This is a complex tale that has spawned a Chaikovsky opera (sometimes know even in English under the French title Pique Dame] and several films. The inclusion of the card game (faro) opens a whole new world of associations. You will find several useful and entertaining links below, but at the end of the day you must read the story and comment on it. Watch carefully the role of numbers, the city, time, the physical framing of characters (windows, chairs, coffins), coincidence. Is this romanticism or realism (but be sure to define those terms for yourself and your fellow readers)?
Deck of Cards Song (Text)
The Game of Faro (History) Be sure to play a few hands.
The Russian Пиковая дама.
The constant reference to time makes the novel feel as if it is adhering to a strict schedule, as if everything has been arranged and ordered and only awaits the appointed time to come to pass. Hermann shows up beneath Lizaveta’s window at the “customary hour” (8) each day, and Lizaveta’s letter to Hermann tells him exactly when the Countess will leave for the ball and when he should be outside the house. The priest’s words at the Countess’s funeral present the unyielding passage of time as the inevitable approach of death: the Countess “had passed long years in calm preparation for a Christian end” (19). This constant reference to time, almost frames events chronologically in the same way that Pushkin frames characters physically. Lizaveta was sitting sewing “about two days” (7) after the card party that begins the story and Hermann goes to the church “three days after the fatal night” (19). Lizaveta is sitting “near the window at her embroidery frame” (7) and the Countess is framed in her coffin, almost as if Pushkin is representing the characters as cards. The framing of events and characters, in addition to the feeling of time inexorably passing, lend to the feeling of fate that pervades the novel, as if the characters are only cards in a game. Yet card games are in large part based on chance, which also shows up in coincidences in the novel, like Hermann wandering aimlessly but ending up in front of the Countess’s house (9).
Is this representation of life as a mixture of fate and chance realism (representing the world as it is) or romanticism (portraying the world in an idealized way)? I think Pushkin does accurately represent the world throughout the story as a combination of fate and coincidence, although I think fate has less to do with our lives than Pushkin portrays. In the several paragraphs at the end, he seems to be again poking fun at Romanticism, as he says that Lizaveta marries a nice civil servant and supports a poor relative, and Tomsky becomes rich and marries well.
Romanticism and Realism are represented in the cards themselves. As was stated in the song. Deck of Cards, a deck is rooted in time or realism. There are 356 dots on the cards to represent the days, four suits for the seasons, and fifty-two cards for the weeks. But although the numerical values of the cards seem to be rooted in time and realism, something very finite and measured, the actual application of the cards seem to be rooted in romanticism. The chances of winning are slim, but one still believes in his ability to win and relies on emotion as his reasoning. Romanticism in this way is associated with chance. Cards, therefore, seem to represent a conflict between Romanticism and Realism themselves. In The Queen of Spades, this conflict is seen in the characters. Hermann is a character, who embodies time as almost as a motif. Hermann is an engineer, an occupation embodied in the physical manifestation of time, a clock. His heart is described as beating “regularly” (13), as if the ticking of a clock. Whenever, Pushkin describes him, the time as a means of setting and the word “time” is repeated almost ruthlessly. Even Liza, once she begins to see him, becomes more confined within the realities of time. However, once Hermann learns about the unusual and fantastic tale of the “Three Cards”, which would allow him to turn the romantic chance of cards into a hard realistic fact, he becomes in conflict with his inner sense of time. The whole exchange between Liza and Hermann seems timeless and therefore romantic. However, as soon as he enters house in order to supposedly meet Liza, Hermann again is surrounded by time, as if Pushkin is hinting to his intentions through imagery. Pushkin never has him adopting both of these ideas at the same time, but instead switches back and forth. However, once the ghost of the Countess tells him of the “Three, Seven, Ace”, Hermann is compelled to attempt to impose his strict reality upon the romantic game of cards but as Pushkin says, “Two Fixed Ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies occupy one and the same place in the physical world” (21). In the end, Hermann is driven to insanity with his attempts to occupy the real and the romantic at the same time. This book is both real and romantic but never simultaneously; instead, Pushkin switches back and forth, and, when Hermann gets so close to embodying both, Pushkin destructs not only the attempt but Hermann’s sanity as well.
Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades” shows an interesting interplay between the Romantic and Realist genres, and because of this I have difficulty pegging the story as strictly one or the other. I’ll begin with the Romanticism, which I view here through Baudelaire’s definition: not so much the “typical” tragic love story that we discussed at length in class the past week or so, but rather as heightened and overemphasized human emotions and conditions. Such dramatic flair is brought to the story, both directly and indirectly, through the character of the Countess. The recollection of the sensational “Muscovite Venus” and her time in Paris many years earlier is riddled with details that dramatize the recounting. Those that deal with vast sums (“she had spent half a million francs” 2) and intrigue — her calling on Count St. Germain, who is himself magnified in Pushkin’s mystifying description of his character — bring the visceral to the fore and thereby create a foundation on which the Countess’ character stands. In comparing this woman to the hollow old lady we later meet, she is not unlike other elderly women within the Romantic genre. For example, her vain and unhappy routine of attending balls (see page 7) depicts her very similarly to the old spinster Miss Havisham of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, who continues to wear her deteriorating wedding dress years after Compeyson leaves her at the altar. The Countess’ death by fright, moreover, seems in keeping with the hyperbolized emotions of Romanticism.
But such a death is nonetheless realistic, and indeed Pushkin shows just as much Realism in this story as he does Romanticism. And as the Countess represented the old Romantic ways, so too do Hermann and Lizaveta embody the newer way of thinking. Pushkin describes their relationship in very real terms, commenting repeatedly on Lizaveta’s “exceeding uneasiness” with a suitor and Hermann’s own loving but heartless attempts to swoon — e.g. his love letter “copied word for word from a German novel” (10). Even greater than through the emotions portrayed between the two young people, however, Realism shines through Hermann’s internal character. In choosing to hide in the Countess’ room rather than enter Lizveta’s, he displays a very un-Romantic choice of desire for wealth over love, and confirms this choice in claiming that money would “insure the happiness of my life” (14). After scaring the Countess to death, he admits feeling guilt, but at the same time seems to not grieve very much over the accident (18). In choosing not to heighten his grief, Pushkin consciously has pushed Romanticism out in favor of Realism.
But how to explain the Countess on the queen of spades? I’d like to look at this as an early conception of Magic Realism, a genre that straddles the realistic and the absurd much as this story does. That her spirit appears through another medium parallels the spirit of Ultima in Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima, a Mexcian-American work of Magic Realism, in which her soul is represented through the owl that repeatedly protects the young Antonio Marez.
Unlike Pushkin’s other works in this set, I felt like the success of “the Queen of Spades” was less dependent on elaborate twists of plot. I got the impression that if the author’s main intention was to baffle us with the unexpected, like it was in the majority of works within the Tales of the Late P. Belkin, he could have easily ended “the Queen of Spades” with the conclusion of chapter three. This segment ends with the death of the Countess and what would appear to be the ultimate frustration of Hermann’s desire for her great secret. Her death was dramatic and unexpected, fulfilling both of Pushkin’s usual stipulations for his stories. So what do the last three chapters add to the narrative? Pushkin allows tension to peak with the quasi-murder of the Countess, lulls us into believing that the story will follow a standard trajectory, and then with the appearance of the queen of spades presents a second, even more surprising climax.
The allusions within “The Queen of Spades” are what give this story such depth. As far as winning the money Hermann pined after with such greed, the final card being any card except the ace would be a catastrophe. However, Pushkin does not just replace the ace with any arbitrary value, but with card from which the story gets its name. Readers of his work would be familiar with the rules of Faro, and also with the associations of the various cards. For the majority of his readers the Queen of Spades would be a direct reminder of the Countess, (as explicitly referenced within the text), but at the same time would also represent the Devil, (the latent meaning of that particular card). As we have been exposed to the superstitious nature of Russian literature already, this allusion to the Devil puts Hermann’s interaction with the spirit of the Countess into a more malevolent light. I am tempted to believe that the visitation of the supposed ghost of the recently deceased old woman could be interpreted as Hermann accepting a bargain with the Devil him– (or her?) self.
