In its sly, sidelong, defiantly non-aligned way, Dovlatov’s work
is always probing questions of freedom. Boris, in
Pushkin Hills
, perhaps belongs on a spectrum with Karavayev and Marusya Tatarovich in
A Foreign Woman
and in
The Zone
, Chichevanov, a prisoner who escapes from camp just hours before his legitimate release – after twenty years inside, he is so afraid of freedom that he wants only to be recaptured. “Outside the prison gates,” says one of the officers, Chichevanov “would have had nothing to do. He was wildly afraid of freedom, he was gasping for breath like a fish.” And Dovlatov adds: “There’s something similar in what we Russian émigrés experience.” [88]
It’s not simply that freedom might be frightening, novel, unreal; it’s that it might turn out to be not as free as advertised – or not free in exactly the way promised. And if you refuse to risk the potential “disappointment” of freedom by exercising it, you will, at least, avoid
that
disappointment. It’s why Boris fearfully defends, even to the point of absurdity, his non-existent status as Russian writer: when Tanya reminds him that he hasn’t been (and, seemingly, can’t be) published in the Soviet Union, he replies, “But my readers are here. While over there…Who needs my stories in Chicago?” [87] Better, perhaps, to have always-unrealized potential than lapsed actuality. Shadowing Boris, and indeed all of Dovlatov’s émigrés, is the double sense of freedom, both positive and negative, that V.S. Naipaul beautifully evokes at the end of his story “One out of Many,” from
In a Free State.
The story is about Santosh, a poor servant from Bombay who accompanies his master, a diplomat, to Washington, D.C. Santosh is utterly lost in America, but he eventually marries an African-American woman and thus
gains the right to stay. His new employer, who owns an Indian restaurant, reassures him that in the States no one cares, as they would in India, that Santosh is married to a black woman: “Nobody looks at you when you walk down the street. Nobody cares what you do.” And Santosh comments: “He was right. I was a free man; I could do anything I wanted…It didn’t matter what I did, because I was alone.” It is an enormous privilege to live in a country where “nobody cares what you do”; but when nobody cares what you do, then perhaps it doesn’t matter what you do. Perhaps apprehending something like this, Boris falters and freezes; it is easier to make no decision at all. He lets his wife and daughter go ahead of him.
Freedom is both actual and ideal, both concrete and metaphysical. There are enacted realities, like the rule of law, free speech, economic possibility and limitation, material circumstance – it should go without saying that these actualities are of enormous consequence in immigrants’ lives. But the émigré has also a strange, pure, almost metaphysical liberty: this, as Nabokov knew, is the portable, remembered world he or she brings with him from the old country. Nabokov’s émigré professor, Timofey Pnin, knows this portable, internal, untouchable,
undisappointable
world to be the cosmos you carry inside you – the stories, the people, the memories, the anecdotes and jokes, even the very dates of one’s national history; in short, the émigré’s entire cultural formation: “a brilliant cosmos that seemed all the fresher for having been abolished by one blow of history,” as Pnin thinks of it. It is why Dovlatov is able to look at the single suitcase he brought with him from the Soviet
Union and disdain the things inside it (the hat, the jacket, the shirt, the gloves). The things are not important. What are important are the stories these things drag with them, the very stories Dovlatov made into his book,
The Suitcase
, the stories that enliven every page of his writing. In this sense, things are not concrete; the impalpable stories are, made so by the great writer when set down brilliantly, vividly in print for generations of future readers. I don’t know if Boris quite understands this, at the end of
Pushkin Hills
; but we are very fortunate that Sergei Dovlatov did.
—James Wood
p. 7,
Gordin, Shchegolev, Tsyavlovskaya… Kern’s memoirs
: Arkady Gordin (1913–97) was a Pushkin expert who wrote a number of books on Pushkin in Mikhailovskoye, where the Pushkin Preserve is now located. Pavel Shchegolev (1877–1931) and Tatyana Tsyavlovskaya (1897–1978) were also noted Pushkin specialists. Anna Kern (1800–79) was briefly Pushkin’s lover. The two met in nearby Trigorskoye in 1825.
p. 8,
Alexei Vulf’s Diaries
: Alexei Nikolayevich Vulf (1805–81) was a bon vivant and close friend of Pushkin.
