Pushkin

Education reform in Russia had begun in 1803, and had had considerable success, both at secondary and university level. Alexander, influenced by Speransky, his principal adviser on internal administration and reform, now wished to establish a school to provide a cadre for the highest ranks of the civil service. His proposal, drawn up originally in 1808 by Speransky, was issued as an imperial decree on 12 August 1810, later ratified by the Senate. The school’s purpose was to be ‘the education of youth especially predestined for important parts of government service’. Among the subjects taught special stress was laid on ‘the moral sciences, under which is to be understood all that knowledge relating to the moral position of man in society and, consequently, the concepts of the system of Civic societies, and of the rights and duties arising therefrom’. ‘Beginning with the most simple concepts of law’, the pupils should be brought to ‘a deep and firm understanding of differing rights and be instructed in the systems of public, private and Russian law’. Teachers were ‘never to allow [pupils] to use words without clear ideas’, and in all subjects were to encourage the ‘exercise of reason’.4 Corporal punishment was forbidden, which made the Lycée probably unique in its time. There were to be two courses, junior and senior, each lasting for three years.* The first intake would consist of not less than twenty, and not more than fifty children of the nobility between the ages of ten and twelve; on graduation the students would be appointed, depending on achievement, to a civil service rank between the fourteenth class – the lowest – that of collegial registrar, and the ninth, that of titular councillor.

The St Petersburg Gazette of 11 July 1811 announced that children wishing to enter the Imperial Tsarskoe Selo Lycée should present themselves to the Minister of Education, A.K. Razumovsky, on 1 August together with a birth certificate, attestation of nobility, and testimonial of excellent behaviour. They would be medically examined, and there would be an examination conducted by the minister himself and the director of the Lycée. They would be expected to have: ‘a) some grammatical knowledge of the Russian and either the French or the German language, b) a knowledge of arithmetic, at least up to the rule of three, c) an understanding of the general properties of solids, d) some knowledge of the basic fundamentals of geography and e) be able to divide ancient history into its chief epochs and periods and have some knowledge of the most important peoples of antiquity’.5

Sergey Lvovich applied to the commissariat for a month’s leave to take his son to the examination. Permission was slow in coming and, realizing he might be detained in St Petersburg for more than a month, he entrusted Pushkin to his brother, Vasily, who was himself travelling to the capital at that time. Together with Vasily’s mistress, Anna Vorozheikina, they set off in the third week of July. Pushkin’s sister, Olga, gave him as a parting present a copy of La Fontaine’s Fables, which he left behind on the table. His great-aunt, Varvara Chicherina, and his aunt, Anna Pushkina, together gave him a hundred roubles ‘to buy nuts’.6 Vasily immediately borrowed the money and never returned it: behaviour that long rankled with Pushkin; he mentions it, albeit jokingly, in a letter of 1825.

Vasily had published his first verses in 1793, but since then he had produced little: only twenty poems over one five-year period, causing Batyushkov to remark that he had ‘a sluggish Muse’.7 She was, however, eventually stirred into action by the heated contemporary debate on literary language and style, and inspired a number of poems in which Vasily enthusiastically ridiculed the conservative faction. Indeed, he was now journeying to St Petersburg to publish two epistles in reply to a veiled personal attack on him by the leader of the conservatives, Admiral A.S. Shishkov, who had recently written of his opponents that they had ‘learnt their piety from Candide and their morality and erudition in the back streets of Paris’.* 8 Though in childhood Pushkin had some respect for his uncle as a poet, his attitude towards him would soon settle into one of amused, if affectionate irony. Indeed, Vasily’s verse scarcely reaches mediocrity, with the exception of A Dangerous Neighbour, a racy little epic only 154 lines in length, written in lively and colourful colloquial Russian. Though too risqué to be published – it did not appear in Russia until 1901 – it circulated widely in manuscript. Pushkin gave the poem a nod of acknowledgement in Eugene Onegin; among the guests at Tatyana’s name-day party is Vasily’s hero,

My first cousin, Buyanov

Covered in fluff, in a peaked cap

(As, of course, he is known to you).

(V, xxvi)

The second line is a quotation from Vasily’s poem; Buyanov, his progeny, would of course be Pushkin’s cousin.

