Abstract
‘Pourtant il y avait quelque chose là ...’1 A. Chénier
In a brilliant, impressionistic essay written in 1914 the poet Osip Mandelstam wrote the following:
The trace left by Chaadaev in the consciousness of Russian society is so profound and indelible that one always wonders quite unconsciously whether he is not engraved on glass with a diamond.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
NOTES
The last words of the poet as he tapped his head and offered it to the guillotine in 1794. Pushkin refers to them in the penultimate line of his poem ‘Andrei Shene’ (1825) and again in reference to himself in a letter to Viazemsky dated November 1825; see A.S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh (Leningrad, 1977) I, p. 231 and x, p. 147 respectively; (henceforth, PSS).
First published in Apollon, 1915. See O. Mandelstam, ‘Petr Chaadaev’, in Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh, eds G.P. Struve and B.A. Filippov (New York, 1971) vol. II, p. 284.
The exchange of letters between Chaadaev and Pushkin is, for example, one of the central themes of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film The Mirror (1975).
See R. Tempest, ‘La Démence de Caadaev’, Revue des Etudes slaves, LV/2 (1983) p. 310. The decree of 16 January 1722 specified that the insane were the responsibility of the police, and that of 6 April 1722 declared that all those claiming to be mad should be suspected of being so and examined by ‘the Senate’. Nicholas I considered madmen to be criminals, and the idea that they should be punished was widespread in Russia at the time. Chaadaev’s case was far from unique; in the purge on St Petersburg University in the last years of Alexander’s reign Pushkin’s former teacher at the Lycée, A.I. Galich, was ‘threatened’ with being declared insane, and there is also the case of the French professor of the University of Kazan, Jobart. In this context Pushkin’s poem ‘Ne dai mne Bog soiti s uma ...’ (1833) takes on new meaning.
Quite apart from F. Vigel and Prince Odoevsky, who were incensed by the Letters, even admirers of Chaadaev held this view, e.g. his nephew M. Zhikharev and N.I. Bartenev. See Tempest, op. cit. (note 4), p. 311. For Chaadaev’s own reaction, see P. Ia. Chaadaev, Sochineniia i pis’ma, ed. M. Gershenzon (Moscow, 1913) vol. i, p. 203 (henceforth Soch.).
Tsuguo Togawa, ‘Pierre Caadaev: Fragments et pensées diverses (inèdits)’, Slavic Studies (Hokkaido) (1979) vol. 23, pp. 1–52 (henceforth Fragments).
P. Ia. Chaadaev, Stat’i i pis’ma, ed. F. Kuznetsov et al., (Moscow, 1987).
A. Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf (London, 1980) pp. 1–2.
R. McNally, Chaadayev and His Friends (Tallahassee, Florida, 1971) (the title does not really encompass Pushkin).
M.I. Zhikharev, ‘P. Ia. Chaadaev: Iz vospominanii sovremennika’, in Vestnik Evropy, (1871) VI, nos. 7 and 9.
M.O. Gershenzon, P. Ia. Chaadaev: zhizn’ i myshlenie (St Petersburg, 1908).
Ch. Quènet, Tchaadaev et les Lettres Philosophiques (Paris, 1931).
See P.S. Shkurinov, P. Ia. Chaadaev, (Moscow, 1960) which sees Chaadaev in an essentially Chernyshevskian perspective, as a prefiguration of socialism, his religious thought being simply a‘disguise’ (see e.g. p. 33): and A. Lebedev, Chaadaev in the series Zhizn’ zamechatel’nykhiudey, (Moscow., Molodaia gvardiia, 1965), which is intended for school children. A particularly valuable addition to Chaadaev studies, however, was vol. 52/2 of Revue des Etudes slaves (1983), devoted entirely to the thinker (henceforth RES).
Stepan Verkhovensky in The Possessed, the ancestor of all the ‘demons’ of which Russia was victim, is heavily indebted to Chaadaev, and in preliminary comments concerning The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky actually names Chaadaev as the prototype of one of the characters (see letter dated 25 May 1870 to Maikov). Rozanov in Dostoevsky and the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor (1891) trans. S.E. Roberts, (Ithaca, 1972), p. 11, considers Miusov to be a thinly disguised Chaadaev. As for other writers, Lermontov is clearly indebted to Chaadaev, especially in his poem ‘Duma’ (1837) (see L. Kelly, Lermontov (London, 1977) pp. 111–12). Chaadaev was also the target of a caricature in N.N. Zagoskin’s play The Malcontents (1835); for his reaction, see Soch., I., pp. 184–5
A.I. Herzen, ‘Uber den Roman am dem Volksleben in Russland’ (1857) in Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Moscow, 1958) p. 162.
