.gif)
The Bronze Horseman (poem)
Encyclopedia
The Bronze Horseman: A Petersburg Tale is a narrative poem
written by Aleksandr Pushkin
in 1833
about the equestrian statue of
Peter the Great
in Saint Petersburg
. Widely considered to be Pushkin's most successful narrative poem, "The Bronze Horseman" has had a lasting impact on Russian literature
. The statue
became known as the Bronze Horseman due to the great influence of the poem.
in 1703. In the first two stanzas, Peter the Great stands at the edge of the River Neva and conceives the idea for a city which will threaten the Swedes and open a "window to the West." The poem describes the area as almost uninhabited: Peter can only see one boat and a handful of dark houses inhabited by Finnish peasants. Saint Petersburg was in fact constructed on territory newly gained from the Swedes in the Great Northern War
, and Peter himself chose the site for the founding of a major city because it provided Russia with a corner of access to the Baltic Sea
, and thus to the Atlantic and Europe.
The rest of the introduction is in the first person and reads as an ode
to the city of the Petersburg. The poet-narrator describes how he loves Petersburg, including the city's "stern, muscular appearance" (l. 44), its landmarks such as the Admiralty (ll. 50–58), and its harsh winters and long summer evenings (ll. 59 - ll. 84). He encourages the city to retain its beauty and strength and stand firm against the waves of the Neva (ll. 85–91).
Part I opens with an image of the Neva growing rough in a storm: the river is "tossing and turning like a sick man in his troubled bed" (ll. 5–6). Against this backdrop, a young poor man in the city, Evgenii, is contemplating his love for a young woman, Parasha, and planning to spend the rest of his life with her (ll. 49–62). Evgenii falls asleep, and the narrative then turns back to the Neva, with a description of how the river floods and destroys much of the city (ll. 72–104). The frightened and desperate Evgenii is left sitting alone on top of two marble lions on Peter's Square, surrounded by water and with the Bronze Horseman statue looking down on him (ll. 125–64).
In Part II, Evgenii finds a ferryman and commands him to row to where Parasha's home used to be (ll. 26 - ll. 56). However, he discovers that her home has been destroyed (ll. 57–60), and falls into a crazed delirium and breaks into laughter (ll. 61–65). For a year, he roams the street as a madman (ll. 89–130), but the following autumn, he is reminded of the night of the storm (ll. 132–133) and the source of his troubles. In a fit of rage, he curses the statue of Peter (ll. 177–179), which brings the statue to life, and Peter begins pursuing Evgenii (ll. 180–196). The narrator does not describe Evgenii's death directly, but the poem closes with the discovery of his corpse in a ruined hut floating on the water (ll. 219–222).
and completed in 1782. Pushkin was not the first to feel the statue's ambiguity: in a travelogue about Petersburg in 1821, the French statesman Joseph de Maistre
commented that he did not know "whether Peter's bronze hand protects or threatens".
Pushkin's poem opens with a brief foreword stating that the events he depicted are based on reality. Indeed, St Petersburg is often hit by flooding
and one particularly severe flood in November 1824 provided the model for this poem.
A number of Russian poets had previously written odes to Peter I: Mikhail Lomonosov
wrote "Peter the Great" ["Петр Великий"] in 1756–1761 and Gavrila Derzhavin wrote a 1778 ode "To Peter the Great" ["Петру Великому"]. There was also a literary precedent for poetry describing the city of Petersburg: Pushkin's own footnotes to "The Bronze Horseman" refer to a poem by Petr Viazemskii
which includes admiring verses about the city, "Conversation on 7 April 1832" ["Разговор 7 апреля 1832 года"].
Pushkin was fascinated by the historical figure of Peter the Great and had mentioned him in several works before "The Bronze Horseman". Poltava
[Полтава] (1828) is an admiring representation of the Tsar in combat with King Charles XII of Sweden and Ivan Mazepa
of the Ukrainian Cossacks. The Negro of Peter the Great
[Арап Петра Первого] is an unfinished novel about Pushkin's ancestors being brought to Russia from Africa. Pushkin made considerable notes for a history of Peter the Great which show the same ambivalence as "The Bronze Horseman": Pushkin notes "Peter I had no fear of the liberty of the people and the unavoidable consequences of enlightenment.... and he held humanity in contempt, perhaps even more so than Napoleon."
