The Bronze Horseman- a masterpiece

[Part 3]

The poem announces its self-discipline through that precision of language. The poem contains many elements - narration, description, reflection, commentary – but at the end the poet is able to sustain a unifying vision that allows the integrative energies to triumph.

The poem, in its very opening stanza, plunges into the thick off the narration. In Eugene Onegin as in the Bronze Horseman, the narrative impulse is unmistakably present.

Now that he is in grave condition
My uncle, decorous old dunce,
Has won respectful recognition;
And done the perfect thing for once.
His action be a guide to others;
But what a bore, I ask you, brothers,
To tend a patient night and day
And venture not a step away;
Is there hypocrisy more glaring
Than to amuse one all but dead,
Shake up the pillow for his head.
Does him with melancholy being,
And think behind a public sigh;
Deuce take you, step on t and die

And Pushkin builds on this narrative energy maintaining the unflagging interest of the reader through quick-paced and artful story-telling

But when young manhood’s stormy morrow
Broke in due course for young Eugene
The age of hope and tender sorrow
Monsieur was driven from the scene.
This left Eugene in free possession;
Clad in London dandy’s fashion
With hair style o the latest cast,
He joined society at last.
In writing and in conversation
His French was perfect, all allowed
He danced mazurkas well and bowed
Without constraint or affection.
Enough! society’s verdict ran;
A bright and very nice young man.

Alexander Pushkin while propelling his narrative forward with alacrity is also interested in combing the narrative with descriptions and analyses of human situations that invest the narrative with a greater significance. In the following stanza, while he is advancing the narrative the poet is also successful in commenting on the behaviour of his protagonistHow soon he learnt to feign emotion,

Act hopeless grief or jealous pet,
To smother or foment devotion,
Seem steeped in melancholy, fret,
By turns disdainful and obedient,
Cool or attentive, as expedient
How glum he was with gloom intense,
How flushed with flaming eloquence,
How casual-kind a lrtter-senser1
One end in view, one seeking most,
How utterly he was deengrossed1
How nimble was his glance and tender
Bold-shy, and when the time was near,
Agleam with obedient tear!

Here the chosen and privileged adjectives and verbs carry a full freight of evaluative judgments. This is indeed, to my mind, a distinguishing feature of Pushkin’s narrative poetry. This novel in verse by Pushkin contains many strengths and the ability to evoke a mood, an atmosphere with telling details is one of them. The following stanza is a typical example :

The house is full, the box-tier glitters
The pit, the stalls – all seethes and stirs;
Impatient clapping from the sitters
On high; the rising curtain whirs.
There stands ashimmer, half-ethereal,
Submissive to the magisterial
Magician’s wands, amid her corps
Of nymphs Istomina – the floor
Touched with one foot, the other shaping
A slow-drawn circle, then a surprise – A sudden leap, and away she flies
Like down from Aeol’s lip escaping,
Bends and unbends to rapid beat
And twirling trills her tiny feet.

Commenting on this verse, a well-known critic said that, ‘this may very well be the supreme example of a motion-painting in all Russian literature.’

An aspect of Pushkin’s poetic craft in Eugene Onegin is the deft way in which he combines narrative and reflection, incident and self-knowledge, giving the poem a density and many-layerdness that adds immeasurably to its final effect.

The following stanza illustrates how Pushkin was able- almost effortlessly – to blend the narrative and reflexivity.

Time was when fervent author-teachers
Their pens attuned to grace and worth,
Gave their protagonists the features
Of bright perfection come to earth.
The cherished objects, hunted ever
By wicked persecuting, clever
And highly strung bestrode their books,
Abetted by attractive looks
With purest passion all afire,
The noble hero seemed to yearn
For sacrifice at every turn,
And half way through the final quire
Vice was invariably scored
And virtue reaped its reward.

The following stanza also serves to illustrate this point. We see behind the words the power of a probing creative intelligence at work.

To you this kind of nature writing
May be of limited allure;
It’s all low-style and unexciting,
Shows scant refinement, to be sure.
A bard of more exuberant lyre,
With inspiration’s god afire,
Portrayed the virgin snow for you
And winter’s charms in every hue;
I dare say you’re devoted to him
As he depicts with lyric glow
Clandestine outings in the snow;
I’ve no intention to outdo him
Or challenge him in this regard,
Nor you, the Finland maiden’s bard.

Pushkin had a remarkable ability to interweave narrative and natural descriptions that, as the story unfolds, take on a symbolic significance. He does this with precision and economy and it is a delight to see how his words arrive on the page, one by one, with unforced certitude.

The night is frosty, brighter all heaven,
The lofty lanterns’ wondrous choir
Wheels on, serenely calm and even..
Tatyana steps in loose attire
Out on the spacious courtyard, training
Her mirror at the moon; but waning
In the dark glass, there wanly shone
The melancholy moon alone…
Hark…..footsteps crunch the snow; tiptoeing
Up to the passerby she bounds
Hails him; the girlish treble sounds
More tuneful than the reed pipe’s blowing;
What is your name/’ he stares, and on
He strides, replying; ‘Agafon.’

I have chosen to quote at length from Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin so that readers not familiar with this verse narrative would be able to get a feel for it. It is not only in natural description that he excels’ he is indeed equally good at social description and sensitively and accurately situating his characters in their proper social contexts.