Gershenzon, op. cit. (note 11), p. 10; J.T. Shaw, The Letters of Alexander Pushkin (Bloomington, 1963) vol. II, p. 510.
See his first two epistles to Chaadaev; also Gershenzon, op. cit. (note 11), pp. 11–13.
See e.g„ R. McNally, ‘Quelques idees glanees dans les ouvrages inédits de Pierre Caadaev’, RES, p. 300.
See M.O. Gershenzon, ‘Chaadaev i Pushkin’, in Stat’i o Pushkine, (Moscow, 1926) pp. 31–41; V.V. Pugachev, ‘Pushkin i Chaadaev’ in Iskusstvo slova, ed. D.D. Blagoi (Moscow, 1973) pp. 101–11 (in fact entirely about Onegin not being intended as a Decembrist) and I.G. Skakovsky, ‘Pushkin i Chaadaev’ in Pushkin: Issledovaniia i materialy (1987) vol. 13, pp. 279–83, on the dating of ‘To Chaadaev’, refuting V.V. Pugachev’s arguments. See also M. Longinov: ‘Speaking of Chaadaev, one cannot not speak of Pushkin; the one complements the other and their friendly names will remain inseparable in the memory of posterity’, ‘Vospominaniia o Chaadaeve’ in Russkii vestnik (1862) no. 11, p. 134.
See, e.g., Leonid Grossman, Pushkin (Moscow, 1958); D. Magarshak, Pushkin (London, 1967).
N.M. Karamzin in a letter to Viazemsky, 2 June 1816, quoted by Veresaev, Pushkin v zhizni (Moscow, 1926) p. 41. Pushkin was moreover in love with Karamzin’s wife, who was later to become the prototype for the faithful Tatiana in Eugene Onegin.
For the period 1818–19 Chaadaev was the guardian of the Lodge ‘Les Amis du Nord’, directed by Zherebtsov. It numbered many members who were officers of Chaadaev’s old regiment, the Semenovsky. In 1819 Chaadaev wrote a pamphlet seriously questioning the use of such societies (possibly by the same token preferring others), and in 1821 resigned from the Lodge.
Even in 1811 Orlov had wanted to establish a society ‘like that of Plato’s’; see A.G. Mazour, The First Russian Revolution 1825: The Decembrist Movement (Stanford, 1937) pp. 64–5, 71–2. Pushkin wrote a rude epigram on Orlov in 1817, see PSS, I, p. 290.
N.I. Turgenev, La Russie et les russes (Paris, 1847) vol. I, p. 11.
The society was in fact founded by Murav’ev-Apostol and sources are contradictory as to whether Chaadaev was ever a fully-fledged member. The Union debated in particular the idea of refusing to take the oath to the Tsar unless he would agree to his power being limited; see Mazour, op. cit. (note 23), p. 68.
I.I. Pushchin, ‘Zapiski o Pushkine’ in A.S. Pushkin v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov v drukh tomakh, ed. V.V. Grigorenko (Moscow, 1974) I, pp. 96–8.
Kaverin (1794–1855), an exact contemporary of Chaadaev, had been to Heidelberg and GOttingen Universities, was a member of the Union of Salvation, and lodged with Chaadaev in St Petersburg in the beginning of 1818 (see J. Bonamour, A.S. Griboedov et la vie littéraire de son temps (Paris, 1965) p. 66. See Pushkin’s poem ‘To Kaverin’ (1817) and his ‘Portrait of Kaverin’ (1817): ‘To friends a faithful friend, to beauties a tormentor/ And everywhere he is a hussar’. Kaverin mentions Pushkin continually in his correspondence and in later years becomes, like Chaadaev, a mystic.
See Zhikharev, op. cit. (note 10), p. 176. Pushkin characterises Chaadaev as the epitome of pride in his Molitva leib-gussarskikh ofitserov (see Qudnet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 33), and Mandelstam calls him a‘Zamoskvoretsky snob’, op. cit. (note 2), p. 287. See also A.I. Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (London, 1968) p. 521.
See F. Bulgarin’s secret denunciation ‘Nechto o tsarsko-sel’skom litsee i o dukhe onogo’ in Zhizn’ Pushkina, ed. V.V. Kunin (Moscow, 1987) vol. I, pp. 230–4.
Mandelstam, op. cit. (note 2), p. 287. A.I. Turgenev also records how captivating it was to talk with Chaadaev, see letters 1835, Chaadaev, Soch., I, pp. 353, 358.
Chaadaev, letter 25 March 1820, Soch., I, p. 3.
See Quénet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 29.
See M.I. Murav’ev-Apostol, ‘Zapiski’, Golos minuvshago (1914) no. 1, p. 410; on Pushkin’s political ‘unreliability’ see Pushchin, ‘Zapiski o Pushkine’, op. cit. (note 26), p. 100.
