“But let us return to the worthy proprietors of Nenaradova, and see what is happening there.
Nothing.”
More than once our assumptions and expectations are proven incorrect as the narratives unfold. The narratives themselves are also collections, like little Russian nested dolls, matryoshkas, where one story is embedded in side of another. Pushkin also treats us to superbly balanced stories.
There is much more to these seemingly simple stories. Consider the complications suggested by the Introduction. What struck your fancy in either one of the stories?
Chance and strange fate seem to almost take on a life of their own in these stories by Pushkin. He describes situations, where such extraordinary things happen but described with the pretext of a being nothing but normal. With these strange twists of fate, Pushkin adds a level of mysticism to stories seemingly based in reality. For instance, with the Blizzard, Pushkin begins the story with a cookie cutter forbidden love story, where Masha loves someone below her parent’s standards. The story seems to go along as usual until her lover, Vladimir, gets lost in the snowstorm and arrives at a closed church. Pushkin again leaves the reader almost with nothing. Masha is struck with a terrible fever for seemingly no apparent reason, then Vladimir packs up and leaves to die in the army with no explanation, and finally Masha’s father dies causing the family to move away. Pushkin departs quickly from a stereotypical love story into a more chaotic and unknown narrative. Not until the very end of the book, when Pushkin finally reveals that Masha was married to the wrong man, who she happened to find and fall in love with, is the reader provided with an explanation of what exactly is happening. Pushkin with these extraordinary twists of fate and strange coincidences seems to be directly satirizing the typical “love story”. Pushkin masterfully hides the key to his irony, until the very end, where the reader is finally revealed to what now seems an obvious joke. In doing this, Pushkin not only creates twists in the plotline but also complete reversals in the reader’s impression of the story.
I found “The Shot/ Bыстрел” as a very interesting story. Coincidentally, we read “The Shot” for RUSS 202 this past week and so I had the chance to read them in both Russian and English (the Russian version ‘dumbed down’ for non-native speakers). In the beginning, we are introduced to a very mysterious and interesting character, Silvio; a once Hussar army man and a great shooter with a pistol. The narrative begins to revolve around him once he is brought into the story in the second paragraph. Its interesting to note that this story is told by one of the officers who is fancied by Silvio. This narrator helps this story come to a full circle when he meets the Count, the man in which Silvio was to return to Moscow to duel with. The narrator is then informed of what happened to Silvio, of how he met up with the Count but then spared his life as the Countess begged Silvio to not shoot the Count. My assumption was that Silvio would return to Moscow to kill the man in which owed him a duel; but I was proven wrong as I continued to read the story. As mentioned, the stories are like matryoshkas, one placed in the other with parallel facts and ideas but which might occur in two different settings and time. I enjoyed reading “The Shot” because at the end Silvio was kind enough to spare the man’s life even though he would have been able to kill him easily. “”Then he turned to go, but passing in the doorway, and looking at the picture that my shot had passed through, he fired at it almost without taking aim, and disappeared.”‘ (pg. 53) And earlier the narrator had mentioned, “… but it was not the painting that struck me, but the circumstance that the canvas was shot through by two bullets, one planted just above the other.” (pg. 50) Silvio could have easily avenged the slap he received from the Count years ago but instead proved to him that he had the skill but in a way not the heart.
Pushkin definitely works to upset the reader’s expectations in both of these stories. I very much liked the part of “The Snowstorm” when, immediately after setting up a forbidden love story, he removes the forbidden aspect by having Maria’s mother consent to the marriage, and then has Vladimir write an “insane letter” refusing to even see Maria again. After this, the reader really has no idea what is going to happen next, because Pushkin has so effectively removed all the predictable possibilities, and he takes his time offering an explanation. A similar thing happens in “The Shot,” when Pushkin sets up the scene for a violent act of retribution by Silvio, but nothing of the kind happens, and the two bullet holes in the picture are explained fairly undramatically. Love, in “The Snowstorm,” and honor, in “The Shot,” are transformed from dull cliches into the objects of ridicule. Especially coming on the heels of “Poor Liza,” I found this subtle irreverence very refreshing.
