“Tragedy and Ethical Evaluation in Pushkin’s «Poltava»,” in «Pushkin Review» 11 (2008): 33 – 59

8/13/2019 Tragedy and Ethical Evaluation in Pushkins Poltava, in Pushkin Review 11 (2008): 33 59.

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Pushkin Review/ 11: 3359, 2008.

Tragedy and Ethical Evaluation in PushkinsPoltava

*Ivan Eubanks

Alexander Pushkins Poltavaconcludes with a paean to the subtle traces

of human lives a century after their ends. All that goes on four feet, two

feet and three feet and is most feeble when it walks on four passes to

dust, thereafter existing in this world only as a shade of past events, per-

haps exerting a presence in history or legend and then, possibly, in myth.1

The barely discernible remains of the Swedish kings camp at Bender,

three steps descending into the belly of the earth, say little about his wor-

thiness as Peters foe. The field at Poltava and its trees silently memorial-

ize the warriors who fought and died in the battle. A monument built by

the labor of hands commemorates the two martyrs, Colonel Iskra and

the Judge General Kochubei, concealing the deleterious longing for ven-

geance against Mazepa that motivated their loyalty to Russia. As for the

Hetman himself, the final stanza ofPoltavaclaims that

; Mazepa had long been forgotten;

Only during solemnities on holy ground,

, Annually unto this day, menacing,

, . The cathedral thunders anathema on him.2

The church renews its curse on the Hetman each year to condemn his

betrayal of Russia, not his appalling mistreatment and ultimate

abandonment of Maria. Her place in cultural memory resembles Mazepas;

* I would like to thank the editorial board of the Pushkin Review, both of the

anonymous reviewers they provided, Caryl Emerson, Michael Wachtel, Olga

Hasty, and Timothy Portice for reading this essay and offering insightful re-

sponses and indispensable advice throughout the different stages of its develop-

ment. This is truly a better essay than it would have been without their input.1This rendition of the Riddle of the Sphinx comes from Bernard Knox, Greece

and the Theater, in Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays, trans. Robert Fagles

(New York: Penguin Books, 1984), 1330, esp. 28.2 Aleksandr S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh, ed. B. V.

Tomashevskii, 10 vols. (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1962), 4: 304. Subsequent cita-tions of Pushkin will come from this edition and will list the authors name, the

volume number, and the page numbers. All translations in this essay are mine

unless otherwise noted. See my complete, less literal, translation ofPoltava in this

volume [pp.].


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34 IVAN EUBANKS

she is paradoxically both forgotten (lost in impenetrable darkness) and

remembered only in songs about a sinful maiden occasionally sung by a

blind, aged rhapsodist.

The theme of memory at the poems conclusion discloses the centripe-

tal force of a tragedy that draws the individuals in its orbit toward the dis-

integration of identity. Russia as a nation, however, benefits from their

suffering and loss. Pushkins preface toPoltavaremarks that Russia rose

into modernity and established itself as a world power after the battle,

while his narrator claims that one hundred years later nothing remains of

the poems heroes except an allegorical sum of moral judgments. These

summaries explain the characters roles in the intrigues leading up to the

decisive engagement, and they reflect the narrators general tendency to

cast political allegiances and shifting loyalties as a struggle of good vs.

evil. The five dramatic dialogues embedded inPoltavacontrast the narra-

tors rhetoric and intensify the poems tragic gravity by providing more

complex ethical conflicts. In those scenes the narrator falls silent and the

interlocutors speak for themselves, without the filter of an ideologically

charged lens, expressing motivations that do not fit securely within their

reduction to the hagiographic, demonological and poetic symbols evoked in

the poems closing lines.

Discourse between the opinionated narrative voice inPoltava and the

characters direct speeches (particularly, but not exclusively, in the dra-

matic dialogues) reveals a profound dilemma, in which civic duty clashes

with morality. The narrator, who does not always represent Pushkins

own views, considers loyalty to Russia the epitome of virtue and accord-

ingly evaluates the characters through the refraction of national history,

which he relates in a mostly factual but biased manner. He thereby serves

as a chorus in relation to the dialogues, which, along with all but two of

the monologues, depict the heroes struggling with a discordance of moral

versus civic correctness. Consequentially, the very nature of civic cor-

rectness appears questionable and beyond clear definition, while the char-

acters personal interactions set strong examples for morality and

immorality.

Traditional wisdom suggests that Pushkins historical novella in verse

consists of two distinct storylinesone political, historical, or epic and the

other private, romantic, or domestic. Such readings focus on Mazepas

schemes prior to the battle, on the one hand, and his relationship with

Maria, on the other. Faddei Bulgarin, in his 1829 review of Poltava,

planted the seeds for this trend, accusing Pushkin not only of grossly dis-

torting history but also of fabricating a romance that was implausible due

to the lovers age difference.3Roughly a decade later, Vissarion Belinsky

3Faddei Bulgarin, Razbor poemy: Poltava, sochinenie Aleksandra Pushkina, Syn

otechestva 125: 1516 (1829), in Russkaia kriticheskaia literatura o proizvedeni-


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TRAGEDY AND ETHICAL EVALUATION IN PUSHKINS POLTAVA 35

developed Bulgarins criticisms in his Seventh Essay on Pushkins

Works, arguing that the love affair is not implausible but does inflict a

lack of unity on Poltava, which wavers between a romance and an epic

that should have concentrated more on Peter the Greats exploits.4Later

critics and scholars reiterate Belinskys reading in their own more sophis-

ticated analyses of Poltava as a romantic, realistic, or heroic narrative

poem.5

Weaving domesticities with political contests and threats to national

unity should not be viewed as an anomaly. It is a common trait in trage-

dies, ancient and modern. The admixture of private and public crises per-

meates works such as Aeschylus Oresteia, Sophocles Theban plays

(Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Oedipus at Colonus), and Shakespeares Titus

Andronicus,King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. The dual plot-lines

of romance and revolt were all but requisite for French Neoclassical trag-

edy.6Pushkin follows these traditions and others originating in tragedy

with his Poltava, in which spiritual blindness is the ultimate touchstone

for sin and identity depends partially on cultural memory and ones status

in society.7

iakh A. S. Pushkina: Khronologicheskii sbornik kritiko-bibliograficheskikh statei,

ed. A. Zelinskii, 7 vols. (Moscow: Tipografiia E. Lissnera i Iu. Romana, 1887), 2:

14962. Hereafter, material cited from this anthology will list full information re-garding original place of publication and partial bibliographic information on

Zelinskys compilation (e.g., in Zelinskii, Russkaia kriticheskaia literatura, 2:

14962).4V. G. Belinskii, Sochinenia Aleksandra Pushkina: VII. Poemy: Tsygany,

Poltava, Graf Nulin, in Sochineniia V. Belinskogo, ed. K. Soldatenkov and N.

Shchepkin, 13 vols. (Moscow: V tipografii N. Gracheva i Komp., 1860), 8: 451509.

Belinskys essay addresses these issues at numerous points throughout, so I have

not indicated precise page numbers.5

See, for example, A. Gukovskii, Pushkin i problemy realisticheskogo stilia(Mos-cow: Goslitizdat, 1957), 84109; N. V. Izmailov, Pushkin v rabote nad Poltavoi,

in Ocherki tvorchestva Pushkina(Leningrad: Nauka, 1975), 5124; Iu. Lotman, K

strukture dialogicheskogo teksta v poemakh Pushkina (Problema avtorskikh pri-

mechanii k tekstu), inPushkin: Biografiia pisatelia, Stati i zametki. 19601990,

Evgenii Onegin. Komentarii, ed. A. Iu. Balakin, O. N. Nechipurenko, and N. G.

