The Queen of Spades and Selected Works (Pushkin Collection)

by Alexander Pushkin

I turned into a craftsman: to my fingers

  I taught submissive, dry dexterity;

  My ear, precision. Having stifled sounds,

  I cut up music like a corpse. I measured

  Harmony by arythmetics. Then only,

  Well-versed in science, dared I give myself

  To the sweet languor of creative fancy.

  I started to compose, but still in silence,

  Still secretly, not dreaming yet of glory.

  Quite often, having sat in my mute cell

  For two, three days - both sleep and food forgotten,

  The thrill and tears of inspiration savored -

  I burned my work, and frigidly observed

  How my ideas, the sounds I had begotten,

  Took flame and disappeared with the light smoke.

  And what of that? When star-enchanted Gluck

  Arose and opened up to us new secrets

  (What candidly profound, what charming secrets!),

  Did I not leave all I had known before,

  And loved so much, and trusted with such fervor,

  To follow him, submissively and gaily,

  Like one who has gone errant yet encounters

  A man to set him on a different course?

  By arduous, ever-earnest constancy

  At last in the infinity of art

  I reached a high degree. Now glory smiled

  Upon me finally; in people’s hearts

  I found strings consonant to my creations.

  I was content; at peace I took delight

  In my own work, success and glory -- also

  In works and in successes of my friends,

  My gentle comrades in the wondrous art.

  No, never did I know the sting of envy!

  O, never! -- neither even when Piccini

  Knew how to charm the savage ears of Paris,

  Nor when I got to hear for the first time

  The initial harmonies of “Iphigenia”...

  Who’d say that proud Salieri would in life

  Be a repellent envier, a serpent

  Trampled by people, gnawing sand and dust

  In impotence? No one! And now -- I’ll say it --

  I am an envier. I envy; sorely,

  Profoundly now I envy. -- Pray, o Heaven!

  Where, where is rightness? when the sacred gift,

  Immortal genius, comes not in reward

  For fervent love, for total self-rejection,

  For work and for exertion and for prayers,

  But casts its light upon a madman’s head,

  An idle loafer’s brow... O Mozart, Mozart!

  (Enter Mozart.)

  Mozart

  Aha! You saw me! Damn - and I was hoping

  To treat you with an unexpected joke.

  Salieri

  You here! -- since long?

  Mozart

  Just now. I had

  Something to show you; I was on my way,

  But passing by an inn, all of a sudden

  I heard a violin... My friend Salieri,

  In your whole life you haven’t heard anything

  So funny: this blind fiddler in the inn

  Was playing the “voi che sapete”. Wondrous!

  I couldn’t keep myself from bringing him

  To treat you to his art. Entrez, maestro!

  (Enter a blind old man with a violin.)

  Some Mozart, now!

  (The old man plays an aria from Don Giovanni; Mozart

  roars with laughter.)

  Salieri

  And you can laugh?

  Mozart

  Ah, come,

  Salieri, aren’t you laughing?

  Salieri

  No, I’m not!

  How can I laugh when some inferior dauber

  Stains in my view the great Raphael’s Madonna;

  How can I laugh when some repellent mummer

  With tasteless parodies dishonors Dante.

  Begone, old man!

  Mozart

  Hold on a moment: here,

  Take this to drink my health.

  (The old man leaves.)

  You, my Salieri,

  Seem squarely out of sorts. Well, I’ll come back

  Some other time.

  Salieri

  What did you bring me?

  Mozart

  This?

  No, just a trifle. Late the other night,

  As my insomnia was full upon me,

  Brought some two, three ideas into my head;

  Today I jot them down... O well, I hoped

  To hear what you may think of this, but now

  You’re in no mood for me.

  Salieri

  Ah, Mozart, Mozart!

  When am I ever in no mood for you?

  Sit down; I’m listening.

  Mozart

  (at the piano)

  Picture... well, whom should you?..