p. 8,
Ryleyev’s mother
: Kondraty Ryleyev (1795–1826) was a leader in the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, which sought to overthrow the Tsar, and a publisher of Pushkin’s work.
p. 13,
Hannibal… Zakomelsky
: Ibrahim Hannibal (1696–1781) was Pushkin’s great-grandfather, an African (probably from modern-day Eritrea) who was kidnapped as a child and given as a gift to the Russian tsar, later becoming a high-ranking favourite of Peter the Great. Pushkin wrote an unfinished novel,
The Negro of Peter the Great
, on the subject of Hannibal. There is a famous painting that was traditionally thought to depict Hannibal, though some scholars have argued that the medal depicted in the painting was an order not created until after Hannibal’s death. Baron Ivan Mellor–Zakomelsky (1725–90), the putative subject of the painting, was a high-ranking general who served in the Second Russo-Turkish War.
p. 15,
The Bronze Horseman
: Pushkin’s 1833 narrative poem which takes its title from a statue of Peter the Great in St Petersburg.
p. 17,
Likhonosov
: Viktor Likhonosov (1936–) was closely associated with the “Village Prose” literary movement of the Sixties that focused on rural life in the Soviet Union and often presented a nostalgic or idealized view of Russia.
p. 18,
Mandelstam
: Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938), Russian poet and essayist.
p. 19,
the writer Volin’s work
: Probably Vladimir Volin (1924–98), writer and journalist who worked for a variety of Soviet magazines and journals.
p. 20,
Gleb Romanov… in Bucharest
: Gleb Romanov (1920–67) was a popular actor and performer. Ruzhena Sikora (1918–2006) was a well-known Soviet singer of Czech origin. “This song for two
soldi
” is a line from the song ‘Una canzone da due soldi’ by the Italian singer Achille Togliani (1924–95). ‘I Daydreamt of You in Bucharest’ was a Russian song from the Fifties performed by Sidi Tal (1912–83), a Jewish singer popular in the Soviet Union.
p. 23,
The sacred path will not be overgrown
: A deliberate distortion of Pushkin’s famous poem ‘Exegi monumentum’: “the people’s path will not be overgrown”. Dovlatov famously attempted never to have two words in one sentence begin with the same letter – Pushkin’s text “
ne zarastyot narodnaya tropa
” has two Ns.
p. 27,
Agdam
: An Azeri fortified white wine.
p. 30,
the Order of the Red Star
: A decoration given for
exceptional military bravery, or for long service in the armed forces.
p. 31,
Gagarin
: Yuri Gagarin (1934–68), Soviet cosmonaut and the first human to travel into outer space.
p. 34,
The Decembrist uprising
: The failed attempt to overthrow the Tsar in 1825, directly supported by many of Pushkin’s close friends.
p. 34,
Benois
: Alexandre Benois (1870–1960) was a Russian artist who worked extensively with the Ballets Russes and Sergei Diaghilev.
p. 36,
Yesenin… Pasternak
: Sergei Yesenin (1895–1925), a Russian lyrical poet who committed suicide at the age of thirty. His works were widely celebrated, but many were banned by the authorities. The poet and novelist Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) suffered enormously at the hands of the authorities, especially after being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 for the novel
Doctor Zhivago
, which was banned in the Soviet Union.
p. 36,
Solzhenitsyn’s
: Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1914–2008), dissident writer and activist.
p. 38,
the famous drawing by Bruni
: In 1837, Fyodor Bruni (1799–1875) sketched Pushkin on his deathbed.
p. 38,
the secret removal and funeral… Alexander Turgenev
: Alexander Turgenev (1784–1846), a close friend of Pushkin’s, transported the poet’s body to the family vault in Svyatogorsky Monastery, near Mikhailovskoye.
p. 39,
Kramskoy’s Portrait of a Woman on the wall
: Ivan Kramskoy (1837–87), Russian painter and critic.
p. 40,
Intercession
: The Intercession of the Theotokos, a holy day in the Russian Orthodox Church, celebrated on 1st October.
p. 42,
1917… Makhno
: Nestor (or Bat’ko, a diminutive of the word “father”) Makhno (1888–1934) was a Ukrainian anarchist who fought against both the Whites and Reds in the Russian Civil War. Although Makhno escaped the Cheka (the Soviet secret police) after the Bolsheviks consolidated their power, many of his followers were shot.
p. 42,
What was the duel between Pushkin and Lermontov about?