Several critics have suggested that the immediate inspiration for "The Bronze Horseman" was the work of the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. Before beginning work on "The Bronze Horseman", Pushkin had read Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve
(1823–32), which contains a poem entitled "To My Muscovite Friends", a thinly-veiled attack on Pushkin and Vasilii Zhukovskii
for their failure to join the radical Decembrist revolt
of 1825. Forefather's Eve contains poems where Peter I is described as a despot who created the city because of autocratic whim, and a poem mocks the Falconet statue as looking as though he is about to jump off a precipice. Pushkin's poem can be read in part as a retort to Mickiewicz, although most critics agree that its concerns are much broader than answering a political enemy.
s: the sections dealing with Tsar Peter are written in a solemn, odic
, 18th-century style, while the Evgenii sections are prosaic, playful and, in the latter stages, filled with pathos. This mix of genres is anticipated by the title: "The Bronze Horseman" suggested a grandiose ode, but the subtitle "A Petersburg Tale" leads one to expect an unheroic protagonist. Metrically, the entire poem is written in using the four-foot iamb, one of Pushkin's preferred meters, a versatile form which is able to adapt to the changing mood of the poem. The poem has a varied rhyme scheme and stanzas of varying length.
The critic Michael Watchel has suggested that Pushkin intended to produce a national epic
in this poem, arguing that the Peter sections have many of the typical features of epic poetry
. He points to Pushkin's extensive use of Old Testament
language and allusions when describing both the founding of St Petersburg and the flood and argues that they draw heavily on the Book of Genesis. However, he adds that the Evgenii plot runs counter to the epic mode, and praises Pushkin for his "remarkable ability to synthesize diverse materials, styles and genres". He concludes that if the poem is to be labeled a national epic, it is a "highly idiosyncratic" one.
The conflict between Tsar
and citizen, or empire
and individual, is a key theme of "The Bronze Horseman". Critics differ as to whether Pushkin ultimately sides with Evgenii - the little man -or Peter and historical necessity. The radical 19th-century critic Vissarion Belinsky
considered the poem a vindication of Peter's policies, while the writer Dmitri Merezhkovsky thought it a poem of individual protest. The poem's ultimate ambiguity is both captivating and frustrating: as Pushkin's biographer Binyon puts it, Peter is ultimately "beneficent and sinister, suggesting the ambiguous nature of power and the inhumanity which is an inevitable concomitant of imperial greatness”. Evgenii's death seems to suggest that historical progress always comes at an ethical price, although the question of whether the ends of progress justify the means is left unanswered. (L. xix) John Bayley reads the poem as a study in Russian autocracy
, arguing that the poem reveals "the almost superstitious awe and admiration of Russia for her most dynamic tyrants - a Peter or a Stalin".
A psychoanalytical reading by Daniel Rancour-Laferriere suggests that there is an underlying concern with couvade syndrome or male birthing in the poem. He argues that the passages of the creation of Petersburg resemble the Greek
myth of Zeus
giving birth to Athena
, and suggests that the flood corresponds to the frequent use of water as a metaphor for birth in many cultures. He suggests that the imagery describing Peter and the Neva is gendered: Peter is male and the Neva female.
era. Pushkin depicted Peter as a strong leader, so allowing Soviet citizens to praise their own Peter, Joseph Stalin
. A poll in Literaturnyi sovremennik in March 1936 reported praise for Pushkin's portrayal of Peter, with comments in favour of how The Bronze Horseman depicted the resolution of the conflict between the personal and the public in favour of the public. This was in keeping with the Stalinist emphasis of how the achievements of Soviet society as a whole were to be extolled over the sufferings of the individual. Soviet thinkers also read deeper meanings into Pushkin's works. Andrei Platonov
wrote two essays to commemorate the centenary of Pushkin's death, both published in Literaturnyi kritik. In Pushkin, Our Comrade, Platonov expanded upon his view of Pushkin as a prophet of the later rise of socialism. Pushkin not only 'divined the secret of the people', wrote Platonov, he depicted it the The Bronze Horseman, where the collision between Peter the Great's ruthless quest to build an empire, as expressed in the construction of Saint Petersburg, and Evgenii's quest for personal happiness will eventually come together and be reconciled by the advent of socialism.