Nikolaiuk (St. Petersburg: Isskustvo-SPB, 2003), 22836, esp. 23435; V. M. Zhir-

munskii,Bairon i Pushkin: Pushkin i zapadnaia literatura, ed. M. P. Alekseev and

Iu. D. Levin (Leningrad: Nauka, 1978), 20020.6One notable exception is Voltaires Oreste, which does balance domestic and polit-

ical struggles but forgoes the love affair because the main hero and heroine(Oreste and Electra) are siblings.7In his 1829 review ofPoltava, Ksenofont Polevoi proclaimed that in Pushkin Rus-

sia finally had a poet who equaled great tragedians such as Aeschylus, Sophocles,

and Shakespeare. He was right. See Ksenofont Polevoi, Poltava, poema


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36 IVAN EUBANKS

Marias fate encapsulates the core of Pushkins tragedy. The first stan-

zas of Poltava outline the fundamental constituents of who she is: her

position in society, her reputation, and her psyche. As the story progresses

the heroine loses her family, her esteem, her beloved, and finally her

mind. The very last lines of the poem describe her almost non-existent

place in cultural memory.8 Marias loss of all that defined who she was,

like Oedipus discovery of his own identity, follows a trajectory from a

state of moral blindness, when she cannot see the Hetmans evil nature, to

a disjunction of her perception from the material world, a state of mental

blindness. In the final dialogue ofPoltavaa recognition scene similar to

that in which Shakespeares Lear mistakes Cordelia for a ghost but finally

realizes she was his dutiful, loving daughterMaria ceases to see Mazepa

as her lover and senses the wickedness in the old man standing before her.

She can perceive what is most important only after her fade into madness.

At this moment the Hetman abandons her, and she vanishes into

darkness.

Although blindness, figuratively speaking, afflicts everyone in the

poem, including Peter the Great, none suffer from it more than Maria.

Nevertheless, her behavior suggests a system of values more closely

aligned with moral goodness than that of any other character. In the spirit

of Antigone, Maria values personal love over all else, including civic duty.

Marias hamartia is, therefore, a missing of the mark in the purest

sense, devoid of malice and ill intent but disobedient and short-sighted.

She naively succumbs to temptation without foreseeing the inevitable ill

consequences, and thus she learns the difference between good and evil.

Marias tragedy in Poltava creates an evaluative plane that clashes

with the narrators moralizing rhetoric, and it deserves special attention

because it constitutes Pushkins most radical alteration of history in the

poem. A fictional and wholly tragic being from the opening lines ofPoltava

until she loses her sanity, Maria was little more than a footnote in history.

Yet Pushkin begins and ends his poem with her. The first stanza lists all

of the treasures less dear to Kochubei than his daughter Maria. In the au-

thors third annotation to the text, which comes at the end of that stanza,

Pushkin informs us that Kochubei had several daughters; one of them

was married to Obidovskii, Mazepas nephew. She, whom we here recall,

was named Matryona.9 In the next note, which marks the end of the

Aleksandra Pushkina, Moskovskii telegraf 27: 10 (1829), in Zelinskii, Russkaia

kriticheskaia literatura, 2: 13848, esp. 14647.8Scholars and critics have not shied from applying the epithet tragedy to the

story of Marias ill-fated love affair with her godfather, the Hetman Ivan Mazepa,

yet they usually treat her as an ancillary figure.9Pushkin, 4: 306 n. 3.


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second stanza, a twenty-five line blazon to Maria, the poet tells us that

Mazepa actually did propose to his goddaughter, but he was refused.10

The authors third and fourth annotations indicate wherePoltavabe-

gins to deviate from history. Pushkin changes the name Matryona (Motrya

in Ukrainian) to Maria, and he transforms Mazepas brief courtship into a

fictional, tragic romance.11 In both the poem and in history, Marias/

Motryas parents denied the Hetmans proposed marriage. In history, Ma-

zepa sent Motrya home immediately when she attempted to elope. This

happened in 1704. Pushkins Mazepa keeps his goddaughter as a mistress

and has her living in his castle until 1708, when Kochubeis execution

takes place.12

Every significant deviation from history inPoltavaplays some part in

Pushkins fictionalization of Maria and her fate, either happening in the

dialogues themselves or serving to fuse her story with the historical

framework of the Great Northern War. The five embedded dialogues

wherein Marias tragedy unravels dominate the fictional aspect of the

poem. The characters who have little or no contact with Maria not only act

in greater accordance with history than those who do, but they also play

less prominent roles in the fictional portions ofPoltava.13

10Ibid., n. 4.11There has been some speculation as to whether Pushkins alteration of Ma-

tryonas name links Maria to the enigmatic dedication. Iurii Lotman suggests that

the dedication establishes a mythologized authorial persona in the poem (Posvia-

shcheniePoltavy), and one of the poems likely dedicatees is Maria Volkonskaia,

ne Raevskaia, with whom Pushkin had become close friends during his southern

exile. Her husband was himself exiled to Siberia in 1826 for his role in the Decem-

brist uprising, and she followed him there. If Pushkin did in fact dedicatePoltava

to her, then one may read the poem as a touching reconciliation between the poetic

inspiration of loss and the cold gravity of fate. See Iurii Lotman, Posviashchenie

Poltavy (Adresat, tekst, funktsiia), in Balakin et al., Pushkin, 25365; and JohnP. Pauls, Pushkins Dedication of Poltava and Princess Mariya Volkonskaya, in

Pushkins Poltava (New York: Shevchenko Scientific Society, 1962), 87107.12 In his Historicity of Pushkins Poltava, Pauls argues that the poet changes

the date of Marias elopement in order to demonize Mazepa. John P. Pauls, His-

toricity of Pushkins Poltava, in Pushkins Poltava, 3784, esp. 5459. Pauls is

not necessarily correct. Pushkin gives no indication of how much time passes be-

tween Marias elopement and her fathers execution, so one can argue that he

extends the duration of the love affair rather than moving it four years ahead. In

his dialogues with Maria, as we will demonstrate below, the Hetman proves a

more complex and human character than Pauls gives Pushkin credit for depicting.13The degree to which a character is fictionalized in Poltavabears a proportional

relationship with his or her proximity to Maria. It is chiefly through their roles in

her tragedy that characters act out of accordance with history or, in some cases,

exist at all. An anonymous young Cossack, for example, becomes the subject of a


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38 IVAN EUBANKS

In Pushkins poem, Marias misguided pursuit of unsanctioned passion

for her godfather, Mazepa, compels her father to inform Peter I of the Het-

mans plans to shift his allegiance to Charles XII. In history, Kochubei did

denounce Mazepa, but not as a means of exacting revenge on him for keep-

ing his daughter as a mistress, because the Hetman did not do so.14Never-

theless, the narrator, who judges everyone according to the outcome of

history, characterizes the Judge General as a visionary who deserves an

everlasting monument to his honor for being loyal to Russia. By the same

token, the narrated portions ofPoltavacharacterize the Hetman as a trai-

tor to his nation because of his blindly ambitious decision to support Swe-

den against Russia. Neither Kochubei nor Mazepa, however, are Russians.

Both are Zaporozhian Cossacks, and in the dramatic dialogues Mazepa

and Maria alike speak as if their homeland is Ukraine.

In their own speeches, either with or about Maria, both Kochubei and

Mazepa undermine the narrators system of values. The welfare of Russia

does not motivate the Judge General, but the Hetman does seek autonomy

for his own people, who are not Russians. In response to his poems earli-

est critics, who attacked it for, among other things, its depiction of the

Hetman, Pushkin claims that Mazepa acts, in my poem, precisely as in

history, and his speeches clarify his historical character.15Aside from his

relationship with Maria, Pushkins Mazepa for the most part does act in

accordance with history. Both Pushkins villain and the historical Ivan

Mazepa negotiated an alliance with Charles XII of Sweden and Stanisaw

Leszczyski of Poland, executed Kochubei for informing Peter I of this,

feigned illness to delay further communications with the tsar, supported

Sweden in the battle of Poltava, and afterward fled with Charles and his

ballad because Maria was the object of his unrequited love. Thus the messenger

who bore Kochubeis denunciation of Mazepa to the tsar gains a fictional personal-

ity through Maria. He later perishes in the battle. Voinarovsky kills him and pre-

vents him from slaying Mazepa.14One of the anonymous peer-reviewers for this essay graciously stressed the im-

portance of this detail, which I had not explored enough in earlier drafts. I am

most grateful to the reviewer for her or his comments, as they helped me to

demonstrate the complexity of Kochubeis character.15Pushkin, 7: 191. This sentence appears in a defense ofPoltavapublished inDen-

nitsain 1831. It addresses attacks by Faddei Bulgarin and Nikolai Nadezhdin. See

Bulgarin, Razbor Poemy, in Zelinskii, Russkaia kriticheskaia literatura, 2: 149

62; and Nikolai Nadezhdin, Poltava, Poema Aleksandra Pushkina, Vestnik Ev-

ropy, nos. 89 (1829), in Zelinskii, Russkaia kriticheskaia literatura, 2: 16785. For

an analysis of these polemics, see Paul Debreczeny, The Reception of PushkinsPoetic Works in the 1820s: A Study of the Critics Role, Slavic Review28: 3 (Sep-

tember 1969): 394415. Debreczeny suggests that literary criticism in Pushkins

Russia had not developed quickly enough to adequately address the spectacular

poetry of that time.


