The Captain's Daughter

  ALEXANDER PUSHKIN (1799–1837) was born in Moscow and brought up mainly by tutors and governesses. One of his great-grandfathers, Abram Gannibal, was an African slave who became a favorite and godson of Peter the Great. Like many aristocrats, Pushkin learned Russian mainly from household serfs.

  As an adolescent, he attended the new elite lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo, outside St. Petersburg. In his early twenties he was exiled because of his political verse, first to the Caucasus, then to Odessa, then to his mother’s estate in the north. Several of his friends took part in the failed 1825 Decembrist revolt, but Pushkin did not—possibly because his friends wished to protect him, possibly because they did not trust him to keep the plot secret. In 1826 Pushkin was allowed to return to St. Petersburg. During his last years he suffered many humiliations, including serious debts and worries about the fidelity of his young wife, Natalya Goncharova. In 1837 he was fatally wounded in a duel with Georges-Charles d’Anthès, the Dutch ambassador’s adopted son, who was said to be having an affair with Natalya.

  Pushkin’s position in Russian literature can best be compared with that of Goethe in Germany. Not only is he Russia’s greatest poet; he is also the author of the first major works in a variety of genres. As well as his masterpieces—the verse novel Eugene Onegin and the narrative poem The Bronze Horseman—Pushkin wrote one of the first important Russian dramas, Boris Godunov (1825); one of the finest of all Russian short stories, “The Queen of Spades” (1833); and the first great Russian prose novel, The Captain’s Daughter (1836). His prose style is clear and succinct; he wrote that “Precision and brevity are the most important qualities of prose. Prose demands thoughts and more thoughts—without thoughts, dazzling expressions serve no purpose.”

  ROBERT CHANDLER’s translations from Russian include Pushkin’s Dubrovsky; Nikolay Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; Vasily Grossman’s An Armenian Sketchbook, Everything Flows, Life and Fate, and The Road; and Hamid Ismailov’s Central Asian novel, The Railway. His co-translations of Andrey Platonov have won prizes both in the U.K. and in the United States. He is the editor and main translator of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida and Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov. Together with Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski, he has also compiled an anthology, The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, to be published in early 2015. He has translated selections of Sappho and Apollinaire. He teaches part time at Queen Mary, University of London and is a mentor for the British Centre for Literary Translation.

  ELIZABETH CHANDLER is a co-translator, with Robert Chandler, of several titles by Andrey Platonov and Vasily Grossman.

  THE CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER

  ALEXANDER PUSHKIN

  Translated from the Russian by

  ROBERT CHANDLER and

  ELIZABETH CHANDLER

  NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

  New York

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Translation, essays, and notes copyright © 2007, 2014 by Robert Chandler

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image: Kazimir Malevich, Red Cavalry, 1930 (detail); Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg: Scala / Art Resource, NY

  Cover design: Katy Homans

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:

  Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 1799–1837, author.

  [Kapitanskaia dochka. English. 2014]

  The captain’s daughter / by Alexander Pushkin ; introduction by Robert Chandler ; translation by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler.

  pages ; cm. — (New York Review Books classics)

  ISBN 978-1-59017-724-2 (alk. paper)

  1. Russia. Armiia—Officers—Fiction. 2. Russia—History—Rebellion of Pugachev, 1773–1775—Fiction. I. Chandler, Robert, 1953– translator, writer of introduction. II. Chandler, Elizabeth, 1947– translator. III. Title. IV. Series: New York Review Books classics.

  PG3347.K3 2014

  891.73'3—dc23

  2014001984

  ISBN 978-1-59017-744-0

  v1.0

  For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to: Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  CONTENTS

  Biographical Notes

  Title Page

  Copyright and More Information

  Introduction

  THE CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER

  1. A Sergeant of the Guards

  2. The Guide

  3. The Fortress

  4. The Duel

  5. Love

  6. The Pugachov Rebellion

  7. The Attack

  8. An Uninvited Guest

  9. Parting

  10. The Siege

  11. The Rebel Camp

  12. The Orphan

  13. Arrest

  14. The Tribunal

  Omitted Chapter

  Note on Names

  Pushkin and History

  Coats and Turncoats

  Notes

  Further Reading

  INTRODUCTION

  THE CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER is set in the early 1770s against the background of the peasant rebellion in southeastern Russia led by the Cossack Yemelyan Pugachov. In Alexander Pushkin’s first outline the hero was to be a real historical figure, Mikhail Shvanvich, an army officer who went over to Pugachov and was eventually exiled to Siberia.