I agree with Hillary’s definition of realism as “representing the world as it is” and for me, “The Queen of Spades” mostly represents realism. Numbers are very important in this story with time as well as with the cards. One number that constantly popped up for me was 3: it can be seen in the 3 cards which first appear on page 3 (I don’t know if that’s just a coincidence), the 3 waiting maids (4), they’re first encounter through letters happens in Chapter 3, Lizaveta reads 3 pages in total to the Countess (6), 3 days after Lizaveta’s letter she receives a response (11), 3 antiquated chambermaids entered when Hermann was hiding (13), it was only 3 weeks that they had know each other (16), Hermann had 3 crimes on his conscience (16), 3 ladies approached Tomsky at the ball (17), Hermann mentions a man with a 3-cornered hat (18), Hermann goes 3 days after to the funeral (19), 3 women approached the coffin before him (20), it was a quarter to 3 when the ghost of the countess went to his room (20), one of the cards themselves is a 3 (20), and finally Hermann played 3 games before losing.
For me also Hermann’s experience is realism because he doesn’t receive what he wants in the end mainly because he used Lizaveta to get to the countess. In life we can’t get everything we want and Pushkin shows that with Hermann’s addiction to wanting to know the 3 winning cards. I don’t see the romanticism as much and mainly because I think I focused on how the story sort of worked against Hermann until the end. After listening to the song about the importance of the numbers in the deck of cards, I payed very close attention to numbers that constantly popped up like the 3. Out of all the Pushkin stories we read, I really enjoyed “The Queen of Spades” the most.
False romance, guns, magic, cards, quick money…this story is almost a precursor to James Bond. The familiar elements of Romanticism – mystery, exoticism, danger – are all here. People come back from the dead to give advice, for God’s sake. But the length of the story I do not feel swept away by the mystery, or intrigued by what may come. That may be because I have some idea of what should happen, or it could just be that the Romantic elements seemed somewhat hollow.
The story, then, is flirting with the Romantic genre and with European social trends in general. Hermann was supposed to win the last game with the Ace which, around the period after the French Revolution, gained significance because as the lowest value card it represented the lower classes moving towards the center of power, and that’s Hermann to a t. He is surprised to find the Queen of Spades – representing the Countess, no doubt – defending a fellow aristocrat from bankruptcy. Here it is also useful to know that the Queen of Spades is the card of Pallas Athena, goddess of crafty intellect and defensive warfare. Nifty.
In reality, I think that this story is about Realism (strangely enough). As the reader we are led through the quest of a foreign sociopath (Hermann) as he tries to realize dreams of grandeur, while on the periphery we see Liza and Tomsky living with hardly a care the very life Hermann wants. Instead of being vindicated, the ‘advice’ which the dead Countess gives Hermann tricks him and exposes the fragility of his success, the hollowness of it all. So what could have ended as a strange tale in things that could happen, we are given a tale of what happens when we get ahead of ourselves – and this is where our discussion about narrative differences between Russia and the US comes into play. At the very end, Pushkin drives that point home – that the aristocracy always comes out on top, cool and collected, effortlessly – and that those who try hard sometimes just don’t make the cut. Herman did not make the cut, and neither did we as readers if we thought he would. Rather than imitating the imported styles/narratives of France, Pushkin writes about what is real for him, tricking the reader into thinking the former for a time, then being surprised by the latter. He would have never allowed a penny-pinching German to overcome the Russian aristocracy – would that ever happen, really?
Almost as an afterthought, we are at the end assured that Tomsky and Lizaveta wind up happily married and still rich – in case we were worried otherwise – and that Hermann is now insane.
