{"id":293,"date":"2015-05-11T09:20:43","date_gmt":"2015-05-11T13:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/?p=293"},"modified":"2015-10-08T14:27:12","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T18:27:12","slug":"understanding-the-superstitious-elements-of-pushkins-the-queen-of-spades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/2015\/05\/11\/understanding-the-superstitious-elements-of-pushkins-the-queen-of-spades\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the Superstitious Elements of Pushkin\u2019s The Queen of Spades"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mackenzie Pickering<\/em><\/p>\n

\"04-Gennady-Yepifanov--illus.-for-Pushkin-s-Queen-of-Spades--1966\"<\/a>

Illustration by Gennady Yepifanov for Pushkin’s Queen of Spades, 1966<\/p><\/div>\n

After having read Pushkin\u2019s \u201cPrisoner of the Caucasus\u201d in class \u2013 and since I knew next to nothing about the writer himself \u2013 I decided that I wanted to use my honors project to examine Pushkin and his works more closely. More specifically, I ended up looking at how the superstitious elements of The Queen of Spades<\/em> worked not only as a literary device but also as a way for Pushkin to confront his own superstitions and shape the experiences of the people around him. For the purposes of this post, however, I am going to focus on one of the sources that ended up forming the crux of my argument.<\/p>\n

A lot of people consider The Queen of Spades<\/em> to be one of Pushkin\u2019s greatest works, mainly because it is so full of ambiguous details and symbols that it can be analyzed endlessly and still remain shrouded in mystery. In his book Writing as Exorcism: The Personal Codes of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol<\/em>, Ilya Kutik argues that part of this stems from the fact that the short story may have been intensely personal for Pushkin, so naturally, as outsiders, the full meaning of his work would remain beyond our grasp. From an early age, Pushkin was incredibly superstitious, and Kutik believes that this particular trait \u2013 coupled with a visit to the famous Petersburg fortune-teller, Madame Kirchhof \u2013 led him to write The Queen of Spades<\/em>. In her predictions for Pushkin\u2019s future, Madame Kirchhof foresaw great fame and fortune, but also death. According to one of Pushkin\u2019s confidants, she claimed that \u201che would live long if in the thirty-seventh year of his life he could avoid some disaster brought to him either by a white horse, by blond hair, or by a white man\u201d (qtd. in Kutik 23). Because of the obviously anxiety inducing nature of having one\u2019s death predicted in such a way, Kutik sees the events and characters of The Queen of Spades<\/em> as Pushkin\u2019s way of exorcising his own very personal demons.<\/p>\n

In Hermann, the main character who is ultimately driven mad by his failed obsession with superstition, Ilya Kutik draws a connection to Pushkin himself. As he explains, \u201cIt is likely that this character takes Pushkin\u2019s fears upon himself\u201d by being \u201cfirst farcical and finally insane\u201d (30). By making Hermann slightly ridiculous, Pushkin may be, in a sense, trying to view his own situation in an absurd light, turning it into something to be laughed at rather than something to be feared. Indeed, for a few years before he turned thirty-seven, Pushkin seemed to be plagued by Kirchhof\u2019s predictions of his death; in both his journal entries and the recorded interactions with those close to him at the time, Kutik finds indications of some depressive symptoms. (Although he does also go on to acknowledge that Pushkin\u2019s private mindset is oftentimes hard to judge since he was so tongue-in-cheek about everything. After all, it is difficult to see someone as anxious or upset when his or her default mode is to be mocking.) Hermann\u2019s experiences in The Queen of Spades<\/em> may have thus been Pushkin\u2019s way of working through these issues and trying to reach some sort of emotional equilibrium.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, by making Hermann a German rather than a Russian, Kutik argues that Pushkin \u201cseems to distance his hero\u2019s madness from himself\u201d (30). If Hermann truly does embody Pushkin\u2019s superstitious anxieties, then in making him a foreigner Pushkin others his fears, pushing them off onto an outsider and denying any association he might feel with them. Had Pushkin made Hermann Russian instead then he would be, in a way, claiming the fears and acknowledging that they could exist in someone like him. As a consequence of this, now not only is Hermann ridiculous, but he is a stranger as well, a man viewed as truly separate from Pushkin and his Russian homeland. In this way, The Queen of Spades <\/em>can be seen as a story that must be analyzed, first and foremost, with an understanding of the author\u2019s own quirks and motivations always at the forefront of the reader\u2019s mind. For, as Kutik argues throughout his work, the story functions as an incredibly personal piece for Pushkin, an attempt (however successful or unsuccessful in the end) at purging himself of his superstitious anxieties. Strangely enough, however, Kirchhof\u2019s predictions of Pushkin\u2019s death ultimately proved true. In 1837, during a duel over his wife\u2019s alleged affair, Pushkin was killed by Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d\u2019Ant\u00e8s, a white man with blond hair.<\/p>\n

Work Cited<\/p>\n

Kutik, Ilya. Writing as Exorcism: The Personal Codes of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol.<\/em> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2005. Print.<\/p>\n

Mackenzie Pickering is a junior at Miami majoring in English Literature and Psychology. \u00a0This post is a condensed version of her honors assignment for HST\/ATH\/RUS 254.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mackenzie Pickering After having read Pushkin\u2019s \u201cPrisoner of the Caucasus\u201d in class \u2013 and since I knew next to nothing about the writer himself \u2013 I decided that I wanted to use my honors project to examine Pushkin and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-editorials","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}