(Susan Layton) Russian Literature and Empire Conq (BookFi)

This is the first book to provide a synthesizing study of Russian
writing about the Caucasus during the nineteenth-century age of

empire-building. From Pushkin's ambivalent portrayal of an alpine
Circassia to Tolstoy's condemnation of tsarist aggression against
Muslim tribes in Hadji Murat, the literary analysis is firmly set in
its historical context, and the responses of the Russian readership
too receive extensive attention. As well as exploring literature as
such, Susan Layton introduces material from travelogues, oriental
studies, ethnography, memoirs, and the utterances of tsarist officials
and military commanders. While showing how literature often
underwrote imperialism, the book carefully explores the tensions
between the Russian state's ideology of a European mission to civil-
ize the Muslim mountain peoples, and romantic perceptions of those
tribes as noble primitives whose extermination was no cause for
celebration. By dealing with imperialism in Georgia as well, the
study shows how the varied treatment of the Caucasus in literature
helped Russians construct a satisfying identity for themselves as a
semi-European, semi-Asian people.
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE
RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND EMPIRE

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN RUSSIAN
LITERATURE
General editor MALCOLM JONES
Editorial board: ANTHONY CROSS, CARYL EMERSON,

HENRY GIFFORD, BARBARA HELDT, G. S. SMITH,
VICTOR TERRAS
Recent titles in this series include

The Brothers Karamazov and the poetics of memory
DIANE OENNING THOMPSON
Andrei Platonov
THOMAS SEIFRID
Nabokov's early fiction

JULIAN W. CONNOLLY
Iurii Trifonov
DAVID GILLESPIE
Mikhail Zoshchenko
LINDA HART SCATTON
Andrei Bitov
ELLEN CHANCES
Nikolai Zabolotsky
DARRA GOLDSTEIN
Nietzsche and Soviet Culture

edited by BERNICE GLATZER ROSENTHAL
For a complete list of books in the series, see the end of this volume
RUSSIAN LITERATURE
AND EMPIRE
Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy
SUSAN LAYTON
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo
Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521444439
© Cambridge University Press 1994
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1994

This digitally printed first paperback version 2005
A catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Layton, Susan. Russian literature and empire: conquest of the Caucasus from
Pushkin to Tolstoy / Susan Layton.
p. cm. - (Cambridge studies in Russian literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 44443 8
1. Russian literature — 19th century — History and criticism.
2. Caucasus — In literature. 3. Orient — In literature.
4. Romanticism — Russia. 5. Russia — Relations — Caucasus.
6. Caucasus - Relations - Russia. I. Title. II. Series.
PG3015.5.C3L39 1995
891.709'32479'09034-dc20 93-47121 CIP
ISBN-13 978-0-521-44443-9 hardback

ISBN-10 0-521-44443-8 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-02001-5 paperback

ISBN-10 0-521-02001-8 paperback
To my mother and the memory of my father
Contents
Acknowledgments x
Map xii
1 Introduction 1
2 The poet and terra incognita 15
3 Imaginative geography 36
4 Sentimental pilgrims 54
5 The national stake in Asia 71
6 The Pushkinian mountaineer 89
7 Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's interchange with the
tribesman 110
8 Early Lermontov and oriental machismo 133
9 Little orientalizers 156
10 Feminizing the Caucasus 175
11 Georgia as an oriental woman 192
12 The anguished poet in uniform 212
13 Tolstoy's revolt against romanticism 233
14 Post-war appropriation of romanticism 252
15 Tolstoy's confessional indictment 263
16 Concluding observations 288
Notes 295
Bibliography 339
Index 348
Acknowledgments
My greatest intellectual debt for Russian Literature and Empire

is to Marc Raeffwho encouraged this project from the outset
and provided invaluable observations on an initial draft of
the manuscript. I also wish to thank Ilya Serman for suggest-
ing helpful guidelines for this study in its earliest stages and
for making useful comments on the first version of chapter 2.
Special gratitude goes to Lauren Leighton and Neil Cornwell,
my two readers at Cambridge who stimulated better formu-
lations of some fundamental issues, steered me back onto
fruitful paths when I began to wander and supplied references
I had missed. The book's final form also owes a good deal to
Jacques Melitz who read successive drafts of most chapters
and prodded me to make many improvements. Of course,
none of these insightful critics bears responsibility for any
errors or shortcomings in my work. In addition to my various
readers, I would like to thank Helen Sullivan and other refer-
ence librarians at the University of Illinois, who regularly
supplied me with bibliographical information and copies of
obscure Russian texts. Librarians at Indiana University, the
Library of Congress and the Library of the Academy of Sci-
ences in St. Petersburg also courteously performed these vital
services.
Russian Literature and Empire began taking shape in my mind
while I was doing research on Hadji Murat with a grant from
the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) in
Russia between 1979 and 1980. On the basis of my proposal
for study of the literary Caucasus, I became a Mellon Fellow
at Columbia University between 1981 and 1983, a time I
Acknowledgments xi
conducted further investigation and began preliminary writ-
ing, while also teaching in the Humanities program. A second
subsidy from IREX then allowed me to pursue my Caucasian
project on a full-time basis the following year. Short-term
grants from the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Stud-
ies permitted me to do additional work in Washington in 1985
and 1986. A grant from the American Philosophical Society
also provided support in 1986. I am extremely grateful to all
these institutions for having made this book possible.
Chapter 11 and a portion of chapter 3 appeared in earlier
drafts in the following articles: "Eros and Empire in Russian
Literature about Georgia," Slavic Review 51 (Summer 1992),
195-213; and "The Creation of an Imaginative Caucasian
Geography," Slavic Review 45 (Fall 1986), 470-85. My thanks
to the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic
Studies for permission to reprint this material. Chapter 7
appears with permission of Macmillan Press and its United
States copublisher St. Martin's Press who printed an earlier
draft in the following book: The Golden Age of Russian Literature
and Thought. Selected Papers from the Fourth World Congress for
Soviet and East European Studies, Harrogate, iggo, ed. Derek
Offord (1992).
Throughout Russian Literature and Empire translations are
my own unless otherwise indicated. Transliteration follows
the Library of Congress system, with some modifications in
Russian names in the text and explanatory notes.
VA A Stavropol
Gelendz
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Besh-Tau* #
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/v A (J
A A KABARDA
-^.ABKHAZIA
B LA CJ ^%v A A V Elbrus A
•^ A A
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/A A <A
yA A\ A?
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A A A /7k A A
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Erzerum (Arzrum) A /)\
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0 50 100 150miles
0 80 160 240 km A
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CHAPTER I
Introduction
The Russian empire included realms so diverse as Poland