  Say, even me -- a little younger, though;

  In love -- not much, just lightly -- having fun

  With a good-looking girl, or friend -- say, you;

  I’m merry... All at once -- a deathly vision,

  A sudden gloom, or something of that sort...

  Well, listen.

  (He plays.)

  Salieri

  You were bringing this to me

  And could just stop and listen at some inn

  To a blind fiddler scraping! -- Oh, my goodness!

  You, Mozart, are unworthy of yourself.

  Mozart

  So, it is good then?

  Salieri

  What profundity!

  What symmetry and what audacity!

  You, Mozart, are a god -- and you don’t know it.

  But I, I know.

  Mozart

  Well! rightly? well, perhaps...

  But My Divinity has gotten hungry.

  Salieri

  Then listen: how about we dine together,

  Say, at the Golden Lion’s Inn?

  Mozart

  So be it;

  I’m glad. But let me first drop in at home

  And tell my wife not to expect me later

  For dinner.

  (He leaves.)

  Salieri

  I am waiting; don’t you fail me!

  No, I cannot withstand it any longer,

  Resist my destiny: I have been chosen

  To stop him -- otherwise, all of us die!

  All of us priests and votaries of music,

  Not I alone with my faint-sounding glory...

  What use is there in Mozart living on

  And reaching yet to new and greater heights?

  Will he thus lift up art? Not really: art

  Will fall again as soon as he will vanish.

  He will bequeath us no inheritor.

  What use is he? Like some celestial cherub,

  He came to bring us several tunes from heaven,

  To rouse within us, creatures of the dust,

  Wingless desire and fly away thereafter.

  So fly away! the sooner now, the better.

  Here’s poison -- late Isora’s final gift.

  For eighteen years I’ve carried it with me,

  And life since then has seemed to me quite often

  A wound unbearable; and oft I sat

  At the same table with a carefree foe,

  And never to the whisper of temptation

  Have I inclined -- although I’m not a coward,

  Though I can feel profoundly the offense,

  Though small my love for life. I kept delaying,

  As thirst of death excruciated me.

  Why die? I mused: perhaps yet life will bring

  Some sudden gifts before me from her treasures;

  Perhaps, I will be visited by raptures

  And a creative night and inspiration;

  Perhaps, another Haydn will create

  New greatnesses -- wherein I will delight...

  As I was feasting with a hateful
guest --

  Perhaps, I mused, I’m yet to find a worse,

  More vicious foe; perhaps, a worse offense

  Will crash upon me from disdainful heights --

  Then you shall not be lost, Isora’s gift.

  And I was right! and I have found at last

  My greatest foe, and now the other Haydn

  Has filled me wonderfully with my rapture!

  The time has come! Prophetic gift of love,

  Transfer today into the cup of friendship.

  Scene 2

  (A special room at an inn; a piano. Mozart and Salieri at a table.)

  Salieri

  You seem a little down today?

  Mozart

  Me? No!

  Salieri

  You surely are upset with something, Mozart?

  Good dinner, glorious wine, but you keep quiet

  And sit there looking gloomy.

  Mozart

  I should own,

  My Requiem’s unsettling me.

  Salieri

  Your Requiem!--

  You’ve been composing one? Since long ago?

  Mozart

  Long: some three weeks. A curious incident...

  I haven’t told you, have I?

  Salieri

  No.

  Mozart

  Then listen:

  About three week ago, I came back home

  Quite late at night. They told me that some person

  Had called on me. And then, I don’t know why,

  The whole night through I thought: who could it be?

  What does he need of me? Tomorrow also

  The same man came and didn’t find me in.

  The third day, I was playing with my boy

  Upon the floor. They hailed me; I came out

  Into the hall. A man, all clad in black,

  Bowed courteously in front of me, commissioned

  A Requiem and vanished. I at once

  Sat down and started writing it -- and since,

  My man in black has not come by again.