Something that I found especially enjoyable was the way that the characters of the protagonists unfold and become more complex with every new story in the story. As mentioned above, we are left in the dark about some key information until the end of these short stories. But especially in the shot, while the story is obscured, I found the personalities of the characters to become more faceted to the reader. At first Silvio is a mystic hero, admired by the young officers. Soon, however we are introduced to a darker side of him, just to have him clear the confusion and disappear. At that point, the reader, or at least I, considered him to be a man that puts a lot of importance on honor, form and appearance and finally got the opportunity to clear a silly issue from his youth that had burdened him for a long time as it had put a stain on his honor that he worked so hard to preserve. However, when we hear the end of the story Silvio gets a cruel twist. We can see that it is not the rescue of his honor that brings his peace of mind, but holding the life of his former opponent in his hands. Well, he is not so honorable anymore. Similar transformations can be witnessed in the other characters: Masha turns from a lovesick young girl after a few steps into a woman that leads her life quite independently. The count turns from a never-do-well into a loving husband. While their stories to explain why these people changed the way they did, it is the change in personality that is given to us first, not the circumstances that lead to it.
“The Shot” certainly exemplifies the layering of stories within a text. The actual tale, of Silvio and the Count’s saga, is embedded within the text about the narrator’s life and experiences. Two separate people, the two heroes of the real tale, each tell half of the story to the narrator. What value is gained, then, from embedding this tale within the story of the narrator? Considering the implications of Pushkin’s introduction, the reader is to believe that all of the stories are true and were told to Ivan Belkin. He even lists the person from whom he heard each of the stories. This form could serve to explain how the initial tale came to Ivan Belkin, presumably through the narrator. In “The Snowstorm,” Bourmin’s telling of his tale serves to bring the story of Maria full circle; all the pieces fall into place.
Our assumptions do prove incorrect as the narratives unfold, but what struck me about “The Snowstorm” is the incredible matter-of-factness with which the story is told. It might be full of twists and surprises, but the attitude of the narration makes it seem like the reader should be nonplussed by much of the story. Maria reads French novels, and is “consequently in love” (55). “It need scarcely be mentioned” that the object of her love is poor (55). The lovers arrive “quite naturally” (55) at the idea of running away together. I love that this sharply contrasts with the bizarre and quite unnatural way that events unfold; the narrator certainly tells the story as a natural progression of perfectly understandable reactions to events, but the plot is not at all predictable or normal. Maria sets up events at the end to provide Bourmin with an opportunity to declare his love for her, moving along the normal progression towards marriage – but this planned situation twists bizarrely at the end. Considering Ben’s comments about the role of fate and chance in the stories, this matter-of-fact narration contrasts even more with the bizarre events that unfold.
I thought “The Snowstorm” was a more enjoyable read than “The Shot,” in that Pushkin rewards us in the end with a twist that connects Bourmin with Maria Gavrilovna. However, perhaps because of its relatively weak story arc, I found “The Shot” to be the more fascinating of the two. Speaking of its story, there is no cathartic denouement; Silvio does not kill the Count, as we are led to believe he will throughout the first part. Indeed, Pushkin does not even offer us the anticlimax of a surprise change of heart on Silvio’s part, as we meet the Count early in Part II and he proceeds to act as narrator to the story of their last meeting. In constructing “The Shot” with little tension, however, Pushkin pushes the psyches of the story’s major characters to the fore. Unlike with “The Snowstorm,” we are left with many questions that define the relationship between Silvio and the Count that Pushkin refuses to answer. We cannot explain, for instance, what brings about the change within Silvio that results in his sparing the Count; there is nothing in the first part to justify his final decision. Equally inexplicable is the Count: despite being frightened by Silvio’s appearance, he apparently finds no importance in protecting himself in the future, as he does not practice his shot. In the end, then, Pushkin creates characters that defy themselves, and in this way stresses human nature over an interesting storyline.