Pushkin, ‘Bairon’, PSS, v, p. 217.
Stat’i i pis’ma, op. cit. (note 7), p. 167. 36. See D. Shakhovskoi, ‘Racines et Milieu social de Caadaev’, RES, p. 332.
L. Grossman, ‘Pushkin i dendizm’, in Etiudy o Pushkine (Petrograd, 1923) p. 35.
Zhikharev, op. cit. (note 10), p. 183.
See M.I. Murav’ev-Apostol’s letter to Iakushkin of 16/28 May 1825, quoted by Quénet, op. cit. (note 12), pp. 85–6.
See Quénet, op. cit. (note 12), pp. 38–9.
Mandelstam, op. cit. (note 2), p. 284.
Grossman, op. cit. (note 37), p. 11.
A. Blok, ‘Russkie dendi’ in Sobranie sochinenii v vos’mi tomakh (Moscow-Leningrad, 1962) vol. vi, p. 56.
Grossman, op. cit. (note 37), pp. 34–5 maintains it was a reaction to ‘the fatal and inexorable formlessness of the country, her eternal disorderliness and instability’ and quotes both Chaadaev and I.S. Turgenev in justification. Chaadaev certainly thinks ‘by reaction’ to both milieu and events.
Longinov, op. cit. (note 19), p. 126 recounts how Pushkin would retire into a corner with a book at the arrival of ‘wordly personages’, of which there were many.
See Pushkin’s second epistle ‘To Chaadaev’ (1821), PSS, II, pp. 47–9.
For Chaadaev’s nicknaming of Pushkin, see Zhikharev, op. cit. (note 10), no. 7, p. 192.
N.I. Turgenev, Opyt teorii nalogov (St Petersburg, 1818).
Gershenzon, op. cit. (note 11), p. 13.
See P.V. Annenkov, in V. Veresaev, Pushkin v zhizni (Moscow, 1926) p. 67.
See Pushkin’s first two epistles ‘To Chaadaev’.
See Quénet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 32. Chaadaev was afterwards sketched dressed in a Roman toga and brandishing a minatory finger, see Lebedev, op. cit. (note 13), between pp. 96–7.
See Quénet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 28. Sverbeev maintains further that Chaadaev always remained faithful to the throne because he abhorred the idea of spilling blood (see Quenet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 29).
See Pushkin’s second epistle ‘To Chaadaev’ (1821), PSS, II, p. 49.
See A.D. Siclari, ‘La Culture allemande comme fondement de la divergence entre aadaev et Kireevskij sur la philosophie de l’histoire’, RES, p. 287; A. Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy (Oxford, 1975) p. 107 and Chaadaev’s Apologia in R.T. McNally, The Major Works of Peter Chaadaev (London, 1969) p. 205 (henceforth Chaadaev, Major Works). Chaadaev had in his library Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding in both English and French, and he had studied English eighteenth-century thought at university, 1808–12.
See S. Driver, ‘Pushkin and Politics; The Later Works’, Slavic and East European Journal (1981) vol. 25, no. 3, p. 3.
PSS, i, p. 303.
Pushkin first became aware of Chénier through reading the few extracts contained in the notes to Chateaubriand’s Le Genie du christianisme (1802), one of Chaadaev’s favourite books (see PSS, v, 27). 59. Mandelstam, op. cit. (note 2), p. 285.
Walicki, op. cit. (note 55), p. 84.
This argument has not been advanced before. Quénet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 33 hints at it, however: ‘It is a curious thing that Pushkin seems [i.e., in 1818] to play the role with regard to Chaadaev of the one who inspires confidence, who pushes the other to action; he speaks to his friend as Turgenev might have spoken to him’.
K.N. Batiushkov, ‘Nechto o poezii i o poete’ in Sochineniia, ed. D.P. Blagoi (Moscow-Leningrad, 1934) pp. 340–7.
The influence here is as much Turgenev’s as Chaadaev’s. According to Quénet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 27, it would appear that Chaadaev’s abolitionist stance was altogether moderate and gradualist and certainly did not address itself to the land question. As a barin he was certainly very ready to extract money from his peasants, see Soch., i, p. 16. However, his ‘Note’ is very eloquent and couched in similar terms to Pushkin’s poem, e.g., ‘These slaves who serve you, do they not constitute the air you breathe? These furrows which other slaves dug in the sweat of their brow ...’ see Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 22–4 (Moscow, 1935) p. 23.
According to Longinov, the Tsar liked the poem and asked Chaadaev to ‘remerciez Pouchekine des nobles sentiments qui inspirent ses vers’, op. cit. (note 19), p. 126.
N.I. Bartenev, Materialy i zapiski k biografzi Pushkina, Sovremennik (1856) 58, no. 5, p. 7.