I believe Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades” is so successful and enjoyable because of its basis in both Realism, which is, as others have said, the attempt to represent the non-literary world as closely as possible, and Romanticism. Romanticism was a tradition that swept throughout Europe during the late 18th and 19th centuries which was centered on the concept of the individual. The movement was defined by the overwhelming emotion expressed by its participants (as it spanned literature, art and music) and was known to have its characters experience emotional inspiration to the point of insanity (to mind comes Goethe’s poor Werther). Pushkin’s short story is steeped equally in both literary traditions, and because of this, its moral remains unshakably ambiguous. Indeed, the story relies on time to decide its pace—as Benjamin referenced, Hermann’s heart beats “regularly” like the ticking of a clock. Certainly Pushkin takes his culture based around gambling and ostentatious wealth from Russian society of the time. When one experiences the Countess’ return as a ghost, however, the story presumably takes a fantastic turn.
At this point one’s interpretation can veer in two opposing directions. Either the story has adopted a supernatural layer, featuring ghosts and winking cards—all circumstances driving Hermann to his eventual downfall into hysteria. Or one can choose to believe that a crazed Hermann has invented events so utterly out of the realm of Realism; Pushkin’s narrative stops being objective and begins to recount only Hermann’s insane perception of the truth. This reading does not hold up, as the three and seven cards do work, and his failure is due to sabotage by an unidentifiable force. Thus, one can choose to read this “realistically,” rejecting the notions of a supernatural force active in the narration and romantically accepting Hermann’s unstable state, or literally. Pushkin deliberately does not allow for solid proof of either theory, leaving each potential explanation with holes impossible to ignore. Such a construction reminds me of Henry James’ 1898 novella, “The Turn of the Screw,” a ghost story that, similarly, does not allow for one successful interpretation, but rather toys with the reader’s perception of insanity and the afterlife. As this story was written only 65 years after Pushkin’s, I have to wonder if James was aware of Pushkin’s ingenious composition.
Pushkin once again stresses the unpredictability of life in “The Queen of Spades” by comparing it to a card game based on chance. Hermann will give anything to learn the Countess’s secret hand, which would insure wealth and “the happiness of [his] life”, and therefore take at least the financial unpredictability out of his life. He could have easily met his goal if his German greediness hadn’t gotten in the way, and if he had not gone back to play for a third time. The story is definitely more realist than romantic, seeing as avarice and deceit reign over love (Poor Liza!). Pushkin again sets the scene for a love story when Liza notices “her Engineer” on the street, her knight in shining armor who might just rescue her from her oppressive life. Pushkin then throws that out the window when Hermann the German only manipulates her to get to the Countess and her secret. Having read The Tales of the Late P. Belkin, this minor plot twist did not take me by surprise. It is also interesting to note the risks Hermann takes in order to learn the Countess’s secret, which is ironically supposed to take all risk and unpredictability away from his life; his risky relationship with Lizaveta, sneaking into the Countess’s room, and actually expecting her to give him what he wants. In the end he does get was he wants, which ends up making him risk and lose all of his earnings, and causes him to go cuckoo.
I read “The Queen of Spades” as almost a parody of the high romantic style of fiction-writing. To me, this style means high-color, one-dimensional characters, intrigue, implausible situations, heightened emotions, etc. “The Queen of Spades” has all of those. The Countess, Lizaveta, and Hermann are all equally one-dimensional, and Lizaveta goes from timid to madly in love to despair and fury in the course of a few pages. Once we learn that Hermann has a “romantic” personality, especially, it seems like Pushkin is deliberately playing with the reader’s expectations of romanticism. The plot details are also extremely romantic: ghosts, secrets, vast sums of money, and that quintessential wrap-up tactic of leaving Hermann to die in an insane asylum. But after reading the Tales of Belkin, I think we know better than to take “The Queen of Spades” at face value as a romantic story. With his commentary on modern fiction, saying through the Countess that it all involves parricide and drowning and that there aren’t even any Russian novels, Pushkin seems to be poking fun at the very genre he emulates in this story. He plays all the romantic elements to the maximum, but in such a way that they seem ridiculous: the Countess dying with fright at an unloaded pistol, Lizaveta getting outwitted by a servant girl, Hermann’s sudden and undignified downfall. Even when Pushkin slips in the customary affected French phrases, they seem like satire, as when he calls crying at a funeral “une affectation.” He distances himself from romanticism even as he indulges in all its cliches. This made me think of how Professor Beyer said Pushkin was responsible for the Russian literary tradition as separate from the French tradition. It seems to me, at the moment, that Pushkin channeled all the tropes and cliches he subverted straight from French literature. I’ve been reading about Structuralists in literary theory, and I think the Structuralist perspective would be that Pushkin created nothing new by merely twisting and exaggerating the French traditions. I’m interested in what happens after Pushkin, and where Russian literature crosses the line from an offshoot of French literature to something really unique.