On arrival in St Petersburg the party put up at the Hotel Bordeaux, but Vasily complained that he was being ‘mercilessly fleeced’, and they moved to an apartment ‘in the house of the merchant Kuvshinnikov’ on the bank of the Moika canal, near the Konyushenny Bridge.9 Taking his nephew with him, Vasily made a round of visits to literary acquaintances. At I.I. Dmitriev’s, before reciting A Dangerous Neighbour, composed earlier that year, he told Pushkin to leave the room, only to receive the embarrassing retort: ‘Why send me out? I know it all. I’ve heard it all already.’10

The medical took place on 1 August; the examination, conducted by Count Razumovsky, the Minister of Education, I.I. Martynov, the director of the department of education, and Malinovsky, the headmaster of the Lycée, was held a week later in Razumovsky’s house on the Fontanka. While waiting to be called in, Pushkin met another candidate, Ivan Pushchin. ‘My first friend, friend without price!’ he wrote of him in 1825.11 Both soon learnt that they had been accepted, though Malinovsky’s private note on Pushkin read: ‘Empty-headed and thoughtless. Excellent at French and drawing, lazy and backward at arithmetic.’12 The two met frequently while waiting for the beginning of term. Vasily occasionally took them boating; more often, however, they would go to the Summer Gardens – a short walk from the apartment on the Moika – with Anna Vorozheikina and play there, sometimes in the company of two other future lycéens, Konstantin Gurev and Sergey Lomonosov. They were measured for the school uniform, which was supplied free to the pupils: for ordinary wear blue frock-coats with red collars and red trousers; for Sundays, walking out, and ceremonial occasions a blue uniform coat with a red collar and silver (for the junior course) or gold (for the senior) tabs, white trousers, tie and waistcoat, high polished boots and a three-cornered hat. Later the boots were abandoned, the white waistcoat and trousers replaced by blue, and the hat by a peaked cap.

On 9 October Pushkin and four other pupils with their relatives travelled to Tsarskoe Selo and had lunch with Malinovsky. In the evening they parted from their families and went across to the Lycée where they were allocated rooms. Pushkin’s was number fourteen, on the palace side. Next to him, in thirteen, was Pushchin. In his room he had an iron bedstead with brass knobs, a mattress stuffed with horse-hair and covered in leather, a chest of drawers, a mirror, a wash-stand, a chair and a desk with inkwell, candlestick and snuffer. In the next few days the other pupils – thirty in all – joined them.†

The ceremonial opening of the new school took place on 19 October 1811. It began with a service in the palace church, to whose choir access could be gained over the arch, through the school library. The priest then proceeded to the Lycée, where he sprinkled the pupils and the establishment with holy water. Between two columns in the school hall had been placed a table covered with a red cloth with a gold fringe. On it lay the imperial charter of the Lycée. The boys lined up in three ranks on one side of the table with their teachers facing them on the other. The guests – senior officials from St Petersburg and their wives – occupied chairs in the body of the hall. When all were present the emperor, the empress, the dowager empress, Grand Duke Constantine and Grand Duchess Anna (Alexander’s brother and sister) were invited in by Razumovsky and took their places in the front row.

The school charter was now read by Martynov. This was followed by a speech from the director, Malinovsky, whose indistinct utterance soon lost the audience’s attention. It was regained, however, by Aleksandr Kunitsyn, the young teacher of moral and political science, although he purported to address the boys, rather than the audience. ‘Leaving the embraces of your parents, you step beneath the roof of this sacred temple of learning,’ he began, and went on, in a rhetoric full of fervent patriotism, to inspire them with the duties of the citizen and soldier. ‘In these deserted forests, which once resounded to victorious Russian arms, you will learn of the glorious deeds of heroes, overcoming enemy armies. On these rolling plains you will be shown the blazing footsteps of your ancestors, who strove to defend the tsar and the Fatherland – surrounded by examples of virtue, will you not burn with an ardent love for it, will you not prepare yourselves to serve the Fatherland?’13 Alexander was so pleased with this speech that he decorated Kunitsyn with the Vladimir Cross. The pupils were now called up one by one and introduced to the emperor, who, after a short speech in return, invited the empresses to inspect the Lycée. They returned to watch the lycéens eating their dinner. The dowager empress approached little Kornilov, one of the youngest boys, and, putting her hand on his shoulder, asked him whether the soup was good. ‘Oui, monsieur,’ he replied, earning himself a smile from royalty and a nickname from his fellows.14 In the evening, by the light of the lampions placed round the building and of the illuminated shield bearing the imperial arms which flickered on the balcony, the boys had a snowball fight: winter had come early that year. The next day Malinovsky made known a number of regulations he had received from the Minister of Education.* The most significant, as far as the boys were concerned, and which caused several to break into tears, was that they would not be permitted to leave the Lycée throughout the six years of their education. Even their vacation – the month of July – would have to be spent at the school. Parents and relatives would be allowed to visit them only on Sundays or other holidays.