Bartenev published another account in Russkii arkhiv in 1866 based on Chaadaev’s version of the events; this is confirmed by Sverbeev in 1868. See Quénet, op. cit. (note 12), pp. 49–50.
Sverbeev in Quénet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 50. See also Longinov, op. cit. (note 19), p. 127.
Longinov certainly attributes this meaning to the lines, see op. cit. (note 19), p. 7.
PSS, x, p. 14.
Chaadaev had himself first served in the Semenovsky regiment 1812–1813, his brother and guardian uncle too. Most of his university friends, including Iakushkin, were also in the regiment.
Soch., I, pp. 3–4.
Rumour had it that he had volunteered to go to Troppau, that he had incurred the Tsar’s anger because he had arrived late, having stopped en route to ‘faire sa toilette’. Various interpretations for Chaadaev’s behaviour have been advanced. Iu. Tynyanov, for example, maintains that Chaadaev displeased the Tsar by linking the regimental mutiny to the question of peasant emancipation (rabstvo), see ‘Siuzhet “Goria ot uma”’, in Pushkin i ego sovremenniki, ed. V.V. Vinogradov (Moscow, 1969) pp. 364–5. The latest argument is that advanced by Iu. Lotman, that Chaadaev was in fact acting out the part of Schiller’s ‘Marquis of Posa’; see Iu. M. Lotman ‘The Decembrist in Everyday Life: Everyday Behaviour as a Historical-Psychological Category’, trans. in Iu. Lotman, B.A. Uspensky, The Semiotics of Russian Culture, ed. A. Shukman (Ann Arbor, 1984) pp. 88–93. As Bonamour points out, op. cit. (note 27), p. 314, there was an epidemic of resignations at this period because of disillusionment with Alexander’s policies.
See Pushkin, The Prisoner of the Caucasus, Dedication, third verse, PSS, v, p. 82; Chaadaev, Letter to Princess Shcherbatova, Soch., i, pp. 3–4.
Soch., i, p. 3. Cf. Pushkin’s quote of Orlov’s conversation on the subject in ‘Historical Notes 1820–2’, PSS,VIII, p. 63.
See PSS, 1, pp. 304, 363.
See D.N. Sverbeev, Zapiski (Moscow, 1899) vol. Ii, p. 237.
Pushkin had to be careful to avoid certain of his friends (e.g. N.I. Turgenev) before leaving for exile (see A.I. Turgenev in Veresaev, op. cit. (note 50), pp. 71–2. However, he did attempt to take his leave of Chaadaev en route for Ekaterinoslav (26–8 May 1820) but finds him asleep: Was it worth waking you up for such a trifle?’ See PSS, x, p. 489.
Diary, 9 April 1821, just after the entry where Pushkin records his meeting with Pestel, PSS, vIII, p. 16.
Sheping was a guards officer who would visit Chaadaev at the Hotel Demouthe; see Longinov, op. cit. (note 19), p. 126.
Cf. also line in Eugene Onegin, I, 46: ‘He who has lived and thought is certain /to scorn men with whom he deals’. See letter to Viazemsky, 6 February 1823 (PSS, x, pp. 46–7).
See e.g. Iu. M. Lotman, Roman A.S. Pushkina ‘Evgenii Onegin’ (Leningrad, 1980) p. 154. As for the epigraph, Pushkin is reported by more than one as having said Chaadaev was ‘happy by dint of vanity’, see Qudnet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 33.
See Qudnet, op. cit. (note 12), pp. 45–6 and Chaadaev, Soch., i, p. 301.
See Qudnet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 44.
See. W. Vickery, ‘Pushkin: Russia and Europe’, in Review of National Literatures (1972) vol. 3, no. 1.
See esp. pamphlet on Crimean War in D. Shakhovskoi, ‘Neopublikovannaia stat’ia’ in Zvenia, vols (Moscow-Leningrad, 1934) pp. 365–90.
Soch.,I, p. 4. ‘Je viendrai vous voir peut-être tous les ans, mais ma patrie sera la Suisse; il m’est impossible de rester en Russie pour plus d’une raison.’ M.I. Murav’ev-Apostol accompanied Chaadaev to the ship and wrote afterwards in connection with Chaadaev that ‘Byron had done a lot of harm making fashionable that artificial disillusionment which anyone who thinks can easily see through ...’ Quoted by Qudnet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 85.
Mandelstam, op. cit. (note 2), p. 285.
Chaadaev would appear to have had this idea for a long time but springs it on his brother before he can refuse him the money. His doctor, Miller -‘the great man!’ - had recommended bathing as a treatment for his hypochondria. Was there no sea in England? Soch., I, pp. 4–5.