Soviet literary critics could however use the poem to subvert those same ideals. In 1937 the Red Archive published a biographical account of Pushkin, written by E. N. Cherniavsky. In it Cherniavsky explained how The Bronze Horseman could be seen as Pushkin's attack on the repressive nature of the autocracy under Tsar Nicholas I
. Having opposed the government and suffered his ruin, Evgenii challenges the symbol of Tsarist authority but is destroyed by its terrible, merciless power. Cherniavsky was perhaps also using the analysis to attack the Soviet system under Stalin. By 1937 the Soviet intelligentsia was faced with many of the same issues that Pushkin's society had struggled with under Nicholas I. Cherniavsky set out how Evgenii was a symbol for the downtrodden masses throughout Russia. By challenging the statue, Evgenii was challenging the right of the autocracy to rule over the people. Whilst in keeping with Soviet historiography of the late Tsarist period, Cherniavsky subtly hinted at opposition to the supreme power presently ruling Russia. He assessed the resolution of the conflict between the personal and the public with praise for the triumph of socialism, but couched it in terms that left his work open to interpretation, that while openly praising Soviet advances, he was using Pushkin's poem to criticise the methods by which this was achieved.
, only the Prologue was allowed to be published during the poet's lifetime. It appeared in 1834 under the title "Petersburg. An extract from a poem" ['"Петербург”. Отрывок из поэмы'] in the journal Library for Reading [Библиотека для чтения].
The poem was first published in full as "The Bronze Horseman" only posthumously in 1837. It was printed in the journal Sovremennik
(Современник), which Pushkin had begun a year earlier. Even then, the censor demanded certain important adjustments.
's The Double: A Petersburg Poem
[Двойник] (1846) directly engages with "The Bronze Horseman", treating Evgenni's madness as parody. Andrei Bely
i's novel Petersburg
[Петербург] (1913; 1922) uses the Bronze Horseman as a metaphor for the centre of power in the city of Petersburg, which is itself a living entity and the main character of Belyi's novel.
The statue itself, which is one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg in much the same way that the Statue of Liberty
is a symbol of New York City
, is now known as the Bronze Horseman owing to the influence of the poem.
Reinhold Glière
made the story into a ballet (1950), and Nikolai Myaskovsky
's 10th Symphony
(1926–7) was inspired by the poem.
The Bronze Horseman: Russian Text Listen to Russian version of "The Bronze Horseman", courtesy of Cornell University
Narrative poetry
Narrative poetry is poetry that has a plot. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex. It is usually nondramatic, with objective regular scheme and meter. Narrative poems include epics, ballads, idylls and lays.Some narrative...
written by Aleksandr Pushkin
Aleksandr Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature....
in 1833
1833 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Arthur Henry Hallam, a friend of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, dies suddenly of a stroke in Vienna...
about the equestrian statue of
The Bronze Horseman
The Bronze Horseman is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Commissioned by Catherine the Great, it was created by the French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet. It is also the name of a narrative poem written by Aleksandr Pushkin about the statue in 1833, widely...
Peter the Great
Peter I of Russia
Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...
in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
. Widely considered to be Pushkin's most successful narrative poem, "The Bronze Horseman" has had a lasting impact on Russian literature
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
. The statue
The Bronze Horseman
The Bronze Horseman is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Commissioned by Catherine the Great, it was created by the French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet. It is also the name of a narrative poem written by Aleksandr Pushkin about the statue in 1833, widely...
became known as the Bronze Horseman due to the great influence of the poem.