and Central Asia in the nineteenth century. But among all
the assertions of imperial tsarist authority, the conquest of
the Caucasus stimulated an incomparably rich body of
literature and an exceptionally lively engagement with ques-
tions of Russian cultural identity. This book explores those
literary and cultural ramifications of empire-building by
focusing on Russian perceptions of the Caucasus as the
orient. Russia's periphery offered other candidates for orien-
talization, as the Crimea illustrates. On her first visit to
this land of Muslim Tatars which she annexed in 1783,
Catherine II proclaimed it a "fairy tale from The Thousand
and One Nights."l The Crimea would indeed acquire an aura
of eastern exoticism in Russian literature and recits de voyage.
The Caucasus, however, upstaged its rivals in the oriental
domain. The explanation lies largely in historical timing:
aggressive tsarist penetration into the Caucasus in the early
decades of the nineteenth century coincided with the rise
of Russian romanticism, a cultural phenomenon which
entailed an extensive interplay with Europe's renaissance ori-
entate. The processes of empire-building brought an unpre-
cedented number of Russians to the Caucasus as civil
servants, travelers, soldiers and exiles (so many of the latter,
in fact, that the territory was nicknamed the "southern
Siberia" already in the time of Alexander I). 2 Given these
new contacts, Russians conversant with western orientalia
and the European imperial manner in Asia readily latched
onto the Caucasus as their "own" orient. 3
2 Russian literature and empire
But if frequently enough remarked in Russian literary criti-
cism since the 1920s, the Caucasus' oriental status has not
been thoroughly probed as a cultural offshoot of imperialism.
What varied cultural and psychological satisfactions did semi-
Europeanized Russians derive by consigning the Caucasus to
the orient? What tensions existed between Asia and the Alps
in Russian writing about the mountainous borderland? How
did orientalization of the Caucasus evolve with the escalating
war against the Muslim tribes? And did Russian writers not
impose varying types and degrees of oriental identity on the
Caucasus' highly diversified peoples?
Before outlining my approach to these questions, the book's
regional and historical fields should be mapped in some detail.
I deal mainly with literary responses to Russian conflict with
the tribes of Circassia, Kabarda, Chechnia and Dagestan.
The main targets of the "pacification" program undertaken
by General Alexei Ermolov in 1818, Chechnia and Dagestan
became the bastions of power of Shamil, the Caucasian imam
who led the jihad from 1834 until his surrender in 1859.4 The
war proceeded on two flanks, however, since tribal resistance
to Russia occurred in the northwestern Caucasus as well, right
into the 1860s. While concentrating on literature about the
Muslim tribes, I also give extensive treatment to Russian writ-
ing about Georgia. Voluntarily taken under the protection of
Catherine II in 1783, the kingdom of eastern Georgia was
annexed by Alexander I in 1801. The rest of Georgia soon
went the same route, and the whole country was subjected to
heavy-handed imperial rule for about twenty years. At one
time or another, every segment of Georgian society resisted
tsarist domination, and as late as 1832, a group of Georgian
noblemen abortively conspired to reclaim their national inde-
pendence. My book's two focuses thus illustrate the diversified
nature of tsarist expansion: relentless war against the "sav-
age" Muslim tribes and embattled protectoral relations with
Christian Georgia.
In addition to the diversity of regional history, the annex-
ation of the Caucasus spanned nearly three centuries. Russia
began asserting power over the borderland in the mid-1550s
Introduction 3
when Ivan IV took the northwestern region of Kabarda under
a protectorate and vassalized the tribes of the Kuban river
basin. The nineteenth-century military conquest virtually
ended with Shamil's defeat, but a small piece of territory
remained to be won in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78,
the last of many tsarist campaigns mounted against the two
traditional forces of Islam in the Caucasus - the Ottoman
empire and Persia. The whole process of annexation thus
occurred under a long succession of Russian rulers with dif-
fering objectives and motivations.
The complex history requires clarifying the sense in which
the term "imperialism" is used throughout the study. In the
late nineteenth century the Russian historian Adolf Berzhe
objected to the very word "conquest" (not to mention the
qualifier "imperialist") by arguing that the annexation of the
Caucasus had unfolded over the centuries in a haphazard,
virtually unwilled manner: there was no grand design of sub-
jugation, masterminded and executed by a Napoleon or an
Alexander the Great. 5 According to this exercise in semantics,
no conquest took place because there was no single conqueror.
It is true, of course, that Russia's southern frontier began
advancing in an unplanned, gradual way in the sixteenth cen-
tury, with Cossacks playing the primary role.6 Mainly Russian
and Ukrainian peasants who fled the Muscovite state and
Poland in order to evade high taxes, enserfment or military
conscription, the Cossacks lived initially as nomadic bands
and then formed settlements along the Don, Dnieper, Yaik
(now Ural),Volga and Terek rivers. These communities were
originally independent, self-governing groups. Their members
lived as mercenaries and freebooters and frequently skir-
mished with the Caucasian or Tatar peoples of contiguous
regions. Especially prominent in the literary Caucasus, the
Grebensk Cossacks along the Terek were granted autonomy
by Ivan IV in return for repelling marauders from across the
river. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centur-
ies, however, the central tsarist state increasingly interfered
in the affairs of all the Cossack groups. The most drastic
curtailment of freedom followed the massive peasant rebellion
led by Emelian Pugachev in 1773-74. After this event, large
numbers of Cossacks were compelled to leave their chosen
habitats and resettle along the Caucasian frontier, deprived
of autonomy and pressed into service as border guards.
But if the annexation of the Caucasus had its haphazard
aspect, as some historians insist, the empress Catherine's con-
certed policy of southern expansion laid the base of the nine-
teenth-century imperialist agenda. The policy had economic,
military, political, religious and moral dimensions which are
virtually impossible to disentangle from one another. Marc
Raeff's essay "In the Imperial Manner" argues that a concern
with developing the economic resources and potential of the
empire was ever present in Catherine's mind, whether in the
formulation of domestic or foreign policy.7 The objective was
furthered by the settlement and development of underpopu-
lated lands to the south and southwest, including the fertile
plains of Ukraine. This push to the south was an exploitation
of territory already under Russian sovereignty, but none the
less it had an expansionist ramification: in order to derive
economic benefit from the lands in question, the state had
to protect them from foreign incursions and assure access to
waterways. The resultant pursuit of border security in the
south led to two wars with Turkey (1768—74, 1787—92)
through which Russia gained control over the northern shores
of the Black Sea. The annexation of the Crimea was another
consequence of the same expansionist policy.
The quest for a secure southern border also largely
explained Catherine's penetration of the Caucasus. Eastern
Georgia became the empress' ally in war against Turkey in
1769, fourteen years before formally accepting Russian protec-
tion. Immediately after the protectorate was established,
Russia founded Vladikavkaz, the northern terminus of the
road to Tiflis (now Tbilisi) known as the Georgian Military
Highway. Traditionally antagonistic to the Ottoman empire,
Catherine's government gave Russian incursion into the
Caucasus a moral and religious rationale - the defense of
Christian civilization against Islam. In addition to estab-
lishing military outposts in the Caucasus, gaining a foothold
Introduction 5
in Georgia and articulating the goal of safeguarding Chris-
tianity, Catherine mapped out a stunning plan for reaping
economic benefits from the southern territory. Her "oriental
project" of 1796 called for full-scale invasion of the Caucasus
and Persia, the seizure of trade stations between Turkey and
Tibet, the consequent opening of a direct route to India and
the isolation of Constantinople from the East. While utterly
unrealistic ("truly fantastic," in Michael Florinsky's words),
the "oriental project" was, of course, an unforgettable
expression of apparently boundless imperial ambition. 8
Catherine's objectives in the Caucasus defined the shape of
nineteenth-century Russian imperialism, as expressed in tense
protectoral relations with Georgia and prolonged war against
the Muslim tribes. The major components of this imperialist
outlook and course of action were a commitment to the mul-
tinational tsarist empire already in existence; territorial
aggrandizement and the assertion of political sovereignty over
subject peoples; a reliance on force to subjugate the tribes
(and frequently to quell unrest in Georgia); an interest in
economic enrichment; and an avowed dedication to a civiliz-
ing mission in Asia. One might define differences in the atti-
tudes of key political actors. Alexander I, for example, reluc-
tantly yielded to General Ermolov's demand for a bigger
Caucasian army, whereas Nicholas I, with no prompting,
offered the high command an unlimited supply of Russian
troops to fight the Muslim mountaineers. But despite such
distinctions, imperialist attitudes, ideas and beliefs generally
pervaded nineteenth-century tsarist policy toward the Cau-
casus: the political, military, economic, moral and religious
factors all operated synchronically, even though they did not
assume exactly the same configuration or have equal intensity
in the mind of every official.
The conquest produced a vast literary Caucasus whose
chronology is readily delineated. Alexander Pushkin's poem
"The Prisoner of the Caucasus" securely fixed the territory
on the readership's cultural horizon in 1822. At the other end
of the temporal framework stands Lev Tolstoy's Hadji Murat,
written during 1896 and 1904 and first published in Russia
in 1912 in a heavily censored form. In between young Pushkin
and old Tolstoy, Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and
Mikhail Lermontov dominated the literary Caucasus in the
1830s and 1840s. These four writers provide logical points of
departure around which a massive amount of Russian writing
can be organized. Further adding to the tractability of the
sizeable literary corpus is the fact that the relevant output of
the four primary producers was so concentrated in the period
from 1822 to 1863, when Tolstoy's short novel The Cossacks
was published. After that time, no nineteenth-century Russian
literature of enduring aesthetic interest treated the Caucasian
conquest, with the enormous exception of Hadji Murat.
Although concern with the subject is growing in the West,
the literary Caucasus' relations to imperialism have so far
been investigated mainly by Russian critics. The collapse of
the Soviet Union promises to infuse fresh life into this field,
not least by maximizing the freedom of scholars from the
decolonized Caucasus. However, as for the commentary
accumulated in the USSR between the late 1930s and early
1980s, much of it is marred by an ideological legacy from
Stalin's time. By rapidly surveying this critical corpus in po-
litical context, I will start articulating my own assumptions
about literature's relation to the state's imperialist agenda.
Lenin once called tsarist Russia a "prisonhouse of peoples"
where a multitude of nationalities suffered oppression. In the
late 1930s, though, Soviet ideologues formulated a new notion
of tsarist imperialism as a lesser evil.9 According to this view,
conquering the Caucasus entailed reprehensible aggression
but nevertheless had a fortunate outcome: by wrenching back-
ward peoples from underdevelopment (and the "reactionary"
religious rule of Shamil), Russia protected them from the ne-
farious expansionist designs of Turkey and Great Britain and
thereby set them on the path to membership in the USSR.10
The theory of lesser evil was progressively modified to under-
play aggression and accentuate the strictly positive. Under
Stalin, the new drift led to the doctrine of the happy family
of nations, united under the leadership of the Russian "big
brother." This metaphor eventually fell into disuse, and yet
Introduction 7
as of 1984, certain Russian historians still proclaimed the
"friendship of peoples" in the USSR and protested that what
"bourgeois" detractors call the Caucasian "conquest" was in
truth an "annexation" immeasurably beneficial to the terri-
tory in the long run.11
Russian criticism about the literary Caucasus recapitulated
this ideological passage from the "prisonhouse" to the
"friendship of peoples." The reputations of problematic
authors consequently underwent dramatic reversals, as best
illustrated by the case of Pushkin. In 1934, prior to the formu-
lation of the lesser evil theory, Nikolai Svirin viewed Pushkin's
Caucasian and Crimean poems as major instances of "Rus-
sian colonial literature." 12 While betraying certain convictions
about Asian alterity, S. Veltman's Literature and the Orient also
chastised Pushkin and Lermontov for participating in "reac-
tionary" tendencies of "colonial literature," as witnessed by
their "false representation of our Orient." 13 Similarly, in a
collection of memoirs about Pushkin compiled in the USSR
in 1936, an editorial annotation associated the poet and the
Decembrist revolutionaries with the brutal forces of empire-
building.14 To quote the none-too-elegant formulation: "With
respect to Russia's war of aggression in the Caucasus, Pushkin
displayed a solidarity with the overwhelming majority of the
Decembrists, whose bourgeois-national program placed them
among the ranks of proponents of the tsarist colonial policy in
the Near East and made them try to justify Russia's atrocities
through references to the tribesmen's 'savagery.' " 15
Once the theory of lesser evil was in the air in the late
1930s, a loud chorus of international friendship drowned out
such tunes. In this climate Pushkin emerged as a writer who
wanted amical relations among all peoples of the Russian
empire, regretted the oppression of Muslim tribeswomen and
foretold the multinational state's "joyful life" inaugurated by
the Stalin constitution.16 International fraternity reigned in
the 1950s' non-scholarly publications about the travels of
famous Russian writers in the Caucasus. 17 More importantly,
the friendship of peoples was a guiding assumption in two
massive, heavily researched books of the period - the studies
of Decembrist writers by Vasily Bazanov and Vano Shaduri. 18
The critical edifice built on the doctrine of the friendship
of peoples erected a rigid protective wall between the tsarist
state and writers of the canon. In the concluding section of
his book on Decembrists, Bazanov formulated the influential
notion of "two Russias" - the "official Russia" of Nicholas I
and a "second Russia," the "Decembrist, Pushkinian Rus-
sia." According to this view, the tsar's Russia was viciously
hostile to the Caucasus, whereas the other Russia "wanted
every possible good" for the territory and "was ready to strug-
gle along with it against autocracy." But conquest itself
turned out to be one of the purported goods: Bazanov attri-
buted to the "Decembrist, Pushkinian" camp a recognition
of tsarist expansion as a historically progressive phenomenon,
boding well for the subjugated nationalities in the future. The
conceptual framework of "two Russias" remained in force in
the last pertinent study written prior to the collapse of the
Soviet Union, Agil Gadzhiev's The Caucasus in Russian Literature
of the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (1982). 19 Without
repeating Bazanov's phrase, Gadzhiev built a similar dichot-
omy derived from a prevalent Soviet view of romanticism as
a broad tendency split between "conservatives" and "progres-
sives." In this scheme, Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and
Lermontov were humanitarian "revolutionaries" antipathetic
to the "reactionary" state's imperialism. The canonical trium-
virate was equally protected from contamination by "low"
literature: Gadzhiev dealt with some purveyors of pulp but
dismissed them as conniving servants of Nicholas I, funda-
mentally disconnected from the "great" writers.
To re-examine the literary Caucasus in relation to
imperialism, I have taken initial methodological inspiration
from Edward Said's explication of discourse in Orientalism.
Essentially a cultural monologue, Russian writing about the
Caucasus engaged in ideologically significant discursive prac-
tices which transmitted and reproduced themselves from one
epoch to another in various genres - in fiction and non-fiction,
in the canonical and the "low." These practices included rhe-
torical postures, symbolic diction and tropes, specific concepts
Introduction 9
and a whole mental tendency to compare "us" to "them."
While viewing literature in such a broad framework, I follow
Orientalism and some other pertinent studies in distancing
myself from Michel Foucault's conception of discourse as
power. Foucaldian analysis tends to see culture hopelessly
enmeshed in the structures of political and socioeconomic
dominance. Literature retains no independence in this
scheme, individual authors count for very little, and just about
any protest against the power structure is all too liable to be
maligned as some form of complicity with official discourse.
As an alternative to Foucault's notion of discourse as power,
Said's Orientalism proposed a theory of "dynamic exchange"
between individual writers or texts and the complex processes
of empire-building with which they interact.20 By granting
culture a vital measure of autonomy, this perspective allows
for resistance to the state's political agenda. Jonathan Arac
has forcefully insisted on the latter possibility in a recent pol-
emic with Foucault: like other forms of writing, literature is
a social practice which cannot be assured a pure, "radical
autonomy" from politics; but writers may none the less utter
real, meaningful protests against the given system of power
and even effect changes in it.21
Russian literature does indeed run a gamut between under-
writing and resisting the Caucasian conquest: writers were
sovereign in their textual domains but wielded their represen-
tational authority to different ends. Total complicity in
imperialism was the mode of ephemeral orientalia, especially
prominent in the 1830s. At the polar opposite, Hadji Murat
denounced the subjugation of the Muslim tribes as vile
aggression. The particularly intriguing middle ground
between the little orientalizers and old Tolstoy was occupied
by young Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov who
all encountered the Caucasus as exiles. These three romantic
outcasts endorsed imperialism in certain ways, while taking
issue with it in others. The first part of this two-sided prop-
osition was best illustrated in their treatment of Georgia.
Although Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov
dealt with Georgia to greatly differing extents, they all helped
io Russian literature and empire
to marginalize it as a "little corner of Asia forgotten by
Europe" and awaiting Russian overlords.22
But while underwriting tsarist domination of Georgia,
Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov produced the
Muslim tribes as unusually problematic noble primitives who
raised restive issues of Russia's own semi-Asian identity. The
noble savage has in recent times been deconstructed as a
"fetish" invented and worshiped by people blind to the ways
their creation enables imperialism. 23 Chapter 14 of my book
provides the most grist for this mill by documenting how
popular history and literature used Pushkin, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky and Lermontov to constitute the Caucasian con-
quest as a civilizing mission in the post-war decades. For the
most part, however, my study seeks to demonstrate that in
their own times the tribesmen of Pushkin, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky and Lermontov disrupted ideology about Russia's
European stature and the derivative right to subjugate the
orient. If cultural and psychological divisions between "us"
and the "orientals" do not hold fast, imperialism loses its
moral justification as a civilizing mission.24 In various ways,
Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov exposed this
abyss by dissolving boundaries between Russia and Asia, for
better or worse. The convergence flattered Russian national
pride in certain respects. On the other hand, however,
troubled recognition of war's manifestation of culturally non-
specific "savagery" degraded the tsarist conquest itself. Most
dramatic in writings of the military exiles Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky and Lermontov, a revulsion from the extermi-
nation of the admirable Caucasian mountaineers deflated a
central myth of imperialism - the conviction that violence is
regenerative, if committed to further "civilization." 25
As these remarks would indicate, in dealing with the liter-
ary Caucasus' relations to imperialism, I strive to confront
the evolving nineteenth-century epdch in its own terms. While
bound to remain an imperfectly realized project, any attempt
to make a historical judgment of this literature must begin
with the basic assumption that the milieux of empire-building
created their own meanings for the texts.26 The milieux
Introduction 11
shifted, of course. In moving from young Pushkin to old Tol-
stoy, my study ranges over a vast amount of literary and
political history, not all of which can be recapitulated. The
changing social composition of the readership provides just
one example. At the literary Caucasus' birth in the 1820s, the
readership was tiny.27 But in the second half of the nineteenth
century, the rise of literacy in Russia brought the wide dis-
semination of certain features of the old romantic discourse.
Such important aspects of the sociology of reader reception
are evoked in my study but cannot be tracked continuously
from one period to the next. What I have tried to do instead
is provide a sequence of historical moments which created
meanings for the texts in question. The issue of historical
conditioning pertains primarily to values perceived in the
writings (most pervasively, as concerns the relative merits of
mutually conditioned "civilization" and "savagery"). But in
addition, the cultural context may even delineate formal, ge-
neric properties of a piece of writing (and indeed determine
just what passes for literature). Russian readers of the 1820s,
for instance, perceived reliable ethnography in Pushkin's
"The Prisoner of the Caucasus" and thereby imparted to the
poem an extra-literary quality entirely lost for us today.28
For all its self-evident importance, entering into the nine-
teenth century is only the first step towards fresh understand-
ing of the literary Caucasus. Every good historian creatively
interrogates the past from vantage points in the present. As
Mikhail Bakhtin stressed in his "Response to a Question from
the Novy Mir Editorial Staff," full immersion in a foreign cul-
ture or remote epoch would produce merely a replication of
the object under study. Indeed, we can detect "new semantic
depths" in a literary artifact only by standing outside it in
time and place.29 Bakhtin thus defined literary history as a
process of dialogue between two eras, two cultures. In trying
to realize this ideal, Russian Literature and Empire grounds tex-
tual analysis in particularized cultural contexts but seeks to
ask the literary Caucasus enriching new questions - ones that
nineteenth-century Russians were not able to pose about it
themselves.
This historical study raises a variety of issues, without treat-
ing the whole configuration in any chapter. Bakhtinian dialo-
gism plays a pervasive role in the assemblage of many differ-
ent texts, the tracking of romantic discourse and the
investigation of exchanges between authors and readers (both
historical and implied). A special concern with the psychology
of reader-response has led me to stress frequently the literary
Caucasus' irrational, affective power.30 Fact-oriented writings
about the territory grew massively in the course of the nine-
teenth century, but readers consistently gravitated to the most
artful, entertaining texts, exactly as common sense would pre-
dict. Where, after all, is the nation of readers who prefer schol-
arly monographs to pleasurable literature? But if hardly start-
ling, the primary allegiance to literary pleasures was
particularly pronounced in the evolution and consolidation of
the cultural mythology of the Caucasian conquest. Certain
Russian critics with a normative commitment to "realism"
have thrust this crucial factor into the background by insisting
that all the pertinent major contributors, from young Pushkin
onward, performed an educative function for readers by dis-
pensing empirical knowledge about the Caucasus. Such views
of triumphant factuality grossly exaggerate the amount of
reliable information available in these writings. But more
importantly, no matter how accurate the literature may have
been, it exerted its biggest impact not by satisfying readers'
intellectual curiosity but rather by supplying them with
unverifiable affective meanings about their relation to
untamed Asia. Indeed, the history of the production and con-
sumption of the Caucasus as the orient adds much concrete
substance to Dmitri Likhachev's recent generalization that in
Russian culture, in contrast to the West, "emotional prin-
ciples" have always meant more than logical ones.31
Issues of gender accounted for many of the mythology's
affective pleasures. The literary Caucasus had a good number
of oriental love slaves whom some nineteenth-century Russian
men were especially ready to promote as ideals of universally
valid, "natural" femininity. Of even greater note, however,
the producers and consumers of the literary Caucasus exhib-
Introduction 13
ited an enormous fondness for oriental machismo, if some-
times only covertly. By far the most dominant personages
of the romantic Caucasus, dashing mountain warriors have
particularly interesting stories to tell us about gender gaps in
nineteeth-century Russian audiences, as readings of'Amma-
lat-Bek" and "Izmail-Bey" will stress. Last but not least,
besides suggesting how the literary Caucasus inscribed certain
tensions between the sexes in Russia, I also analyze writers'
tendencies to feminize and eroticize the territory. This was
most evident in the literary invention of Georgia as an oriental
woman but had a wider compass.
The book's organization is basically chronological. Chapter
2 examines the early nineteenth-century readership's dual
quest for duke and utile in the literary Caucasus. Next comes
analysis of the alpine imaginative geography produced in
Pushkin's "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" and secondary
poetry of the era. "Sentimental pilgrims" (chapter 4) then
investigates the yen for politically innocent alpine experience
in travel literature, mainly from the 1820s and 1830s.
After thus taking the measure of the "Caucasian Alps" as
a region often rhetorically depopulated, the book turns full
attention to issues of oriental culture in chapter 5, "The
national stake in Asia." This discussion probes the contradic-
tory identities the Russian elite derived for itself vis-a-vis the
orient during the romantic era. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 then
investigate various lines of resistance to the ideology of the
European civilizing mission in Pushkin's "The Prisoner of
the Caucasus," Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's "Ammalat-Bek" and
Lermontov's "Izmail-Bey." Contrast with the disruptive
tendencies of these three works is provided in "Little orien-
talizers" (chapter 9), a discussion of secondary writers and
hapless scribblers who fully underwrote war against the Cau-
casian tribes. Chapter 10 takes up the issue of feminization
with special attention to Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's Caucasian
travelogues. As the most artistically significant expression of
the urge to read the territory as a woman, literature about
Georgia is treated separately in chapter 11. Certain insights
from this extended consideration of metaphorical femininity
are also picked up in the concluding chapter on romantic
literature, "The anguished poet in uniform," an analysis of
late Lermontov's projection of spiritual turmoil about Russian
aggression in the Caucasus.
The final chapters are dominated by Tolstoy, the writer
who provides a certain all-encompassing focus on the big
issues of literature, knowledge and imperialism which run
throughout the book. At the outset of his career in the 1850s
Tolstoy assumed an embattled stance towards romanticism
and made literature address new problems: "What relation
has the 'poetic' Caucasus to the empirical Caucasus?" and
"What sort of impact has the 'poetic' Caucasus had on
imperial Russia's readers?" In a discussion centered upon
failed cross-cultural communication in The Cossacks, chapter
13 explores early Tolstoy's efforts to deflate Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky and Lermontov. The next chapter keeps Tolstoy
in focus by demonstrating how romantic discourse persisted
despite him and even infused history in the latter part of
the nineteenth century. Hadji Murat is then examined as old
Tolstoy's confessional challenge to Russia's reigning myth-
ology about the Caucasian conquest as a civilizing mission.
No longer haunted by the romantic shades which had dis-
turbed his literary apprenticeship in the 1850s, Tolstoy used
some old "poetic" tricks himself to maneuver his envisioned
readers into unflattering recognition of their (shared) history
and present status as plundering beneficiaries of the empire.
The book's final pages offer concluding observations partially
concerned with ways the Caucasus' decolonized peoples
might rewrite the history of their relations with Russia.
CHAPTER 2
The poet and terra incognita
Pushkin discovered the Caucasus.