The three-masted ship, called the Kitty and captained by a‘pig’ called Call who ‘starved’ Chaadaev ‘to death’, lost its ‘topsels’ (sic) in the Baltic, and almost capsized in the North Sea. Chaadaev nevertheless falls hopelessly in love with the sea, ‘the great depths beneath one’. See Soch., I, p. 10.
He is amazed by the immensity of London, the lack of ‘provinces’, the great number of carriages, the dense fog, the movement everywhere. While in London he stays with ‘The Baring Bros’. Soch., I, pp. 11–12.
Soch. I, p. 12.
Fragments, p. 14. Chaadaev also made excursions to the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth.
Soch I, p. 15.
Soch I, pp. 23, 29.
Chaadaev insists that his brother even send him the money from the peasants sent off to the recruits, and seriously doubts whether the peasants will be pleased with ‘le bonheur que vous leur préparez’ (Soch., I, p. 15). He is fully aware, however, that what he is doing is shameful, but hopes the ‘little peasants will forgive’ him (Soch., I, pp. 31–2).
Soch., I, p. 31.
Letter 1–8 December 1823, PSS, x, p. 62.
To his brother, from Milan, 30 December 1824, Soch. I, p. 38. Cf. Pushkin’s reaction: ‘What’s this I hear? A Flood! It serves that damned St Petersburg right! Voilà une belle occasion a vos dames de faire bidet!’ PSS, x, p. 86.
Letter to L.S. Pushkin, November 1824, PSS, x, p. 85.
Letter to same, 20 December 1824, PSS, x, pp. 91–2. 101. See J.G. von Herder, Herders Sämtliche Werke (Berlin, 1877) vol. I, p. 479, and A.I. Galich, ‘Opyt nauki iziashchnogo’, in Russkie esteticheskie traktaty pervoi treti XIX veka (Moscow, 1974) vol. 2, p. 262.
Pushkin notes the death of Napoleon in his Diary, PSS, v, p. 17.
A.I. Herzen, My Past and Thoughts (London, 1968) p. 524.
McNally, ‘Quelques idées ...’, p. 300; see note 18.
Mandelstam, op. cit. (note 2), p. 292.
See, for example, ‘Apologia’ in Chaadaev, Major Works, p. 213.
For text of denunciation, see Lebedev, op. cit. (note 13), pp. 119–20.
Fragments, p. 39.
See ‘Pokazaniia P. Ia. Chaadaeva v 1826 godu’ in Soch., I, p. 69. See also his letter to his brother, ibid., p. 67. The poems in question were one ‘Death’ (not traced) and ‘verses about Dante’, probably ‘The Dagger’ (Kinzhal).
See, e.g. de Bonald, Pensèes sur divers sujets ...(Paris, 1812); and Walicki, op. cit. (note 55), p. 102.
R. McNally, Chaadayev and His Friends (Florida, 1971) p. 146.
Herzen, op. cit. (note 103), pp. 521–3.
Vladimir Pecherin (1807–85) who in 1837, after Chaadaev’s Letters, wrote the following notorious verse: ‘How sweet to hate one’s country!/ And avidly await its destruction/ And in that destruction of the country to see/ The hand of universal Resurgence!’
Quoted by H. Troyat, Gogol: The Biography of a Divided Soul (Lon-don, 1974) p. 186. For the ‘campaign’, see pp. 186–7.
Soch., I, pp. 167–70; see also Schelling’s letter to Chaadaev, in Chaa-daev, Soch., I, p. 382.
See Pushkin’s letter to Viazemsky, 2 January 1831 (on question of Poland), PSS, x, p. 257, and to E.M. Khitrovo, 26 March 1831, PSS, x, p. 267. His attitude to Lamennais is ironical: ‘Je ne sais si Paris est son Ninive, mais nous sommes les citrouilles.’ (PSS, x, p. 267).
In a letter of 9 November 1876 Pushkin laments to Viazemsky that journals were published in Russia by so many factions. He had prob-ably been privy to discussions with Pogodin and his circle - all Moscow disciples of Schelling — on founding the new Moscow Messenger. He himself contributes a scene from Boris Godunov (PSS, x, pp. 167–8), but no more. Pushkin is also supposed to have told Pogodin that he should contact Chaadaev if he wanted to know more about Schelling. (Quénet, op. cit. (note 12), pp. 197–8).
S.P. Shevyrev, D. Venevitinov, M. Iu. Velgorsky; Sobolevsky introduced Pushkin to Polevoi, Mickiewicz and the Liubomudry circle.
