TLS: Pushkin & The Captain's Daughter

[Robert Chandler]

Dear all,

I am deeply embarrassed to realize that, in a letter just published in the
Times Literary Supplement, I have failed to acknowledge the scholarship of
the American Pushkinist Sergei Davydov.

My original letter was twice as long, and I was asked to shorten it.  In the
course of doing this, I inadvertently edited out the following sentence at
the end of the second paragraph: ³All this has been brilliantly analyzed by
the American scholar Sergei Davydov.²

I am deeply sorry. I admire Sergei Davydov¹s articles on Pushkin more than I
can say.  Here below is my letter as published.  As many of you will
recognize, it is largely a summary of Davydov¹s insights. I shall, of
course, write to the TLS about this, but I wanted to correct my mistake
publicly as soon as possible.

Best Wishes,

Robert Chandler



Sir,

That readers with no Russian should underestimate Alexander Pushkin is to be
expected; there have been too many poor translations. But I am surprised
that so eminent a Pushkin scholar as David Bethea should disagree with my
claim that The Captain¹s Daughter is Œthe most subtle and poetic of all
nineteenth-century novels¹.

I know of no novel in which sound, sense and image are so subtly interwoven.
The entire story turns on the young Pyotr¹s gift of a coat to a drunken
peasant ­ in fact, the Emelyan Pugachov who is about to lead a major peasant
rebellion - on Pugachov¹s return gift to Pyotr of a second coat, and on the
ensuing allegation by the Tsarist authorities that Pyotr is a turncoat.
This wordplay is not, of course, Pushkin¹s, but it encapsulates themes that
he himself encapsulates more subtly.  An astonishing number of the novel¹s
key words are made up of the letters P, L and T.  The Russian for clothes is
Œplatye¹, and a coat is tulup or pal¹to; a crowd is tolpa, a noose is
petlya, a handkerchief (Pugachov waves a white handkerchief as a signal for
an execution to be carried out) is platok, and a raft (at one point Pyotr
encounters a gallows on a raft) is plot; to pay is platit¹ and a half-rouble
coin (early in the novel Pyotr tries, and fails, to give Pugachov half a
rouble; later Pugachov tries, and fails, to give Pyotr half a rouble) is
poltina.  Pugachov is often referred to as a plut (a rascal).  Every element
of sound and plot metamorphoses into another.  The coat Pyotr gives to
Pugachov saves him from having a noose put round his neck in front of a
crowd of rebels; the coat Pyotr receives from Pugachov leads to his own
arrest. 

The Captain¹s Daughter is Pushkin¹s last major work.  The first great
Russian novel, it is the fruit of a lifetime devoted to poetry.  Lyudmila
Ulitskaya, one of Russia¹s best known contemporary writers, told me not long
ago that she re-reads The Captain¹s Daughter every year, without fail.  I
can understand why.

Yours,

Robert Chandler

Robert Chandler, 42 Milson Road, London, W14 OLD

tel. 020-7603-3862



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