Outline of the poem
The poem is divided into three sections: a shorter introduction (90 lines) and two longer parts (164 and 222 lines). The introduction opens with a mythologized history of the establishment of the city of Saint PetersburgSaint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
in 1703. In the first two stanzas, Peter the Great stands at the edge of the River Neva and conceives the idea for a city which will threaten the Swedes and open a "window to the West." The poem describes the area as almost uninhabited: Peter can only see one boat and a handful of dark houses inhabited by Finnish peasants. Saint Petersburg was in fact constructed on territory newly gained from the Swedes in the Great Northern War
Great Northern War
The Great Northern War was a conflict in which a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in northern Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the anti-Swedish alliance were Peter I the Great of Russia, Frederick IV of...
, and Peter himself chose the site for the founding of a major city because it provided Russia with a corner of access to the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
, and thus to the Atlantic and Europe.
The rest of the introduction is in the first person and reads as an ode
Ode
Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...
to the city of the Petersburg. The poet-narrator describes how he loves Petersburg, including the city's "stern, muscular appearance" (l. 44), its landmarks such as the Admiralty (ll. 50–58), and its harsh winters and long summer evenings (ll. 59 - ll. 84). He encourages the city to retain its beauty and strength and stand firm against the waves of the Neva (ll. 85–91).
Part I opens with an image of the Neva growing rough in a storm: the river is "tossing and turning like a sick man in his troubled bed" (ll. 5–6). Against this backdrop, a young poor man in the city, Evgenii, is contemplating his love for a young woman, Parasha, and planning to spend the rest of his life with her (ll. 49–62). Evgenii falls asleep, and the narrative then turns back to the Neva, with a description of how the river floods and destroys much of the city (ll. 72–104). The frightened and desperate Evgenii is left sitting alone on top of two marble lions on Peter's Square, surrounded by water and with the Bronze Horseman statue looking down on him (ll. 125–64).
In Part II, Evgenii finds a ferryman and commands him to row to where Parasha's home used to be (ll. 26 - ll. 56). However, he discovers that her home has been destroyed (ll. 57–60), and falls into a crazed delirium and breaks into laughter (ll. 61–65). For a year, he roams the street as a madman (ll. 89–130), but the following autumn, he is reminded of the night of the storm (ll. 132–133) and the source of his troubles. In a fit of rage, he curses the statue of Peter (ll. 177–179), which brings the statue to life, and Peter begins pursuing Evgenii (ll. 180–196). The narrator does not describe Evgenii's death directly, but the poem closes with the discovery of his corpse in a ruined hut floating on the water (ll. 219–222).
Sources and Inspiration
The Bronze Horseman of the title was sculpted by Étienne Maurice FalconetÉtienne Maurice Falconet
Étienne Maurice Falconet is counted among the first rank of French Rococo sculptors, whose patron was Mme de Pompadour.-Life:Falconet was born to a poor family in Paris...
and completed in 1782. Pushkin was not the first to feel the statue's ambiguity: in a travelogue about Petersburg in 1821, the French statesman Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre was a French-speaking Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat. He defended hierarchical societies and a monarchical State in the period immediately following the French Revolution...
commented that he did not know "whether Peter's bronze hand protects or threatens".
Pushkin's poem opens with a brief foreword stating that the events he depicted are based on reality. Indeed, St Petersburg is often hit by flooding
Floods in Saint Petersburg
Floods in Saint Petersburg refer to a rise of water on the territory of St. Petersburg, a major city in Russia and its former capital. They are usually caused by the overflow of the delta of Neva River and surging water in the eastern part of Neva Bay but sometimes caused by melting snow...
and one particularly severe flood in November 1824 provided the model for this poem.