In Pushkin’s “Queen of Spades”, he pokes fun at romanticism by ultimately ending any plot lines which could be viewed as romantic. In the beginning of the story, it seems plausible that Lizaveta and Hermann could fall in love and marry. She is described as a “domestic martyr”, quickly winning the reader’s heart with her patience, humility and unfortunate position in life. This makes Hermann’s choice of money over love even more upsetting. As Nate touched on, choosing wealth over love is as realistic as it is unromantic.
Pushkin’s tongue-in-cheek attitude is evident throughout “The Queen of Spades”. When the countess requests for a novel and Tomsky asks if she would like a Russian one, she seriously asks “Are there any Russian novels?”. With this statement, Pushkin seems to scoff at the lack of appreciation and awareness of Russian writers.
Another purely Pushkin element of “The Queen of Spades” is his use of cards in the story. The cards represent secrecy, unpredictability and the paranormal. Pushkin employs gambling, a popular and destructive habit to many Russians at the time, to further his message of human fallibility. Hermann succumbs to the allure of the gambling and bets his fate on a clearly unrealistic dream. Realism is Hermann’s downfall in “The Queen of Spades” and goes along nicely with Pushkin’s satirical view.
I see “The Queen of Spades” as romanticism turned into realism. By this I mean that the imaginative, subjective, and individualistic becomes more empirical, objective, and social—or realistic in the sense of naturalistic and non-idealized. For instance: Hermann ends up mysteriously, maybe fatefully at the Countess’ house, but he chooses to return and realize a compulsion of his own accord; coincidence turns into rational, causal choice. Later, Hermann’s (and the narrator’s) imagination run wild when three cards “were perpetually running through his head[, …] haunted him in his sleep, and assumed all possible shapes,” (21) until eventually Hermann must use or actualize them in card-play. Likewise, the German’s apparently vast, untranslatable love for Lizaveta is just a cover for his worldly, greedy scheme. The Countess’ ghost, perhaps this work’s most romantic element, in the end serves to catalyze and realize the story’s resolution, rather than represent something irresolvably supernatural. Narratologically speaking, also, the tale ultimately transitions from a creative focus on Hermann to a social-realistic, omniscient summary that sort of puts everyone in his or her place at the very end; it functions as a finally straightforward acknowledgment of Hermann’s mental derangement, Lizaveta’s and the prince’s marriages, plus their social, familial situations. Although Pushkin does not entirely ignore the typical, ‘appropriate’ subjects of high literature (a prince, countess, beautiful woman, etc.), he places these in the context of hauntingly potential, if not already real, circumstances. The strength and believability of this tale, compared to Pushkin’s others, in my opinion derives from its willingness to de-romanticize wealth, high society, the private aristocratic life, and, if it may be said, mental presence. Pushkin makes real the players of what could be an idealistic (Hermann might and by some accounts should have won) or idea-istic (most important events happen in heads and hearsay until the last chapter) story. Remember, after all, the opening lines of that sixth section, which parallel incompatibilities “in the moral [and…] in the physical world.” (21) Pushkin thus pushes the romantic into the realistic, and a timeless tale into contemporary possibility.
it is interesting to imagine Pushkin, that inveterate gambler, seeing life as a game of cards. With a lively imagination it would not be hard to make the associations everywhere. This accounts for his prodigious use of numbers and numerology in his story. There are 3 maids who follow the queen everywhere, the bells of the clocks noticeably strike various times and hours, and there are many other examples noted by the previous bloggers.
