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Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman and Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow": A Curious Case of Cultural Cross-Fertilization?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy
Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy*
Affiliation:
The Slavic Department, Barnard College
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Extract

Yankee [. . .] A nickname given to Americans; its meaning is unknown to us

–A. S. Pushkin, "Dzhon Tenner"

As is well known, "influence" studies have fallen into disrepute in recent decades in western literary criticism. Linda Hutcheon rightly points out that this development constitutes an inevitable corollary to Roland Barthes's announcement of the "death of the author" in 1968,' shifting the site of meaning away from the flesh-and-blood author onto the interaction between text and reader, placing at issue "the locus of textual appropriation.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 58 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Aleksandr Pushkin 1799-1999 , Summer 1999 , pp. 337 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1999

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References

1. See Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in his Image—Music—Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York, 1977), 142–48.

2. Hutcheon, Linda, “Literary Borrowing … and Stealing: Plagiarism, Sources, Influences, and Intertexts,” English Studies in Canada 12, no. 2 (1986): 230 Google Scholar (emphasis in the original).

3. Iser, Wolfgang, “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach,” in Tompkins, Jane P., ed., Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore, 1980), 50 Google Scholar

4. Pochmann, Henry A., “Washington Irving: Amateur or Professional?” in Clarence|Gohdes, ed., Essays on American Literature in Honor of Jay B. Hubbell (Durham, 1967), 66.Google Scholar

5. See, for example, ibid., 75; and Clendenning, John, “Irving and the Gothic Tradition,” in Myers, Andrew B., ed., A Century of Commentary on the Works of Washington Irving (1860–1974) (Tarrytown, N.Y., 1976), 387.Google Scholar

6. The 1949 Disney animated version of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (narrated by Bing Crosby) not only kept the work alive in the American cultural consciousness but also stands as testimony to the enduring appeal of Irving's tale.

7. Irving, Washington, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, in Springer, Haskell, ed., The Complete Works of Washington Irving, gen. ed. Rust, Richard Dilworth (Boston, 1978), 275.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., 295–96.

9. Jakobson, Roman, Pus˘kin and His Sculptural Myth, trans, and ed. Burbank, John (The Hague, 1975), 4, 5, 6Google Scholar (emphasis in the original).

10. Ibid., 9–10 (emphasis in the original).

11. No dearth of sources have been put forward for Pushkin's Bronze Horseman. Pushkin himself, in his foreword and notes to the poem, mentions the historian Vasilii Nikolaevich Berkh, the Italian journalist Francesco Algarotti, and the poets Prince Petr Andreevich Viazemskii, Adam Mickiewicz, and V G. Ruban as having inspired lines or sections of the poem. Critics and poets have added to this list, including Valerii Briusov, who remarked that “the image of the statue come alive might have been suggested to Pushkin by M. Iu. Viel'gorskii's story about a certain marvelous dream.” See Briusov, Valerii, “Mednyi vsadnik,” in his Sobranie sochinenii, 7 vols. (Moscow, 1975), 7: 53 Google Scholar. Waclaw Lednicki has gone so far as to speak of the “mosaic character of the poem” in relation to its sources. Lednicki, Waclaw, Pushkin's Bronze Horseman: The Story of a Masterpiece (Berkeley, 1955), 19 Google Scholar. To date, however, no one has proposed a source that might account for the plot structure of the poem as a whole. For a recent overview of possible sources that have been suggested for the poem, see Kahn, Andrew, Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman (London, 1998), 98–108.Google Scholar

12. In this context, Lednicki makes the following observation in his discussion of The Bronze Horseman: “This motif of the animation of a statue or a portrait was especially popular among the romantics, since it served to illustrate their idea of the irrational magic of art. Hoffmann, Maturin, Washington Irving, Gogol, Odoevsky, Lermontov, and many others exploited this old motif.” Lednicki, Pushkin's Bronze Horseman, 17 (emphasis mine).

13. A. S. Pushkin, Mednyi vsadnik, in PSS, 17 vols., 5: 135; Pushkin, A. S., “The Bronze Horseman,” trans. Nepomnyashchy, Catharine, in Rydel, Christine, ed., The Ardis Anthology of Russian Romanticism (Ann Arbor, 1984), 151 Google Scholar (hereafter Pushkin, “The Bronze Horseman “).