In “The Shot” I felt that Silvio’s character changed dramatically by the end of the story. In the beginning he does not seem to care about his honor when it is insulted by the drunken officer. It is almost comical what is seen to be grounds for a duel by all these young officers. They all see duels as justified because of the need to uphold your honor and Silvio refusing to duel is looked down upon. From our perspective, Silvio seems to be magnanimous in that he spared the drunken officers life, but as the story progresses Silvio becomes a person who is obsessed with one thing. He is obsessed with having power over other people; he spares the drunken officer and the count simply because he has already demonstrated the power to take their lives. This story is a great framing of the kind of sociopaths that feel that there is a need to fight a duel; officers with nothing else to do, noblemen that value their lives very little, and those who wish to have power over other peoples’ lives.
“The Snowstorm” is a brilliant little tale that brings together the seemingly disjointed happenings of the snowstorm into a cohesive whole at the very end. Certain incidents do not seem to follow logically from others. For instance, it is hard to understand why Maria’s lover refuses her after the snowstorm and why she suddenly falls ill. The snowstorm seems to bring some kind of barrier between the young lovers, even as Maria gains consent from her parents to marry. It is only at the end, that we realize that Maria was married, by chance alone, to the person that she ends up falling in love with at the end. This strange series of events adds some mysticism to the story and invests the snowstorm with the power that allows this story to break away from being a simple and typical love story.
I personally found “The Snowstorm” a superficially more enjoyable and readable story, in that Pushkin wove more suspense into the narrative. Fundamentally, though, the short story contains a variation of a tried and true formula: a wealthy woman falls in love with a man of appropriate status, there is a glitch in the proceedings, but the glitch is ultimately resolved. Although Vladimir ends up as a discarded, really tragic figure, the plot ends with a traditionally successful twist. In “The Shot,” while a bit harder to digest, I feel Pushkin is more successful in manipulating the expectations and emotions of the reader. The author introduces readers to a mysterious Silvio, and, like the narrator, we are curious about his motivations. As Nathan mentioned, this story is less satisfying as there is no “cathartic denouement”—no grand culminating event to justify or condemn Silvio’s actions. Rather, Silvio expresses a subtle acceptance of emotional superiority (as told by the Count in the second chapter), and their score is settled with relatively little drama. Pushkin’s decision to exclude a final vengeful act leads to a feeling of unfulfilled emptiness on the part of the reader, the same emptiness that is almost certainly felt by Silvio, himself.
I think that the most jarring element of both stories was dramatic shifts in scale. Their brevity and ‘simple’ focus betrays the reader, initially, into believing the story to have a swift ending, which we expect almost in accordance with the laws of gravity – Newtonian-like – that given a set of circumstances we should see a particular ending (equal and opposite reactions and the like).
Both of the stories, however, have a point at which the narrative shifts from a small-scale, ‘simple fable’ into a slightly longer term arrangement: in The Shot it’s at the beginning of Chapter 2, and in The Snowstorm it is on page 60, when Masha is bed-ridden. At both of these points I felt as though I were being wrenched from the story’s ‘natural’ course towards something unexpected and different which – because we started with a different expectation as to how time would flow – we can no longer predict. As time stretches out the relationships between characters collapse or adjust until some new set of circumstances takes place. In the case of both stories, a new set of neighbors arrives, supposedly heralding something new but in reality tying back to events that took place years ago.
This temporal change allows Pushkin room to fiddle with his characters and, most importantly, with the outcome of their passions, whose energy has been cut short. We expect that Silvio will kill his enemy in cold blood and that Masha will marry Vladimir, but – whether through a step gone awry or the reader’s mistaken interpretation – the characters surprise us somewhat. There decisions display another aspect of their character – if not unnoticed depth, then a new facet we had not witnessed. As a reader we are asked to stay on our toes and not expect simplistic moral preaching. The Shot shows that it is not the taking of life that is important, but that life is appreciated in some way. Similarly, The Snowstorm shows a dissatisfaction with contrived romances culminating in a fated marriage to a different, though better, man.