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army.16 In Poltava, the Hetmans speeches clarify his historical charac-

ter because, contrary to the narrators interpretation of him, they reveal

that he sees himself as a national leader, not a subordinate of the Russian

tsar. He shifts allegiances for the purpose of setting up a Ukrainian state

independent from Russia, thereby serving what he thinks are the best in-

terests of his country. Mazepa admits that he does so in part to avenge an

insult, but this motivation suggests that he sees himself as an equal, not a

vassal, of Peter I.

The narrator inPoltava clearly sees Mazepa and Kochubei as subjects

of the tsar and therefore criticizes or praises them accordingly. The civic

judgments that the narrator constantly issues, however, depend not only

on an imperialist attitude toward Ukraine but also on the notion that Rus-

sia was somehow right, that it was her destiny to defeat Sweden and be-

come a prominent world power under Peter I, and that those who did not

see this were wrong. In order to verify this position, the narrator ex-

presses the privileged vantage point of one who knows what, for the

poems characters, happens in the future. For example, one acquainted

with the history of the Great Northern War, such as the narrator, knows

that Mazepas plans to support Charles will end in disaster, while the Het-

man himself obviously does not realize this until the eve of the battle.

All of the major characters share the tragic flaw of inhibited vision, or

the inability to see the correct course of action to take. The narrator, how-

ever, transfers the equation of sin and blindness, along with its moral im-

plications, into the context of political allegiances, whereas the dramatic

dialogues give us a chance to judge characters according to their own

words and personal interactions. At the same time, the narrator faithfully

provides the dialogues with off-stage historical context, despite his bom-

bastic commentaries. Pushkin similarly uses third-person narration as an

elaborate chorus surrounding dramatic dialogue in two other narrative

poems: Gypsies (1824) and Angelo (1831). V. M. Zhirmunsky points out

that in the earlier work:

Narrative passages (223 lines) are arranged here at the beginning

of the poem (exposition), in the concluding scenes, and in transi-

tional passages (Two years went by). The rest of the story con-

16A vast number of historical sources confirm this. For a first-hand account

written by Charles XIIs court chamberlain, see M. Gustavus Adlerfeld, The

Military History of Charles XII, King of Sweden, 3 vols. (London, 1740), 3: 1516,

19296, 233, 24548. Izmailov suggests that Pushkin may have had access to thistext in French translation (Pushkin v rabote nad Poltavoi, 1112). Pushkins

main source also documents many of these events: D. N. Bantysh-Kamenskii,

Istoriia Maloi Rossii,3 vols. (Moscow: Tipografiia Semion Sklivanovskago, 1822),

3: 375416.


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40 IVAN EUBANKS

sists of a series of dramatic scenes, sometimes with a few introduc-

tory lines defining the situation. Thus a fundamental part of the

action passes before us in a dramatically palpable form, not as a

story in third person. Some dialogues have purely dramatic

characteristics, depicting essential moments in the development of

the plot: particularly, for example, the conversation between Zem-

fira, Aleko, and the old man near the childs cradle, when Zemfira

lets her husband know that she loves another (The old man

basked in the vernal sun), or the scene of the murder.17

As in the Gypsies(1824), the dramatic dialogues inAngelo(1831)show us

the most pivotal moments in the story. One could say the same for Pol-

tava, as far as the fictional scenes go, but it presents a somewhat more

complex plot because it is historical fiction; as such, a number of key

events from history play into the story through the voice of the third-

person narrator. All three poems, however, focus on a conflict between

ones duty to society and ones personal passions, be they jealousy, love,

vengeance, ambition, or carnal desire, and the dramatic dialogues occur

precisely at moments crucial to an ethical evaluation of the interlocutors.18

By casting these moral dilemmas in free-standing dialogues, Pushkin lib-

erates readers from the filter of an idiosyncratic and, in Poltava, contro-

versial narrative voice, allowing them to judge the characters for

themselves.

The narrator in Poltava is by far more opinionated than those in

either GypsiesorAngelo, and he seems to have a greater interest in rein-

forcing his opinion by constantly interpreting the dramatic dialogues be-

fore and after they occur. To say the least, the narrators rhetorically

effective commentaries themselves are not indisputable. In their speeches,

17Zhirmunskii,Bairon i Pushkin, 90.

18Nikolai Izmailov suggests that the seeds for Poltava began to incubate inPushkins mind during his southern exile, when he visited the remains of Charles

camp at Bender in 1824, the same year he wrote Gypsies. See Izmailov, Pushkin v

rabote nad Poltavoi, 8: Pushkins interest in the Petrine epoch came about

during a trip he undertook with I. P. Liprandi in 1824, from Odessa to Bender,

with the goal of seeking out traces of Charles XIIs camp and the grave of Hetman

Mazepa. And, perhaps, precisely in Bender, at the all but vanished remains of the

Swedish camp, in the vain search for the Hetmans forgotten grave, immersed in

thought, the poet (in the words from a draft of the epilogue to Poltava) first

conceived a vague outline for his future narrative poem. This, of course, explains

much about the conclusion to Poltava.Pushkin also discovered a serious interestin Shakespeare that year, which would blossom during his northern exile and last

the rest of his life. Finally, in 1824 Pushkin made his first attempt at writing trag-

edy in his unfinished Vadim, which would have followed the French Neoclassical

format. He also began and never finished a narrative poem by the same name.


10/28


the characters do not necessarily verify or contradict his black-and-white

valuations. By drawing on historically documented symbols in the final

linesKochubeis tomb, the curse on Mazepa, his songs about Mariathe

narrator attempts to utter the final word concerning the heroes of the

tragedy, to reduce the individuals to images of a small portion of their true

natures. In doing so he establishes his own ideological positions rather

than truly helping us to understand the people who took part in the events

he describes.

Paul Debreczeny, in Narrative Voices in Pushkins Poltava, goes so

far as to argue for three distinct ideological identities in the poems narra-

tion: an Imperialist Russian Court Historian; an authorial persona who

chose the epigraph and wrote the dedication; and a lyric poet with an af-

finity for folk language. He suggests that Pushkin thereby accommodates

several different views of Mazepa in the poem by means of shifting narra-

tive voices and contradictory annotations.19 To be sure, the narrator at

times renders faithful accounts of events as they happened in history,

while at other times he imposes a nationalistic interpretation on them. He

also seems to shift opinions and contradict himself, as if the chorus sur-

rounding Marias tragedy consisted of multiple voices that do not always

agree or speak in unison.20 Whether or not one agrees with Debreczeny,

the shifts in the poems narrative voice should discourage us from conflat-

ing it with Pushkins own views. The poet, for example, knew that Mazepa

had neither long been forgotten nor remembered solely in anathema, yet

the narrator nevertheless makes this claim at the poems conclusion.21

19Debreczenys reading aims to liberate Poltava from the charge of imperialism

and, in keeping with Izmailov (in Pushkin v rabote nad Poltavoi), proposes a

complex meaning in the poem connected to the poets response to the Decembrists

fate and a willingness to reconcile himself with the tsar after his own periods of

exile. See Paul Debreczeny, Narrative Voices in Pushkins Poltava, Russian Lit-

erature24: 3 (1988): 31948. For more on the footnotes in Poltava, see Lotman, Kstrukture dialogicheskogo teksta, 22836. For an essay discussing the role of

footnotes that contradict the story in historical fiction contemporary to Pushkin,

see Dan Ungurianu, Fact and Fiction in the Romantic Historical Novel, Russian

Review 57: 3 (July 1998): 38093. Ungurianu does not address narrative poems,

only prose novels, but he does provide a chart indicating how many novels, in-

cluding Pushkins Captains Daughter, feature subtitles defining the genre, fore-

words, afterwards, epigraphs, annotations, or indications of authorial presence in

the text.20Attic tragedy provides a precedent for this as well. For example, in Aeschylus

Agamemnon the chorus debates both the credibility of Cassandras prophesyingand the course of action to take as they hear their dying kings groans coming from

the baths.21Pushkin mentions two well known, contrary depictions of Mazepa in his refuta-

tions toPoltavas criticsVoltaires Histoire de Charles XII, Roi de Sudeand Lord


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42 IVAN EUBANKS

Also, the narrated passages at times express the perspectives of a given

society as a whole, such as the lines describing Marias reputation or gen-

eral Cossack sentiments toward Mazepa and the war.