What i found most interesting in the story is the theme that Hermann never wanted to “risk the necessary for a chance at the superfluous” and yet he became obsessed by the myth of the three cards because it seemed to be risk free. He thought that there was a “safe” way to gamble and make his riches. Unfortunately for him through his blindness and greed he didn’t play it safe and ended up losing much more than his money.
I dont like defining stories as romantic or realist, it seems to subtract from their substance and be inessential. However, this story i would classify as reality with a touch of fantasy, or better stated, reality with a lively imagination.
I am continually impressed by Pushkin when reading this collection of stories as he employs a variety of styles throughout his works with a mastery that allows him to predate Gabriel Garcia Marquez by roughly 160 years and still exhibit an immense talent for weaving magic realism into a moralistic folklore framed by a descent into madness. What makes this story so compelling is the contrast between where Pushkin absconds into fantasy: a world where three cards can bring untold fortune, where countesses wink from beyond death’s door, where Germans look like Napoleon, and where an ace can vanish into the mocking visage of a queen of spades, and where he plays on the all too real vices of the human soul: love for gambling and unwitting romances. The truth is Pushkin demonstrates a resistance in the stories we’ve read of his to pigeonholing, he belongs to no single school of thought. Rather he able to walk the thin line between romanticism and parody, allowing elements of both to seep into his work and disclose to the reader a truth often overlooked, that the poetic imagery and fantastic elements that comprise romanticism are informed by a realism that draws its strength from a believability that allows us to truly empathize with pages of fiction.
I don’t want to just repeat what everyone has said here, but I would like to strengthen the argument that this work is both realistic and romantic through Pushkin’s use of numbers in the Queen of Spades. Hilary did us a great service by focusing on the way that time presents itself, and I think one of the most important themes is the way that specific numerals (1 o’clock, 10 o’clock etc.) are constantly being used to progress Hermann’s story.
Given that numbers are a theme, let us consider all the numbers used in the climax of the story – chapter VI. Hermann begins the chapter obsessed with the card sequence he’s learned from the Countess “three, seven, ace”. The next number appears when Hermann wagers 47,000 rubles – an oddly specific number – on the first bet with Chekalisnky. He bets 94,000 rubles the next time. Last, after Hermann loses, the narrator on “three, seven, queen of spades,” he gives us the specific room number of the mental hospital that Hermann is in.
Why are all these details important? Obviously, Pushkin wants us to believe that the narrative does have a realist component, or else there would be no utility for these seemingly unimportant numbers. He desires that we experience the arch of action not by seeing that Hermann might have lost a large sum of money, but for us to acutely relate to Hermann’s experiences as they were. However, it is through those numbers that ground us in reality that Pushkin employs the romantic element of the story – the idea that there is an unseen sense of retribution that happens in the world. In the Queen of Spades, that retribution occurs when the Countess reappears in the form of the Queen rather than the Ace. I’m not sure what Pushkin wants us to take from this approach, but it is certainly masterful of him that he is able to contain both realist and romantic elements within one aspect of the text. Perhaps he is looking to undermine both, and, as we find common in Pushkin, show his ultimately superior wit even as a narrator-once-removed.
Well this may just be the musings of a classicist, but I detected hints of Ovid’s “Art of Love” in Hermann’s courtship of Lizaveta. Was Pushkin familiar with Ovid or trained classically or is this mere coincidence? Wholly lacking any kind of substantiation, I readily relegate it to the the realm of the human brain detecting illusory patterns where there are none. However, the similarities are interesting.
Ovid gives instructions similar to Hermann’s first letter exchange with Lizaveta: “Meanwhile, if she’s being carried in the street, cushioned, in her litter, approach. Act cool, be discreet” (Art of Love 35). Hermann is indeed discreet as he subtly slips Lizaveta a note leaving “a letter between her fingers” (10).