Both, “The Shot,” and, “The Snowstorm,” treat the reader- or at least this reader- to highly unsatisfactory endings. Upon reaching the end of each story, my emotional response was, I imagine, akin to someone punching me in the face as I went in for a high-five. Although I recognized a distinct lack of emotional tension in either story, the endings still supremely disappointed me. I expected Pushkin to offer at least some shock and awe after presenting situations I found to be bland at best. This is especially true in, “The Shot.” As soon as the Count’s position is revealed, I mentally geared up for some sort of interesting resolution to their conflict. But of course that didn’t happen. The end of, “The Snowstorm,” was at least a little surprising, but all I was thinking was, “what happened to that other guy?” However, with both stories, I would venture to say that the strongest thing I felt was, “oh, what a weird coincidence.”
I didn’t know what to think when you said in class that Pushkin would be poking fun at the brand of sentimentalism employed in Poor Liza. But after reading just those two stories, I see exactly how that’s the case. Even with what you say is a poor translation, I can see that Pushkin is mocking Karamzin’s style. Pushkin continually introduces the possibility of a dramatic build-up only to dash it shortly thereafter. No fun!
Unlike Danielle, I was very content with the ending in both stories. Why is it that we need a satisfactory ending that ties up all the loose ends? Despite their obviously fictional tales, “The Shot” and “The Snowstorm” (titled “The Blizzard” in my book), or at least the way in which the situations they contain take unexpected twists, seem to me more realistic than your average clichéd story of love and/or honor. The unexplained situations in “The Snowstorm”, such as the fact that Vladimir no longer wanted to see Maria after he missed the wedding, along with the unfinished duel between Silvio and the Count in “The Shot”, certainly make these stories vastly different from Karamzin’s “Poor Liza”, in which the author sets up the story so that almost all of the reader’s predictions are fulfilled. The less than exciting climax at the end of “The Snowstorm” and the fact that in “The Shot”, what I thought to be the climax was written in past tense, only emphasize the abnormality of both stories. Pushkin did not completely avoid cliché, in that at the end of “The Snowstorm” Maria does in fact end up with a man she loves, an in “the Shot”, Silvio feels the need to show the Count that he capable of killing him, instead of simply walking out. Will love and honor always prevail?
Pushkin seems to love misdirecting his reader. Looking at many of the posts above it seems like most of the people reading these stories were somewhere between mildly and completely thrown by certain events as they transpired. Pushkin seems to have a way of setting up his characters in the beginning of the novel so that your impression of them as a reader changes dramatically from the beginning to the end.
In “The Shot” Pushkin opens the story from the perspective of a younger member of the military who obviously respects and admires Silvio. From the point of introduction one gets the impression that Silvio is a man of intelligence and action. Within the story Silvio’s reserved personality is deemed an admirable quality by his peers, not unlike similar characterization of Maria’s regard for Bourmin in “the Snowstorm,” where she finds laconic nature mysterious and engaging. Within Pushkin’s narrative style I found that this correlated with his propensity to use character development as a means of revealing previously unexposed faults. In the case of Silvio I was thoroughly disillusioned with his character by the end of the story. Not that I am disappointed that Silvio refrained from committing cold-blooded murder in front of a man’s wife, but sitting around for years waiting for a chance at revenge and then not even following through makes Silvio seem more than a little pathetic. Instead of seeing him as the generous host and deadly marksman, Silvio’s nature seems timorous and without integrity.
Also, in “the Snowtorm” the characters and plot go in a direction contradictory to what is expected. More important than the fact that Masha doesn’t end up in her cliche love affair was that Pushkin chose to leave Vladimir’s disappearance completely unexplained. Whereas in “Poor Liza,” it is possible to sympathize with the plight of Liza’s would-be husband, we are given no insight into the motivations or justifications for which Vladimir withdrew from their passionate love. He seems like a perfectly decent fellow until all of our preconceptions get thrown out with one line, and he is rarely mentioned again. As far as the plot goes, Pushkin presents us with the perfect cliffhanger and then leaves the reader with curiosity thoroughly unsatisfied.
In “The Shot” and “The Snowstorm”, Pushkin weaves two unemotional and strange stories which leave the reader with a smirk upon reflection. Neither “The Shot” nor “The Snowstorm” fits into traditional story lines. Pushkin’s unconventional approach to common themes of revenge and prohibited love give his work its tongue-in-cheek effect.