The school day began at six, when a bell awoke the pupils. After prayers there were lessons from seven to nine. Breakfast – tea and white rolls – was followed by a walk, lessons from ten to twelve, another walk, and dinner at one: three courses – four on special occasions – accompanied, to begin with, by half a glass of porter, but, as Pushchin remarks, ‘this English system was later done away with. We contented ourselves with native kvas or water.’15 From two to three there was drawing or calligraphy, lessons from three to five, tea, a third walk, and preparation or extra tuition until the bell rang for supper – two courses – at half past eight. After supper the boys were free for recreation until evening prayers at ten, followed by bed. On Wednesdays and Saturdays there were fencing or dancing lessons in the evening, from six until supper-time.

Several servants, each responsible for a number of boys, looked after the domestic side of school life. Prokofev was a retired sergeant, who had served in the army under Catherine. The Pole Leonty Kemersky, though dishonest, was a favourite, since he had set up a tuck-shop, where the boys could buy sweets, drink coffee or chocolate, or even – strictly against the school rules – a glass of liqueur. Young Konstantin Sazonov looked after Pushkin. Much to the astonishment of the school, on 18 March 1816 the police turned up and arrested him on suspicion of half a dozen murders committed in or around Tsarskoe Selo, to which he promptly confessed. A few weeks later, when in the Lycée sickbay under the care of the genial Dr Peschl, Pushkin composed an epigram:

On the morrow, with a penny candle,

I will appear before the holy icon:

My friend! I am still alive,

Though was once beneath death’s sickle:

Sazonov was my servant

And Peschl – my physician.16

Vasily Malinovsky was forty-six when he became director of the Lycée. He was an odd choice, since he had no previous experience in education. He had been a diplomat, but had held no post since 1801. While with the embassy in London, he had published A Discourse on Peace and War, which anticipated Woodrow Wilson in suggesting that peace could be maintained by the establishment of a league of nations. And in 1802, like others at this time, he had put forward a project for the emancipation of the serfs – a reform which was only put into effect in 1861. He carried his liberal idealism into his new post, being responsible for the ban on corporal punishment. But his tenure was short-lived: he died, after a sudden illness, in March 1814. His death was followed by the period called by Pushkin ‘anarchy’, and by Pushchin ‘the interregnum’,17 when the school had no director. It was governed sometimes by a committee of the teachers, sometimes by a succession of individual teachers, each abruptly appointed as temporary director by Razumovsky and as abruptly dismissed after some disagreement or minor scandal.

Anarchy came to an end in March 1816, when the forty-year-old Egor Antonovich Engelhardt became the school’s director. Born in Riga and of German-Italian parentage, Engelhardt enjoyed the patronage of Alexander, and on occasion was to make use of this to the school’s advantage. Unlike Malinovsky, he had some qualifications for the post, having been the director of the St Petersburg Pedagogic Institute. But whereas Malinovsky’s aim had been to form virtuous individuals, imbued with high civic ideals, ‘Engelhardt was chiefly concerned with turning his charges into “des cavaliers galants et des chevaliers servants”.’18 Indeed, the social life of the pupils outside the walls of the Lycée – absent before – was one of Engelhardt’s main concerns. He entertained them at his house in the evenings, took them for walks and drives in the neighbourhood, organized picnics and skating parties, providing, on all these occasions, feminine company from his own family or from those of friends and acquaintances in Tsarskoe Selo: ‘In a word, our director understood that forbidden fruit can be a dangerous attraction, and that freedom, guided by an experienced hand, can preserve youth from many mistakes,’ wrote Pushchin sagely.19