Concerning Hermann’s letter writing, Hermann persists in sending letters to Lizaveta everyday even when she does not respond to them, or has sent his back: “Hermann was not the man to be thus put off. Every day Lizaveta received from him a letter, sent now this way, now in that” (11). Just as Ovid advocates: “So she’s read it and won’t reply? […] Just see that she goes on receiving regular flattery.” The regular flattery being interpreted as the daily letters as well as Hermann’s consistent appearance outside her window. For Ovid promises “Persist and you’ll take even Penelope’s citadel” (Art of Love 35). And indeed Lizaveta eventually consents: “she became intoxicated with [the letters]” and later she even is in awe that “[Hermann] has succeeded in inducing her to grant him a nocturnal interview!” (11 & 16). It seems some of the strategy employed by Hermann is in line with Ovid’s advice.
Ultimately, whether or not these parallels are legitimate or artificially constructed by an overactive classics-leaning mind is irrelevant. It’s an interesting connection, but Pushkin also raises interesting points about comparative values of love and money, and which appears more valuable to youth. He also prompts his reader to make moralistic judgements along these lines: whether Hermann is inherently good or bad, or well intentioned. (I would argue he is not well intentioned, but I have gone over 250 words, and will thus leave this discussion for class).
Realism is when a writer tries to imitate life, and romanticism overemphasizes emotion. In short, I agree with the definitions that have been posted already. This story parodies romanticism by overemphasizing emotions and making the plot so fantastic. However, it also shows something about people. It shows the allure that gambling has, and many other character flaws. The nobility are cast in a negative light; the men are inveterate gamblers and the Countess is a mean and frivolous old hag. It has characters that are romanticized, but also somewhat believable. Hermann in particular is a very enigmatic character, whose fate tells us something about ourselves. I think that we are supposed to accept the fantastic happenings at the end as fact because the first two numbers working could not be mere coincidence. So, we are lead to believe that Hermann loses everything because he did not listen to the Countess’ request for him to marry Lizaveta. His disregard for this request clearly shows that the idea of becoming rich is the only thing he can focus on. This is due to the fact that nobody can be fully absorbed in two things at once, and so Hermann goes for the thing that is most important to him, which is sadly not Lizaveta.
In The Queen of Spades we find Russian society and life represented in a more realistic manner than it was in the other stories we have read. Nothing appears to be really idealized not the intentions of the characters or the personalities of them. The metaphor that has been used before that life is a card game and guided by chance, even if someone gives you that one apparently bullet-proof piece of advice, seems very suitable in this case, especially in the Russian context. This would reaffirm the notion of life happening to the person and thus the latter not really having any role in it. What is that if not Russian realism? This is as well conveyed in the use of specifics and descriptions in great detail as Jacob and others have pointed out. The queen of spades, which I personally associate with either the countess or Lizaveta, is maybe a pointer to the reader that this notion of fate happening to one is maybe not correct and applying some thought to what is presented as truth (the three cards) before accepting it would be the right way. This would most certainly be idealist, but not necessarily romantic.
Pushkin’s Queen of Spades is seemingly a romantic story, but I believe that there is something else at work here. Romanticism is the idea of doing things for love, of noble heroes overcoming odds and winning the beautiful girl. It deals outside the realm of reality, but is still intimately connected to it. The Queen of Spades has many of those elements. Hermann is a noble young officer. In addition to being a member of the upper class (noble), he has a mostly good character. He does not squander his wealth and strives to better himself. Lizaveta is clearly the heroine (if I can use that term) of the story. She is the beautiful young woman who kindly cares after this decrepit old lady. She’s not an air-headed courtier, but a likeable woman. The story also clearly leaves behind reality at points, the countess’ body winking at Hermann at the funeral, the ghost visiting him in his sleep, and the magic cards that will always win (provided the player follows the magic rules). However, like always, Pushkin does not follow through on the promise of his chosen genre. In a standard romantic book, Hermann and Lizaveta would have a more substantial relationship, the countess would have died likely of natural causes (not of Hermann scaring her to death), and the ending would have been Hermann winning, marrying Lizaveta, and providing well for her from his winnings. Pushkin does not entirely switch genres at the end, but he does throw in a large dose of realism. Realism is the literary style that shows life as it “really is”: nasty, brutish, and short. Instead of the happily ever after, Hermann loses the card game, his money, his mind, and the girl (who was never seriously interested in him anyway). In the end, The Queen of Spades is a combination of romanticism and realism, but in a way that makes it seem more like a twist of romanticism than a blend of the two.