In “The Shot”, the reader expects Silvio to seek bloody revenge on the Count. At that time, it seemed that duels were common and honorable. However, Silvio does not kill the Count and with this does not become the type of hero the reader is expecting.
Perhaps even more obvious is the expected ending of “The Snowstorm”. Masha and Vladimir, in love against her parents’ will, are expected to succeed in marrying each other and living together forever. Instead, she marries the wrong man and he dies in war. This blunt and cruel ending to what starts as a well-known and loved story line is both shocking and disconcerting.
With these alternate endings to seemingly predictable situations, Pushkin seems to be questioning what is “sentimental”. Is it actually heartbreakingly beautiful to elope against one’s parents wishes? Is bloody revenge truly the most dramatic ending? I’m not sure, but I do know that by taking an alternate route from what is predictable in these stories, Pushkin forces us to question the simplicity and predictability of sentimentalism.
At certain points while reading Pushkin’s “The Shot” and “The Snowstorm” I felt less like I was reading works from 19th century Russia and more so that they were dictums on the absurd by either Thomas Nagel or Albert Camus. Especially during “The Snowstorm” where the blizzard, which seemingly subjects Masha to the worst that existential dread has to offer, losing the love of her life and being resigned to the malaise of estate living, actually allows for the manifestation of her renewed good fortune in the character Bourmin. Pushkin through the guise of his naïve narrator seems to want the reader to revel with him in the profound depths of absurdity these stories have wired into the very ingenuity of their plots. The vengeful ex-Hussar gives up his turn and later his shot during a duel we were led to believe was the very core of his being, his most intimate fascination. A snowstorm gets a woman to forgo following through on a romance born out of French novels and instead marries a highly touted veteran who she falls in love with some years later. These frameworks for short stories in the hands of lesser writers would seem coy to the point of begging. Yet with Pushkin’s pen they are brief reveries delighting in the oddity of existence.
I found Pushkin’s satirical or tongue-in-cheek generalizations to be the most revealing of his sense of humor, and of his mockery of sentimentalist writers such as Karamzin. In the first story, “The Shot,” Pushkin’s more flippant observations seem to be about attitude toward bravery of young males. Pushkin pointedly remarks, “Want of courage is the last thing to be pardoned by young men, who usually look upon bravery as the chief of all human virtues” (45). In fact, one could argue that Silvio’s jealousy of the Count, who was earlier described as embodying “the most reckless bravery” (47). This bravery is what Silvio is haunted by after the first duel and is what he seeks to destroy as he revisits the Count years later.
The second tale, “The Snowstorm” revolves around love, obviously. And as such as tale Pushkin points most of his quips at women and the French. Pushkin kills two birds with one stone, hitting both women and the French in both a social and literary commentary with: “Maria Gavrilovna had been brought up on French novels, and consequently she was in love” (55). Later while reportedly explicating Maria’s fate, Pushkin concludes with “ […] etc., etc. Moral proverbs are wonderfully useful in those cases where we can invent little in our own justification” (60). As a later commentary toward the French, Pushkin’s Russian conquerors ironically play the French song “Vive Henri-Quatre” in celebration after the defeat of Napoleon’s French army.
I found both these stories enjoyable…although I was somewhat robbed of the full dissonance between expectation and actual plot progression. Like Luis, I came across these stories in RUSS202 (albeit a few years back and I didn’t immediately recognize them). I preferred “The Snowstorm”, but not for its twists and turns (although they make the sickly sweet ending bearable), rather the characters seem less contrived (or at least more familiar). Silvio, on the other hand, exhibits skill, patience and philosophy to a godlike degree and the narrator is somewhat ridiculous in his naïveté. Furthermore, “The Snowstorm’s” incredibly coincidental conclusion and Vladimir’s unsatisfying fate smack of the ridiculously unlikely events that occur in real life. That said, Pushkin manipulates the reader’s perceptions more dramatically in “The Shot”. Silvio begins a reserved and repentant duelist, then becomes intensely vengeful and petty, and dies a sophisticated moralist. In this way its ending is somewhat more uplifting I expected.