  Pushkin would have known that peasants on his father’s family estate in Boldino took part in the rebellion, and he had been interested for a long time both in Pugachov and in Stenka Razin, the leader of an important peasant rebellion in the seventeenth century. In a letter written in November 1824 he had asked his brother to send him a book titled Life of Yemelka Pugachov; in another letter he had asked his brother to provide him with “the historical, dry information about Stenka Razin, the only poetic figure in Russian history.” [1]

  In early 1833, after obtaining permission to carry out research on Pugachov in the state archives, Pushkin decided to write not a novel but a work of historical research. Between February 25 and March 8, he read more than a thousand pages of documents, summarizing some and copying down others in full. During April and May he wrote a first draft of A History of Pugachov. In August, wanting to speak to eyewitnesses, he traveled to the area where the rebellion took place. On his way back, in early October, he stopped at his family estate in Boldino and completed a second draft of his History. During that same month, astonishingly, he also wrote several other important works—including two of his supreme masterpieces, “The Queen of Spades” and The Bronze Horseman.

  After publishing the History in December 1834, Pushkin returned to The Captain’s Daughter. He wrote a first draft in late 1835 and continued to make revisions for another year. In November 1836 Pushkin read part of the novel aloud at a gathering in the house of his friend Prince Vyazemsky. It was published in December, in The Contemporary, the literary journal founded and edited by Pushkin himself.

  The Captain’s Daughter is presented as a memoir, written by the nobleman Pyotr Grinyov towards the end of his life. The story turns on a number of gifts and their unexpected consequences. On his way to serve as an officer in the province of Orenburg, the sixteen-year-old Pyotr gets lost in a blizzard and is guided to safety by a mysterious peasant. Pyotr shows his gratitude by giving this man a hare-skin coat. In Belogorsk, the remote fortress where he is posted, Pyotr falls in love with Masha, the captain’s daughter, and fights a duel against a jealous rival, Lieutenant Shvabrin. The rebellion breaks out; Shvabrin proves to be a traitor and Fort Belogorsk falls to Pugachov, who turns out to be the mysterious pea
sant who had rescued Pyotr from the blizzard. The victory feast ends with a conversation between Pugachov and Pyotr. Marina Tsvetaeva has written that she would give up “all of Dostoevsky’s immortal dialogue” for this tête-à-tête, which she describes as “a magnanimous duel, a competition in greatness.” And so the story unfolds . . .

  The Captain’s Daughter is full of action but much of the plot is propelled by letters, including some that the reader never sees. At one point, Captain Mironov, the fortress commandant, acts as an internal censor, tearing up one of Pugachov’s subversive proclamations without giving away so much as a word of its contents; Pushkin does, however, allow the captain’s gossipy wife to divulge part of Pugachov’s other proclamation. Many other documents are scattered about the novel: passports and safe-conducts of all kinds, an inventory of property stolen by Pugachov’s men, and Captain Mironov’s commission, framed and glazed, as well as a letter from Catherine the Great, also framed and glazed. And the entire novel is offered to us as a historical document, written by Pyotr Grinyov in his old age and presented by his grandchildren to “the publisher,” who changes a few names, adds an epigraph to each chapter, and happens to complete his work on a date of great significance to Pushkin: October 19, the anniversary of the day that he began his studies at the prestigious Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo. Almost every year after graduating, Pushkin attended anniversary reunions with his fellow students, dedicating several well-known poems to them.