Vissarion Belinsky
Belinsky's foreword to the epochal miscellany The Physiology of
Petersburg (1845) offers a vital perspective on Russian imperial
consciousness. In approving the book's aesthetic of descriptive
naturalism as a new mode for exposing urban life's particu-
larities, the critic naturally concentrated on Russia's capital
cities. But in orienting his discussion, he looked much farther
afield to urge Russian writers to clarify their national identity
by investigating the whole, far-flung empire. Among other
regions, he cited the Caucasus, the Crimea and Siberia as
places whose geographical and cultural features were not yet
sufficiently known to the Russian readership. Most of all, he
thought "travelogues, accounts of trips, essays, stories and
descriptions" should determine the affiliations and differences
between all the various peoples: which ones were most "kin-
dred" to the "purely Russian element," and which were
"utterly alien?" 1 In casting a rhetorical eye over these vast
expanses, Belinsky no doubt showed a "readiness to enjoy the
experience of empire." 2 Without questioning the tsarist state's
right to rule all the "other" nationalities, he looked forward to
exploring the empire's "unknown" corners, observing exotic
populations, defining them and assigning them cultural ranks
in relation to his metropole. 3 Such an attitude surely was
shared by many of Russia's armchair travelers who proved
so receptive to the literary Caucasus.
However, the cultural texture of this reading experience
was much richer than the imperial posture alone can sug-
gest. A great deal of the complexity lay in the belief that
some of the empire's regions and ethnic groups were more
kindred to Russians than others. Thanks primarily to young
Pushkin, romantic literature's alpine Caucasus and Muslim
mountaineers quickly won the most favored "Asian" slot
in this hierarchy. But before delving into the way writers
produced a Caucasian landscape and population so emi-
nently suited to Russian national needs, it is worthwhile
lingering on Belinsky's conviction that literature would con-
tribute to knowledge. Although the introduction to The
Physiology of Petersburg obviously pinned great hopes on non-
fictional genres such as the "essay," imaginative writing
held its own ("stories"), while the hybrid form "travelogue"
appeared in two Russian variants {puteshestvie and poezdka).
Belinsky thus endorsed fiction and semi-fiction as tools for
unearthing reliable information.
The conviction that literature could help make any place
terra cognita underlay Belinsky's well-known assessment of
Pushkin as the "discoverer" of the Caucasus. Contained in
the critic's sixth article on Pushkin (1844), this evaluation
provides a good starting point for discussing poetry's special
authoritativeness in the early nineteenth-century field of
Russian reader response. Belinsky maintained that "Russian
society became acquainted with the Caucasus for the first
time" only in Pushkin's tale. In hailing the writer as a sort
of literary Columbus, Belinsky specifically applauded verse
as the chosen medium: in his opinion, Pushkin successfully
slipped geographical and ethnographic information into a
captivating story, instead of writing "too didactically and,
perforce, too prosaically." 4 Of course, the very notion of
"discovery" misconstrued Pushkin's production of a Caucasus,
as we shall see. Nevertheless, Belinsky definitely had a
point in declaring that readers of the 1820s looked to the
poet partly for enlightenment about an intriguing foreign
land. Enraptured by the verse but also keen for knowledge,
the contemporary audience approached "The Prisoner of
the Caucasus" as a work both duke and utile. What textual
and contextual factors encouraged this double demand?
The poet and terra incognita 17
THE PROBLEM OF GENRE
An investigation of the question must start with the problem

of genre. Today's standard classification for "The Prisoner of
the Caucasus" is the narrative poem {poema, a term to be
further explicated shortly). Pushkin, however, did not set any
particular store in the designation. He proposed a much wider
range of generic labels for "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" in
correspondence with Nikolai Gnedich, the friend and editor
to whom he wrote from Kishinev to ask for assistance with
publication. In a letter of April 29, 1822 the author gave
Gnedich carte blanche: "Call this verse (stikhotvorenie) a fairy
tale, a tale, a poema or whatever other name you want to
give it." 5 Along with poema, Pushkin suggested "fairy tale"
(skazka), an option which called attention to the element of
pure invention in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." The poet's
third proposal was povest' ("tale"), a category nineteenth-
century writers often allowed to overlap with poema or even
"novel" (roman). To complete the list of generic labels
employed by Pushkin, a draft of his letter to Gnedich called
the poem's 121-line depiction of the Circassian warriors a
"geographical article or traveler's account," embedded none
too harmoniously in the fictive prisoner's story.6 In a move
never contested nor defended by the author, Gnedich pub-
lished "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" as a povest', no doubt
in imitation of the subtitle "tale" used by Byron for "The
Giaour," "The Bride of Abydos" and "The Corsair." 7
As signaled by the profusion of terms Pushkin proposed,
"The Prisoner of the Caucasus" exhibits varied authorial
impulses. Its consequent resistance to neat classification was
obscured, however, by Victor Zhirmunsky's influential defi-
nition of the "romantic poema" in the comparative study Byron
and Pushkin* Concerned with all of young Pushkin's "southern
poems," Zhirmunsky characterized the romantic poema by
thematic and compositional features such as a disillusioned
hero, an exotic setting and fragmentariness. While preoccu-
pied with textual properties, this analysis stressed Pushkin's
historical role as an innovator in Russia. A major event in the
rise of Russian romanticism, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"
abandoned the rigid classical norms predominant in eight-
eenth-century Russian literature. Proponents of the new
romantic sensibility accordingly rallied around the tale, while
conservative critics assailed it as a disorderly production
because it fitted into none of the accepted genres defined by
Boileau.9 Zhirmunsky underlined Pushkin's discontinuity
with Russia's established hierarchy of genres but did not per-
ceive the new aesthetic freedom as an unruly force which
undercut an ideal of textual unity. To the contrary, he took
the "romantic poema" as a new genre whose discursive prac-
tices were all consistent. The "ethnographic catalogue" in
"The Prisoner of the Caucasus" thus became just another
"romantic" device in the service of "local color." More tell-
ingly, Zhirmunsky said virtually nothing about Pushkin's
footnotes, a significant non-fictional component of the text.
Like Zhirmunsky's Formalist rage for unity, a related line
of criticism obscured the dual-purpose character of "The Pris-
oner of the Caucasus" by trying to pigeonhole the poema as
strictly "high" literature for admiratory readers of the early
nineteenth century. "Poema" had always encompassed the
epic. In the 1820s, however, the proponents of romanticism
largely appropriated the term to signify a long tale in verse
in tune with their anti-classical artistic agenda. With this con-
text in mind, some commentators have argued that "The Pris-
oner of the Caucasus" belonged to the loftiest literary echelon
of the era, in distinction from satirical prose replete with
details of everyday life.10 Young Pushkin himself did indeed
subscribe to a fundamentally eighteenth-century classical
notion of poetry as the highest literary medium, set against
"humble prose" in a stanza of Eugene Onegin.11 However, the
literary culture of his day was not marked by the rigid bound-
aries which this perspective might suggest. Versatility rather
than specialization was upheld at the time as the norm for
the typical gentleman poet who was expected to display com-
petence in a variety of genres, just as he was required to
assume a multifaceted, urbane social self. 12
Disorderly to the taste of the era's conservatives but pleas-
ingly versatile to his admirers, young Pushkin cut across ge-
neric boundaries in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" to send
diverse signals to the readership. Unlike Zhirmunsky, Boris
Tomashevsky and Yuri Tynianov recognized the heteroge-
neity of Pushkin's tale.13 But they too left Pushkin's readers
largely outside their analyses. Bakhtin's concept of the "novel-
ized poem" provides a corrective by shifting attention away
from the literary polemics of the 1820s to focus instead on
clashing discourses which may invite readers to seek varied
satisfactions from a single text. As defined in a discussion
focused on Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan,
the novelized poem has an unruly, "centrifugal" force: it
revolts from an ideal of unified order and pushes verse into
semi-fictional and extra-literary spheres by incorporating a
diversity of discursive practice's.14 Although Bakhtin did not
treat Pushkin here, the concept of novelization applies par-
ticularly well to "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," which was
influenced in several respects by the much longer Childe Har-
old's Pilgrimage.
Pushkin's generically restless tale certainly won much
popularity by providing escapist entertainment and aesthetic
pleasure. As animatedly recollected by the orientalist Ilya
Berezin, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" filled readers with
"rapture" and stimulated a pandemic daydream of the terri-
tory as a place of romantic adventure. 15 Narrative excitement
abounded (a Russian's captivity in Circassia, a spectacular
mountain paysage, savage warriors and a love affair with a
native woman). Pushkin's mellifluous language immeasur-
ably enhanced all these subjects, as many memoirs of the
period affirm. In the opinion of Dmitri Mirsky, the "wonder-
ful music" of the verse was quite simply the primary expla-
nation for the extraordinary success of "The Prisoner of the
Caucasus." 16 If exaggerated, Mirsky's discussion none the less
pinpointed something extremely important: with its harmony
of sounds, carefully selected diction and masterful adaptation
of rhythm to intonation, Pushkin's language afforded a stun-
ningly new aesthetic pleasure which outshone other literary
works of the time.
But the romantic subject-matter and elegant versification did
not prevent "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" from enjoying con-
siderable extra-literary authority in its heyday. So important
was the urge to read Pushkin for information that the literary
historian Mikhail Alekseev once declared that consumers of the
Caucasian tale were looking "not for make-believe nor capti-
vating inventions and fantasies, but rather for facts and specifi-
cations."17 As unsatisfactory as Mirsky's single-minded
emphasis on Pushkin's "wonderful music" may have been,
Alekseev's hasty generalization was in a sense no better: it erred
on the opposite side by completely discounting the element of
aesthetic, affective pleasures. The truth is that readers of the
1820s were enthralled by the thrilling adventure and musicality
of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" but simultaneously wanted
geographical and ethnographic data to reassure them of the
exotic land's real existence. This concurrent pursuit ofdulce and
utile was underlined aptly by Ivan Bessonov, an early editor of
Pushkin who asserted in the 1840s that the Russian public had
approached the writer's Caucasian and Crimean poems as
"essays" written with brilliant artistry. 18
The notion of an essay in verse provides an illuminating
parallel with Chateaubriand's writings about America. In
addition to the frequently noted thematic similarities to "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus," Chateaubriand's semi-fictional
works about a Frenchman's encounter with native Americans
also invited reading for both entertainment and enlighten-
ment. Chateaubriand took pride in the mixture (without
admitting just how limited his journey in America had been).
In a preface to Atala he described himself as a traveling author
who had produced a text perceived by himself and his audi-
ence as "autre chose qu'un ouvrage de pure imagination."19
With a similar evasion of the issue of actual exposure to the
exotic region in question, Pushkin's brief preface to the second
edition of his Circassian tale proudly directed readers to the
"true, if barely etched, representation of the Caucasus and
the moeurs of the mountaineers."
As regards "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," the big contex-
tual factor which encouraged readers to seek something more
than literary invention was the dearth of impressive non-
fiction and semi-fiction about the territory. Prior to Pushkin,
some explorers and travelers had dealt with the Caucasus but
failed to fix its image in the public eye.20 Furthermore, a Rus-
sian tradition of relevant journalism was also lacking. In other
words, neither travelers' accounts, natural science, ethnogra-
phy nor newspaper reports had assumed authority as the
locus of true, real-life writing about the Caucasus.21 In this
situation, Pushkin's tale in verse performed functions of travel
literature, geography, ethnography and even war correspon-
dence. The poem intersected these fields to unequal degrees,
however, as we shall see now in discussing the overlaps in
turn.
PUSHKIN AND THE TRAVELOGUE TRADITION
In the eyes of the readership of the 1820s "The Prisoner of