The introduction seems to mock provincial primitiveness and pettiness, especially as a preferred setting for romances. Pushkin characterizes the alleged Belkin as an impractical young landowner of no particular consequence from innocent and honest origins. The absence of detail from Belkin’s biography and the contradictory commentary on the stories’ veracity and invention by the anonymous letter writer enhance the ridiculous and simple background of dear Belkin. One wonders how he could do anything competently at all. The final detail that caught me was the reference to the provincial doctor’s expertise in such ailments as “corns”.
I found “The Snowstorm” to be quite humorous. All through the beginning, I expected Vladimir and Maria to either 1) run away successfully, get married, live happily, then go back to Maria’s home and not be accepted, or 2) they get married but the reality of supporting themselves kick and and Maria learns her lesson. I never quite expected the
“let us… see what is happening there.
Nothing.”
that came after.
Then there is a bit of sarcasm when Maria’s delirious ravings are mistake for the love that overcomes all obstacles – except that in this case, Maria did not have to, on the surface, undertake any shocking actions, but Praskovia still came to the cliche conclusions for let Vladimir marry Maria:
“that poverty is not a crime, that one does not marry wealth, but a man, etc., etc.” The “etc., etc” show especially that those are only but a few of the cliches for the themes of romantic stories. Towards the end of the story, Maria’s thoughts about and her process of influencing Bourmin to propose to her could go on for pages and pages, but Pushkin simply sums it up in about four lines. Then later when Bourmin finds Maria, she is dressed in white as “a veritable heroine of romance.”
It is amusing how Pushkin turned another potentially rich romance story into something of a joke.
While my emotional response was not quite as intense as being punched in the face while going in for the high 5er, I do sympathize with Danielle. Pushkin, in “the snowstorm” anyway, gets annoying with how he teases the reader. The stories seem to be exercises in the craft of storymaking solely for their own sake. They are cute little irreverent pieces which are told to entertain rather than enlighten. (which is pretty refreshing considering we’re in the wake of Karamzin and looking forward to Tolstoy..)
The stories, however, are very well made! they remind me of math equations in their simple symmetry. This is true for “The Shot” especially. The “Snowstorm” shows much more use of a technique that piques the readers interest with an expected conclusion, then allows for a twist to let the interest slacken. This process in the writing occurs rhythmically and happens at least eight times. It got a little grating, especially when one considers how Pushkin must have imagined readers to approach it.
Its very easy to imagine Pushkin’s training in poetic technique after reading these stories. The balance and timing of the stories have an indisputable rhythm which Pushkin is in very firm control of.
I liked all of his jesting remarks – “Maria Gavrilovna had been brought up on French novels, and consequently was in love.” and am really looking forward to seeing what else he has to offer..
Like several of my classmates before me, I was struck by the anticlimactic endings of both “The Shot” and “The Snowstorm”. Neither story left me with a feeling that it had been resolved, but at the same time I knew that they had been. Intellectually Pushkin resolves the stories, but does not do so emotionally. Silvio and The Count have another fateful meeting, and just as importantly, the narrator gets to hear about this meeting. Bourmin and Maria are reunited and Vladimir is pushed out of the picture. These endings both conclude the arcs of the stories and bring cerebral closure to the narratives, however they leave the reader on an emotional hook. Silvio again walks away from the duel for relatively unknown reasons; there is no show down at the O.K. Corral, no morally grounded refusal to duel. Bourmin ends up with Maria, but is also introduced to the reader at the very end of the story. Most of the story follows Vladimir in his quest to marry the girl of his dreams, even his noble trek to the chapel through a heavy snowstorm. Pushkin however, instead of the story ending happily ever after, kills off the main character and introduces another man to reunite Maria with. The stories do not emotionally end, they sharply cut off.
As has been told to us by our professor, these stories are part of a greater narrative by Pushkin. There is layered satire here, like those Russian dolls everyone loves. I have to ask myself what Pushkin’s larger goal is here. What commentary is he trying to make? Are these endings (which are extremely atypical in Western Literature) of particular significance in Russian Literature, or are they more common? What is being satired?
