaviour.
The dramatic setting of the Caucasus as created by Pushkin and Marlinsky was exploited outside Russia as well, with British writers joining in on the act. They could combine the standard celebration of the lusty savage with a good measure of anti-Russian prejudice, and came up with results every bit as dreadful as their Russian counterparts.
Grace Walton set Schamyl, or the Wild Woman of Circassia in the basic factual framework of the war in the eastern Caucasus, but otherwise seems to have imagined the mountain folk to be more or less equivalent to the townsfolk of Romeo and Juliet. Schamyl – her version of Imam Shamil, the ruler of the highlanders – has a son Hamed, who is staunch and fearless, a daughter Lelia, who is a ‘peerless beauty’, a ward Ivan, who is noble and handsome, and an aide Hassan Bey, who is sly and treacherous.
A battle separates them, threatening their total destruction, only for them to be helped by a mad woman called Wenda who appears out of the mountains and rescues them from a desperate fate. The plot twists and turns in an ever more complex web of love intrigues. Hamed ends up marrying the ward of a Russian general after he spurns an employment offer from the tsar. Lelia, who is not really Schamyl’s daughter, marries Ivan, who actually is Schamyl’s son. Hassan Bey gets his just deserts after trying to seduce Lelia, while Schamyl finds the wild woman is really his lost wife and the mother of Ivan.
In one exceptionally racy passage, Catherine Dubroschi – the young Russian girl who ends up marrying Hamed – is stripped to the waist and threatened with a flogging. The audience is treated to an illustration of the scene, with her perfect skin and only-just-not-visible right breast threatened by the knout. It is certainly not what you expect from Victorian literature.
The influence
of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky ran deep indeed, and it settled on a young man called Mikhail Lermontov, who had holidayed at the mineral spas as a young lad. In a museum now devoted to him in Pyatigorsk is a sketch he did illustrating the story of Ammalat Bek, with a savage mountaineer shooting dead a Russian officer with a rifle at close range.
When Lermontov was aged ten, his family was taking the waters at Pyatigorsk. He fell in love with a girl he met there, or so he said a few years later, adding a layer of sensual allure to a place that already had a hold on him. ‘My heart began to throb, my knees felt weak; I had no idea about anything at that time. Nevertheless, it was passion, strong though childish, it was real love. I still haven’t looked like that since. They laughed at me, teased me, for they noticed the emotion in my face. I would weep silently without reason. I wanted to see her. The Caucasian mountains are sacred to me.’
As a teenager, Lermontov’s fascination with the mountains endured, even after his return to the north, and his subtlety of thought quickly outstripped anything Bestuzhev was capable of. In his poem ‘Izmail-Bey’, written when he was fifteen or sixteen and only a few months before the Decembrist revolt, he revealed a very ambiguous attitude to Russia’s conquest of the south.
‘The village where his youth was spent, the mosques, the peaceful roofs, all rent and ruined by the Russians are,’ the poem says, in justifying the hero’s decision to turn his back on Russian service and return to the Caucasus of his forefathers. Lermontov based his poem on stories he had heard during his trips to the south, but his story is still celebratory of Russia. Disillusion would come later. For now, he believed that when the Circassians were subdued they would proclaim ‘slave though I be, I serve a prince most high, a king of the world’. But even this did not go far enough for the censors, who cut it when the poem was finally published in 1843.
Let Our Fame Be Great Page 10
