Lucinda Elliot

Paul Debreckzeny’s Criticism of Pushkin’s Robber Novella ‘Dubrovsky’

Dubrovsky cover

I orginally wrote this post nearly five years ago, just before I published my spoof historical highwayman romance ‘Ravensdale’.

I am posting it again, as I am again writing a spoof historical novel that features highwaymen, and I have never lost my admiration for this uncompleted novella of Pushkin’s.

At that time,  I was reading the traditional robber stories, including Christian Auguste Vulpius’  1798 ‘Penny Dreadful’ ‘Rinaldo Rinaldini’ and Freiderich Schiller’s  1781 play, ‘The Robbers’.  Besides these, I read some well known highwayman romantic novels, including Georgette Heyer’s  1917  ‘The Black Moth’.  Not then knowing about Project Gutenburg, I didn’t realise that I would have been able to get hold of a copy of Harrison Ainsworth’s 1834  ‘Rookwood’. which features Dick Turpin, or to read some of the Blood and Thunder novels of  Jeffrey Farnol which feature highwaymen.

Besides these, I read an unfinished novella on a landlowner turned brigand by ‘The Russian Shakespeare’ Aleksander Pushkin”s 1832 ‘Dubrovsky’. This I found to be by far the best of them all, despite the unedited long legal document in the middle of it. Some critics think that this project of his, to write a piece of popular literature was a failure. I think that he gave up on it too easily.

There is a paucity of criticism on Pushkin’s prose works in English, and this is particularly true of his robber story ‘Dubrovsky’ which I described in my previous post (before pc was down for some time!) as notably Pushkin’s attempt to reconcile popular and ‘worthwhile’ literature in a novella form.

As I said there, there has been critical division (when isn’t there?) on how far he succeeded in this aim of bringing together popular tastes – excitement, romance, and a high literary quality to a story.

This is, of course, an area that impinges on all writers who are out to produce something of quality – how far to cater for popular taste?

Rosemary Edmonds, in her introduction to ‘The Queen of Spades and Other Stories’ describes ‘Dubrovsky’ as ‘One of Pushkin’s masterpieces’.

‘Melodramatic in subject, it is extremely simple in style. The fairly elaborate plot develops swiftly against against a background which presents an illuminating picture of rural conditions in Russia and Russian legal procedure under Catherine II…The two noblemen, Troyekurov and Vereisky, along with the Byronic hero, the young Dubrovsky, are impressive creations in Pushkin’s portrait gallery.’

She considers that ‘The heroine is more of a lay figure’ and indicates that this is one of the reasons why Maria Kirilevna doesn’t elope with Dubrovsky when she is given the chance after her forced marriage (which, as she hasn’t made the marriage vow, is no marriage at all in fact); having thought it ‘most romantic’ to be kidnapped from the alter by her brigand suitor, when the enforced marriage to the elderly prince goes ahead she is quite happy to slip into the role of another ‘heroine’ – that of the ‘devoted wife’.

Another critic writing of Pushkin’s prose works – Lezhnez in his book, ‘Pushkin’s Prose’, while only mentioning Dubrovsky in passing, makes a telling point about the strangely uplifting quality to be found in this, as in all Pushkin’s works, however sad their content.

‘Life in him smiles, though sometimes with a terrible, but charming, smile…Dubrovsky leaves without taking revenge, and without tearing Masha out of the arms of the old prince; he has lost his name, his love, and his property…But the sun shines. And the moving shadows of leaves tremble on the earth. And people know how to love selflessly and to sacrifice themselves. There is a spirituality in them, simplicity, generosity. They have faith in life, and Pushkin injects us with this faith….’

For my own part, I agree with this judgement, and think it is one of the reasons why, for all the drawbacks to it’s melodramatic romantic plot, ‘Dubrovsky’ is a great story.

With regard to the weaknesses in the presentation the melodramatic romance, Paul Debreczeny in  ‘The Other Pushkin’ is almost merciless on this topic and comes to the conclusion that Pushkin himself stopped writing the novel because he could see that his attempt to combine ‘the serious with the entertaining’ had failed.