the Caucasus" coincided primarily with the travelogue, a
semi-fictional genre which may be more or less informative.
As argued in many studies, not always concerned with Russia,
the boundaries between the recit de voyage and fiction are
notoriously blurry.22 The manner of producing travelogues
and the motivations for consuming them are often difficult, if
not impossible, to distinguish from the writing and reading
of a piece of imaginative literature. The division between fact
and fiction can also become imperceptible in the traveler's
account itself. Since travel literature exists almost exclusively
in prose, it is usually related to fiction alone. In seventeenth-
century France and Poland, however, the recit de voyage was
practiced by poets as well.23
Pushkin's poem shared travel literature's fundamental
impulse to bring a foreign territory into a mutually illuminat-
ing relationship with the homeland. Like imaginative writing
about a trip, a real-life traveler's narrative clarifies the charac-
ter of the native realm by contrast to a different country. The
pertinent Russian travelogue tradition stemmed from encoun-
ters with Europe, where civilization's attainments were incon-
trovertibly greater than the writer could find at home. Nikolai
Karamzin set the immensely influential standard in Letters of
a Russian Traveler, first issued serially in the Moscow Journal
(Moskovskii zhurnal) in 1791-92. A great admirer of west Euro-
pean culture, Karamzin cast himself as a mediator between
"our" sphere and "theirs." 24 The comparative dynamic nat-
urally persisted in the great wave of recits de voyage in Europe
which other Russians wrote under Karamzin's impact.
Equally fruitful in imaginative literature about travel, the
impulse to sharpen national self-definition by writing about
foreigners operated in Pushkin's tale of Circassia, a "wild,"
Asian place whose imaginative geography and ethnography
will occupy us in later chapters.
Along with the cross-cultural style of thought, Russia's
travelogue tradition prefigured Pushkin's poetic foray abroad
by serving the dual functions of entertainment and enlighten-
ment. A typical example of the hybrid genre, Karamzin's Let-
ters of a Russian Traveler combined factual reportage with literary
invention. Although stimulated by an actual trip, the book
was researched and written in the author's study after he
returned to Russia. In a digressive manner patterned after his
two major models Laurence Stern's A Sentimental Journey and
Charles Dupaty's Lettres sur Vltalie, Karamzin discussed the
geography, history, customs and politics of the various places
he visited, while enlivening his account with literary citations,
anecdotes and professions of intense, often tender feelings. In
the arresting phrase of Yuri Lotman and Boris Uspensky,
this semi-fictional mixture struck the Russian readership as a
"Baedeker embellished by amusing tales." 25 Curious readers
mined the travelogue for information about scenery, architec-
ture and art, national monuments, politics and daily life in
Europe. But at the same time, they were enchanted by Ka-
ramzin's new sentimental manner and path-breaking, elegant
prose style. Literary merit accounted substantially for the
popularity of Letters of a Russian Traveler, which appeared
before the novel emerged in Russia and was consequently
relished all the more for its diverting, story-telling proper-
ties. 2 6
As these remarks suggest, the sentimental mode of vicarious
tourism obscured generic distinctions between a recit de voyage
proper and a purely fictional story. The much cherished
romances of Richardson, Rousseau and Karamzin himself
("Poor Liza," 1792) promoted a cult of emotionality and an
enthusiasm for a life close to nature, both prominent themes
in subjective travelogues.27 Likewise, literature could offer
the pleasure of surveying an interesting foreign landscape.
Rousseau's immensely popular Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise was
a major case in point with its depiction of St. Preux's rambles
in the Alps. The themes and style of this text extensively
infiltrated the section on Switzerland in Karamzin's Letters of
a Russian Traveler. As illustrated by the interrelationship
between Karamzin and Rousseau, the recit de voyage and works
of fiction strongly reinforced one another in the age of senti-
mentalism: the writing traveler made digressions from paysage
in order to celebrate friendship and love, while the novelist
provided touristic interludes. Readers could accordingly find
the same sorts of satisfactions in both types of books without
bothering to ask how empirically "true" the writing might
be.
The reader's demand for entertainment and intellectual
stimulation in a recit de voyage clearly coincided with the aims
of much touristic travel itself, a condition which would persist
in young Pushkin's time. As Michel Butor has underlined,
"reading as traveling" can be observed in various places and
historical periods.28 However, a strong current of boredom in
late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russian society
fostered an especially strong taste for armchair journeys. In
1785 the nobles reaffirmed their privilege not to render service
to the state, and large numbers of them retired to country
manors, deprived of amusements enjoyed by the leisured
classes in the capitals. The placid routine of the landed gentry
nurtured a great appetite for books of travel and romance,
as Pushkin so memorably suggested in depicting the
old-fashioned Madame Larin and young Tatiana in Eugene
Onegin. To be sure, news of the French revolution and conse-
quent upheavals in Europe galvanized many politically minded
persons in Russia at the time. But despite such momentous
events abroad, a sense of tedium plagued the Russian upper
classes and fed their taste for recits de voyage, as well as tales of
love and adventure. Karamzin acknowledged the situation
when he launched the Herald of Europe (Vestnik Evropy) with an
editorial promise that the periodical would provide reading
material to "help while away the long evenings," especially for
"our belles" of the beau monde and "provincial ladies."29 While
targeting women in particularly, this comment evoked two vast
spheres of urban and rural boredom.
A BAEDEKER IN VERSE
Firmly rooted in the sentimental era prior to the conquest of

the Caucasus, the zest for actual and armchair traveling was
enormously intensified by Byronism in young Pushkin's time.
By comparison to Karamzin's generation, more Russians of
this period took long trips, often with the express purpose of
relieving ennui. Never destined to receive the state's per-
mission to go abroad, Pushkin expressed raging wanderlust
in a letter to Prince Pyotr Viazemsky in 1820: "Petersburg is
stifling for a poet. I long for foreign lands." 30 The yearning
was ordinary among young, privileged Russians of the time,
as illustrated by a visitor in the Caucasus who called travel
an antidote for the "boredom of our monotonous life."31
The poetry of Byron both prompted Russians to go on jour-
neys and served as a substitute for those who could not leave
home. Initially known to Pushkin's generation as the author
of tales of adventure in exotic lands, Byron acquired a Russian
reputation as the traveling author par excellence. Translated
excerpts from "The Corsair" appeared in the Russian Museum
(Russkii muzei) in 1815; a few years later Konstantin Batiush-
kov translated the apostrophe to the sea from Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage; and Vasily Zhukovsky's Russian version of "The
Prisoner of Chillon" was published in 1821, just a year before
32
the "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." In the same period
Byron's oriental poems, as well as the full text of Childe Har-
old's Pilgrimage, circulated widely in the French prose trans-
lations of Amedee Pichot, the imported versions read by the
majority of Russians. All these works contributed to Russian
perceptions of Byron as the "great wanderer," as the orien-
talist Berezin dubbed him in his recit de voyage, Journey in Dages-
tan and Transcaucasia?3
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in particular had an autobio-
graphical dimension which won it the reputation of a "Bae-
deker poem" inspired by the author's travels abroad.34 In the
preface to the first and second cantos, Byron called Childe
Harold a "fictitious character" introduced "for the sake of
giving some connexion to the piece."35 He invested the hero
with his own alienation and spleen, as in the celebrated apos-
trophe to the sea ("Adieu, adieu! my native shore," canto 1,
xiii). But besides such elements of self-dramatization, the
impact of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage as a reflection of actual
travels was augmented by the copious prose commentary,
largely devoted to Greece and the virtually unknown Albania.
In the annotations Byron paraded his knowledge of history
and geography, included long citations and constantly
reminded readers that he himself had traveled the routes of
the poem. Both chatty and full of insistence on the factual
base of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the sometimes unreliable
commentary seemed to hold a wealth of fascinating infor-
mation and was published separately in certain British
periodicals.36
A notable expression of Russian excitement over Childe Har-
old's Pilgrimage as a Baedeker poem appeared in the review of
a travelogue in the Moscow Telegraph (Moskovskii telegraf) in the
early 1830s.37 The author demonstrated a readiness to shuttle
back and forth between recits de voyage and imaginative litera-
ture in a twofold quest for entertainment and intellectual
stimulation. He began by discussing the phenomenal popular-
ity that travel literature had enjoyed in Russia for decades
(and still heartily deserved, in his opinion, because the
nation's novel remained so unimpressive). While praising the
edifying features of recits de voyage, this discussion devalued
fact-oriented, "scientific" accounts by contrast to the "poetic"
kind. "Enjoyable and absorbing," the "poetic" travelogue
covers the "misfortunes, dangers and difficulties" encoun-
tered during the voyage and exposes the reader to "fearful
storms at sea and wonders of the world such as mountains
much higher than the clouds." As if the allusions were not
sufficiently clear, this devotee of "poetic" recits de voyage then
summed up his sentiments by seconding the first line of the
epigraph to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: "L'univers est une
espece de livre, dont on n'a lu que la premiere page quand on
n'a vu que son pays." Travelogues were thus situated along a
continuum which shaded into verse itself: the author made
"scientific" equivalent to turgid factuality and implied that
versatile Byronic poets made the best guides, capable of sim-
ultaneously satisfying the armchair traveler's appetite for
adventure and thirst for new knowledge.
Although written several years after the publication of "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus," this testimony to a hunt for iden-
tical satisfactions in recits de voyage and poetry alike indicates
a prevailing disposition of Pushkin's first readers. Exiled to
the south of Russia because of writings deemed subversive by
the government, Pushkin spent around two months in the
Caucasus in the vicinity of Piatigorsk and the Kuban river
basin.38 His poem most directly evoked this personal experi-
ence in the dedication addressed to his traveling companion,
Nikolai Raevsky. As illustrated in reviews of "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus" in the Russian press, the author's status as
a recent visitor of the outland invited viewing the work as an
elaborate traveler's report. Viazemsky made the most interest-
ing attempt to relate the text to the journey:
The author of the tale "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" wanted to
transmit to the reader impressions which his trip made upon him
(after the example of Byron in Childe Harold). . .In contemplating
the summits of the poetic Caucasus, Pushkin was struck by the
poetry of wild, majestic nature, the poetry of the moeurs and customs
of an unrefined but bold, martial, handsome people [ellipsis mine].39
A landmark in the revolt against classicism in Russia, Via-
zemsky's enthusiastic review of "The Prisoner of the Cauca-
sus" showed a sensitive critic groping towards a new concept
of romantic imagination as a transfiguring force. But in the
quoted passage, Viazemsky strikingly suggested that "poetry"
had been out there in the Caucasus a priori, waiting to be
found and transmitted to readers in Russia. Instead of focus-
ing on the artistic act of contriving images of the foreign land,
this train of thought foregrounded travel as the requisite con-
dition for sufficient inspiration. Pushkin thus acquired a cer-
tain stature as a tour guide.
In approaching "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" as the
product of a trip, Viazemsky lavished special praise on the
poet's artful transmission of purportedly authentic geographi-
cal and ethnographic detail. He marveled at the technical
excellence of the verse and declared that — far from excluding
accuracy — a polished poetic style was more veridical than
"dead and, so to speak, literal representation." A new variant
on the ancient call for literature which is both useful and
pleasing, Viazemsky's evaluation of the wild landscape and
exotic cultural content in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"
propounded a typically romantic belief in poetry as a realm
of some higher realism, beyond the merely and drily factual.
THE POET'S RIVALRY WITH SCIENCE
As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, the very possibility