14. Irving, Sketchbook, 272.

15. Interestingly, one translation appeared under the tide Bezgobvyi mertvets (The headless dead man) thus focusing attention—as does the title The Bronze Horseman—on the supernatural character as the central figure in the work. On the significance of titles in Pushkin's works, see Jakobson, Puskin and His Sculptural Myth, 3–4. For an overview of readings of The Bronze Horseman that have focused on the image of Petersburg in the poem, see Kahn, Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman, 89–97.

16. PSS, 17 vols., 5: 139; Pushkin, “The Bronze Horseman,” 152.

17. Irving, Sketchbook, 279–80.

18. Pushkin mentions Irving only once in passing in his critical works, in “Dzhon Tenner.” (For articles concerning Pushkin's citation of Irving in ‘John Tanner,” see the last note in this article.) For a possible second reference to Irving by Pushkin, see Nikoliukin, A. N., Literaturnye sviazi Rossii i SShA: Stanovlenie literaturnykh kontaktov (Moscow, 1981), 238.Google Scholar

19. For a detailed discussion of Irving's reception in Russia, see Nikoliukin, Literaturnye sviazi Rossii i SShA, especially the chapters “Vashington Irving i rannie perevody amerikanskikh pisatelei” (180–223) and “Pushkin i amerikanskaia literature” (224–55).

20. For an overview of this debate, see Fiske, John C., “The Soviet Controversy over Pushkin and Washington Irving,” Comparative Literature 8, no. 1 (1955): 25–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Most notably, the Soviet scholar N. la. Berkovskii in 1962 identified Irving's story “The Spectre Bridegroom,” also from the Sketchbook, as a source for Pushkin's “Metel “’ (The snowstorm) suggesting that in the Belkin tale Pushkin is “polemicizing” with Irving. Berkovskii, N. la., “O povestiakh Belkina,” in Stat'i o literature (Leningrad, 1962), 289–92Google Scholar. His argument is developed and modified by Katz, Michael R., “Pushkin's Creative Assimilation of Zhukovsky and Irving,” in Brodwin, Stanley, ed., The Old and Nexu World Romanticism of Washington Irving (New York, 1986), 81–89 Google Scholar. See also Bethea, David M. and Davydov, Sergei, “Pushkin's Saturnine Cupid: The Poetics of Parody in The Tales of Belkin ,” PMLA 96 (1981): 8–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Akhmatova, A, “Posledniaia skazka Pushkina,” Zvezda, 1933, no. 1: 161–76Google Scholar; Alekseev, M. P., “Istoriia sela Goriukhina,” Pushkin: Stat'i i materialy, pt. 2 (Odessa, 1926), 70–87 Google Scholar; Proffer, Carl R., “Washington Irving in Russia: Pushkin, Gogol, Marlinsky,” Comparative Literature 20, no. 4 (1968): 329–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. A copy of this translation in two volumes, entitled Esquisses morales el litteraires, ou Observations sur les Moeurs, les Usages et la Litterature des Anglois el des Americains, was among the books by Irving contained in Pushkin's library. Unfortunately the evidence provided by Pushkin's possession of the book remains inconclusive. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (translated as “La legende de la vallee somnifere “) appears on pages 271–326 of the second volume of the Delpeux and Villetard translation. The information given in B. L. Modzalevskii's annotated listing of Pushkin's library seems to indicate that, while the first volume is completely opened, the second volume is opened only through page 300. The inscription on the book (there are no marginal notes) indicates that the two volumes of the translation were given to Pushkin by A. I. Turgenev, who was, like Pushkin, an avid reader. Therefore, the pages may in fact have been opened by Turgenev rather than Pushkin. For a list of the books by Irving in Pushkin's library, see Modzalevskii, B. L., “Biblioteka A. S. Pushkina,” Pushkin i ego sovremenniki: Materialy i isstedovaniia, vols. 9–10 (St. Petersburg, 1910), 255–57Google Scholar. It is worth noting in this context that N. V. Izmailov, in his commentary to The Bronze Horseman, has pointed out the perhaps unresolvable difficulty involved in trying to identify all of the apparendy large number of books Pushkin took with him to Boldino in the autumn of 1833 and lists those works that he definitively had in his possession. See Pushkin, A. S., Mednyi vsadnik, ed. Izmailov, N. V. (Leningrad, 1978), 181.Google Scholar