A number of Russian poets had previously written odes to Peter I: Mikhail Lomonosov
Mikhail Lomonosov
Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was a Russian polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. Among his discoveries was the atmosphere of Venus. His spheres of science were natural science, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, history, art,...
wrote "Peter the Great" ["Петр Великий"] in 1756–1761 and Gavrila Derzhavin wrote a 1778 ode "To Peter the Great" ["Петру Великому"]. There was also a literary precedent for poetry describing the city of Petersburg: Pushkin's own footnotes to "The Bronze Horseman" refer to a poem by Petr Viazemskii
Pyotr Vyazemsky
Prince Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky or Petr Andreevich Viazemsky was a leading personality of the Golden Age of Russian poetry.- Biography :...
which includes admiring verses about the city, "Conversation on 7 April 1832" ["Разговор 7 апреля 1832 года"].
Pushkin was fascinated by the historical figure of Peter the Great and had mentioned him in several works before "The Bronze Horseman". Poltava
Poltava
Poltava is a city in located on the Vorskla River in central Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Poltava Oblast , as well as the surrounding Poltava Raion of the oblast. Poltava's estimated population is 298,652 ....
[Полтава] (1828) is an admiring representation of the Tsar in combat with King Charles XII of Sweden and Ivan Mazepa
Ivan Mazepa
Ivan Stepanovych Mazepa , Cossack Hetman of the Hetmanate in Left-bank Ukraine, from 1687–1708. He was famous as a patron of the arts, and also played an important role in the Battle of Poltava where after learning of Peter I's intent to relieve him as acting Hetman of Ukraine and replace him...
of the Ukrainian Cossacks. The Negro of Peter the Great
Peter the Great's Negro
Peter the Great's Negro is an unfinished historical novel by Alexander Pushkin. Written in 1827-1828 and first published in 1837 the novel is the first prose work of the great Russian poet.-Background:...
[Арап Петра Первого] is an unfinished novel about Pushkin's ancestors being brought to Russia from Africa. Pushkin made considerable notes for a history of Peter the Great which show the same ambivalence as "The Bronze Horseman": Pushkin notes "Peter I had no fear of the liberty of the people and the unavoidable consequences of enlightenment.... and he held humanity in contempt, perhaps even more so than Napoleon."
Several critics have suggested that the immediate inspiration for "The Bronze Horseman" was the work of the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. Before beginning work on "The Bronze Horseman", Pushkin had read Mickiewicz's Forefathers' Eve
Dziady (poem)
Dziady is a poetic drama by the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. It is considered one of the great works of European Romanticism. To George Sand and George Brandes, Dziady was a supreme realization of Romantic drama theory, to be ranked with such works as Goethe's Faust and Byron's Manfred.The...
(1823–32), which contains a poem entitled "To My Muscovite Friends", a thinly-veiled attack on Pushkin and Vasilii Zhukovskii
Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century...
for their failure to join the radical Decembrist revolt
Decembrist revolt
The Decembrist revolt or the Decembrist uprising took place in Imperial Russia on 14 December , 1825. Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I's assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession...
of 1825. Forefather's Eve contains poems where Peter I is described as a despot who created the city because of autocratic whim, and a poem mocks the Falconet statue as looking as though he is about to jump off a precipice. Pushkin's poem can be read in part as a retort to Mickiewicz, although most critics agree that its concerns are much broader than answering a political enemy.
Analysis
Formally, the poem is an unusual mix of genreGenre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
s: the sections dealing with Tsar Peter are written in a solemn, odic
Ode
Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...
, 18th-century style, while the Evgenii sections are prosaic, playful and, in the latter stages, filled with pathos. This mix of genres is anticipated by the title: "The Bronze Horseman" suggested a grandiose ode, but the subtitle "A Petersburg Tale" leads one to expect an unheroic protagonist. Metrically, the entire poem is written in using the four-foot iamb, one of Pushkin's preferred meters, a versatile form which is able to adapt to the changing mood of the poem. The poem has a varied rhyme scheme and stanzas of varying length.