of Pushkin's poem functioning as a traveler's report was
greatly facilitated by the lack of competition from semi-
fictional and non-fictional prose. Prior to the time of the poet's
own exile, there were few Caucasian travelogues because the
lack of border security blocked the development of tourism.
Some pertinent recits de voyage had appeared in the Russian
press, but they were undistinguished efforts which attracted
no discernible attention. 40 The territory had simply not found
its Karamzin, so that "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" was in
a prime position to serve as a substitute for travel literature.
Even more strikingly, Pushkin challenged the existing
corpus of natural science and ethnography. In the late
1760s Catherine II was reportedly perturbed to discover
that her diverse maps located Georgia's capital Tim's inland,
on the Black Sea and on the Caspian coast.41 To rectify
the situation, the empress mounted scientific expeditions
led by Johann Giildenstadt, Samuel Gmelin and Peter
Pallas over the course of several years. Each of the explorers
wrote lengthy studies full of data on the natural environ-
ment and indigenous peoples.42 To judge by a Russian
translation of his German, Pallas in particular was a felici-
tous author.43 But like Giildenstadt and Gmelin, he too
had fallen on deaf ears in Russia. The preface to Semyon
Bronevsky's A New Geography and History of the Caucasus
(1823) acknowledged debts to the eighteenth-century natu-
ralists.44 However, the tribute's whole point was to retrieve
those writers from the oblivion into which they had sunk
outside a tiny circle of readers.
Since "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" contains some
reliable ethnographic detail, there has been much speculation
about Pushkin's sources of information. His trip certainly
afforded no opportunities for observing Circassian life. After
visiting the area of Piatigorsk (known to Russians at the time
as "Goriachye Vody" - "Hot Springs"), Pushkin and Raev-
sky headed for the southern shore of the Crimea with a convoy
of sixty Cossacks. As the poet told his brother in a letter of
September 1820, he had merely ridden "in view of hostile
lands of the free mountain peoples."45 His responsiveness was
keen, though, as he stressed by adding, "You realize what
appeal this specter of danger has for an active imagination."
The mind's eye was presumably stimulated by readings, but
nobody has been able to establish exactly what they may have
been.46 Conversation during Pushkin's travels in the south
may also have shaped his ideas about Circassia. After leaving
the Caucasus, the poet spent some time in the Crimea in the
house of Bronevsky, an acquaintance of Raevsky. One might
imagine them having lively talks about peoples treated in
Bronevsky's book. However, the naturalist was definitely no
mentor for Pushkin, who judged him well informed about the
Crimea but "not an intelligent man." 47
Whatever sources the poet may have consulted, he boldly
crossed the boundary into contemporary science by footnoting
"The Prisoner of the Caucasus." In sharp contrast to Byron's
intrusive claims to truth in the massive commentary to Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage, Pushkin's glosses were laconic and self-
effacing, but they made a bid for extra-literary authority by
introducing a line of scholarly discourse into the poem. 48
Among other things, Pushkin defined a linguistically mixed
assortment of terms - chikhir (new red Georgian wine), sakla
(house), kunak (consecrated friend) and aul (the word for tribal
"village" already used in Zhukovsky's "To Voeikov"). A ref-
erence to Karamzin's History of the Russian State best illustrates
the commentary's general presumption to go beyond the con-
fines of imaginative literature.' Pushkin cited Karamzin's
second volume in order to substantiate the poem's mention
of an ancient Russian prince who fought the Circassians' pur-
ported ancestors. By modern-day standards of historical
research, Karamzin's own discussion of this distant epoch was
heavily fueled by imagination, but it had won a considerable
intellectual authority in its time.49 Pushkin's note thus directed
his audience to an outside, documented source where they
might corroborate his own text.50 In the same fashion, an
annotation to Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's tale of thirteenth-
century Novgorod, "Roman and Olga" (1823), would invite
the audience to check the story against the documented treat-
ment of the epoch in Karamzin's History.
Published neck in neck with Bronevsky's book and possibly
influenced by its author in person, "The Prisoner of the Cau-
casus" was attended by signs of tension between the littera-
teur and the scientist. Bronevsky's preface to the second edi-
tion of A New Geography and History of the Caucasus presented
the book as Humboldtian natural science meant to dispel the
mythological aura of a territory most educated Russians
associated with Prometheus, Medea and Jason. 51 The scien-
tific protest was directed against the lingering power of
ancient legends and did not declare war on contemporary
Russian poetry as a new mythology. All the same, Bronevsky's
allegiance to facts instead of compelling stories held the seed
of Russian culture's future argument about what constituted
the "real" Caucasus.
Although the full-blown debate lay ahead, the regional
specialist's big disadvantage to the poet was immediately
apparent. Bronevsky's book was earnestly commended by
reviewers, including Bestuzhev-Marlinsky in the Polar Star
(Poliarnaia zvezda) ,52 But even amidst the initial success, stylis-
tic deficiences were noted. In the words of a commentator for
the Son of the Fatherland {Syn otechestva), the book's content
placed it among the best Russian publications of 1823, but
"a purity of style cannot be counted as one of its merits." 53
Thus only a short while after the appearance of "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus," the foremost exponent of scientific investi-
gation of the territory was called to task for not writing with
aesthetic flair. The demand for stylistic excellence in natural
science and ethnography implied that the Caucasus deserved
a Buffon, a man who enlightened while sounding well.
Bronevsky was too pedestrian to fill the role, and in the mean-
time Pushkin's annotated tale in verse garnered authority as
a Baedeker poem.
Young Pushkin's illimitable aesthetic ascendance over the
natural scientist owed much to the extraordinary memora-
bility of his "wonderful music." In the present era Russians
still tend to know much Pushkin by heart and may even per-
form astounding feats of recollection. In the poet's own time,
however, extensive memorization was more common. Accord-
ing to Belinsky, even into the 1840s most Russian readers
could recite from memory the depiction of the mountains and
the tribesmen in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." 54 To judge
from memoirs, some early nineteenth-century Russians
accumulated much vaster mental records of verse.55 During
his trip to Erzerum ("Arzrum" to Russians) in 1829 Pushkin
himself is said to have declaimed "The Prisoner of the Cauca-
sus" by heart for a group of tsarist officers at a champagne
fest.56 In our age, when a poet's "reading" of his works is
usually exactly that (especially if the verse was written several
years earlier), Pushkin's bardic facility may seem astonishing.
But today's text-oriented reader will no doubt be more struck
by the performance of an admirer the poet encountered on
that journey: Pushkin's military escort on the road to Vladi-
kavkaz claimed that he recited the epilogue of "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus," ran through "The Gypsies" and launched
into the first chapter of Eugene Onegin before the poet finally
called a halt.57 While this soldier may have glorified himself
a bit in his memoir, Pushkin's younger brother won recog-
nition from other people for precisely such prodigious capaci-
ties: as Viazemsky once remarked, Lev Pushkin's mind was
a veritable "printing press" where entire long poems by his
brother were set (and occasionally released without the
author's permission).58
A major factor in young Pushkin's triumph at the expense
of Bronevsky, the "wonderful music" of his verse gave the
newly romanticized Caucasus an inordinately potent, unver-
balizable aesthetic resonance. "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"
and secondary romantic verse of the 1820s would be eclipsed
by prose in the next decade, when Bestuzhev-Marlinsky took
the Russian reading public by storm. However, Lermontov's
poetry subsequently reasserted the musical factor in the liter-
ary Caucasus, and young Pushkin's own tale of captivity in
Circassia would come into a rebirth in late nineteenth-century
Russia. In exhibiting a greater staying power than any other
writers who treated the conquest, Pushkin and Lermontov
provided much food for thought about a very special (if his-
torically inconstant) Russian veneration for the works and
lives of poets.
NO NEWS TO RIVAL THE MUSE
While no doubt intersecting the recit de voyage most extensively

and also encroaching upon the turf of the geographer and
ethnographer, the novelized "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"
had a journalistic edge as well. The total lack of anything
approaching war correspondence about the conquest was par-
ticularly pronounced in the 1820s when Russian journalism
was such a literary activity and so closely overseen by the
state censors. By contrast to today's American and European
newspapers, the Russian periodical publications of the type
prevalent in young Pushkin's era had no "news" in the sense
of regular, continuous coverage of current events at home and
abroad. Literary magazines such as the relatively long-lived
Herald of Europe (1802-30) dominated the scene with offerings
in poetry, fiction, travelogues, criticism and book reviews. In
a category by itself was the four-sheet St. Petersburg broad-
side the Northern Bee {Severnaia pchela, 1825-64), edited by the
infamous Faddei Bulgarin. As a reward for playing informer
during the government's investigation of the Decembrist
revolt, Bulgarin was allowed to publish political news, a privi-
lege denied all other private periodicals. Interesting items
could make their way into the Northern Bee. However, by 1827
Bulgarin's association with the secret police was common
knowledge, and liberally minded persons held his "news" in
contempt.
The journalistic context gave "The Prisoner of the Cauca-
sus" a topical aspect. Embroiled in repeated conflicts with
Turkey and Persia in the Caucasus since the late eighteenth
century, the tsarist army also had gone to Chechnia in the
1780s to surpress the stirrings of Islamic holy war under the
leadership of Sheikh Mansur. Such events were not exposed
in the press, however. This left the Russian public in a very
different position than nineteenth-century British readers bar-
raged with newspaper articles about exploration in Africa or
problems of the colonial administration in India at the same
time that writers such as Kipling offered fiction about such
experiences.59 Russian readers knew vaguely of warfare occur-
ring in the Caucasus, but for most of them young Pushkin
provided the first specific evocation of tsarist armies in combat
against the tribes. The brief monopoly of the poetic muse
would be broken by the appearance of Alexander Yakubo-
vich's campaign notes in 1825. Nevertheless, for a short period
following the publication of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"
Russian readers could not even try to verify verse by compari-
son to writings by eyewitnesses at the theater of war.
Pushkin and his audience doubtlessly perceived a sharp
boundary between verse and a newspaper report, and yet the
role of a poet in a field of imperial conquest remained a little
ill defined. In the epilogue of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"
the author struck the traditional stance of an odist rather than
a reporter with a scoop, and he shared with other members
of the literary elite of the early 1820s a low opinion ofjournal-
ists as profit-minded scribblers. Furthermore, when in 1829
Pushkin detailed his observations of warfare along the Turk-
ish-Caucasian border, he wrote Journey to Arzrum in prose. But
interestingly enough, when a journalist from the Tiflis Gazette
(Tiflisskie vedomosti) learned of Pushkin's presence in the area,
he looked forward to reading a new poem born of travels, as
he believed "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" and "The Foun-
tain of Bakhchisarai" had been.60 With enmity rather than
admiration in his heart, Bulgarin also assumed that Pushkin
would write inspiring poetry about the war against Turkey
and accordingly vented his displeasure with Journey to
Arzrum.61 Somewhat equivocal about the proper sphere and
function of verse, these commentators assumed that a talented
poet at the front was duty-bound to share his impressions
with homebound readers, perhaps to stimulate patriotism (as
Bulgarin demanded) but also to artfully fill a gap in infor-
mation, as the Tiflis journalist implied.
Despite obvious divergences between an ode and a corre-
spondent's bulletin, the journalistic context of "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus" indicates a major problem which would
continue to face Russian audiences throughout the coming
decades of battle against the Muslim tribesmen. Just where
could a reader seek a stimulating exposure to the multifaceted
process of empire-building in the territory, given the paucity
of genuine "news" in the censored press? This question
remained urgent in young Tolstoy's era of the 1850s, even
though non-fiction about the Caucasus had proliferated
monumentally by that time. As often observed, the conditions
of censorship in nineteenth-century Russia increased the per-
tinence of literature (and literary criticism) as forums for dis-
cussing political, social and cultural issues not adequately
aired elsewhere. This general rule applied to the literary
Caucasus. During the entire period from the 1820s to the
capture of Shamil in 1859, Russians never had any steady,
uncontrolled newspaper coverage of the conquest, and this
indubitably enhanced the literature's attractiveness.
POETRY AS ARTFUL FACT
In opening perspectives on "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"

as a generically unruly work, this chapter has stressed the
poem's power to convince readers it was a multipurpose text,
at once artful and enlightening. Although not yet subject to
much direct discussion in the 1820s, a belief in fine literature's
informational capability was operating to ensure doubly keen
responsiveness to Pushkin's Circassian tale. An incipient line
of opposition to literature as a reliable branch of regional
studies can be detected in Bronevsky's avowed aim to displace
potent ancient myths with factual knowledge. However, at
the inception of the literary Caucasus during the Golden Age
of verse there was neither a Plato of the sciences nor a band
of fact-oriented journalists degrading the poet as a liar and
demanding that he yield his position of authority to a keeper
of the truth. No dichotomous style of thought prevailed,
declaring either literature or science, either imagination or veri-
fiable data. To the contrary, writers and readers in the 1820s
entertained notions of poetry's potential as artful fact rather
than frivolous artifact. The outlook would thrive well into the
next decade, as witnessed by Ivan Borozdna's annotated
verses about his travels, Poetic Essays on Ukraine, Odessa, and
the Crimea (1837).62
But the Bronevskian cry for more facts would eventually
strengthen in Russia. After the Golden Age of poetry had
passed, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Tolstoy would each defend
his own distinctive brand of semi-fictional prose as the
uniquely reliable narrative about the Caucasus. More comba-
tively, historians, ethnographers and journalists committed to
edification would degrade literature as a web of fantasies. To
begin detailing this history of interplay between the affective
and rationalistic ways of knowing the territory, the next chap-
ter will explore the imaginative Caucasian geography founded
by Pushkin.
CHAPTER 3
Imaginative geography
In gloomy Besh-Tau, the majestic hermit,