  Which makes me glad, because I would be sorry

  To part with my endeavor, though the Requiem

  Is nearly done. But meanwhile I am...

  Salieri

  What?

  Mozart

  I’m quite ashamed to own to this...

  Salieri

  What is it?

  Mozart

  By day and night my man in black would not

  Leave me in peace. Wherever I might go,

  He tails me like a shadow. Even now

  It seems to me he’s sitting here with us,

  A third...

  Salieri

  Enough! what is this childish terror?

  Dispel the empty fancies. Beaumarchais

  Used to instruct me: “Listen, old Salieri,

  Whenever black thoughts come into your head,

  Uncork yourself another Champagne bottle

  Or reread ‘Le mariage de Figaro.’“

  Mozart

  Yes! I remember, you were boon companions

  With Beaumarchais; you wrote “Tarare” for him --

  A glorious thing. It has one melody...

  I keep on singing it when I feel happy...

  La la la la... Ah, is it right, Salieri,

  That Beaumarchais could really poison someone?

  Salieri

  I doubt he did: too laughable a fellow

  For such a serious craft.

  Mozart

  He was a genius,

  Like you and me. While genius and evildoing

  Are incompatibles. Is that not right?

  Salieri

  You think so?

  (Throws the poison into Mozart’s glass.)

  Well, now drink.

  Mozart

  Here is a health

  To you, my friend, and to the candid union

  That ties together Mozart and Salieri,

  Two sons of harmony.

  Salieri

  But wait, hold on,

  Hold on, hold on!.. You drank it!.. Without me?

  Mozart

  (throws his napkin on the table)

  That’s it, I’m full.

  (He goes to the piano.)

  And now, Salieri, listen:

  My Requiem.

  (He plays.)

  You weep?

  Salieri

  Such tears as these

  I shed for the first time. It hurts, yet soothes,

  As if I had fulfilled a heavy duty,

  As if at last the healing knife had chopped

  A suffering member off. These tears, o Mozart!..

  Pay no respect to them; continue, hurry

  To fill my soul with those celestial sounds...

  Mozart

  If only all so quickly felt the power

  Of harmony! But no, in that event

  The world could not exist; all would abandon

  The basic needs of ordinary life

  And give themselves to unencumbered art.

  We’re few, the fortune’s chosen, happy idlers,

  Despising the repellent cares of use,

  True votaries of one and only beauty.

  Is that not right? But now I’m feeling sick

  And kind of heavy. I should go and sleep.

  Farewell then!

  Salieri

  See you later.

  (Alone.)

  You will sleep

  For long, Mozart! But what if he is right?

  I am no genius? “Genius and evildoing

  Are incompatibles.” That is not true:

  And Buonarotti?.. Or is it a legend

  Of the dull-witted, senseless crowd -- while really

  The Vatican’s creator was no murderer?

  THE END

  The Criticism

  THE ROMANTIC POETS: POUSHKIN by Rosa Newmarch

  RUSSIAN society was now expectant of some consummate manifestation of national genius. Lomonossov had awakened the intellect of the country and provided it with a literary language; dignified, correct, based on the classical traditions of the eighteenth century — the language of the panegyrical ode and the metrical epistle. Karamzin had touched a frigid, artificial age by a senti- mentalism that was, however, only partly sincere. But, as Bielinsky observed, tears — even factitious — marked an advance in the evolution of Russian society. Krylov had taught society to laugh, as Karamzin taught it to weep, but more naturally. He held up a mirror in which, for the first time, the nation saw itself reflected as it actually was. Not, indeed, with perfect fidelity, for the mirror of the satirist, pure and simple, generally distorts something; but Krylov’s fables remain the first imperfect revelation of nationality in Russian literature. Joukovsky stirred both the heart and the imagination of the reader. The Russians now drank at the haunted well of romanticism; saw strange visions and were thrilled by new sensations. Joukovsky’s unsubstantial, dreamy poetry had not sufficient stamina to form a new epoch, but through its agency society realised not only the movements of the outer world, but its own emotional capacities. By these various paths we have now reached that converging point at which we are confronted with a figure, greater than any we have yet considered, who seems to close the gates finally upon the old “preparatory period” of Russian literature and to point to a new road, leading on to nationality and independent creation.