Debreckzeny takes the view that the problem begins with the presentation of Vladimir Dubrovsky, which is at first detached and ironic, in much the same way that the depiction of the tyrannical Kiril Petrovitch and the elder, proud and unbending Dubrovsky are portrayed; when we first meet Vladimir, he is a rakish officer of the guards, with little thought for the future ‘Irresponsible and ambitious…Occasionally, the thought crossed his mind that sooner or later he would be obliged to take to himself a rich bride’.

Later, the narrator remarks that young Dubrovsky, who has been from home since boyhood, values family life all the more highly for ‘having had so little opportunity to enjoy its peaceful pleasures’. However, Debreczeny remarks that the portrayal of Vladimir Dubrovsky soon becomes ‘the unhumorous stock in trade of romantic literature.’

Dubrovsky image

Certainly, the meetings between Dubrovsky and his true love Maria, Kirol Petrovitch’s daughter, are depicted in a straightforwardly melodramatic way as Eugene Onegin’s courtship of Tatiania, for instance, never is. When Dubrovsky tells Maria of his developing love for her, for example, he admits to having stalked her in her grounds: ‘I followed you in your careless walks, dodging from bush to bush…I established myself in your house (as a French tutor).These three weeks were days of happiness for me; the memory of them will be the joy of my melancholy existence…’

Debreckzeny’s point if very valid; this wild devotion of Vladimir Dubrovsky to Maria is touching, but the picuture it sums up of his stalking her in the garden is also faintly ludicrous and the turns of phrase are too melodramatic (in fairness, this is a translation; the effect may have been different in the original Russian, though one doesn’t get the impression from Debreckzeny that it is).

It is arguable that the problem could have been overcome by Pushkin using his habitual ironical detachment as narrator, so that the reader feels both moved by Dubrovsky’s hopeless passion and amused by it. It may have been Pushkin’s intention to revise the work, and do away with this ‘straight’ presentation of the lovers contrasting with his detached one of the other main characters.

That, anyhow, is my opinion, but Debreckzeny takes a dimmer view of the central cohesion of the novel: ‘Although the robber theme could be fused with the theme of social or political protest, in Pushkin’s novel it does not serve to shed light on or further elaborate the problem of peasant rebellion…It’s only function is to somehow bring a romance into relation with a revolt…’

I don’t personally see why story of social protest can’t also involve a romance, and think that one of the fascinating aspects of ‘Dubrovsky’ is its combination of romantic melodrama and it’s depiction of a nobleman rising against his society in company with his erstwhile serfs.

Debreckzeny however is of the opinion that a lack of interest in ‘Dubrovsky’s love life’ leads to the various oversights in the text, the timing of the old princes’ proposal and Dubrovsky’s offer to Maria to rescue her from a forced marriage distasteful to her and so on, even down to peculiarity of Maria refusing to run away with Dubrovsky when he does belatedly rescue her, which the critci argues is based on literary precedent (ie, from Walter Scott’s writings) rather than a moral stand.
This critic is dismayed at a scene I particularly enjoyed – the one where the ‘French tutor’ unmasks himself as the Dubrovsky the leader of the robber band in the dead of night to the treacherous man who perjured himself to help Kirol Petrovitch take his estate: ‘Be quiet, or you are lost. I am Dubrovsky.’

Pushkin was a perfectionist and seems to have been unable to appreciate the literary value of even those works he considered failures; while a lesser talent, delighted by what s/he had achieved in this novella, might well have carried on with the story, attempting to work out the problems in the plot, varying tone, narrotor objectivity, etc, Pushkin cast it aside and never returned to it.

Instead, he went to work on his history of the Pugachev rebellion. He also completed a long short story or novella connected with it, ‘The Captain’s Daughter’ which I actually found far less absorbing than the flawed but fascinating robber melodrama ‘Dubrovsky’.

Dubrovsky

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