Alexander Pushkin regarded Eugene Onegin as his best work, although my feeling is that the Bronze Horseman, which I wish to discuss later, is a more accomplished and integrated work.

Edmund Williams, the American literary critic played a crucial role in gaining recognition and visibility among English-speaking readers for Pushkin.

He comments perceptively on Pushkin’s poetry, comparing him to Keats, and claims that Pushkin dispensed with the conventionally romantic feel, the story book picturesqueness; he focused sharply ad empathetically on the realistic details. After all as he himself declared it is a novel in verse. As Wilson observed, ‘no detail of country life is too homely, no phase of city life too worldly, for him to master it by the beauty of his verse.

Artistically, he has outstripped his time; and neither Tennyson in ‘In Memoriam’ nor Baudelaire in Les Fleurs du Mal was ever to surpass Pushkin in making poetry of classical precision and firmness out of a world realistically observed.

“It is the integration of experience and language, which above all, serves to elevate this poetic text to a superior work of art,

Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin – the first Russian novel in verse – is distinguished by an enviable gift of phrase and a refined poetic style and here I use the term style in its broadest sense, such that the discerning reader is captivated by this style as it takes him or her into a wonderfully realised world.

Nabokov, one of the most insightful readers of Pushkin remarked, ‘Pushkin’s composition is first if all and above all a phenomenon of style.’ This style, I am persuaded, contains a vital redemptive power. Let me explain what I mean by this semi-cryptic remark. The duel between Eugene Onegin and Lensky and the eventual death of the latter is one of the most depressing episodes in the narrative.

In this episode we observe with increasing unease how darkness and moral confusion descend upon the narrative.

Eugene Onegin’s actions, at times invite mild censure, but here we are witnessing something far more serious. Olga, Tatyana’s sister, is betrothed to Lensky; at a social get-together Eugene flirts openly with her. Lensky is deeply upset, and he challenges Eugene to a duel in order to safeguard his honour. Lensky, unfortunately, is killed in the duel.

It seems that there is plenty of blame to go around. Eugene is blameworthy because he is the prime agent of the unfortunate incident; Lensky is blameworthy because of his callowness and self-destructive in challenging Eugene to a duel; the society at large is culpable because it encouraged and legitimises such mindless destruction.

One need hardly add that this incident is weighed down by sadness and remorse and thoughtlessness. Here Pushkin is operating so near the border-line of moral confusion, but yet is able to impose a poetic order on it. This was facilitated by the fact that Pushkin is more interested in a morality of suggestion than a morality of postures.

However, Pushkin is able to rescue the moment from its gloominess by the indubitable power of his verbal artistry; indeed, his art of verbal description seems to possess an enviable redemptive power.

His words lead us to a more pleasurable domain of experience. Let us consider the following stanza depicting the death of Lensky.

In silence to his bosom raising
A hand, he took no other breath,
And sank, and fell. Opaquely glazing,
His eyes expressed not pain, but death,
So, gently down the slope subsiding.
His heart with sudden chill congealed,
Onegin flew across and kneeled
Beside the boy….stated….called….no answer;
He is not there. Our youthful friend
Has gone to his untimely end.
Becalmed the storm; by searing cancer
Spring’s lovely blossom withered lies;
The alter fire grows dim and dies

What is interesting about this episode as depicted by Pushkin in his novel in verse is the way in which his powerful poetic imagination rises to the occasion and takes control of it, the verbal artistry undoubtedly displaying its redemptive power.

The reader is at a crossroads – the bleakness and the gloominess of the situation on the one hand and the verbal ingenuity and sensitivity with which it is given poetic shape on the other.

Here we see the poem’s declaration of itself as the tragic density of being is elevated to a poetic density of being. This is largely because, I contend, that his genius was lyrical. But that lyrical skill is wedded to a precise language capable of echoing gravity.

Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse that we in Sri Lanka can draw on for our own literary pursuits.

The art of verse narratives is a part f the Sinhala poetic tradition, as exemplified in works such as Sasadavata, Muvadevdavata, Kavsilumina, Kavyashekaraya and Guttiliaya.

In more modern times there have been verse narratives like Sudosudu, which is based on a poem by Tennyson. Verse narratives in verse based on contemporary experience are a genre that can be fruitfully cultivated and Pushkin’s work can be a useful eye-opener to us. I wish to underscore six points in this regard.

First, Pushkin was able to achieve a superb balance between narrative, description and commentary, one shadowing the other.

Second, he fashioned a comfortable style that was precisely attuned to his poetic ambitions. He trusted the intuitions of language as he reached for a deeper reality. Third, he blended poetic inventiveness with self-discipline that Lord Byron – his model – never succeeded in achieving. Fourth, Pushkin had a rare ability to transfigure the visual and invest it with symbolic valences.

Fifth, Eugene Onegin manifests a neat structure that incarnates a persuasive rhetorical argument. Sixth, Pushkin was able to re-draw the map of human consciousness by showing how consciousness saw itself.

Eugene Onegin, then, is an outstanding poem; however, in my judgment The Bronze Horseman, which I shall discuss next week, is a more accomplished verse narrative; and it is a poem which, we in Sri Lanka, would find particularly engage in.

(To be continued)