I found a new Parnassus.
Pushkin
In its treatment of landscape "The Prisoner of the Cauca-
sus" approximated the territory to the Alps rather than the
orient. The choice had its arbitrary element. Authors can
read whatever they like into nature, and Russian literature
would Islamize Caucasian peaks in the 1830s when war
against the tribes had escalated. But if mountains them-
selves do not predetermine an alpine imaginative geography,
their salience in Pushkin's experience undoubtedly contrib-
uted. The poet passed most of his time in the Caucasus
around Besh-Tau ("five mountains" in Persian) and the
other four peaks which gave Piatigorsk its name (a Russian
caique of "Besh-Tau"). The most southerly point of Push-
kin's trip, this area of mineral springs is situated in the
central range, about 80 kilometers north of stupendous,
twin-peaked Elbrus (5,633 meters, by comparison to Mt.
Blanc, 4,807 meters). Had Pushkin ventured over the moun-
tains into Georgia, he would have found a clime more
readily assimilated to romanticism's conventional oriental
topoi. To illustrate the possibilities, the minor belletrist Alex-
ander Shishkov orientalized Georgia in a poem written in
1821 during military service in Tiflis: he cast the land as
a gigantic pleasure garden with babbling "streams of Saadi"
and maidens like "divine peris"1 Balmy Georgia was
excluded, however, from Pushkin's poem which started the
"Caucasian epidemic" (as Zhirmunsky termed it).
36
Imaginative geography 37
Besides reflecting the limitations of Pushkin's itinerary, the
concertedly alpine paysage of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"
expressed a romantic preoccupation with wilderness disjoined
from its local population. As later chapters will substantiate,
the poet certainly conceived the Caucasus as exotic Asia, but
his imaginative geography effected a certain separation
between the territory and the Asians who lived there. 2 For all
its concern with the Circassians, "The Prisoner of the Cauca-
sus" constructed the Russian encounter with nature as res-
torative tourism focused on the self: as a site of inspiration and
rejuvenation, the land acquired meaning primarily in terms of
its impact on the poet and his hero who falls captive and
escapes.
Despite the poem's many intimations of Asiatic menace, a
trope of Russian harmony with nature largely suspended the
ongoing violence of tsarist imperialism. Captivity affords the
prisoner both the erotic adventure with the tribeswoman and
thrilling contact with mountain wilderness. Grounded in
romantic rejection of the beau monde, both the love story and
the communion with nature occur within a privileged sector
removed from war.3 Pushkin constructed a sheltered space
for himself as well. His dedication to Raevsky alluded to his
banishment to the south (the "song of an exiled lyre"). But
instead of dwelling on the politically risky subject of exile, the
poet staged his own encounter with the Caucasus as a volun-
tary ascent of a "new Parnassus." 4 More the gentleman trav-
eler than the deportee, his authorial persona evoked an alpine
trek which enabled a poem.
Although directly focused on battle, the tale's epilogue did
not let the promise of pacific and enriching Russian contact
with alpine wilderness completely slip away. Pushkin himself
had required the protection of several dozen Cossacks at one
stage of his journey. Nevertheless, he concluded his poem with
the over-confident image of a traveler fearlessly riding alone
through Caucasian canyons. A sort of invitation, these lines
suggested that Russian readers might visit the invigorating
mountains for themselves, as indeed they began to do in sig-
nificant numbers after the publication of Pushkin's poem. An
unwarranted confidence in the "pacification" program was
more widely discernible in Russia at the time. As the military
man, journalist and botanist Ilya Radozhitsky put it in 1823,
the Caucasus seemed to have fallen "at the foot of the Russian
throne." 5 Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Instead of subjugating the tribes, General Ermolov's strategy
of offensive warfare backfired to strengthen Muridism, a
resistance movement with roots in Sufism.6 Especially in light
of Russian optimism of the moment, "The Prisoner of the
Caucasus" cannot be faulted for failing to anticipate the for-
midable jihad about to erupt against tsarist power. What
deserves analysis, however, is how the poem produced a capti-
vating version of alpine experience shielded from the dangers
and carnage of military conquest in Asia.
THE RISE OF MOUNTAIN GLOOM AND GLORY IN RUSSIA
Pushkin's contemporaries never sufficiently recognized that

he invented rather than recorded Caucasian landscape. As
remarked in the first chapter, reviewers of "The Prisoner of
the Caucasus" in the 1820s hailed the poet as a traveler who
offered an artistically heightened but veridical description of
mountain vistas he had seen: according to Viazemsky's strik-
ing formulation, Pushkin had captured the true "poetry" of
the place in a way impossible in dry prose. Two decades
later, in essays vigorously endorsed in a Soviet Russian critical
tradition about Pushkinian "realism," Belinsky insisted much
more stridently upon the poet's powers of reflection rather
than invention.7 The critic's previously cited article of 1844
marveled at Pushkin's "life-like pictures" of mountain land-
scape, while disparaging the "prosaic" efforts of Gavrila
Derzhavin's ode "On Count V. A. Zubov's Return from Per-
sia" (1804) and Zhukovsky's address "To Voeikov" (1814).
Belinsky knew that neither Derzhavin nor Zhukovsky had set
foot in the Caucasus when they wrote these verses. "Prosaic"
accordingly seemed to connote something uninspired and
hopelessly inferior to what a writer might produce on the site
itself.
Belinsky made this outlook explicit in the review of an edi-
tion of Derzhavin's works issued in 1845. Derzhavin's ode to
Zubov had presented the Caucasus as a rugged mountain
wilderness, complete with a thunderstorm, roaring waterfalls
and a swarm of giant serpents biting one another. These
snakes in particular aroused Belinsky's scorn as creatures
wildly out of touch with the actual world:
In those days a poet had no concern with reality: he relied strictly
on his imagination. What did he care that the Caucasus was not
India and had no enormous snakes, or that no snakes have ever
swarmed in stacks, that hay is the only thing piled in stacks, or
that snakes have never amused themselves by giving each other
transfusions of venom? 8
Belinsky saw the serpents as Derzhavin's most flagrant lapse
into fantasy, but he berated the poet more generally because
the real Caucasus had not supplied his inspiration. Although
"The Prisoner of the Caucasus" was not mentioned in this
review, Belinsky's previous approval of the captivity tale's
"life-like" scenery left no doubt that he considered Pushkin
an antipode of Derzhavin: by contrast to the armchair traveler
with his "prosaic" inner visions, young Pushkin struck Belin-
sky as a master of mimesis who caught the image of the actual
"poetic land."
But instead of "discovering" an inherently "poetic" place,
Pushkin made the Caucasus poetic by situating it squarely
within long-standing traditions of European writing about the
Alps. As Marjorie Nicolson showed in her study of the aesthet-
ics of "gloom and glory" in England, attitudes of indifference
or hostility toward mountain landscape predominated in Euro-
pean letters throughout the seventeenth century.9 One of the
most notable expressions of this negative orientation was John
Donne's "An Anatomy of the World" (1611), where asym-
metrical peaks and canyons appeared as "warts and pock-holes
in the face of th' earth." But as part of preromanticism's new
fondness for nature, British poets were responding enthusiasti-
cally to mountains by the 1720s, when tourism in the Alps was
on the rise. This shift in sensibility expanded a traditional
notion of the sublime, as compared to the beautiful. While
beauty was identified with order, harmony and regularity on a
relatively small scale, sublimity was marked by awe and vener-
ation, traditionally associated with the contemplation of God
and the heavens. In an extension of the concept, preromantic
poets such as James Thomson invented the category of the
"natural Sublime" to encompass mountains and other vast ter-
restrial phenomena. An experience of comingled delight and
horror became the hallmark of this new, heady feeling for
elemental forces of nature. Stark precipices, toppling boulders,
avalanches, ferocious storms and raging waterfalls violated the
standard notion of beauty as harmony and yet aroused an
intense thrill in the observer. In the words of Thomson, the
natural sublime swelled the soul with "pleasing dread," a for-
mula whose variants in eighteenth-century Britain would
include "delightful horror" and "enthusiastic terror."
Like France and other European countries, Russia reca-
pitulated the British "discovery" of mountain gloom and
glory, but only toward the end of the eighteenth century. Lit-
erary imports from the West naturally assumed a vital role.
Thomson had Russian admirers, including Derzhavin and
Karamzin who translated the British writer's "Autumn," a
poem containing a catalogue of the world's great peaks. But
the preeminent western transmitter of the le gout de la montagne
in Russia was Rousseau. With its treatment of the Alps full of
allusions to the Nouvelle Heloise, Karamzin's Letters of a Russian
Traveler greatly strengthened Rousseau's impact. Although
Karamzin did not slight the Arcadian habitats of shepherds,
he loudly voiced the "reverential dread" (blagogoveinyi uzhas)
and strange exhilaration he felt at the sight of savage, violent
features of rugged mountain country.10 The first widely read
Russian response to the Alps, Karamzin's Letters set topoi
of the sentimental mountain trek which would migrate into
Caucasian travel literature.
Unless one counts the Ural foothills, Russia itself possesses
no mountains, so that the taste for alpine gloom and glory
inevitably led to foreign lands. Derzhavin's ode to Zubov first
set a stamp of sublimity on the Caucasus in two stanzas
quoted in a footnote to "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." The
passage situates the civilized protagonist amidst "nature's
dread and glory" (uzhasy, krasy prirody) . n Similar to the British
formulas "pleasing dread" or "delightful horror," Derzha-
vin's terms conveyed a comingled feeling of awe and enthusi-
asm before the Caucasian range. The poet went on to present
through Zubov's eyes "angry rivers in murky abysses," a
"rumbling" avalanche, thunder and lightning in the "fear-
some mountains." In stark contrast to this pervasive
"gloom," the second stanza floods the scene in bright sun-
shine. Here Derzhavin displayed his talent for rendering the
play of light and color: brilliant sun sparkles on water and ice,
creating prism-like effects and turning rock masses to "bluish-
gray amber." The "golden—crimson sun" gleams through
trees of the dark pine forest, "delighting the gaze" and con-
tributing to the generally "splendid" {velikolepnyi) vista.
Derzhavin's aesthetic of the sublime evolved in a section of
Zhukovsky's "To Voeikov" written as a travelogue and also
quoted in Pushkin's commentary on "The Prisoner of the
Caucasus." Touches of "dread" figure in Zhukovsky's fifty-
three-line description of the untamed territory: waterfalls roar
"in the murk of chasms" in granite cliffs, and the light of day
cannot penetrate the tenebrous thick of the forest.12 But unlike
Derzhavin's harmonious poise between gloom and splendor,
Zhukovsky heavily accented the beauty of the stupendous ter-
rain. Mountain rises upon mountain, "clad in blue mist," and
Elbrus dramatically dominates the scene:
And like a cloud above the rest,
Elborus gleams in all his glory
With dreadful majesty - a hoary
Giant capped by a double crest.
Here Elbrus (in a variant spelling) functions as a metonym
of the Caucasus' general magnificence - the "splendor of Cre-
ation" (velikolepie tvoren'ia) which meets the poet's eye at every
turn.
A L P I N E E X P E R I E N C E IN " T H E P R I S O N E R OF T H E
CAUCASUS"
As important as Derzhavin and Zhukovsky were as Pushkin's