The critic Michael Watchel has suggested that Pushkin intended to produce a national epic
National epic
A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation; not necessarily a nation-state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to independence or autonomy...
in this poem, arguing that the Peter sections have many of the typical features of epic poetry
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
. He points to Pushkin's extensive use of Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
language and allusions when describing both the founding of St Petersburg and the flood and argues that they draw heavily on the Book of Genesis. However, he adds that the Evgenii plot runs counter to the epic mode, and praises Pushkin for his "remarkable ability to synthesize diverse materials, styles and genres". He concludes that if the poem is to be labeled a national epic, it is a "highly idiosyncratic" one.
The conflict between Tsar
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
and citizen, or empire
Empire
The term empire derives from the Latin imperium . Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
and individual, is a key theme of "The Bronze Horseman". Critics differ as to whether Pushkin ultimately sides with Evgenii - the little man -or Peter and historical necessity. The radical 19th-century critic Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency. He was an associate of Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin , and other critical intellectuals...
considered the poem a vindication of Peter's policies, while the writer Dmitri Merezhkovsky thought it a poem of individual protest. The poem's ultimate ambiguity is both captivating and frustrating: as Pushkin's biographer Binyon puts it, Peter is ultimately "beneficent and sinister, suggesting the ambiguous nature of power and the inhumanity which is an inevitable concomitant of imperial greatness”. Evgenii's death seems to suggest that historical progress always comes at an ethical price, although the question of whether the ends of progress justify the means is left unanswered. (L. xix) John Bayley reads the poem as a study in Russian autocracy
Autocracy
An autocracy is a form of government in which one person is the supreme power within the state. It is derived from the Greek : and , and may be translated as "one who rules by himself". It is distinct from oligarchy and democracy...
, arguing that the poem reveals "the almost superstitious awe and admiration of Russia for her most dynamic tyrants - a Peter or a Stalin".
A psychoanalytical reading by Daniel Rancour-Laferriere suggests that there is an underlying concern with couvade syndrome or male birthing in the poem. He argues that the passages of the creation of Petersburg resemble the Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
myth of Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
giving birth to Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...
, and suggests that the flood corresponds to the frequent use of water as a metaphor for birth in many cultures. He suggests that the imagery describing Peter and the Neva is gendered: Peter is male and the Neva female.
Soviet analysis
Pushkin's poem became particularly significant during the SovietSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
era. Pushkin depicted Peter as a strong leader, so allowing Soviet citizens to praise their own Peter, Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
. A poll in Literaturnyi sovremennik in March 1936 reported praise for Pushkin's portrayal of Peter, with comments in favour of how The Bronze Horseman depicted the resolution of the conflict between the personal and the public in favour of the public. This was in keeping with the Stalinist emphasis of how the achievements of Soviet society as a whole were to be extolled over the sufferings of the individual. Soviet thinkers also read deeper meanings into Pushkin's works. Andrei Platonov
Andrei Platonov
Andrei Platonov was the pen name of Andrei Platonovich Klimentov , a Soviet author whose works anticipate existentialism. Although Platonov was a Communist, his works were banned in his own lifetime for their skeptical attitude toward collectivization and other Stalinist policies...
wrote two essays to commemorate the centenary of Pushkin's death, both published in Literaturnyi kritik. In Pushkin, Our Comrade, Platonov expanded upon his view of Pushkin as a prophet of the later rise of socialism. Pushkin not only 'divined the secret of the people', wrote Platonov, he depicted it the The Bronze Horseman, where the collision between Peter the Great's ruthless quest to build an empire, as expressed in the construction of Saint Petersburg, and Evgenii's quest for personal happiness will eventually come together and be reconciled by the advent of socialism.
Soviet literary critics could however use the poem to subvert those same ideals. In 1937 the Red Archive published a biographical account of Pushkin, written by E. N. Cherniavsky. In it Cherniavsky explained how The Bronze Horseman could be seen as Pushkin's attack on the repressive nature of the autocracy under Tsar Nicholas I
Nicholas I of Russia
Nicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...