Above all he was concerned to establish ‘amical relations’ between himself and the lycéens, guiding himself by the maxim that ‘only through a heartfelt sympathy with the joys and sorrows of one’s pupils can one win their love’.20 Many succumbed to his wooing; for some he became a surrogate father, and the correspondence between himself and a number of former pupils, lasting in some cases until his death in 1862, testifies to the sincere affection in which he was held. Others, however, held themselves aloof. Among these was Pushkin. ‘Why Pushkin rejected all the attentions of the director and his wife remains an unsolved mystery for me,’ wrote Pushchin forty years later.21

The lycéens, thrown intimately together, isolated from outside influence, never leaving the Lycée from one year’s end to the next, formed a close-knit society: indeed, they referred to themselves as ‘a nation’, emphasizing their independence and unity. An extraordinarily strong esprit de corps bound the group together, persisting long after they had quitted the Lycée. For most, 19 October remained a significant anniversary throughout their lives. Pushkin had known little parental affection, and was now, in addition, cut off from his family: though his mother visited him in January 1812, he next saw her in April 1814, after the family had moved to St Petersburg. For him, more than for most of his companions, the Lycée nation became a replacement for the family. The bond was too strong for him to accept, as others did, Engelhardt as a surrogate parent.

Of his tutors only Aleksandr Kunitsyn, the young teacher of moral and political science whose speech had so impressed Alexander, had a lasting influence: his teachings on natural law, on the rights and obligations of the citizen, the relationship between the individual and society are reflected in Pushkin’s work. ‘He created us, nourished our flame/He placed the cornerstone,/He lit the pure lamp,’22 Pushkin wrote of him in 1825; and, sending him in January 1835 a copy of his History of the Pugachev Rebellion, inscribed it ‘To Aleksandr Petrovich Kunitsyn from the Author as a token of deep respect and gratitude’.23

Other than as a poet, he had an undistinguished school career. In November 1812 the academic and moral supervisor, Martyn Piletsky, wrote of him:

His talents are more brilliant than fundamental, his mind more ardent and subtle than deep. His application to study is moderate, as diligence has not yet become a virtue with him. Having read a great number of French books, often inappropriate to his age, he has filled his memory with many successful passages of famous authors; he is also reasonably well-read in Russian literature, and knows many fables and light verses. His knowledge is generally superficial, though he is gradually accustoming himself to a more thorough mode of thought. Pride and vanity, which can make him shy, a sensibility of heart, ardent outbursts of temper, frivolity and an especial volubility combined with wit are his chief qualities. At the same time his good-nature is evident; recognizing his weaknesses, he is willing, with some success, to accept advice […] In his character generally there is neither constancy nor firmness.24

The comments of the different subject teachers echo Piletsky’s assessment: ‘His reasonable achievement is due more to talent than to diligence’; ‘very lazy, inattentive and badly-behaved in the class’; ‘empty-headed, frivolous, and inclined to temper’.25 In the list of pupils, ordered according to their deportment, which was drawn up at regular intervals, Pushkin’s place was invariably towards the bottom: twenty-third in 1812; twenty-fourth, twenty-eighth and twenty-sixth in the three following years. His best subjects at school were Russian literature, French literature and fencing. In the final examinations, taken in May 1817, he was judged ‘excellent’ in those three subjects; ‘very good’ in Latin literature and state economics and finances; and ‘good’ in scripture and Biblical studies, in logic and moral philosophy, in natural, private and public law, and in Russian civil and criminal law. He had also studied, his graduation certificate noted, history, geography, statistics, mathematics and the German language.

Of the lycéens he was closest to Pushchin, Delvig, Küchelbecker, and Yakovlev. Pushchin was upright, honest, honourable; a hard-working, intelligent student; liked by all, yet, perhaps, a little imperceptive. His nickname was ‘tall Jeannot’; Pushkin was known as ‘the Frenchman’, for his proficiency in the language and encyclopaedic knowledge of the country’s literature.* They are linked in a verse of one of the songs the lycéens composed about each other:

Tall Jeannot

Without knowing how

Makes a million bons mots,

While our Frenchman

Lauds his own taste

With a string of four-letter words.26

Anton Delvig was plump, clumsy and phenomenally lazy. He was a very poor student, continually rebuked for his behaviour: ‘He is rude in his manner, insolent in his speech, and so disobedient and obstinate as to ignore all admonitions and even to laugh when he is reprimanded.’27 His only interest was Russian literature; he knew a mass of verse by heart. As with Pushkin, his talent for poetry blossomed at the Lycée. He was the first to appear in print, when a poem on the capture of Paris appeared in the Herald of Europe in June 1814. In one Lycée poem – one of the best he ever wrote – dedicated to Pushkin, he prophesies literary immortality for his friend:

Pushkin! Even in the forests he cannot hide himself,

His lyre will betray him with loud singing,

And from the mortals Apollo will carry away

The immortal to rejoicing Olympus.† 28

The third of the Lycée’s poets was Wilhelm Küchelbecker, in some ways the strangest of all the pupils. Tall and very thin, he had had an attack of St Vitus’s Dance (Sydenham’s chorea) in childhood, which had left him with a facial tic and deaf in one ear. Engelhardt wrote of him: ‘He has read all the books in the world about all the subjects in the world; has much talent, much diligence, much good will, much heart and much feeling, but, alas, with all this he has no taste, tact, grace, moderation or clear aim. However, he is an honest, innocent soul, and the obstinacy he sometimes displays is only the result of a Quixotic honour and virtue with a considerable admixture of vanity.’29 No other pupil was referred to so often in the lycéens’ songs, or had so many epigrams written about him. In general Küchelbecker bore the attacks stoically, but when Malinovsky threw a plate of soup over his head at dinner he had to be taken to the sickbay with a fever, escaped, and tried to drown himself in the lake. A cartoon in one of the magazines produced by the lycéens shows a boat-load of teachers fishing for him with a boat-hook. His passionate, impractical idealism manifested itself even in his views on literature, in which he preached the virtues of the eighteenth-century ode, of archaic language, and of the hexameter.

‘Coarse, passionate, but appreciative, zealous, clean and very diligent’: so reads a report on Mikhail Yakovlev.30 A talented musician, who sang to the guitar, he set a number of Delvig’s and Pushkin’s works to music, both at the Lycée and later. At the Lycée, however, where his nickname was ‘the clown’, he was best known for his imitations. He had a huge repertoire of two hundred roles. They include, besides all the teachers and most of the pupils, Italian bears (no. 93), their attendants (no. 94), a samovar (no. 98), Russian bear attendants (no. 109), Alexander I (no. 129), a ship (no. 170) and a mad sergeant of hussars (no. 179).31 Later, when Pushkin was living in Moscow, he asked a friend from St Petersburg what the subject of Yakovlev’s latest imitation was. ‘The St Petersburg flood’ was the reply. ‘And how’s that?’ ‘Very lifelike.’32

The first three months of the Lycée’s existence passed quietly; Alexander I’s birthday was celebrated on 12 December; Volkhovsky was adjudged the best student of the term: his name, and that of Gorchakov (first in deportment), were inscribed in gold letters on a board which was put up in the school hall. Razumovsky ordered it to be taken down and informed Malinovsky that innovations of this kind were not to be introduced without his permission. The last week of the year was a holiday. By the beginning of 1812 war with France seemed imminent. In February and March the lycéens turned out to cheer the guards and army regiments passing through Tsarskoe Selo on their way south to join the Russian First Army in Vilna. Commander-in-chief of this army, and Minister of War, was Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, who was distantly related to Küchelbecker, and had been instrumental in securing a place for him at the Lycée.

In May Pushkin spent five days in the sickbay with a feverish cold; he was thirteen on the twenty-sixth of that month; on 9 June the Lycée was visited by the Metropolitan of Moldavia, Gabriel Banulescu-Bodoni; and on 12 June Napoleon’s army of half a million men crossed the Neman. The news was received in Tsarskoe Selo five days later. From that time on the lycéens followed, with growing anxiety and dismay, the progress of the invasion in the Russian and foreign newspapers in the reading-room, and in the bulletins which Nikolay Koshansky, who taught Latin and Russian literature, made it his business to compose and to read on Sundays in the school hall. Delvig earned instant popularity by his vivid account of the events he had witnessed as a nine-year-old during the campaign of 1807: a complete fantasy which, nevertheless, deceived the lycéens and even Malinovsky.