precursors, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" made the moun-
tainous territory an unforgettable place for Russian readers
only by taking inspiration from Byron as well. The poems of
Derzhavin and Zhukovsky could not fully satisfy the romantic
era's demand for a lyric hero emotionally engaged with his
surroundings. Written in memoriam to the man charged with
executing Catherine's "oriental project" and then recalled to
suffer disgrace under Paul I, Derzhavin's ode to Valerian
Zubov solemnly extended the campaigner's journey into a
metaphor of life's course. The somber allegorical undercur-
rent definitely frustrated a reader's yen for pleasurable arm-
chair travel. Romantic zest was also lacking in Zhukovsky's
"To Voeikov," which recounted a fellow litterateur's touristic
jaunt through southern Russia and the Caucasus. Never
clearly defined as a personality responding to the world, the
addressee ("you") in this case was little more than a rhetori-
cal pair of eyes used to register a succession of sights.
By contrast to Derzhavin and Zhukovsky, Pushkin
employed Byronic formulas to integrate Caucasian paysage
into a compelling traveler's tale for the first time in Russian
literature. During his exile in the south Pushkin reread Byron
in a particularly impressionable frame of mind and reached
the height of a shortlived enthusiasm for him. The primary
trace of this influence in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" was
the jaded hero in flight from the beau monde - the "renegade
from society and friend of nature." Although having ante-
cedents in figures such as Chateaubriand's Rene, Pushkin's
unnamed traveler was most indebted to Byron's autobio-
graphical creation Childe Harold. Alienated from his home-
land, Childe Harold roams the Alps, Albania and other exotic
places in search of something to cure his spleen. The special
pertinence of mountain landscape in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
was epitomized by Byron's declaration, "to me high moun-
tains are a feeling" (canto 3, lxxii). Remarkable as the stirring
of a dulled, sated spirit, this "feeling" signals the traveler's
capacity to be moved anew, once he has fled his familiar,
stifling surroundings and come into contact with untamed
nature. Like the famous apostrophe to the sea in Childe Har-
old's Pilgrimage, the response to the Alps establishes a standard
romantic equation between the natural sublime and the trav-
eler's intense inner life.
Although never given to Byron's emotive mode of self-
projection, Pushkin expressed some identification with his
hero as a social type. In a letter to Vladimir Gorchakov he
explained that he wanted the captive to transmit "that indif-
ference to life and its pleasures, that premature old age of the
spirit which have become the distinguishing characteristics of
nineteenth-century youth." 13 Reviewers of the time generally
found the hero flat but clearly recognized his social signifi-
cance. As Viazemsky observed, the prisoner's profound bore-
dom reflected a malaise rampant among the Russian elite now
enthralled by Byron.
A Byronic type with some of Pushkin's own emotional bag-
gage, the prisoner discovers a kinship with the mountains
during his captivity. Unconscious when first brought to the
tribal village, the Russian awakens the next day to see the
range looming as the walls of a fortress - the "enclosure of
Circassian liberty." In this initial confrontation the moun-
tains form an imprisoning space which isolates the hero from
the civilized world. But during captivity the Russian's percep-
tion of the natural environment shifts in a manner conforming
to the romantic construct of prison as a site of inner liber-
ation.14 Put to work tending the tribe's herds, the shackled
prisoner expands emotionally under the impact of the elemen-
tal environment initially perceived as a foreboding Circassian
citadel.
The long descriptive sequence which registers this experi-
ence uses borrowings from Derzhavin, Zhukovsky and Byron
in a distinctive new blend. Like Derzhavin's ode to Zubov,
Pushkin's text is organized by a principle of contrast between
clement weather and a storm. In the opening lines of the
passage the captive gazes upon the peaks on a clear morning:
Trudging amidst the gloomy crags
During the morning's early freshness,
He marveled, staring at the view
Of the remote, enormous faces
Of mountains, hued gray, rose and blue.
Vistas of majesty resplendent!
The everlasting thrones of snow:
The summits look like clouds in steady
Lines to the viewer from below,
And rearing tall above the others,
Immense and stately, crowned with ice,
Elbrus - the double-peaked colossus -
Stands sparkling white 'gainst azure skies. (97)
Pushkin's attention to the effects of sunlight on the rock faces
recalls one of the prominent features of the second stanza of
Derzhavin's ode to Zubov. But in its particulars, this passage
from "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" displays a larger debt
to Zhukovsky. Like his predecessor in "To Voeikov," Pushkin
placed the focus on Elbrus as the majestic twin-crested giant,
looming above the other mountains and sparkling against the
sky. As Pushkin remarked in a letter of March 1821, he had
seen Elbrus and Kazbek only from a great distance during
his trip.15 Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that
"The Prisoner of the Caucasus" virtually duplicated Zhu-
kovsky's visual image of Elbrus and even appropriated one
of his key rhymes, dvuglavyi I velichavyi ("two-headed" /
"majestic"). 16
The same passage from "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"
also illustrates how Pushkin translated into Russian certain
descriptive motifs of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Byron's canto
3 contains the following lines:
Above me are the Alps,
The Palaces of nature, whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
And throned Eternity in icy halls
Of cold Sublimity, where forms and falls
The Avalanche - the thunderbolts of snow! (lxii)
In a paraphrase of Thomson's and Pope's formula "eternal
snows," Byron presented snow and ice enthroned forever, a
notion directly paralleled by Pushkin {prestoly vechnye snegov).
Byron's association between snowy peaks and clouds was
another trope which figured in Zhukovsky's projection of
Elbrus and then resurfaced in Pushkin's text as well. In
addition, Byron's metaphor of the Alps as "vast walls" was
re-echoed when Pushkin's prisoner first feels entrapped in
Circassia.
After celebrating the mountains in sunshine, "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus" depicts a violent storm and expresses the
heady Byronic "feeling" for untamed nature's violence:
When thunder boomed - a storm's first presage -
And turned into a rumbling peal,
In mountains high above the village
The captive frequently sat still.
Below his feet the clouds grew somber,
Dust swirled across the lowlands yonder,
In fright the deer began to search
For shelter in their rocky perch;
From cliff-sides eagles took to flying,
Filling the heavens with their crying;
The sounds of horses, lowing cows
Were muffled by the tempest's volume. . .
Then lightning flashed, erupting clouds
Sent rain and hail into the valleys,
The torrents undermined the steeps,
As flowing water surged in billows
And dislocated age-old boulders,
While lonely on a rugged peak
The captive watched the heavy glower
And waited 'til the sun returned,
In shelter from the tempest's power,
And with a certain joy he learned
To hear the rainstorm's futile howling. (97, 99)
In this culmination of the poem's central descriptive sequence
the socially disaffected hero feels his jaded spirit stir before
the spectacle of savage nature: he is aroused by both the
"glory" and the "gloom" of the Caucasian range and per-
ceives in the tempest a correlative to his own troubled self.
While dramatizing the Byronic hero's kinship with
untamed terrain, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" also
explicitly defines the territory as a source of inspiration for a
traveling writer. More autobiographical than fictive, this fea-
ture of imaginative geography speaks of the poet himself
rather than the captive, who has no authorial ambitions. The
dedication to Raevsky calls Besh-Tau Pushkin's "new Parnas-
sus" and hails the mountain country as the realm of "inspi-
ration's wild genius." This notion of the Caucasus as Par-
nassus is reinforced in the epilogue, where the Muse enters
as the writer's traveling companion. A site where imagination
soars, Pushkin's rugged mountain land subscribes directly to
Byron's romantic canon. In Childe HaroWs Pilgrimage, for
example, the Alps' inspirational power is opposed to the tor-
turing "hum of human cities" (canto 3, lxxii).
THE SPREAD OF PUSHKIN S GEOGRAPHY
When viewed strictly within Pushkin's own career, his Cauca-

sian gloom and glory must be judged a minor byproduct of
his brief Byronic phase. The poet's taste for savage alpine
terrain proved quite limited. He wrote only a small number of
texts devoted to mountain wilderness, and even in the highly
romantic "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" the observer's "feel-
ing" for rocky heights did not become so overwhelming as
to interfere with clear visual images. In harmony with the
prevailing tendencies of his poetry, Pushkin's correspondence
did not emote about Caucasian landscape either. For
instance, the long letter written to his brother in September
1820 proclaimed the mountain range "splendid" without
going into a fit of rapture. This restraint set Pushkin apart
from the sentimental mode of recits de voyage or private letters
by romantics such as Byron, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and the
secondary Russian poets Stepan Nechaev and Vasily
Grigoriev.
But if relatively minor in Pushkin's own oeuvre, the poetic
discourse of Caucasian sublimity took on a tenacious,
emotionally heightened life of its own, beginning in secondary
Russian verse of the 1820s. Pushkin had looked to precursors
for models of description, and his successors extended the
chain of intertextual representation by adopting the rhetoric
and central tropes of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." As
illustrated by the verse of Thomson (or Derzhavin's ode to
Zubov), an author can create vivid verse about peaks known
only from reading.17 But even after seeing the Caucasus
during a stay in the spa country or a trip to Georgia, second-
ary Russian writers of the 1820s predictably produced works
conditioned by previous texts, just as Pushkin had done.
The rhetoric of gloom and glory ran as a unifying thread
through this Russian literature. Time and again, the authors
filled with "wonder" at the "dread and charm" of the "awe-
some," "splendid" Caucasus with its "eternal snows," violent
downpours, "stormy," "mutinous" rivers and "raging"
waterfalls.18 Part of a broader Russian revolt against classi-
cism, these expressions of admiration for alpine wilderness
exemplified a radical shift in aesthetic sensibility generally
affected by the early 1820s.19 In treating mountains and
waterfalls, previous writers like Derzhavin, Karamzin and
Zhukovsky had laid important foundations for "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus," as we have seen. None the less, it was
Pushkin who attracted unprecedented attention to Russia's
southern borderland as a new site for exercising the aesthetic
of the sublime. With their freshly awakened awareness of the
Caucasus, traveling Russian poets of the 1820s invoked Ka-
barda, Abkhazia and Dagestan, while representing all these
various regions as generic mountain country clearly indebted
to Pushkin.20 The frontier territory quickly acquired a stylized
character to become the "Caucasian Alps," the label attached
to it in Nechaev's versified recit de voyage, "Recollections"
(1823).21
In elaborating the "Caucasian Alps," secondary poets let
their imaginations run to extremes of symbolism and emotion
atypical of Pushkin. The Decembrist Kondraty Ryleev wrote
an extended metaphor of Elbrus as a monumental embodi-
ment of steadfast "Civic Courage" (1823).22 While idio-
syncratically aimed at promoting the Decembrists' foremost
political virtue, this verse replicated the rhetoric and visual
image of Zhukovsky and Pushkin: shining high above the
clouds in a "hazy fog," Elbrus looms in "awesome beauty" -
a "hoary giant" and the "glory of the Caucasian mountains."
With no trace of Ryleev's aspiration to overthrow the tsarist
state, Nechaev proclaimed his "reverence" before the "hoary
Caucasus" and "splendid" Elbrus, as though he had entered
a church ("Recollections"). Somewhat later, the same rhet-
oric of sublimity served yet another end in Countess Evdokiia
Rostopchina's "Elbrus and I," a lyric which confessed a secret
passion for the peak conceived as a mighty man.23
Pushkin's trope of the "new Parnassus" proved extraordi-
narily productive, as other poets flocked to celebrate the
Caucasus as a wild haunt of the Muse. In a verse written
during naval service on the Black Sea, Efim Zaitsevsky
invented Abkhazia as a "country of wild beauty." The
observer's soul thrills to ice-capped peaks, rapid streams, for-
ests and tribal villages: "ecstasy and pleasure" overwhelm
him as he breathes the "fire of sacred poetry."24 The same
notes of spiritual exultation were struck in Grigoriev's "Besh-
Tau" (written 1826) and Victor Tepliakov's "The Caucasus"
(1829).25 Aleksei Meisner's "A View of Kazbek at Noon"
(1833) also contributed to the theme of loftiness and added
an anthropomorphic touch by projecting the peak as an
"inspired man, standing above the crowd."26 This high-
minded loner was a thinly disguised mutant of Pushkin's
"majestic hermit," the Parnassian Besh-Tau.
All these poets evolved Pushkin's notion of the Parnassian
refuge along quasi-religious lines. They presented Caucasian
peaks not as the home of poetry alone but as the wider realm of
"higher things," where a traveler experiences spiritual uplift
and a sensation of escape from the vanity of the world. The
thematic complex carried forward the "reverential dread" of
Karamzin, Thomson, Rousseau and other celebrators of the
Alps. But on beyond the eighteenth-century heritage of the
soulful gout de la montagne, there were even remnants of the
medieval idea of heaven's location on a sky-scraping peak.
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky in particular would prove sensitive to
this tradition, as indicated by his remarks on Dante's Paradiso
in the journal he kept during military exile in the Caucasus.27
While predominant, the motifs of inspiration and spiritual
exaltation overlapped with another emotive cluster centered
around Caucasian power, combativeness and pride. A line of
tension thus opened up between the self-reflective, enriching
engagement with the "new Parnassus" and a confrontation
with mountains fraught with potential antagonism to Russian
outsiders. As both Byron and Zhukovsky ("Mountain Road,"
1818) had done before him, Pushkin employed a metaphor of
the mountain as monarch. The dedication to "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus" casts Besh-Tau not only as a lofty "hermit"
but also as the "five-headed tsar over fields and auls" (tribal
"villages"). In an extension of the trope of the mountain as
overlord of the land, Pushkin's epilogue addresses the terri-
tory as a collective embodiment of the tribes purportedly paci-
fied by General Ermolov: "Submit and bow your snowy
head, / Oh, Caucasus, Ermolov marches!" Here in the patri-
otic finale of the work the snow-capped peaks function as the
head of a body politic. As a region supposedly subjugated
by Russian arms, the landscape is suffused by the poet with
indignation and injured pride. Without referring to warfare,
Pushkin's "The Monastery on Kazbek" (1829) would also
use some anthropomorphic symbolism. In this short verse the
poet admiringly addresses the peak as a majestic presence
looming over fellow mountains: "Kazbek, high above the
family of mountains, your regal tent shines with eternal
beams."
Like the construct of Parnassian heights, Pushkin's anthro-
pomorphic tropes of native power found elaboration in sub-
sequent Russian poetry. In "Recollections" Nechaev cast
Elbrus as the "dreadful tsar" of the Caucasus, "surrounded
by a retinue of servants," the lower peaks. Tepliakov devel-
oped the same metaphor of an enormous potentate in "The
Caucasus," where Besh-Tau rises as the "five-headed tsar."
A "gloomy ruler" bedecked in a "crown of sharp-pointed
crags," the mountain monarch is encircled by lesser peaks
standing "guard in granite armor." A metonymic variant on
this motif of a sovereign and his sentries appeared in Grigori-
ev's "Evening in the Caucasus" (1826): snowy peaks loom as
a glittery "row of hoary eyelids" (about to dim in the shadow
of Russia's eagle, a traditional symbol of imperial might). 28 A
trace of the figurative mountain king and his servitors would
remain in Lermontov's "Hastening northward from afar"
(written 1837), a well-known lyric which cast Kazbek as a
"sentry of the Orient." 29
Poets after Pushkin furthered expanded the possibilities of
anthropomorphism by throwing their peaks into verbal
combat. This artistic construct shaped Dmitri Oznobishin's
"Mashuka [sic ] and Kazbek" (c. 1828) and Liukan Yakubo-
vich's ' T h e Urals and the Caucasus" (1836). 30In these verses
the quarrelsome mountains advance claims to superiority on
the basis of height, beauty, mineral wealth, or curative
properties derived from local springs. The poetic conceit of
debate between mountains would endure in Lermontov's pol-
itically charged verse "An Argument" (1841).31 A brash self-
confident type in a "cap" (a nearly permanent cloud cover),
Lermontov's Kazbek has a dispute with Elbrus (alternatively
called "Shat-gora"), a venerable "gray-haired" figure who
fears an attack on the Caucasus. The oldster's apprehensions
are realized as a massive army from the "North" advances
on the territory at the poem's conclusion. In this anthropo-
morphic presentation the two peaks appear amidst their
"tribe of mountains" {plemia gor), a trope subsequently rein-
forced by the adjective soplemennyi (which designates member-
ship in the same tribe). Transformed into towering chieftains
in a war counsel, Lermontov's allied mountains heatedly
argue about their vulnerability to aggression from the tsarist
state.
Like the Caucasian mountains, the Terek river also
received anthropomorphic treatment in Russian literature
under the impact of Pushkin. In the final stanza of "The
Caucasus" as published in 1829 shortly after his second trip
to the territory, Pushkin symbolized the Terek at the Darial
Pass as a hungry "young beast," frolicking and howling at
the sight of food outside his iron cage.32 The trope of the con-
strained, raging animal took on a long life in Russian litera-
ture. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's "Ammalat-Bek" (1832) called
the river a "ferocious beast, black with wrath, roaring and
pawing age-old rock masses;" and Vilgelm Kiukhelbeker's
poem "The Orphan" (written 1833-34) less extravagantly
evoked a similar creature. 33 While having clear antecedents
in Ivan Dmitriev's "The Volga" (1794) and the German poet
F. Shtolberg's "Mountain Stream," Lermontov's "Gifts from
the Terek" (1840) also owed something to Pushkin's animate
waterway.34 In an anthropomorphic realization of the river's
tributary relation to the Caspian, Lermontov's Terek is a
"savage" vassal who serves an imperious white-haired
"elder," the sea, by bringing him "gifts" from the war zone —
boulders from Darial and dead bodies.
THE POETICS OF CAUCASIAN SPACE
As we have seen, young Pushkin's imaginative Caucasian

