The End of Pushkin

 I'm glad I went back to the Pushkin biography (by T. J. Binyon). It wasn't heavy going, there was just so much of it. How so much detail has survived from so long ago is a thing in itself. Like any rip-roaring roller-coaster, it built to a tremendous, highly-charged dramatic climax. Tragedy is often inevitable and so it seems here with the circumstances and the personalities involved.

Pushkin himself is hot-headed, some might say reckless, but he is worthy of some sympathy when it comes to the appalling Baron Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès who was a persistent nuisance in his pursuit of Natalya, Pushkin's wife. One has to say he does look like a cad. I'm not sure how many times Pushkin in his turn had tried his chances with other spoken-for women but that is not the mindset of the alpha male who regards anything he wants as rightfully his and everything that's his to be exclusively so.

Despite the drawn-out intercessions of those close to the bitter rivals, the duel that Pushkin had demanded could not be averted. The rules of a duel are brilliantly fair, like a game of 'chicken'. There is a limit beyond which neither side can move any closer but they begin several paces behind that. They can move towards it and shoot whenever they see fit but they only have one bullet and, having shot it, must stay where they are with their opponent able to take his time before using his. I say 'his' - it's hard to imagine women being quite so daft as to want to do such a thing.

In the event, d'Anthès shot first, hit Pushkin who was injured but insisted he could still take his shot. His effort wasn't as fatal as that of d'Anthès proved to be a few days later. D'Anthès was sentenced to hang for taking part but pardoned by the Emperor. Arrangements for Pushkin's funeral were amended to lessen the possibility of insurrection by any revolutionary group seeing it as an opportunity to promote their cause.

The debts left behind were enormous but Nicholas I not only covered all that but looked after Natalya and her children generously which did nothing to quieten suspicions that she was, or had been, his mistress but there is no solid evidence for that.

Legends grew up around poets in the C20th but, blimey, they didn't make them like Pushkin any more. For better or worse.

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And so, right on time, while writing that there was a knock on the door and it was the delivery of Fall Quarter, the novel by Weldon Kees, all the way from America. That is good timing.