The chorus in Attic tragedy generally functions in the same way,

taking on the multiple duties of representing a collective opinion, narrat-

ing and summarizing events that did not happen on stage, particularly

bloodshed, analyzing the story and its heroes, and interacting both with

fictional characters and the real audience. In Oedipus Rex, for example,

the kings quest to discover the cause of the plague on Thebes transforms

into a personal investigation of his own identity, which he carries out pub-

licly, before the chorus of Theban citizens, who offers remarks and inter-

pretations. Thus the chorus mediates between the audience, the tragic

hero and the polis, or the society affected by his actions and his fate. At

one point, when Oedipus and Tiresias hurl accusations at one another, the

chorus intervenes, interpreting the words of each as expressions of exces-

sive anger and chiding them both.22 In Poltava, historical events and

bloodshed only occur in the narrated passages while the dialogues reflect

the characters inner psyches during intersticial scenes; the narrator ad-

dresses his readership from a point in time when the Great Northern War

had become part of national history, and yet he also addresses the char-

Byrons Mazeppa(Pushkin, 7: 19093). He also mentions Voltaires Histoirein thenotes to Poltava(Pushkin 4: 308 n. 29) and quotes Byrons poem in the epigraph

(Pushkin, 4: 251). Mazepa has remained ambiguous in Eastern Europe, sometimes

lauded as a champion of the people who defied the oppressive Russian empire and

served the best interests of Ukraines autonomy, and elsewhere criticized as an op-

portunist or traitor. Mazepas contemporaries across Europe perceived him as a

man of refined manners, excellent education, and superior intelligence. Western

intellectuals saw him as a marvel of the East, and Pushkin defies the legends

propagated by Voltaire, Lord Byron, and Victor Hugo with his own characteriza-

tion. He describes Byrons Mazeppa, in fact, as little more than a series of pic-tures, each more impressive than the last, lamenting that if only the history of a

seduced daughter and her executed father had fallen under his pen, then no one,

to be sure, would have dared touch upon the horrific subject after him (Pushkin,

7: 193). Pushkin comments more amiably on Ryleevs Voinarovskii, nevertheless

pointing out his fellow Russians similar neglect of the tragic potential realized

only in Poltava (Pushkin, 7: 193). For a discussion of the most famous Western,

Central, and Eastern European treatments of Mazepa in art and literature, in-

cluding Voltaire, Byron, Victor Hugo, Pushkin, Ryleev, Sowacki, and others, see

Hubert F. Babinski, The Mazeppa Legend in European Romanticism (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1974). See also Theodore Mackiw, Prince Mazepa,Hetman of Ukraine in Contemporary English Publications 16871709 (Chicago:

Ukrainian Research and Information Institute, 1967).22See Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, in Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays, trans. Rob-

ert Fagles (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), 182: ll. 46063.


12/28


acters and has access to moments in their lives that no historical record

does; and finally, he offers readers his own analysis of the story.

In the passages preceding the first embedded dialogue, for example,

the narrator casts Maria as a hapless, nave victim of the worldly, wicked

serpent Mazepa. Mariia, bednaia Mariia (Maria, poor Maria), the penul-

timate stanza of Canto One laments:

! Beauty of Circassian daughters,

, You dont know the serpent you caress,

. Held against your bosom.23

This apostrophe to the heroine summarizes her romance with the Hetman

in symbolic terms that equate it with the myth of the Fall.24Because she

does not know the serpent for who he is, Mazepa manages to temptMaria with the fruit of passion. In her blindness to evil she succumbs.

Svoimi chudnymi ochami (With his enchanting eyes), the chorus

continues:

, The old man cast a spell on you,

With his gentle speeches

; He lulled your conscience to sleep;

You raise your blinded gaze

, To look on him with reverence, You coddle him with affection

, You find your disgrace pleasant,

, , You, in your senseless rapture,

Are proud of it, as if it were chastity

You lost the tender charm of shame

In your fall25

This stanza sets up the first of the dramatic dialogues in Poltava, which

follows at the beginning of Canto Two, as a temptation scene. In the myth-ical context of Eden, Eves original sin is not necessarily malicious, but

disobedient and short-sighted. Thus the stanza quoted above characterizes

Maria as sinful but not evil in and of herself as it prepares us for the en-

suing dialogue. Sophocles uses the chorus for a similar effect in Antigone,

characterizing his heroine in lines 94487 according to a traditional myth.

Robert Fagles translation of this apostrophe to Antigone begins:

23

Pushkin, 4: 269.24This is also an inverted Cleopatra motif. Mazepa, despite his ambitions, is not

exactly Mark Antony, and Maria is nave, in contrast to the Egyptian queen, who

knew well the consequences of nursing an asp.25Pushkin, 4: 270.


13/28

44 IVAN EUBANKS

Dana, Dana

Even she endured a fate like yours,

In all her lovely strength she traded

The light of day for the bolted brazen vault.26

This particular speech rectifies an exchange between the chorus and

heroine that occurs some 150 lines earlier, in which the chorus objects to

Antigones comparison of herself to Niobe.27Like the chorus in Antigone,

which not only offers an interpretation of the heroine that contradicts her

own speech but also looks ahead to the plays conclusion by evoking the

image of Danas brazen vault, Pushkins choral narrator foreshadows

Marias fate by constructing an allegory of the Eden myth: as a result of

her fall, Maria shall languish in her consequential knowledge of evil,

which equals blindness to what is good, because hers is the original sin of

spiritual blindness.

In keeping with the choral odes in Attic tragedies, which did at times

represent multiple people, sometimes even consisting of dissenting voices,

as in Aeschylus Agamemnon, Pushkins narrator turns on itself, as if

shifting from one perspective to another. Thus the following stanza recti-

fies judgment of Maria, contextualizing her submission to temptation.

Chto styd Marii? chto molva? (Whats shame to Maria? What are

rumors), when she has her beloved by her side? Why care what others say

or think:

When with her, the Hetman forgets

, The noise and labor of his lot,

, Or reveals the secrets of his bold,

, , ? Grim thoughts to her, a timid girl?28

Here the narrator offers a more stern interpretation of Marias motiva-

tions. No longer the poor victim of a sorcerer-serpent or an innocent girl

26Sophocles, Antigone, in The Three Theban Plays, 108: ll. 103539. Sir Richard

Jebb offers the following prose translation: [944] So too endured Danae in her

beauty to change [945] the light of the sky for brass-bound walls. The original

Greek runs thus: Corv:tlakaDanavornonfv / llxadmavncalkodtov alav. Sophocles, The Antigone of Sophocles, ed. and trans. SirRichard Jebb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891), ll. 94445. This text

is available online at the Perseus Digital Library.27Niobe had fourteen children, all of whom were slain by Apollo and Artemis as

punishment for their mothers boasting her superiority to the gods. Dana was themother of Perseus, whom she conceived with Zeus when her father, Acrisius,

locked her away in a tower because of a prophecy that she would bear a son who

would later take his life.28Pushkin, 4: 270.


14/28


whose conscience an old man lulled to sleep with magic spells, Maria now

seems to have cared nothing for shame or rumor in the first place. She

feels flattered by the fact that she can distract the Hetman from his con-

cerns with the affairs of state; she is attracted to his power. This shift in

the narrators interpretation of Maria presents a paradox. Does she suc-

cumb to evil because she does not know the serpent she nurtures, or be-

cause she feels attracted to its very nature in the first place?