  The Captain’s Daughter can be seen as a historical novel, as an epistolary novel, and also as a fairy tale—or rather, two linked fairy tales. First Pyotr and then Masha set out on quests. Pyotr is a fairy-tale “wise fool.” As a child he is frivolous in his attitude to learning and, in particular, to geography; he tries to turn a map of the world into a kite. In Simbirsk he gets drunk and loses a lot of money; he then ignores his driver’s warnings of a coming blizzard. Nevertheless he passes the crucial test, showing generosity to the mysterious tramp—as much fairy-tale wolf as man—who emerges out of this blizzard, as if born from it; and this wolf-man or, as we eventually learn, rebel leader, repays Pyotr’s kindness many times over. Masha’s quest is shorter but contains a number of the same elements. Both Masha and Pyotr first speak to their powerful saviors without realizing their true identity. And, like Pyotr, Masha reveals unexpected qualities; just as the seemingly foolish Pyotr succeeds because of his astuteness, so the seemingly timid Masha succeeds because of her boldness.

  And beneath the fairy-tale surface lies a densely textured novel full of quotation, pastiche, and allusion. The Captain’s Daughter can even be read as a discussion of the future direction of Russian literature. Pyotr has two tutors: one Russian and one French. At first Pyotr seems linguistically incompetent; he fails to learn French from Beaupré and, when he meets the incognito Pugachov, is unable to understand his riddling Russian. In time, however, Pyotr comes to be at home in both languages; he studies French, somewhat surprisingly, in a remote steppe fortress and he develops a rapport with Pugachov. Pyotr’s two languages, his two worlds, are represented by the epigraphs and embedded poems, half of which are drawn from folk songs and half of which are examples or pastiches of elegant eighteenth-century verse. Pushkin may be suggesting that, like Pyotr, Russian literature can find its true path only by acknowledging both the Asiatic world of the steppe and the high culture of the elite.

  Every detail in the novel does more work than can reasonably be expected of it. The elder Grinyov’s Court Almanac, the old cannon Pyotr glimpses on his arrival in Belogorsk, Captain Mironov’s framed commission as an officer—all these, introduced merely as background, come to play a part in the action. Pyotr’s fencing lessons, his first encounter with Zurin, and, of course, his readiness to give away a fine coat—all prove significant. Pushkin’s use of repetition and inversion is especially subtle. Whole scenes are repeated, but are seen from so different an angle that we notice these repetitions only on reading the novel a second or third time. Zurin’s peremptory letter demanding payment for a gambling debt is mirrored by Savelich’s impertinent demand that Pugachov pay for the property that his men have stolen. As Pugachov’s gift of a sheepskin coat mirrors Pyotr’s gift of a hare-skin coat, so Pugachov’s failed attempt to give Pyotr half a ruble after allowing him to leave Fort Belogorsk mirrors Pyotr’s failed attempt to give half a ruble to Pugachov at the inn. The verbal duel between Pyotr and Pugachov mirrors the actual duel between Pyotr and Shvabrin; all three men are, in a sense, poets, and a poem—or song—plays a part in each duel. And as Masha’s silence when imprisoned by Shvabrin mirrors Pyotr’s silence when accused of treason, so Masha’s eloquent directness before Catherine the Great mirrors—and also inverts—Pyotr’s eloquent tricksiness before Pugachov. And as Pyotr saves Masha, so Masha saves Pyotr.

  These parallels and inversions hint at another parallel of still greater importance: that between Pugachov, an only temporarily successful pretender, and Catherine the Great, the German who successfully usurps the Russian throne. Catherine, we should remember, gained power by deposing her Russian husband, Peter III, the grandson of Peter the Great. The war between Catherine and Pugachov—who claims to be her murdered husband—embodies the split between Russia’s Westernized elite and its peasantry, two worlds that spoke different languages.

  The divide between A History of Pugachov and The Captain’s Daughter is another expression of this same split. In the former, Pushkin takes the viewpoint of the educated elite, subordinating himself to documented fact and portraying Pugachov as treacherous and sadistic; in the latter, he shows us the magnanimous Pugachov of popular legend and allows us a glimpse of life as it might be if we could learn to give and to forgive, if we could learn to enter one another’s worlds.

