SO WHAT DO WOODCOCKS AND WALLENSTEIN HAVE IN COMMON? ON PUSHKIN’S OVERLOOKED PUN
https://doi.org/10.31425/0042-8795-2018-1-53-86
Abstract
Following his trip to Orenburg, Pushkin wrote to V. Perovsky attaching four copies of his History of Pugachev’s Revolt [Istoriya Pugachevskogo bunta], asking him to forward those to ‘Dahl, Pokotilov, and that hunter who likes to compare woodcocks with Wallenstein or the Caesar’.
This hunter’s identity has long since been revealed by V. Dahl in his Notes on Pushkin [Zapiski o Pushkine]: it is K. Artyukhov, director of the Orenburg-based Neplyuev military school, who once played host to Pushkin in his bathhouse and entertained him with a dialogue about woodcocks (Waldschnepfe) - gamebirds who proudly fly towards the deadly lead, wings spread widely. In Pushkin’s pun, the dying woodcock is likened to the Caesar in his composure, and to Wallenstein in his final gesture, according to Artyukhov’s impression. In Europe and Russia, the memory of A. von Wallenstein was revived after F. Schiller’s trilogy (1799). The prince apparently spread his arms and offered his unprotected chest to the murderer’s halberd. A similar description is provided by Schiller, but in his History of the Thirty Years’ War, rather than in his play Wallenstein’s Death. This history was missing from Pushkin’s library, although he may have found out about the prince’s final gesture elsewhere.
Pushkin’s pun is unique in its two-layer structure: the phonetic likeness reaches into a non-verbal, pantomimic level. In addition, the quip and the final phrase in the letter provide an example of metered prose.
About the Author
I. Savelzon
Orenburg State University’s Philological Faculty
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Igor Viliamovich Savelzon, Candidate of Philology, lecturer at the Department of Literature, Journalism and Methods of Teaching Literature.
Academic interests include contemporary Russian literature and studies of Orenburg-related literary heritage.
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Review
For citations:
Savelzon I. SO WHAT DO WOODCOCKS AND WALLENSTEIN HAVE IN COMMON? ON PUSHKIN’S OVERLOOKED PUN. Voprosy literatury. 2018;(1):53-86. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.31425/0042-8795-2018-1-53-86
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