Marias own speeches suggest neither. In her dialogue with Mazepa

she seems to love him genuinely. She hardly acts as if under a spell when

she questions the Hetman about Princess Dulskaia. Maria excitedly offers

to support and even die for Mazepas plot to shift allegiances, because she

interprets it as a plan to establish him as tsar of an autonomous Ukraine.

Disregarding the narrators description of Mazepa as a charming sorcerer,

we might assume that Maria does not, in other words, consider his plans

treasonous toward his native land. Otherwise, she herself is treasonous,

but that does not fit with her personality throughout the poem.

Mazepa discloses his ambitions to Maria precisely when she grows

suspicious of Princess Dulskaia:

: Now all is ready: I have both

; The kings negotiating with me;

,

,

And in the bloody chaos of

, . Strife I, perhaps, will ascend to the throne.

: I have reliable adherents:

The Princess Dulskaia is one,

, ... My Jesuit, and that beggar, too.29

29Pushkin, 4: 274. By both the kings, the Hetman means Charles XII and Stani-saw Leszczyski, whom the Swedish king nominated for the throne of Poland in

1705. The Swedes had taken Warsaw. Peter and a good portion of the Polish nobil-

ity supported King August of Saxony, whom Charles ousted and whom Leszczyski

defeated in 1706. Leszczyskis devotees began attempting to persuade Mazepa

into their camp in 1705, when Peter sent him to the Right Bank in a move to rein-

force Russias candidate for the throne.

Mazepas allusion to the Polish usurper echoes the evil twin archetype that

contributes so much to the structure of Poltava, at once adding historical depth to

the poem and evoking classical patterns, which commonly involve a contest for

sovereignty. For example: Atreus vs. Thyestes (Senecas Thyestes, Voltaires LesPlopides); Aegysthus vs. Agamemnon (AeschylusAgamemnon, SenecasAgamem-

non); Polynices vs. Eteocles (the Oedipus saga, dramatically manifested in three of

Sophocles plays, particularly Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus, and Aeschylus

Seven Against Thebes); Edgar vs. Edmund (ShakespearesKing Lear), etc.


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46 IVAN EUBANKS

We have no reason to assume that Mazepa changes the conversation in

order to evade Marias questions about Dulskaia. The narrator implies

that he manipulates Marias awe for his power in preparation to broach a

far graver subjectthat of Kochubeis impending beheading. Maria at this

point thinks that the brunt of her fathers wrath has fallen on herself, and

she does not know that he is imprisoned in the very castle where she lives.

The narrator, however, has already disclosed Mazepas plans to execute

Kochubei. In light of this fact, as well as the serpent motif applied to Ma-

zepa just prior to this dialogue, the following inquisition should strike

readers as an act of incredible cruelty:

: :

?

Maz: Tell me: is your father or your spouse

More dear to you?

: ,

?

Maria: My dear,

Why ask such a question? It vexes

. Me needlessly. Im trying to

. Forget about my family.

; Ive brought disgrace on them, perhaps

( !), (Oh, what a horrible dream!)

, My father has cursed me,

? And for whom?

: Maz: So Im more precious

? To you than your father? Youre silent

: ! Maria: Oh god!

: ? . Maz: What is it? Answer.

: . Maria: Decide for yourself.

: : , Maz: Now listen: were it to happen that we,

, He or I, had to perish,

, And you were to be our judge,

, Whom would you choose to sacrifice,

? And whom would you shield?

: , !

!

Maria: Enough! Dont wrench my heart

. Like that! You are a tempter.

: ! Maz: Answer!


16/28


: ;

Maria: Youre pale; your words are harsh

, ! , Oh, dont be angry! AllIm prepared

, ; To sacrifice all for you, believe me;

. Such words as these are terrifying.

. Enough.

: , , Maz: Remember that, Maria,

. What you told me just now.30

The narrator informs us before this dialogue that Mazepa does not

propose a hypothetical situationthe Hetman has already scheduled

Kochubeis execution for the following day. What remains unclear, how-

ever, is why the Hetman asks Maria whom she would rather lose. Later,in the third dramatic dialogue, Marias mother suggests that she could in

fact convince her lover to call off the execution. The narrator implies that

Mazepa wants to torture Maria or place some share of responsibility for

his crimes on her. If, however, we disregard the narrators rhetoric (e.g.,

Mazepa is a serpent) and think only of facts (e.g., Mazepa executes

Kochubei), we might interpret the Hetman as a more complex, conflicted

character.

The predicament in which Mazepa finds himselfthe need to execute

Kochubei in order to achieve his goal of liberating Ukraine from Russiaand setting himself up as tsardid not come about solely by his own

doing. It partially reflects the will of his people. In one of the numerous

passages where the narrator falls silent to allow direct speech, we hear

Zaporozhian Cossacks grumbling about fighting in foreign lands against a

foe they do not consider theirs:

? , Whats with the Hetman?

; ; Hes incapacitated, old;

His flame has waned in passing seasons, , . Excessive labors leave him cold.

Why should hands that tremble like his

? Still hold the Hetmans staff and mace?

Nows the time for us to assail

! Oppressive Moscows walls!

, If old Doroshenko,

, Or the young Samoilovich,

, Or our Paley, or Gordeenko

, Controlled our military forces, Then Cossacks wouldnt have to die

30Pushkin, 4: 27677.


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48 IVAN EUBANKS

Face down in snow, in foreign lands,

And all their troops already would

. Have liberated Little Russia.31

As a leader who was, at least in principle, democratically elected, the Het-

man must pursue the best interests of the people he represents.32 Of

course his personal ambitions come into play, but one cannot discount the

popular voice just because it agrees with him. Kochubei himself bears

some responsibility as well, especially since he denounced the Hetman out

of a desire to punish him rather than out of loyalty to Russia or any na-

tion. Finally, Marias own role in bringing about the catastrophe remains

open.

Early the morning after Orlik has tortured Kochubei, Marias mother

sneaks into Mazepas castle to warn her daughter of the impending exe-

cution. Whether or not Maria could have prevented her fathers death by

choosing to sacrifice Mazepa, the question of responsibility again comes

into the third dramatic dialogue. In Canto One, Marias mother had urged

Kochubei to denounce Mazepa, but now she prompts her daughter to

supplication:

, , Run, fall at his feet!

, : Deliver your father, be our angel!

, Your gaze will bind the villains hands,

. You can deflect them from the axe.

, : Hurry, demandthe Hetman wont refuse:

, For him you have forgotten honor,

. Your family, and God.33

31Ibid., 26061.32The treaty of Pereiaslav, according to existing documentation, guaranteed the

Zaporozhian Cossacks the right to choose their own Hetman in keeping with their

democratic tradition. Peter I circumvented this rule in setting up Ivan Skoro-

padsky as Hetman after Mazepas defection in 1708. The controversy surrounding

Mazepa in fact stems from the treaty of Pereiaslav, which some argue granted au-

tonomy to the Zaporozhian Cossacks but also obliged them to militarily support

Russia. The issues surrounding this are complicated, but in a nutshell the ques-

tion is whether Russia had nullified the treaty by failing to honor its articles ade-

quately or whether Mazepa brazenly violated it in supporting Sweden. See JohnBesarab, Pereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study (Edmonton, Alberta: CIUS

Press, 1982), 23036, cited in Paul Robert Magosci, A History of Ukraine(Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 1998), 20716, esp. 21415.33Pushkin, 4: 285.


18/28


Marias mother thrusts the same problem on her that Mazepa had in the

first dramatic dialogue: whom would she rather lose? Her mother at-

tempts to move her with guilt, suggesting that she would put her lover be-

fore her father. Eight lines prior to the passage quoted above, she says:

: I see: youll scorn

; Your grieved family for Mazepa;

, I find you here slumbering

, When they pass cruel judgment,

, When the sentence is being read,

. When an axe is readied for your fathers

head.34

Marias mother is either desperate and hopeless, or she actually be-

lieves that Mazepa will call off the execution at his lovers request. Be-

cause the narrator does not filter this scene, we can read it as we will, and

our interpretation should directly impact our evaluation of the Hetman.