: Pushkin and Lermontov, the best-known poets of nineteenth-century Russia, both died famously in duels, but not with one another. It is believed they never even met.
p. 42,
Pikul, Rozhdestvensky, Meylakh… Novikov
: Valentin Savvich Pikul (1928–90) was a writer of popular historical novels. Robert Ivanovich Rozhdestvensky (1932–94) was a lyrical poet. Boris Solomonovich Meylakh (1909–87) was a literary critic who specialized in Pushkin. Ivan Alexeyevich Novikov (1877–1959) was a prolific author who wrote several works on Pushkin.
p. 43,
Benckendorff
: Alexander von Benckendorff (
c
.1782–1844) was a Russian commander and later directly monitored and censored Pushkin’s correspondence and literary work.
p. 44,
Arina Rodionovna… Seryakov
: Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva (1758–1828) was Pushkin’s nanny. Yakov Seryakov (1818–69) was a sculptor.
p. 44,
a Finnish knife flashed ominously
: Another reference from Yesenin’s ‘Letter to Mother’ (1924).
p. 45,
Mnemosyne… Delvig
:
Mnemosyne
was a short-lived literary journal founded by Wilhelm Karlovich Küchelbecker (1797–1846) and Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky (1803–69). Anton Antonovich Delvig (1798–1831), poet and close friend of Pushkin.
p. 45,
Sergei Lvovich… Sergei Alexandrovich
: The narrator has confused the patronymics of Pushkin’s father and Yesenin.
p. 46,
Suprematism
: A Russian art movement of the mid-1910s which focused on geometric patterns.
p. 47,
Talleyrand… Lomonosov’s wife
: Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838), famed diplomat and statesman. Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–65), pioneering Russian grammarian, poet, scientist and founder of Moscow State University.
p. 52,
d’Anthès
: Georges-Charles d’Anthès (1812–95) killed Pushkin in a duel in 1837, in a dispute over Pushkin’s wife.
p. 55,
Kiprensky… in a looking glass
: Orest Kiprensky (1782–1836) was a leading figure in Russian portraiture, and painted one of the most famous portraits of Pushkin. The verse quoted is from an 1827 poem Pushkin dedicated to Kiprensky on seeing the portrait.
p. 55,
Godunov… Gypsies… if you love my shadow
: All from Pushkin’s oeuvre.
Boris Godunov
, a drama, was published in 1831.
The Gypsies
was a long narrative poem published in 1827. The quotation comes from Pushkin’s 1825 elegy to the French poet André Chénier.
p. 56,
Gukovsky and Shchegolev
: Grigory Alexandrovich Gukovsky (1902–50) was a Formalist literary historian. For
Shchegolev see first note to p. 7.
p. 58,
Likhonosov
: See note to p. 17.
p. 59,
the Remizov school of writing
: Alexei Remizov (1877–1957), a Russian symbolist writer with an unusual style and a fixation on the whimsical and grotesque.
p. 71,
Nefertiti
: Nefertiti (
c
.1370–
c
.1330
BC
), wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten.
p. 75,
Thou, nature, art my goddess
: Spoken by Edmund in
King Lear
, Act 1, Sc. 2.
p. 78,
Comrade Grishin
: Presumably Viktor Grishin (1914–92), First Secretary of the Moscow Central Committee from 1967 to 1985.
p. 79,
an appealing ethnic minority… Granin and Rytkheu
: Presumably Dovlatov is referring here to his Armenian background. Yuri Rytkheu (1930–2008) was a Russian and Chukchi writer. Daniil Granin (1919–) is a Russian writer and public figure.
p. 82,
Bulgarin
: Faddey Bulgarin (1789–1859), a reactionary journalist and writer whom Pushkin disliked.
p. 86,
Heifetz
: The dissident writer Mikhail Heifetz (1934–).
p. 86,
Grani. Or Continent
: Émigré dissident journals dealing with art and politics.
p. 86,
Bukovsky… Kuznetsov
: Vladimir Bukovsky (1942–) and Anatoly Kuznetsov (1929–79), dissident writers.
p. 88,
Santa María
: One of the ships that Christopher Columbus used on his voyage to the New World in 1492.