23. Nikolai Polevoi, Povesti i literaturnye otryvki (Moscow, 1829).

24. Jakobson, Pus˘kin and His Sculptural Myth, 10.

25. Geertz, Clifford, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” in his The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), 203.Google Scholar

26. Here, of course, I am somewhat oversimplifying. Valerii Briusov identified diree major trends in criticism, pointing out that from the beginning critics had been inclined “to see in the images of Evgenii and Peter personifications, symbols of two principles.” See Valerii Briusov, “Mednyi vsadnik,” in his Moi Pushkin (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), 64–65. David Bethea, in his own thoughtful article on what he terms the “dialogic confrontation” between the traditions of European statuary and Russian heraldry in The Bronze Horseman, begins by summarizing Briusov's argument and pointing out that most critics of the poem have tended to “take sides “: “After Belinskij, Valerij Brjusov was one of the first to see an emerging shape to scholarship on Puskin's Mednyi vsadnik (Bronze Horseman). He outlined three dominant tensions responsible for the ideological meaning of the work: collective versus individual will, paganism versus Christianity, and rebellion versus despotism. […] These tensions, which subsequent generations of readers have tended to resolve by accenting one or the other member of the opposing pairs, correspond roughly to interpretations on the ‘social, ’ ‘religious, ’ and ‘political’ levels.” David M. Bethea, “The Role of the Eques in Puskin's Bronze Horseman,” in Bethea, David M., ed., Puskin Today (Bloomington, 1993), 117, 99.Google Scholar

27. I would add here in passing a subject certainly worthy of further study. While critics have been inclined in the cases of both works to cast their interpretations in terms of binary oppositions, in each case there is a “third term” that stands in ambiguous relationship to the horseman—the elemental force of nature in The Bronze Horseman and the complex of associations surrounding the Hessian mercenary in “Legend.” Note, for example, that Richard Gregg has contended in relation to The Bronze Horseman: “The basic dynamics of the poem is, then ternary (not binary, as is commonly claimed).” Richard Gregg, “The Nature of Nature and the Nature of Eugene in The Bronze Horseman,” Slavic and East European Journal 1, no. 2 (Summer 1977): 170. Arguably it is precisely this structural tension between binary and ternary relationships that gives the two much of their interpretive richness.

28. Daigrepont, Lloyd M., “Ichabod Crane: Inglorious Man of Letters,” Early American Literature 19, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 68.Google Scholar

29. Irving, Sketchbook, 274 (emphasis mine).

30. Ringe, Donald A., “New York and New England: Irving's Criticism of American Society,” American Literature 38, no. 4 (January 1967): 455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. Ibid., 459.

32. Wells, Robert V., “While Rip Napped: Social Change in Late Eighteenth-Century New York,” New York History 71, no. 1 (January 1990): 18–19 Google Scholar. I should note that in this particular part of his article, Wells is actually talking about “Rip Van Winkle.” His article as a whole, however, explores how both of Irving's stories reflect the social transformation of postrevolutionary New York.

33. Guttmann, Allen, “Washington Irving and the Conservative Imagination,” American Literature, no. 2 (May 1964): 171.Google Scholar

34. Irving, Sketchbook, 272–73.

35. Ibid., 289.

36. Daigrepont, “Ichabod Crane,” 74.

37. Irving himself cast a jealous eye on the cultural riches of Europe's past in “The Author's Account of Himself” that opens The Sketchbook (8–9): —no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery. But Europe held forth the charms of storied and poetical association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful promise: Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age.

38. See, for example, Martin, Terence, “Rip, Ichabod, and the American Imagination,” American Literature 31 (1959): 137–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Daniel Hoffman, “Prefigurations: ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, '” in his Form and Fable in American Fiction (New York, 1961), 83–96; Bone, Robert A., “Irving's Headless Hessian: Prosperity and the Inner Life,” American Quarterly 15, no. 2, pt. 1 (Summer 1963): 167–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Daigrepont, “Ichabod Crane,” 68–81.