Furthermore, in placing responsibility for Kochubeis death on her, claim-

ing that his life is in her hands, Marias mother treats her as harshly as

Mazepa himself does. The burden of guilt contributes to Marias insanity,

and her madness begins in this very scene. Thus she resembles Oedipus,

who blinds himself upon learning his own identity, that of his parents,

and the crimes he committed against them and Thebes, or Shakespeares

Lear, who goes mad when he realizes he has exiled those who love him,

Kent and Cordelia, and split his kingdom between his opportunistic elder

daughters.

Marias indirect role in the catastrophe brings to bear the ethical di-

lemma. She acts out of love. However inappropriate her passion, it is

surely not a worse sin than seeking vengeance or political ambition at any

cost, but her deeds and words do provide a catalyst for the tragic events to

follow. Neither wicked nor malicious, Maria represents the purest defi-

nition of sin in the poem. Sin is the blindness of mortality, such as that

which afflicted Oedipus. Maria simply does not know who her spouse

truly is, until she has lost her mind. She knows neither of his political

plots nor his mercilessness when she decides to elope. And sin results from

moral blindness even in the absence of malice, although destiny can turn

it toward good or evil. Maria brings disgrace on her family, and her ac-

tions spur Kochubei to ensure his own death by denouncing Mazepa, but

at the same time her shame brings greater honor to her family in the long

runKochubei ends up a hero in Peters eyes. One can see this, however,

only in retrospect, which both history and the poems narrator provide.

34Ibid.


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50 IVAN EUBANKS

The lens of history provides a view wide enough to show how each

persons decisions fit into a machine of events that becomes Russias ve-

hicle for its foreordained eminence in Europe.35Pushkins preface to Pol-

tavaencourages such a reading. Furthermore, the narrator depicts certain

characters, such as Mazepa, Maria, and the King of Sweden, as blind or

unaware, whereas others, such as Kochubei and the tsar, have or gain vi-

sion. His valuations depend on his nationalist sentiments and the outcome

of history. Kochubei, for example, denounces Mazepa in order to punish

him for keeping his daughter as a mistress. The Judge General wants ven-

geance and blood, which one can hardly say are good desires, yet the

narrator all but canonizes him as a saint for having the foresight to cast

his lot with the tsar of Russia.

The narrators ethical evaluations establish a series of contrasts, an

evil twin motif, in which figures such as Peter I and Charles XII, Iskra

and Orlik, Voinarovsky and Palei, or Mazepa and Kochubei reflect the

positive or negative qualities of one another. Peter therefore appears as

the hero of destiny, even though he does succumb to Mazepas wiles in the

business of Kochubeis execution, while Charles suffers from hubris. Iskra

proves his devotion to the right cause, while Orliks greed and cruelty lead

him to his fate of permanent exile. Mazepa, blindly arrogant, vengeful,

and insatiably hungry for power, destroys Kochubei, whose vision and loy-

alty earn him and his family everlasting honor. None of these juxtaposi-

tions, however, define the characters true moral qualities because the

narrators ethical evaluations of them depend entirely on whether they

cast their lot on the side of victory or defeat.

The narrated scenes of Poltava therefore attach an epithet of evil to

the Hetman, describing him as an archetypically wicked force, and his sig-

nificance as such equals his importance as a controversial historical icon.

The tragedy as a whole, however, provides a less categorical view of Ma-

zepa, thus clarifying his historical character. The result is a sympathetic

devila figure who may be evil and cruel, but whose greatest fault is be-

ing a rebel who cannot see the futility of his cause or the inevitable tri-

umph of the authorities he seeks to undermine. Kochubeis development in

the narrative forms the opposite pattern. History verifies his written devo-

tion to Russia (in the form of a denunciation of Mazepa), for which the tsar

honors his memory, and because of which the narrator treats him as a

35In tragic myths the absolute past and the grip of destiny are established by like

means. Tiresias, for example, in his dialogue with the king in Oedipus Rex predictsthe plays unavoidable development toward its tragic conclusion. In other trage-

dies, such as Shakespeares Hamlet, a plot-structure and set of narrative devices

familiar to the audience foreshadows the expected ending. The point of watching

such plays (or reading them) is not to find out what happens, but how and why.


20/28


visionary. Aside from the honor he achieved through his political loyalties,

however, one can hardly perceive him as good.

Kochubei, in fact, rebels against Mazepa in much the same and way

and for the same reasons as the Hetman betrays Peter. The Judge Gen-

eral had been friends with Mazepa for a long time, knowing his treacher-

ous nature, but did not denounce him to the tsar until he felt insulted by

him. In the Hetmans eyes Kochubei is an aged man who has reached the

summit of his powers, and:

, He, himself, the proud rebel, he brought

. The axe upon his neck himself.

, ? With eyelids shut he bolted. Why?

? What were his hopes based on?36

In Canto Three, however, Mazepa describes himselfas the blind, fool-

ish old man whose ambitions exceed his potential. Shortly thereafter,

glory shines on the Judge Generals grave, marking it as a testament to

the triumph of destiny.

Notwithstanding the narrators praise of one and condemnation of the

other, Mazepa and Kochubei differ primarily in their political allegiances

and their consequential burial (or lack thereof). Otherwise they are nearly

identical. One is Marias father, the other her godfather. Both love her.

They are high-ranking Cossacks. Each is beyond his prime in years. They

bore arms together, and Ikh koni po poliam pobedy / Skakali riadom

skvoz ogni (Their steeds, traversing the fields of victory, / Had galloped

side by side through flames).37 They trusted one anotherMazepa told

Kochubei of his plans to form an alliance with Charles and Leszczyski,

the Judge General asked the Hetman to christen his daughter. One is

bound to the theme of lameness, the other is shackled.38Marias godfather,

with Peters blessing, arranges the torture and beheading of her father,

who attempts to do the same to him. Peter the Great approves the actual

execution of one and orders the others effigy executed. The Hetman com-

pels Maria to state whose life she would rather save, forcing her to express

her choice, but her father gives her no choice at all.

Kochubeis letter to the tsar, in which he denounces the Hetman for

shifting loyalties, marks his point of departure from Mazepa in the narra-

tors evaluative paradigm. His motivation to send the letter, which he di-

rectly expresses in a monologue, underscores his resemblance to the Het-

man because it is identical to his rivals reason for betraying Peter

36Pushkin, 4: 269.37Pushkin, 4: 263.38Mazepa feigned illness when he was worried that Peter may have discovered his

plans. Much is made of this in Poltava.


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52 IVAN EUBANKS

revenge. In the fourth dramatic dialogue, Mazepa explains to Orlik that

he cannot make peace with Peter because of an insult he suffered some

time ago: the tsar had tweaked his mustache in public, at a feast.39Ma-

zepa, in other words, feels equal to Peter, and this sense of equality drives

him to rebellion.40Ambition also plays into the Hetmans motivations, and

the same goes for the Judge General.

Kochubei gives little indication of his politics. He expresses no ideolog-

ical rationale for supporting Russia. The narrator admits that the Judge

General was indeed close enough to Mazepa to have knowledge of his

plans to break with Peter, but he neither objected nor informed the tsar

until the Hetman soiled his familys name by keeping Maria as a mistress.