. Having opposed the government and suffered his ruin, Evgenii challenges the symbol of Tsarist authority but is destroyed by its terrible, merciless power. Cherniavsky was perhaps also using the analysis to attack the Soviet system under Stalin. By 1937 the Soviet intelligentsia was faced with many of the same issues that Pushkin's society had struggled with under Nicholas I. Cherniavsky set out how Evgenii was a symbol for the downtrodden masses throughout Russia. By challenging the statue, Evgenii was challenging the right of the autocracy to rule over the people. Whilst in keeping with Soviet historiography of the late Tsarist period, Cherniavsky subtly hinted at opposition to the supreme power presently ruling Russia. He assessed the resolution of the conflict between the personal and the public with praise for the triumph of socialism, but couched it in terms that left his work open to interpretation, that while openly praising Soviet advances, he was using Pushkin's poem to criticise the methods by which this was achieved.
Composition and publication
Pushkin wrote "The Bronze Horseman" between October 6 and October 31, 1833 while he was staying on his family's estate at Boldino. Owing to censorshipCensorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
, only the Prologue was allowed to be published during the poet's lifetime. It appeared in 1834 under the title "Petersburg. An extract from a poem" ['"Петербург”. Отрывок из поэмы'] in the journal Library for Reading [Библиотека для чтения].
The poem was first published in full as "The Bronze Horseman" only posthumously in 1837. It was printed in the journal Sovremennik
Sovremennik
Sovremennik was a Russian literary, social and political magazine, published in St. Petersburg in 1836-1866. It came out four times a year in 1836-1843 and once a month after that...
(Современник), which Pushkin had begun a year earlier. Even then, the censor demanded certain important adjustments.
Influence
The work has had enormous influence in Russian culture. DostoevskyFyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....
's The Double: A Petersburg Poem
The Double: A Petersburg Poem
The Double: A Petersburg Poem is a novella written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The novella was first published on January 30, 1846 in Fatherland Notes....
[Двойник] (1846) directly engages with "The Bronze Horseman", treating Evgenni's madness as parody. Andrei Bely
Andrei Bely
Andrei Bely was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev , a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His novel Petersburg was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century.-Biography:...
i's novel Petersburg
Petersburg (novel)
Petersburg or St. Petersburg is the title of Andrei Bely's masterpiece, a Symbolist work that foreshadows Joyce's Modernist ambitions. For various reasons the novel never received much attention and was not translated into English until 1959 by John Cournos, over 45 years after it was written,...
[Петербург] (1913; 1922) uses the Bronze Horseman as a metaphor for the centre of power in the city of Petersburg, which is itself a living entity and the main character of Belyi's novel.
The statue itself, which is one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg in much the same way that the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
is a symbol of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, is now known as the Bronze Horseman owing to the influence of the poem.
Reinhold Glière
Reinhold Glière
Reinhold Moritzevich Glière was a Russian and Soviet composer of German–Polish descent.- Biography :Glière was born in Kiev, Ukraine...
made the story into a ballet (1950), and Nikolai Myaskovsky
Nikolai Myaskovsky
Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky was a Russian and Soviet composer. He is sometimes referred to as the "father of the Soviet symphony".-Early years and first important works:...
's 10th Symphony
Symphony No. 10 (Myaskovsky)
The Symphony No. 10 in F minor, Op. 30 by Nikolai Myaskovsky is among the more remarkable of the Russian composer's large output of 27 symphonies....
(1926–7) was inspired by the poem.
Sources
- The Bronze Horseman ed. T.E.Little (Bradda Books, 1974)
- The Bronze Horseman, ed. Michael Basker (Bristol Classical Press, 2000)
- Pushkin's 'Bronze Horseman': Critical Studies in Russian Literature, Andrew Kahn (Bristol Classical Press, 1988)
- Aleksandr Pushkin: A Critical Study'", A.D.P. Briggs (Barnes and Noble, 1982)
- The Cambridge Companion to Pushkin, ed. Andrew Kahn (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
- Pushkin: A Biography, T.J. Binyon (Harper Collins, 2002)
External links
English Translation of The Bronze Horseman The text of The Bronze Horseman at Russian WikisourceWikisource
Wikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has...
The Bronze Horseman: Russian Text Listen to Russian version of "The Bronze Horseman", courtesy of Cornell University