Pushkin’s interest in English dated back to the early 1820s when he read Byron in French and took some lessons in English. In 1824 he had read, enraptured, the first cantos of Don Juan (again in French) and was already becoming interested in Scott; see his letter to his brother, November 1824, PSS, x, p. 85. For a complete account of Pushkin’s knowledge of English, see V. Nabokov, Eugene Onegin: Translation and Commentary (London, 1975) vol. II, p. 161 ff. 120. See P.I. Bartenev, (from words of Chaadaev), quoted by V. Veresaev, Pushkin v zhizni, (Moscow, 1926) p. 54. There are indications that Pushkin was reading a wider range of English poetry, including Wordsworth and Coleridge, certainly by 1828. In 1830 he wrote ‘Sonet’, inspired by Wordsworth’s ‘Scorn not the poet’, and on 26 March 1831 writes to Pletnev asking him to send him ‘Crabbe, Wordsworth, Southey and Schakespeare’ [sic] (PSS, x, p. 267).
See letters (Soch., I), for 1826, passim. At first in 1826 Chaadaev lived on his aunt’s Moscow estate under police surveillance. For the Moscow period, see the fictional episode of Griboedov’s visit to Chaadaev in Iu. Tynianov, Smert’ Vazira Mukhtara, (1927) (Kiev, 1988) chapter 5, pp. 24–30.
D.N. Bludov (1785–1864), one of the founders of Arzamas, a former Ambassador to London and one of the Commission of Enquiry into the Decembrist affair, became Assistant Minister of Enlightenment (under Uvarov) 1826–32, after which he became Minister of the In-terior. Pushkin had known him since 1817, and his wife, A.A. Shcherbatova, was a relative of Chaadaev. It was Bludov who first spoke to Pushkin about becoming the royal historiographer, and he and Pushkin, with others, debated the question of Guizot’s historical views in the Academy on 30 December 1836.
Pushkin also calls it thus, as well as the ‘Ville du Néant’, 26 March 1831, PSS, x, p. 266.
See Pushkin’s letters to Nashchokin, 21 and 29 July 1831, and to Viazemsky, 3 August 1831: PSS, x, pp. 285; 286–7; 289–90, respectively.
Letter to N.N. Pushkina, 8 December 1831, PSS, x, p. 305.
Herzen, op. cit. (note 103), p. 519.
Soch., I, pp. 161–2.
Chaadaev, letter to Pushkin, 7 July 1831, Soch., I, p. 162. Cf. Pushkin’s ironical note of 1825–6: ‘Je suppose que sous un gouvernement des-potique ...’, PSS, v, p. 365.
Chaadaev, ibid.
See letter to Chaadaev, 6 July 1831; PSS, x, p. 282. It is Pushkin who insists on French, although Chaadaev has told him to use the ‘language of his calling’ (Soch., I, p. 162). (Cf. Chaadaev’s letter to A.I. Turgenev (1833) Soch., I , pp. 170–1, in which he begs him to write in French for he is ‘a European down to the marrow of his bones’.) It is Chaadaev, however, who now marks the lapse of time and the change of mood: ‘You want to chat, you say: let us do so. But take care, for I am not in good cheer; and as for you, you are jumpy (nerveux)’, Soch., I, p. 163.
Letter to Pushkin, Soch., I, p. 162.
F.W. Schelling, ‘Philosophie der Kunst’, in Schellings Werke, ed. M. Schröter (Munich, 1927) vol. 3, p. 476. Cf. Chaadaev, Fragments, p. 20: ‘La poésie est donn6e pour réunir le monde physique au monde intellectuel et pour tromper l’esprit par cette confusion ...’.
Soch., i, p. 73. Together with this letter, Chaadaev sent Pushkin a copy of Frédéric Ancillon’s two-volume Pensées sur l’homme, ses rapports et ses interets (Berlin, 1829), covered in pencil marks, and with a fly-leaf explanation on the nature of poetry, very much in the Schellingian mode. See Chaadaev, Stat’i i pis’ma, ed. Kuznetsov, op. cit. (note 7), p. 340. Belinsky will later take up this notion of poetry in The Idea of Art (1841), see Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1953–9) vol. 4, p. 585. Chaadaev may have been influenced in his role by his friend A.S. Norova, who wrote to him in 1830 that it was his vocation ‘to stretch his arm to others and bring them nearer the truth ...’ (quoted by Lebedev, op. cit. (note 13), pp. 125–6).
See letter to Pushkin, Soch., I, p. 165, where Chaadaev speaks of Saint-Simon as another possible candidate for the role of conveyor of the new message.
PSS, x, p. 260.
Russkii arhkiv, II (1878) p. 487.
Soch., I, p. 164.
Pushkin published this jointly with Zhukovsky. It was much praised by Bludov (see note 122), who was responsible for drawing up the official Russian Imperial manifestoes to Poland. Interestingly, in the previous winter, Pushkin had criticised the ‘pugilistic’ attitude of the government vis-à-vis Poland; see letter to Khitrovo, 9 February 1831, PSS, x, p. 262.