Ambition certainly could have factored into Kochubeis change of devotion

(at least in history this seems to be his primary motivation). In Poltava,

however, he indisputably voices vengeance as a deciding factor. He wrote

a letter to the tsar as a means to punish Mazepa for a personal insult:

, Kochubei meditated, grinding his teeth

, Ill spare your den,

; My daughters prison,

, You wont smolder in flames,

You wont perish by the blow

. , , Of a Cossacks saber. No, villain,

, In the hands of Muscovite executioners,

, , Bleeding, amid your vain denials,

, , On the rack, trembling from torture,

, Youll curse the day and very hour

When you christened our daughter41

Like Oedipus sons Eteocles and cursed Polynices, or Gloucesters sons

Edmund and Edgar in King Lear, the most significant distinctive factor

between Kochubei and Mazepa in the narrators eyes is not morality, but

legitimacy.42 Polynices proved himself an illegitimate citizen of Thebes,

39Pushkins critics ridiculed this, but the poet defended it as a plausible illustra-

tion of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century conventions of honor.40 It also contributes to the analogy between Mazepa and Satan, who felt that he

was as great as God. For a superb reading of Poltavaas a holy war myth, wherein

Peter represents the storm god Perun and Mazepa the serpent he wrestles, see

Svetlana EvdokimovasPushkins Historic Imagination(New Haven: Yale Univer-

sity Press, 1999), 173208.41Pushkin, 4: 26263.42Eteocles and Polynices, Oedipus sons, fought over the throne of Thebes. Eteoc-

les prevailed, and Polynices returned with seven Athenian champions and their

armies. Each dies at the others hand. Creon forbids Polynices burial and then


22/28


having assaulted the city with an Athenian army, and so Creon forbids

him the rites of the dead. Mazepa also takes the field with invading forces

in an attempt to secure control of his homeland. He fails, dying shortly

after the disastrous battle and never receiving an honorable burial in his

native soil.43

By honoring his memory and his family, the tsar legitimizes Kochu-

beis actions, but the deed that earned his grace ironically precipitates the

only moment in Poltava when Peter errs. Blinded by Mazepas rhetoric,

the tsar approves the Judge Generals execution, mistaking his proclama-

tion of the Hetmans treachery for slander. Once he is arrested, Kochubei

begins his metamorphosis in the narrators rhetoric from a vengeful father

into a seer or martyr. In the poems second dramatic dialogue, however,

Kochubei laments the fact that no one will avenge his death. Enduring

torture, he claims that God will avenge him. Just before his execution he

courageously meets his doom, and the narrator reports that he piously for-

gives his transgressors.44 The narrated portions of Poltava imply that

Kochubei lost his life voicing truths that no one else, not even Peter, could

see, but as far as Marias fate is concerned he gave his life to punish her

beloved.

Good and evil, as they are defined in the narrated portions ofPoltava,

neutralize one another in Pushkins tragic depiction of Maria. She escapes

the necessary classification of allegiance to either Sweden or Russia. She

has no evil twin. Motivated by passion to abandon her beloved familys

home, selfishly devoting herself to her lover, Maria consequently endures

the death of her father and her godfathers/husbands exile. She has no

schemes or calculations to evaluate, only the emotions that guide her.

Thus Pushkins fictionalization of her tragedy not only provides a counter-

point to his narrators harsh rhetoric, but it also showshow her actions in-advertently affect the outcome of major political events.

The polarization of ethical evaluations underscores the narrators in-

terpretations of Mazepa and Kochubei. While this polarization may inform

our reading of the dramatic scenes, the dialogues themselves indicate its

subjectivity. The subjective assignation of right and wrong in Poltavaem-

anates from a retrospective view of history, which has shown us that the

tsar of Russia brought his nation into its foreordained greatness. In fact,

in his introduction toPoltava, Pushkin writes:

buries Antigone alive for sprinkling dust and libations on her brothers remains.

Edmund, the bastard son of Gloucester in Shakespeares King Lear, engages in

mortal combat with his brother Edgar, the Earls legitimate son. Edmund seeks togain power, possibly the throne, in the wake of a French invasion.43Mazepa dies near Bender on October 2, 1709.44See Svetlana Evdokimovas Pushkins Historical Imagination for a thorough

reading of how Kochubei is transformed into a saint inPoltava.


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54 IVAN EUBANKS

The battle of Poltava is one of the most important and most

fortunate events of Peter the Greats reign. It relieved him of a

dangerous enemy, established Russian sovereignty in the south,

secured our new presence in the north, and proved to the govern-

ment the success and necessity of the reforms instituted by the

tsar.

The Swedish kings error has passed into proverb. He has been

reproached for his carelessness; his march on Ukraine has been

characterized as irrational. It is impossible to please the critics,

particularly after failure.45

This retrospective view turns Pushkins juxtaposition of Peter I with

Charles XII into a basis for positive and negative valuations throughout

the poem. Because destiny favored Peter in the war, those who support

him are right. Charles and his followers, however, stumble in the blind-

ness of hubris; they attempt to control the outcome of history, to defy the

will of destiny, and so they are wrong. In this sense, Maria is both right

and wrong, because she compels her father to join with the Russians and

encourages her lover to support the Swedes. Through their interactions

with her, both Mazepa and Kochubei reveal similar complexity, whereas

Peter and Charles, who do not interact with the heroine, remain firmly

aligned with the narrators categorizations of positive or negative.

The virtues of Peter the Great illuminate the shortcomings of Charles

XII, and vice versa. Although each of the monarchs represents a powerful

European nation, one has reached the summit of his powers while the

other stands on the verge of greatness. When the two meet in battle:

. Peter comes forth. His eyes

. . Blaze. His face provokes awe.

. , His movements are swift. He is

magnificent,

, . In every aspect like divine thunder. He

walks46

[ on his own two feet. But then]:

before the cobalt ranks

, Of his martial retinue,

, Born forth by loyal servants,

, , , Upon a litter, pale, unmoving,

, . Suffering from his wound, Charles

appeared.47

45Pushkin, 4: 51819.46Pushkin, 4: 296.47Ibid., 297.


24/28


And he appears most feeble as he goes on four feet, for even those feet

are not his own. Being carried on a litter, Charles was most likely sup-

ported by two people, with a total of four feet, and hence the riddle of the

Sphinx, central to the Oedipus myth, manifests completely in Poltava, for

Mazepa carries a staffalso akin to Lucifers cane, which he uses because

his leg was wounded when he was cast out of heaven.48

The narrator states that Kazalos, Karla privodil / Zhelannyi boi v

nedoumene (It seemed as if the battle Charles desired / Had led him

into a quandary) The narrators derisive tone responds to the Swedish

kings reputation for martial prowess; and Vdrug slabym maniem ruki /

Na russkikh dvinul on polki (Suddenly with a weak wave of his hand / He

moved his troops against the Russians).49 The themes of lameness and

youth merge in Charles, who moves on four legs, and thus they represent

an anatomy of hubris. His childish overestimation of himself is glaringly

obvious in light of Peters aura of true confidence, which reaches a magni-

tude that can only be achieved by one who is right. Charles was a vain vo-

tary of fate, but Peter performs the will of destiny.

Lameness thereby coincides with blind arrogance in Charles. It also

amalgamates with wickedness, as Mazepa, the negative pole of evil in the

narrators rhetoric, feigns illness when Peter discovers his treachery. Even

his own people perceive him as old and lame; young Cossacks grumble:

Zachem drozhashcheiu rukoiu / Eshche on nosit bulavu (Why does he

still hold / The Hetmans mace with trembling hands?). Because like his

staff it is a metonymic vessel of his power:

[For] old age treads with caution,

And prudently it eyes each step

, In age, contemplations,

48One of this essays anonymous reviewers rightly points out that Mazepas bun-

chuk, his staff, was a symbol of power, not weakness. I am grateful for his or hersuggestion that I clarify this apparent contradiction. The next few paragraphs

hopefully do so, but I will briefly address it here. In the riddle of the Sphinx, the

third leg of the three-legged stage of life is presumably a cane, staff, or walking

stick, which symbolizes old age, an attribute continually assigned to Mazepa in

Poltava. In the first canto, for example, the Cossack youths complain that Mazepa

is too old and weak to oppose Russia, and in the third canto he successfully feigns

an incapacitating illness in order to conceal his treachery from Peter. Neverthe-

less, it is through age and experience that the Hetman has come by the power and

authority he wields. Satans cane functions in a similar way, as it represents spiri-

tual lameness, at the root of which is his reliance on deceit and manipulation forthe purpose of ruining others. The symbol of the cane, in other words, does not

mean that the Devil lacks the potential to influence people or bend them to his

will.49Pushkin, 4: 297.


