The Queen of Spades, Pushkin
Russians hold Pushkin in such high esteem that his place in Russian literature can reasonably be compared to that of Shakespeare in the literatures of the English language. Pushkin's literary genius seems to have been almost limitless: in addition to the long narrative and short lyric poems for which he is most famous, he also wrote short stories, stage plays and literary criticism. His letters are among the best in European literature. Many literary historians believe that the legend which suggests the composer Salieri may have murdered Mozart can be traced back to Pushkin's play MOZART AND SALIERI. (It is worth noting here that the great nineteenth-century Russian composer, Rimsky-Korsakov, wrote a successful opera based on the play in 1898; and both the play and the opera would later inspire the British playwright Peter Shaffer in writing AMADEUS). Pushkin's short stories--such as "The Queen of Spades," upon which Tchaikovsky based his great opera "Pique Dame"--are the first great works of prose fiction in Russian to stand the test of time unshakably. His most widely read masterpiece, the verse novel EUGENE ONEGIN, is the source for another magnificent Tchaikovsky opera by the same name, as well as several ballets.
"The Queen of Spades" is the most popular, the most puzzling, and the most aesthetically successful of all Pushkin's prose tales. Critics disagree widely and vehemently over whether or not the fantastic element in the story should be interpreted as "real." While the story makes use of mystical themes, readers can be sure that it is firmly grounded in sound human psychology. It is a story of man's character becoming his fate, of calculation triumphing over imagination and feeling with the protagonist's destruction the ultimate result. Hermann's overweening desire to rise in the world by acquiring money causes him to lose not only his winnings and his patrimony, but finally his mind. Unlike Macbeth, who also sells his soul out of greedy ambition, Hermann is never able to enjoy his success. (It is interesting to note that Hermann has called the countess "old witch" to her face. In MACBETH, the witches predict not only the protagonist's speedy rise to power but also his guilt, his insomnia, and his catastrophic fall.) Through natural or supernatural means, depending on how one chooses to interpret the episode featuring the ghostly visitor to Hermann's rooms, Hermann shows the wrong card at the crucial moment, and the moment of victory is turned horrifically into the moment of defeat. Sections of this epic Romantic poem in novel form are still memorized by Russian and other Eastern European school children as reverently as if they were verses from the Bible. In considering Pushkin's short life as a narrative, it should first be said that his was even more turbulent and romantic than that of his fictional creation, Eugene Onegin. Pushkin was born in Moscow on May 26, 1799. Although his family had lost most of their political influence by the time of Pushkin's birth, he was immensely proud of the fact that they had been part of Russian nobility for six hundred years. He was educated by a series of private tutors and governesses and had access to his father's large library of seventeenth and eighteenth-century French classics. In 1811 the young poet was enrolled in the first class of the lyceum at Tsarkoe-Selo, the site of the Czar's summer palace. This special school had recently been established by Alexander I (the Czar who defeated Napoleon) to educate the sons of prominent families with an eye to grooming them for important government posts. His early poems won prizes and earned him a reputation that made him the literary darling of St. Petersburg. Between 1817 and 1820, however, his poems began to express li
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