Quoted in M.D. Beliaev, Pis’ma Pushkina k E. Khitrovo (1827–1832) (Leningrad, 1924) pp. 294–5.
Letter to Pushkin, 18 September 1831, Soch., I, p. 166.
J. Brun-Zejmis, “A Word on the Polish Question” by P. Ya. Chaadaev’, Canadian Slavonic Studies (1980) vol. 11, pp. 25–31.
Cf. Pushkin’s reaction to the Novgorod uprising of 1831, PSS, x, pp. 289–90 and his phrase a propos of the Pugachev rebellion: ‘that mad, merciless Russian revolt’. PSS, VI, p. 349.
Soch., I, pp. 183–90; pp. 230–2.
Letter to E.M. Khitrovo: La Parisienne is not so good as La Marseillaise’, etc., 21 August 1830, PSS, x, pp. 236–7; see also letter to same 21 January 1837: ‘the French have ceased to interest me ... Their king, with his umbrella under his arm, is far too bourgeois ... PSS, x, p. 262. This should be compared to the positive attitude of, for example, A.I. Turgenev, as recorded in O.V. Orlik, ‘Russkie-uchastniki i ochevidtsy frantsuzskoi revoliutsii 1830 goda’, in Istoriia S. S. S. R. (1964) no. 1, p. 141.
Quite apart from such works as Ezersky, and The Bronze Horseman, see Pushkin’s notes: ‘Ignorance des seigneurs russes ...’ and ‘La libération de l’Europe ...’ in PSS, v, pp. 366–7.
See article Dzhon Tenner’, PSS, vII, pp. 298–322, especially the beginning. Cf. Chaadaev’s letter to Cirecourt, 14 January 1846, where he stresses the importance of an aristocracy in a republican monarchy, Soch., I, pp. 268–75.
Letter to Chaadaev, 6 July 1831, PSS, x, pp. 282–3; and 19 October 1836, PSS, x, pp. 464–6. Pushkin was not the only one to reply; in his letter to Viazemsky 3 August 1831 he alludes to having received a ‘religio-philosophical postscript’ from A.I. Turgenev. (PSS, x, p. 290).
Mandelstam, op. cit. (note 2), p. 287.
See PSS, vu, p.136.
Chaadaev, Major Works, Letter vi, p. 132 and Soch. I, pp. 231–2.
P.A. Viazemsky, ‘Biograficheskoe i literaturnoe izvestie o Pushkine’, in A.S. Pushkin v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov v dvukh tomakh, ed. V.V. Grigorenko (Moscow, 1974) vol. I, p. 143.
Chaadaev, Major Works, Letter VI, p. 137 ff.
Chaadaev, Major Works, Letter VII, pp. 170–4.
Chaadaev, Major Works, Letter II, p. 69.
R. McNally, Chaadayev and His Friends (Florida, 1971) p. 146. Chaadaev was called the ‘Moscow Lamennais’ by A.I. Turgenev.
Quénet, op. cit. (note 12), p. 142.
Letter to Viazemsky, 3 August 1831, PSS, X, pp. 289–90.
On 8 December 1831; 22 September 1832 ‘I saw Chaadaev at the theatre; he invited me to go everywhere with him, but I was drowsy’; 27 August 1833; 11 May 1836: see PSS, x, pp. 305, 324, 344, 451 respectively. Chaadaev speaks of the last meeting in his letter to A.I. Turgenev of 25 May 1836 (Soch., i, p. 191), stating somewhat scornfully that Pushkin’s History of Peter the Great will be an ‘epitaph’, and that his Contemporary is nobody’s contemporary: ‘What have we got in common with Europe?’
Chaadaev writes in his letter to S.L. Pushkin in 1837 that Pushkin’s letter of 19 October 1836 was the only one he had ‘of all the numerous letters I received from him at various times of my life ...’ Soch., II, p. 209.
Herzen writes that when he read it in Viatka, ‘I was afraid that I had gone out of my mind’; see op. cit. (note 103), pp. 517–18.
The quotation is from Scott’s Woodstock and is found again in Pushkin’s notebook, PSS, VII, p. 370. The sense is not altogether clear. Is Pushkin perhaps mitigating his criticism so as not to offend Chaadaev too deeply? The draft letter would confirm this to some extent.
‘Zametki po russkoi istorii’ (1822), PSS, VII I, p. 93.
Letter to Viazemsky, 27 May 1826, PSS, x, p. 161. See also Viazemsky’s to Pushkin 1828: ‘Russian patriotism can only reside in hatred for Russia as she is now ...’ in Ostafevskii arkhiv kniazei Viazemskikh (St Petersburg, 1899) vol. III, p. 181.