  In 1917, the conflicts embodied in the novel were to tear Russia apart. In his art, however, Pushkin reconciles these conflicts; no nineteenth-century Russian novel more successfully brings together popular and high culture.

  —ROBERT CHANDLER

  2014

  THE CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER

  Take care of your honor when you are young.

  —POPULAR SAYING

  1. A SERGEANT OF THE GUARDS

  “He could be a captain in the Guards tomorrow.”

  “No, no. Let him see service in the line.”

  “Well said, well said—let a young man toil and sorrow!

  ..........................................

  And who’s his father?”

  —KNYAZHNIN, The Braggart [1]

  MY FATHER, Andrey Petrovich Grinyov, served under Count Münnich in his youth and retired in ’17—with the rank of lieutenant colonel.[2] From then, he lived on his estate in the province of Simbirsk, where he married Avdotya Vasilievna Y., the daughter of an impoverished local nobleman. We were nine children. My brothers and sisters all died in infancy.

  Thanks to the good offices of a close relative, Prince B., a major in the Guards, I was enrolled as a sergeant in the Semyonov regiment while still in my mother’s womb.[3] Had Mother—God forbid!—given birth to a daughter, Father would have notified the authorities of the death of the sergeant who had failed to report for duty—and that would have been the end of it. I was considered to be on leave until I had completed my studies. In those days education was not what it is today. At the age of five I was entrusted to the care of Savelich, my father’s senior huntsman, [4] appointed my tutor in recognition of his sober conduct. Under his supervision I learned during my twelfth year to read and write in Russian, as well as how to judge the points of a male wolfhound. Father then hired a Frenchman for me, a Monsieur Beaupré, sending for him from Moscow along with our annual supply of wine and olive oil. Savelich took his arrival very badly. “The child’s clean,” he muttered to himself. “He’s groomed, God be praised, and well fed. Why throw money away on some Monseer? Haven’t we got enough of our own folk?”

  In his fatherland Beaupré had been a barber; he had been a soldier in Prussia and then come to Russia �
�pour être a teacher”—although his understanding of what this entailed was somewhat vague. He was good-natured, but flighty and extremely wayward. His chief weakness was a passion for the fair sex; all too often, however, his tender advances were parried by blows that set him moaning and groaning for days on end. He was also—as he used to put it—“no enemy of the bottle,” that is, in plain language, he liked to drink too much. But since in our house wine was served only at dinner, and since each person was given only one small glass and the tutor in any case was usually passed over, my Beaupré soon got used to vodka cordials and even came to prefer them to the wines of his fatherland, pronouncing them incomparably better for the digestion. He and I hit it off immediately and, although his contract stipulated that he was to teach me French, German, and every one of the sciences, [5] he chose instead to learn enough Russian from me to get by and then leave me to my own devices. We pursued our separate interests and lived in perfect harmony. I certainly wished for no other mentor. But Fate soon separated us, as I will now relate.

  Palashka, the stout, pockmarked young washerwoman, and Akulka, the one-eyed dairymaid, decided one day to go and throw themselves at Mother’s feet, confessing their lamentable weakness and complaining tearfully about how Monseer had taken advantage of their inexperience. Mother did not take such matters lightly and complained to Father. Father, never one to delay in the execution of justice, sent at once for that canaille of a Frenchman. He was informed that Monseer was giving me my lesson. Father came into my room. At that moment Beaupré was on my bed, sleeping the sleep of the innocent, and I was engrossed in a project of my own. Some time before this, a map of the world had been ordered for me from Moscow. Hanging there on the wall without being of the least use to anyone, it had been tempting me for a long time with the breadth and good quality of its paper. I had resolved to turn it into a kite and, while Beaupré was asleep, I had got down to work. Father entered as I was fitting a bast tail [6] to the Cape of Good Hope. Seeing these geography exercises of mine, Father tweaked my ear, hurried across to Beaupré, shook him awake and began to give him a piece of his mind. In consternation, Beaupré tried to get to his feet but could not. As well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb: the unhappy Frenchman was dead drunk. Father lifted him off the bed by his collar, pushed him out the door and sent him packing that very day, to the indescribable joy of Savelich. And that was the end of my education.