Like many of my fellow classmates, I view “The Queen of Spades” as falling somewhere between romanticism and realism. I’ll start with my definitions. The one thing on which the many definitions I’ve located for romanticism agree upon is an emphasis on emotion and imagination- this is often represented in a larger than life manner. The definition that I work with for realism deals with a focus on ordinary events and a willingness to display the ugly elements of life.
Pushkin certainly conforms more to the standards of romanticism in this story than in any of the others we’ve read. The way Pushkin sets the scene with his inclusion of Paris and balls almost puts the reader in a fairy tale sort of mind set. The, albeit vague, descriptions of the love letters and the presence of ghosts also served to make me feel that I was reading about events larger than life- I at least felt removed from the now familiar feeling of a story mirroring real life. But the best example of Pushkin’s compliance with Romanticism is in allowing the reader’s expectations of the Countess’ story to align with the reality of the story. Being a hardened reader of Pushkin’s stories, I fully expected that the story be essentially over when the Countess was found dead, but no! The secret gets revealed!
Although Pushkin indulges the reader in those respects, he doesn’t shy away from the unpleasant aspects of life. Hermann deceives Lizaveta with his letters- a most ungentlemanly act. The death of the Countess is fairly jarring and rather vividly depicted. Finally, as I have now come to expect, we are denied a happy ending.
Although he’s much subtler than in the previous stories Pushkin is still toying with the reader in “The Queen of Spades.” He indulges the reader more by meeting (at least my) expectations more frequently. Also, the letdowns are much less extreme. But the same message of, “although you think that life can be rosy and things can go well for everyone, nothing ever goes 100% correctly,” is definitely present. And for once, I was actually satisfied with the ending.
Romanticism often deals with horror and trepidation, besides the cliché love stories. In this case, although Hermann is risk-averse and always follows his personal rule of “calculation, moderation, and hard-work,” he falls for a story that he heard at a gambling house, and becomes extremely caught up in his daydreams of amassing riches through a fail-safe way to win at faro. This daydream and desire to win drives him to act against his logic, to subconsciously arrive at the house of Countess and to return day after day. Hermann then seems to develop a wide range of emotions for Lizaveta, and vice versa, but then we find out that Hermann’s emotions are not for Lizaveta, that he was still caught up in the dreams of winning money.
At the end of the story, he experiences another surge of emotion, this time loss. So caught up in the successes of the first two games, he puts complete faith in the “three, seven, ace rule”. At this point he is extremely susceptible to manipulation, and just as Hermann toyed with Lizaveta’s emotions and manipulated her, the queen of spades toyed with him and destroyed him.
I think the story tries to “real”-ize romanticism. Germans are thought to be efficient and no-nonsense, and we see that in Hermann’s trying to calculate faro in the beginning, and his desire to minimize all risk by knowing the three cards to win the game.
At the end of the day, I’ve read the story, but my reading was rushed, so I’m not entirely certain how well I can comment on it. Hermann is a twisted and tragic character. His obsession with cards and abstinence from them cannot be described as anything but unhealthy – it’s the kind of psychology that develops into psychopathy. As Pushkin wrote (and I paraphrase inaccurately), “No two ideas can manifest simultaneously in one mind”, Hermann is totally concerned with the preservation and expansion of his wealth…and also – completely risk averse, he will not gamble without a sure-thing. I was very much struck by his relationship with Lizaveta; in most romances, it would be expected for one to deeply manipulate the other and the other to be hurt, but their relationship seems almost entirely superficial. Both seem removed, Lizaveta stays near the bounds of propriety and Hermann simply uses her for access to her aunt. I do like the pseudo-mystical element of the story; I think that Pushkin has a great talent for incorporating the supernatural in way that leaves the reader question whether the protagonist’s insanity brings on ghosts or whether some ghost actual underlies the story. We, as readers, cannot really know whether the death of Hermann’s hope for easy money incited hallucinations in him or whether the Queen of Spades really did haunt him.