  Alexander Sergeivich Poushkin was born at Moscow on May 26th, 1799. His father — the poet was proud to remember — was the descendant of an old, although not a titled, family. A man of many accomplishments, he took a lively interest in the various literary movements of his day, and was inclined to the Voltairean philosophy. The poet’s uncle, Vassily Lvovich, was even better known in the fashionable and cultured world, as a member of that famous literary society, the “Arzamas,” and as the writer of smooth and flowing verses, from which Poushkin learnt much of his technical skill. The brothers Serge and Vassily Poushkin were representative types of the absen
tee aristocracy in Russia at the close of the eighteenth century: easy-going, hospitable, and highly, if somewhat superficially, cultured. Country life to them and their like meant intolerable boredom; nor did they trouble to inquire into the condition of their property so long as it yielded the wherewithal to support them in a kind of dilapidated splendour in Moscow. Their town house, with its superb furniture and rich hangings in one room, its bare walls and rush-seated chairs in another, was highly characteristic of the manner of living among the poorer Russian aristocracy, then, and at a much later date.

  On the maternal side Poushkin’s descent was less impeccable, although he did his best to set his maternal grandfather in a picturesque and romantic light. The poet’s mother was the granddaughter of Ibraham Hannibal, a negro sent to Peter the Great — an amateur of all such “curiosities” — by the Russian ambassador at Constantinople. Hannibal’s boyhood was spent at Court, and afterwards he was sent to Paris, although not under such luxurious circumstances as Poushkin depicts in his Memoirs of his ancestor, whom he euphemistically describes as “Peter the Great’s Arab.” The physiognomy of the poet himself, the thick lips, crisp, curly hair, and the nose which broadens and flattens across the nostrils, all point to an admixture of pure negro, rather than of Arab blood. In spite of a veneer of education, Hannibal appears to have retained a good deal of the savage in his nature. The poet’s grandfather, Ossip Hannibal, was also a man of violent temper and unbridled passions, and Poushkin himself was sensible of what in moments of cynical frankness he calls “the inherited taint of negro concupiscence.” His grandmother, whose brief, unhappy married life came to an end in 1784, when Ossip Hannibal was tried and found guilty of bigamy, was a woman of character, who exercised considerable influence on the poet’s early years.

  Until seven years of age Poushkin showed no signs of intellectual superiority. On the contrary, he was so unnaturally dull and heavy that he gave his parents serious cause for anxiety. The shy, unattractive child was neglected by his mother in favour of his sister Olga and his younger brother Leo. The sole friends of his early childhood were his grandmother and his nurse, Arina Rodionova. The latter, a typical specimen of the old-fashioned, devoted family servant, had the whole world of Russian folk-lore at her finger-ends, and from her Poushkin first acquired his intimate knowledge of the national songs and legends. His grandmother also stirred his historical interest by relating her reminiscences of the splendour of Court life under the great Empress Catharine II. After he had passed his seventh year, Poushkin’s entire constitution underwent an almost miraculous change. He lost his heavy gait and stolid air, becoming active and sprightly. His father now began to interest himself in the boy’s education, and several foreign teachers were engaged for him. By the time he was nine he had already evinced that passionate enthusiasm for literature which never waned at any moment of his career. Skabichevsky, speaking of this period of Poushkin’s life, says: “Private theatricals and jeux d’esprit of all kinds were constantly going on at home, and the children were allowed to take part in them. It is not surprising that before he was twelve Poushkin made his first attempts at writing verses.” These verses were in the style of La Fontaine or Voltaire, and his little plays were borrowed from Molière, for French was the language in which he thought and wrote in his childhood.