39. Daigrepont, “Ichabod Crane,” 75–77.

40. See Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, “The Poet, History, and the Supernatural: A Note on Puskin's ‘The Poet’ and The Bronze Horseman,” in Mandelker, Amy and Reeder, Roberta, eds., The Supernatural in Slavic and Baltic Literature: Essays in Honor of Victar Terras (Columbus, Ohio, 1988), 34–46.Google Scholar

41. “Autobiographical” readings of Evgenii rest on the postulation of a “genetic” relationship between The Bronze Horseman and poetic fragments, most notably “Rodoslovnaia moego geroia” (The genealogy of my hero) and “Moia rodoslovnaia” (My genealogy), Pushkin drafted during the early 1830s. See, for example, Lednicki, Pushkin's Bronze Horseman.

42. PSS, 17 vols., 15: 70.

43. It is notable in this context that both Irving and Pushkin began as “gentleman” writers and were forced to become “professionals.” What might be viewed as a nostalgia for a more aristocratic past is registered in the names of both of their protagonists. Daniel Hoffman observes in this connection: “Ichabod Crane is a sorry symbol of learning, of culture, of sophistication, of a decayed religious faith, of an outworn order in the world. His very name suggests decrepitude: ‘And she named him Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel’ (I Sam. iv. 21).” Hoffman, “Prefigurations,” 94. In like fashion, the name Evgenii, broken down into its Greek roots, suggests “well born,” which only serves to underscore by contrast the lowly state into which Pushkin's protagonist has fallen.

44. PSS, 17 vols., 5: 145; Pushkin, “The Bronze Horseman,” 154. We should also note that the ships Peter's “window into Europe” brings to his imperial city are, at least by implication, merchant ships.

45. PSS, 17 vols., 5: 138; Pushkin, “The Bronze Horseman,” 152.

46. PSS, 17 vols., 5: 148; Pushkin, “The Bronze Horseman,” 155.

47. Pushkin read his best documented sources on the United States— Tanner, John, A Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner during Thirty Years Residence among the American Indians (French translation, 1835)Google Scholar; Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratic en Amérique (first two volumes, 1836); and Gustave de Beaumont, Marie, ou I'esclavage aux États-Unis (1836)—only after completing The Bronze Horseman. On Pushkin's attitudes toward America and specifically on his ‘John Tanner” article, see J. Thomas Shaw, “Pushkin on America and His Principal Sources: His John Tanner, '” in his Collected Works, vol. 1, Pushkin: Poet and Man of Letters and His Prose (Los Angeles, 1995), 231–59; Barratt, Glynn, “Pushkin's America: A Survey of the Sources,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1973): 274–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mar'ianov, B., “Ob odnom primechanii k stat'e A. S. Pushkina ‘Dzhon Tenner, '” Russkaia literalura, 1962, no. 1: 64–67 Google Scholar; Al'tshuller, Mark, “Pushkin o problemakh demokratii ('Dzhon Tenner’),” Russian Language Journal 38, nos. 129–30 (Winter-Spring 1984): 69–78 Google Scholar; and Alekseev, M. P., “K stat'e Pushkina ‘Dzhon Tenner, '” in his Pushkin i mirovaia literatura (Leningrad, 1987), 542–48Google Scholar. Lednicki, in support of his hypothesis that The Bronze Horseman expresses Pushkin's belief that Peter the Great's reforms caused the decline of the old Russian nobility, cites an article Pushkin wrote in 1832 deploring both the “chute de la noblesse” in Russia and democracy in America: “The table of ranks has been sweeping away the nobility for 150 years now, and it is the present emperor who is the first to have put up a dike, still very weak, against the torrent of a democracy worse than that of America” (Voilà déjà 150 ans que la table of ranks balaye la noblesse et c'est I'Empereur actuel qui le premier a posé une digue, bienfaibte encore, contre le débordement d'une démocratic pire que celle de I'Amérique). Lednicki, Pushkin's Bronze Horseman, 65.