I’d like to point out, in terms of embedding, the many levels on and lenses through which we approach these stories. Take, for example, the end of “The Snowstorm,” which can be explicated from top down as: 1. what Alexander Pushkin historically wrote 2. the reader interprets as 3. the implied author “Pushkin” writing that 4. the publisher writes that 5. a friend of Ivan Petrovich Belkin writes that 6. Ivan Petrovich Belkin writes that 7. the maiden K.I.T. related that 8. Bourmin related 9. what happened. Thus, Pushkin’s narratives pass through so many mouths that they lose their sentimental senses of Truth and Emotion (ideals elevated by Karamzin). Instead, such values are concentrated in the reader who, rather than sympathizing with literary expressions of love, honor, etc., ends up having to judge these in the characters for himself, in a way that exposes the reader’s own principles. Pushkin pushes the buttons of and appeals to the reader’s interpretation by framing his stories with naïve, manipulative narrators, stick-out chapter breaks, situational happenstance, and sweeping generalizations (among these the love/French books comment [55] + interjections about women’s forgiveness of certain faults/follies [63] and men’s lack thereof [45]), not to mention a simple, lightly pedantic tone. Everyone so far seems to agree that Pushkin’s stories achieve a particular unpredictability; I’d argue that this stems from the reader having to decide where he or she stands, and to often being left with nowhere to do so! I actually appreciated “The Shot” for its almost intentionally sub-par elusiveness; Pushkin draws attention to the literary qualities (balance of perspective, consistency in tone/character, constructedness) to belie and diminish the otherwise heavy values of honor, death, companionship, revenge, and so on. Basically, he trivializes sentimentalist content and critique by writing such that readers supply the true emotion (suspense evokes frustration, anticipation, questioning, etc.), instead of any member of the 9 stages mentioned above, who could only tell of these feelings.
I wanted to talk a little bit about how the introduction ‘from the Publisher’ affects the way these short stories are read. As we said in class, Pushkin separates and even contrasts himself with the naïve Belkin. One point that my classmates have touched on so far is whether or not the endings of The Shot and The Snowstorm are satisfactory. I’d like to take similar passages in both of the resolutions of the stories and see them through the lens of this dual-narrator.
In The Shot, when Silvio decides not to kill the Count, Belkin concludes that Silvio was indeed a hero. This idea was first suggested at the beginning of the story, and was ascribed to the narrator’s tendency for sentimentalism: “Being endowed by nature with a romantic imagination, I had become attached more than all the others to the man whose life was an enigma, and who seemed to me the hero of some mysterious drama,” (45). It seems here that Belkin’s inability to situate Silvio in his moral or aesthetic paradigm is precisely the impetus to call him a hero. Then, at the end of the story, Belkin concludes that Silvio is definitely a hero, again because of the ambiguity of the Count’s story, “The hero of it I never saw again” (53).
In the same way, Belkin establishes Maria as a sentimentalist and then gives here the title of ‘heroine’ when matters become complicated. Within the first page of the story, Belkin writes, “Maria Gavrilova had been brought up on French novels, and consequently was in love,” (55). And near the end of the story, right before the surprise of Bourmin’s past ‘wife’ is revealed, Belkin calls Maria, “A veritable heroine of romance” (63).
Why is it so important for Pushkin that, as the stories become more intricate, Belkin must assign overly simplistic meaning? This is, I believe, what many of my classmates had issue with. Pushkin writes that Belkin “Led a most temperate existence, avoiding all manner of excess…” He also asserts that Belkin has “a lack of imagination”. I think Pushkin, here, is responding to the sentimental, which is after all the penchant to itemize and extrapolate for the sake of inserting meaning. What this does is give the reader the opportunity to see the flaws in such an understanding of the world. When both Silvio and Maria are called hero and heroine, respectively, the reader is forced to distance him or herself from the narrator and find complexity – or some might say, lack of meaning or ‘weak’ meaning – in the bizarre endings. In this way, Pushkin is able to confront the human tendency to smooth over the complexity, and in this revelation he seems to implicitly ask us to find meaning in the absurd.