PSS, VII, p. 210. ‘Russia was pre-ordained a lofty mission ...’ ...The Enlightenment which was just about to dawn was saved by a ravaged and expiring Russia ...’ (Pushkin goes on to criticise the attitude of Europe to Russia, which had always been ‘as ignorant as it was ignoble’).
PSS, v, pp. 92–3. ‘In Russia the influence of the clergy was as beneficial as it was deleterious in Roman Catholic countries. There the clergy, acknowledging the Pope to be the head of the church, constituted a society apart, independent of civil laws and invariably put up barriers to enlightenment . . .’.
PSS, VII, p. 210. ‘In the silence of the monasteries the monks continued their ceaseless chronicles . . .’.
‘V otvet A.S. Khomiakovu’ (1838), In Polnoe sobranie sochinenii I.V. Kireevskago, ed. M. Gershenzon (1911), reprinted Farnborough, 1970, pp. 113–15. For Chaadaev’s influence on Kireevsky, see P. Miliukov, Glavnye techeniia russkoi istoricheskoi mysli (St Petersburg, 1913) pp. 339–40.
See Letter to Cirecourt, 1846, Soch. I, pp. 253–8. ‘Donc il faut revenir sur nos pas, il faut retrouver ce passé que vous nous avez si méchamment dérobé ...’ etc., p. 257.
Chaadaev, Major Works, Letter II, p. 60.
See Walicki, op. cit. (note 55), p. 87.
PSS, x, pp. 510–11.
Cf. Marquis de Custine: ‘The Church has no power over hearts in Russia ... one would be quite right to criticise it for its sterility ... The Church is dead’, see Journey for Our Time (The Journals of the Marquis de Custine) (Russia, 1839 and London, 1953) p. 166.
Cf. Belinsky in his famous letter to Gogol, 3 July 1847: ‘Russians by their very nature are a deeply atheistic people ...’, V.V. Belinsky, Selected Philosophical Works (Moscow, 1948) p. 506.
Pushkin tells A.I. Turgenev in 1834 (see letter, 1/11 December 1834, PSS, x, p. 403) that the only thing he wants in Paris is De Maistre’s Du Pape (1817).
See Digression in Part III of ‘The Forefather’s Eve’.
After the Negro (1827) came Stansy in which Pushkin advises Nicholas to tread in Peter’s footsteps, then in 1833 The Bronze Horseman. Chaadaev held that history was the central epistemological discipline; Pushkin was moving in that direction.
In his review of N. Polevoi’s second volume of his History of the Russian People, PSS, Vv, p. 100.
PSS, VII, p. 136.
Soch., I, p. 79.
A report from a contemporary, see Lebedev, op. cit. (note 13), p. 92.
Pushkin’s ‘Great Russian patriotism’ is also interestingly touched upon by such a close friend as Viazemsky in his memoirs: ‘Although it could never be said that he “slavophilised”, he would frequently touch upon concepts, sympathies, notions and especially disaffections (?otchuzhdeniia), which were somehow only germane to Russia, that is, to a Russia which did not recognise Europe and forgot she was a member of Europe - to pre-Petrine Russia, whereas I would hold more international views ... And Aleksandr Turgenev and I would often want to say to him: “You just take a trip one day, friend - even if it’s only to Lubeck”’. Quoted in A.S. Pushkin v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, p. 125. This should be contrasted with Pushkin’s letter to Viazemsky, 27 May 1826, where he speaks of getting out of Russia as quickly as possible. PSS, x, p. 161.
Soch., I, pp. 200–1. Chaadaev also completely changes his view of the Orthodox Church in his Apologia ‘so humble, so heroic ...’ Chaadaev, Major Works, p. 217.
Letter to N.I. Gnedich, 23 February 1825, in PSS, x, p. 100.
See D. Davydov ‘Sovremennaia pesnia’ (1836); N.M. Iazykov, ‘Poslanie k K.S. Aksakovu’ and ‘Vpolne chuzhda tebe Rossiia ...’
Draft letter to Chaadaev, 19 October 1836, PSS, x, p. 511.
See Pushkin, entry for February 1835 in ‘Diary 1833–35’, PSS, VII, p. 47.
Pushkin, letter to Viazemsky, December 1836, PSS, x, p. 480.
Chaadaev, letter to M.F. Orlov, 1837, Soch., II, p. 213.
Chaadaev, letter to A.I. Turgenev, 1837, Soch., I,, p. 200.
Chaadaev, Soch., I, pp. 306–7. He adds at the end of the letter: ‘I hope future biographers will also look at his poetry’ (p. 307).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1990 School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Budgen, D. (1990). Pushkin and Chaadaev: the history of a friendship. In: Freeborn, R., Grayson, J. (eds) Ideology in Russian Literature. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10825-1_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10825-1_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-10827-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-10825-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)