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56 IVAN EUBANKS

, The fruits of contained passions,

, Repose submerged beneath the depths,

, And a scheme from long past days

, . Can perhaps ripen on its own.50

Mazepas office is the vehicle by which he moves in his quest to establish

himself as tsar of a united Ukraine, liberated from the Russian protec-

torate. In other words, he moves on three legs, as his staff symbolizes the

power he has gained through the experience that comes with age. The

vestments of his office lend him the wicked charm with which he attracts

Maria, who:

with a not so feminine spirit

, Loved cavalry formations,

, The martial beat of kettledrums, and

salutes

To the mace and staff

Of Little Russias sovereign51

She blindly encourages his ambitions and promises to die with him on the

chopping block should he fail to achieve them. As the narrator would have

it, the Hetman, with his inimitable charm, beguiles not only his young

goddaughter, but even Peter the Great. Yet Mazepas treachery and per-

suasion earn him permanent exile, death abroad, burial on foreign soil,

and anathema. Once stripped of the vestments of power, he no longer fools

Peter or Maria. The heroine in fact sees him at the end of the poem as a

wicked old man and shuns him. Thus his signature Mephistophelean

lameness and the staff with which he moves foreshadow his effective dam-

nation and exile from his home.

Regardless of whether Mazepa was truly a demonic villain or Kochu-

bei was truly a saint, the former was mistaken and the latter correct in

their respective decisions to support Sweden or Russia, according to the

outcome of history. Mazepa in fact describes his decision to align himself

with Charles as an error in his calculations. In the fourth dramatic dia-

logue, he confesses:

, , , , No, I can see it, dear Orlik,

: Weve rushed into misfortune:

, Our calculations were bold and flawed,

. And in them there will be no grace.

, , . My goal has clearly failed.

50Ibid., 26061.51Ibid., 259.


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? : What now? Fortune has been cruel:

. I was mistaken in Charles.

Hes just a spry, courageous boy52

The irony of Mazepas fated ruin infuses his confession from the start. In

the phrase I can see it, he indicates proof of his own blindness to Orlik,

proceeding to describe what he could not see before yet could no longer

denyhis inalterable demise.

The error of following Charles in his miscalculations, such as Mazepa

did while Kochubei did not, is a missing of the mark, the symptom of mor-

tal blindness that caused Oedipus so much anguish. The historical retro-

spective narration in Poltava seizes on this to reinforce the notion that

some intangible force, such as destiny, brought Russia into greatness and

therefore one need only have been good or right to have chosen the

winning side. Thus he characterizes Charles invasion as mistake result-

ing from foolish pride:

, Crowned with ineffectual glory,

.

Audacious Charles slipped near an abyss.

, He marched on ancient Moscow,

, Enraging Russian principalities,

Like a whirlwind stirring ashen plains

. And forcing dusty grass to bow.

, He took the road where tracks were left

, In our newer days by a mighty foe,

When the retreating steps of that fated man

. Glorified his fall.53

In our days, when Pushkin wrote the poem and when we read it, we can

perceive the omens of Swedens defeat. The narrator can tell us that the

Swedish king and Napoleon tread upon the same ground, and they failed

to accomplish analogous goals. Charles, however, could not have seen that

by invading Russia he would doom himself to the fate the French General

would suffer one 104 years later. We know that both of Russias aggressors

were predestined to stumble blindly into the abyss because both of them

did, and each ones plummet confirms the inevitability of the others.

One may retrospectively identify hamartiawithout knowing what mo-

tivates a character, evaluating him according to the consequences of his

actions, of which we are aware because they have already occurred. In the

52Ibid., 29293.53Ibid., 25960.


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58 IVAN EUBANKS

tragic plot one may likewise know sin and wickedness by their fruits, but

passing judgment on the sinful obligates us to inquire into why they did

what they do. Why, for example, does Mazepa force his lover to choose be-

tween saving his life or her fathers? Would he really have sacrificed his

life had Maria chosen Kochubei? And why does Marias mother blame her

for Kochubeis death?

The most difficult ethical questions in Poltava emerge from the dra-

matic scenes and are therefore intimately connected to Pushkins Maria.

History does not tell us what happens to her, however inevitable the dis-

semination of her psyche may be in the fictional aspects of the poem. On

the contrary, the poet tells us that the shade of her memory exists only on

the aged lips of a blind rhapsodist. One cannot foresee her doom through a

historic lens because her story largely deviates from the historical record,

but one can discern its tragic certainty in the darkness emanating from

her. The dichotomy between right and wrong that reverberates from

Charles invasion does not trap Maria, because the consequences of her

actions are both good and bad. The passages in the text that orbit around

her, the tragic aspects of the poem, instead transform the narrators polar-

izations into an ideological identity for him, rendering his moral judg-

ments suspect.

If Kochubeis honor and glory were destined for him, as Russias vic-

tory was for her, then Peters approval of his execution no longer appears

to be an act of blindness. It establishes the Judge Generals place in his-

tory and brings his family honor for generations to come. Peter therefore

not only embodies the will of historic destiny, he also wields the authority

of fate. Kochubeis beheading severs the last thread of sanity in Maria,

tragically destroying her. Her father had been willing to die for honor,

which he bought at the expense of his daughters psyche. If he were truly a

visionary, as the narrator describes him, he must have foreseen the conse-

quences of his actions. Otherwise he was as blind as anyone.

Poltava opens with a testament to Marias preciousness; she is the

treasure Kochubei loves most of all his impressive riches. She quickly

metamorphoses from an object of lyrical beauty, imbuing all in her pres-

ence with poetry, into a tragic heroine as complex as Antigone. The poem

concludes with a lamentation for the memory of her faded tragedy. When

Mazepa finally encounters her after the battle near the banks of the

Dnepr, she has been reduced to a shade of her former self, and by the end

of the poem she is nothing more than a legend. Maria loses honor, but for

what? For eloping? Or for eloping with a man who will be known as a trai-

tor to Russia? Her blind passions bring dishonor on her family, but Kochu-

beis execution and subsequent glory amend this.

In the tragedy formed by the dramatic dialogues in Poltava, the subtle

erotic motivations of a single character precipitate acts of passion and be-

trayal. Marias elopement, in other words, sparks contention between


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Kochubei and Mazepa, but at the same time the historic narration depicts

the expulsion from Russia of a mighty invader, the thwarting of treachery

and eventual reverence for loyalty. Although it has no positive effect until

the end, Kochubei does notify Peter of Mazepas betrayal. Had Maria been

an obedient daughter, Kochubei may have been numbered among the trai-

tors to the tsar (or at least would have been less motivated to warn Peter),

in which case his estate, title, and life would have been forfeit, as would

his honor and his familys honor.

In witnessing the unraveling of fate in Poltava one experiences an

effective anamnesis. We know the future as soon as we see the present un-

fold, and this occurs because of the combination of two temporal spheres

the historical past and the dramatic, absolute present. The two consequen-

tial evaluative planes allow us to recall the significance of an event as we

see it occur. The result, as in the Oedipus myth, is optimistic tragedy. In-

vasion provides tragedies of this sort (e.g.,Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus

at Colonus, King Lear, and Poltava) with a historical backdrop that sug-

gests how little the cogs and wheels of time value human life and emotion,

but the question of the role of Fate remains open.

However inevitable Marias downfall, it was not meaningless in the

larger scope of history. Although the heroine perhaps chose the less repu-

table and maybe even less moral of two options, her transgression contrib-

utes to a Russian triumph. Oedipus at Colonusfeatures the same phenom-

enon, for Sophocles was, after all, Athenian, and the heros death and

burial on Athenian soil insures victory over Thebes for the city of Theseus.

In Shakespeares King Lear, had Cordelia flattered her father a third of

his kingdom would have been her dowry in marriage either to the King of

France or the Duke of Burgundy. As it turns out, England remains whole

and in Edgars hands. No foreign power can make rightful claim to the is-

land, since the armies of the milk-toast Albany and the deceased Cornwall

defeated the French in the battle near the Cliffs of Dover. As part of the

myth of national tradition, Lears tragic fate therefore insures a better fu-

ture for England. If Fate controls the destinies of great peoples, Lear and

Marias weaknesses unavoidably lead them to sacrifice, and we should do

as Shakespeares Kent suggests: vex not [their ghosts] and let [them]

pass.

Documents

“Tragedy and Ethical Evaluation in Pushkin’s «Poltava»,” in «Pushkin Review» 11 (2008): 33 – 59