geography was carried to new emotional and metaphorical
extremes by other writers. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s,
symbolism and subjectivity reigned in poetry about the terri-
tory. Pictorial images were relegated onto a secondary plane
or eliminated entirely in favor of the writer's feelings. In this
process relatively simple Pushkinian formulas such as "snowy
head" or "family of mountains" blossomed into elaborate
poetic conceits of peaks as sovereigns, sentries, inspired
loners, tribes and combative debaters. Similarly, the Terek as
"young beast" thrived and evolved into Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's glowering, ferocious animal and Lermontov's
howling vassal to the Caspian Sea.
But despite the important differences which obtained
between Pushkin and the later, full-blown romantic manner,
"The Prisoner of the Caucasus" started the production of
an imaginative geography which took a fierce hold on the
readership. As observed in other literatures with reference to
other regions of the world, a "poetics of space" fills a geo-
graphical location with powerful affective meanings generated
by rhetoric, tropes, patterns of symbolism and the free vio-
lation of actual topographical relations. 35 Not necessarily dis-
pelled in the popular mind by the accumulation of empirical
data, these imaginary worlds may far outweigh the force of
scientific description and can infuse or even override historical
analysis and other fields of scholarly inquiry. In young Push-
kin's era people drawn to science showed no great antagonism
to poetic geography. Without impugning contemporary litera-
ture for non-factuality, Bronevsky's A New Geography and His-
tory of the Caucasus urged the public to forget the "fabled" land
of Prometheus and Medea. In 1825 Pyotr Mukhanov made a
similar call for more fact-oriented writing. Devoted largely to
the eighteenth-century naturalist Giildenstadt, Mukhanov's
article praised past efforts to explore the Caucasus but under-
scored how much remained to be done: in his view, the terri-
tory was still terra incognita for Russia - as unknown and
uncharted as "deepest Africa."36 Like Bronevsky, Mukhanov
was defending natural science as the sphere of real knowledge,
without noticing how contemporary poetry was fabling the
Caucasus anew.
What these exponents of Humboldtian natural science
failed to anticipate was how affectively irresistible and imper-
vious to fact the romantic construct of alpine experience
would prove to be in Russia. By rendering the Caucasus as
the Alps of the homeland's own periphery, Pushkin invented
a soul-stirring realm of the sublime, full of perils for citified
travelers but ready to inspire and rejuvenate them. The terri-
tory was thus appropriated as a space for the therapeutic
uses of the lyrical Russian self unhampered by native peoples.
Thrilling nuances of Asiatic tribal menace certainly enlarged
the Caucasian poetics of space, already laden with natural
dangers like precipices, violent storms and avalanches, but
local populations were not permitted to hinder Russian com-
munion with alpine wilderness. This posture of "friendship"
with nature transfigured the Caucasus into congenial meaning
about the foreign writer's experience of artistic inspiration,
spiritual uplift, civic courage and passionate love. Frequent
references to the tribes certainly occurred, and even the eco-
nomic objectives of tsarist imperialism noisily intruded in
Nechaev's "Recollections" in a footnote on a potentially
lucrative Caucasian silk industry. Nechaev's verse itself, how-
ever, conformed to the rule of staging a strictly pacific,
uplifting encounter with nature, as if the Russian presence in
the territory had no other rationale.
All the same, the self-absorbed dramas of these friends of
wilderness, so preoccupied with "higher things," was signifi-
cantly rocked by the intertextual landscape's second promi-
nent cluster of symbolic motifs - the figures of local power,
bellicosity and rebellion. Still subtle when the war was barely
underway in the 1820s, the geographical imagery of Cauca-
sian antagonism to Russia would become more pronounced
and insistently oriental in the next decade when the jihad
flared up. In young Pushkin's time, however, this symbolism
represented the return of the repressed: romantic poetry's
cherished theme of Russian communion with nature averted
the eye from military conquest, but cross-cultural conflict
lurked in the tropes of Caucasian sovereigns, their sentries
and families. Often willfully blind to imperial Russian designs
on the territory, the Caucasian lyric poetry of Pushkin's era
betrayed the following, irresoluble dilemma. Enthusiasts of
mountain gloom and glory professed a desire to profit from
the Caucasus in a purely non-violent, aesthetic and spiritual
way. But what about all those Asians who inhabited the re-
storative land and did not welcome Russia's incursion? The
incoherence of the Russian quest for rejuvenative alpine
experience in an oriental combat zone would haunt Caucasian
travel literature, especially in Pushkin's time.
CHAPTER 4
Sentimental pilgrims
But where was that Caucasus?

Ilya Radozhitsky
Not long after young Pushkin's trip of 1820, the Caucasus
began acquiring the status of a Russian tourist attraction. As
implied by the lone traveler passing safely through canyons
at the end of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," Ermolov's cam-
paigns in Chechnia and Dagestan seemed to have secured a
new realm for pleasure trips. The perception was well con-
veyed in Ilya Radozhitsky's recit de voyage which provides the
epigraph to this chapter. At the outset of his military service
in the Caucasus, Radozhitsky declared that the territory was
now firmly under the tsarist "scepter of art and science." 1 To
his mind, steady Russian protection had transformed Georgia
in particular into an "Italy" of peace and tranquillity. With
the same beguiling promise of new opportunities for tourism,
National Annals {Otechestvennye zapiski) in 1822 ran a guide for
travel across the mountains. 2 This publication maintained
that the Georgian Military Highway was now quite safe,
despite pockets of "predatory" tribes.
But if even Georgia seemed newly accessible, Russian tour-
ism was in fact concentrated at spas in the Piatigorsk area,
suitably distant from battlefields. In the course of the 1820s
and early 1830s the Caucasian cure became so fashionable
among upper-class Russians that one of them likened the
practice to a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. 3 Rudimentary
facilities for using the mineral springs gradually gave way to
well-appointed installations, as Pushkin would observe with
evident dissatisfaction in 1829 when he passed through the
54
Sentimental pilgrims 55
region a second time en route to Turkey.4 By the early 1830s a
landscaped hotel and bath houses, fountains, pavilions and
shops greeted civilian visitors and the tsarist soldiers who
were sent to the spas to recuperate from wounds or illness.
The environs were not absolutely free from tribal "predators,"
but risky excursions were not really necessary for the alpine
experience: as Pyotr Sumarokov remarked, the Piatigorsk
mountains could be nicely appreciated through the window
of one's quarters (frequently no more than a rented room in
a local resident's house).5 To vary their activities, vacationers
might also watch the festivities of Bairam and sample exotic
foods in nearby tribal villages allied to the tsarist state.6 On
the tamer side, there were outings to the German settlement
of Karras, a community originally founded by Scottish mis-
sionaries in the early nineteenth century.7
The spas had a high reputation for physical therapy. A
"medico-topographical" guide of the mid-1820s chemically
analyzed the mineral springs and commended their curative
properties.8 These "amazing, salutary gifts of Nature" were
meant to be good for just about everything. While attacking
physical ailments, they purportedly lifted one's spirits, in-
stilled a happy feeling and could instantly transfigure sickly
faces. Especially prized in Russia (even in the Soviet era),
sparkling Narzan was acclaimed as the spas' "champagne." 9
During a prescribed cure in the Caucasus in 1823, Stepan
Nechaev took exception to such accolades in a short verse
addressed to Grigory Rimsky-Korsakov, who had just left
Russia for Paris, Italy and Vienna: now in unhealthy com-
pany, Nechaev looked forward to a reunion with his friend in
Moscow over a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.10 In a humorous
vein, this poem highlighted Russia's new craze for Caucasian
mineral water.
While the culture of the spa created a pervasive aura of
therapy, travelers got a big dose of spiritual medicine by com-
muning with nature, as so profusely attested in recits de voyage
of Pushkin's era. Typically focused on the writer's emotions
and short on pictorial detail, the travelogues of the 1820s were
saturated with allusions which attest to literature's power as
a guidebook. Reading put Russian travelers on the alert for
Caucasian sublimity and gave them an appropriate discourse
to imitate. As this chapter will illustrate, Rousseau and Ka-
ramzin remained very active models of a soulful gout de la
montagne immeasurably more emotive than anything Pushkin
ever wrote. It was young Pushkin, however, who activated
the Caucasian literary pilgrimage and provided the read-
ership with an enticing discursive bond between the Alps and
Russia's "own" alternative. Lesser poets of the 1820s
strengthened the connection by amplifying the mountains'
putative powers for restituting tired spirits. Lured by the liter-
ary Caucasus, Russian travelers of the era sought their own
encounters with the uplifting mountain land. When they
chose to write about the experience, they usually produced
emotive accounts which "corroborated" exactly what reading
had led them to expect.
Although they were on the edge of a war zone, sentimental
travelers greatly inflated contemporary poetry's fiction of an
alpine space of "higher things" sheltered from military
aggression. On apparently solitary treks, Russians with heads
full of print meditated and prayed on the Asian frontier as if
in Switzerland. Consciousness of continuing tribal hostility to
tsardom sometimes invaded the quasi-religious idyll. How-
ever, despite acknowledgments that the conquest was by no
means over, the sentimental journey erected a screen to the
inhumanity of imperialism, as though the traveler's presence
in the Caucasus owed nothing to military campaigns. Quite
likely a source of moral solace, this strategy of high-
mindedness obscured the pilgrim's complacence about Rus-
sia's assault on the territory.
The literary guidebooks which stimulated the travelers'
quest for spiritual therapy in the Caucasus suffered notable
but largely futile attacks from the early 1830s onward. Most
famously, Pushkin challenged the romantic poetics of Cauca-
sian space in Journey to Arzrum, the account of his unauthorized
trip to the camp of the Russian army at war with Turkey in
1829. But as we shall see, this recit de voyage to Turkish battle-
fields stopped short of totally dismantling the discourse of
"The Prisoner of the Caucasus." Left partially intact in Jour-
ney to Arzrum, the soul-stirring alpine realm of Pushkin's youth
was thoroughly demolished in Alexander Polezhaev's "Erpe-
li" (1832), a chauvinistic poem of war in Chechnia and Dages-
tan. Subsequent writers, including Lermontov and Tolstoy,
also punctured old cliches of Caucasian gloom and glory right
into the 1860s. Despite all the onslaughts, however, the genre
of the sentimental pilgrimage survived throughout the Cauca-
sian conquest (and even into the twentieth century). 11 For
reasons to be summarized in this chapter's concluding section,
the "Caucasian Alps" were apparently just too satisfying for
most Russian travelers to relinquish.
THE EMPTY CHURCH
Operative as a poetic bridge between the Alps and the Cau-

casus, young Pushkin's popular tale of captivity in Circassia
naturally topped the travelers' list of literary companions.
Some visitors in the territory actually brought "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus" with them.12 Russians who left the poem at
home might find a copy at a posting-station along the way,
as Pushkin supposedly did en route to Erzerum.13 But most
significantly, even travelers without physical access to the text
had Pushkin's verbal music imprinted on the brain. Belinsky
attested to this condition of traveling under the spell of poetry
memorized at home. When he went to Piatigorsk for his health
in 1837, the sight of the mountains triggered his spontaneous
declamation of the pertinent section of "The Prisoner of the
Caucasus." 14 His previously cited article on Pushkin implied
that such mental records were common: as Belinsky prepared
to discuss the poem's scenery (and the conjoined "ethno-
graphic" sequence), he skipped quotations on the assumption
that most readers knew the whole extract by heart.
Literary pilgrims who chose to write recits de voyage typically
assumed the posture of cultivated gentlemen prone to reveren-
tial meditations more Karamzinian than Pushkinian. 15 The
characteristic blend of eighteenth-century sentimentality and
the contemporary poetics of Caucasian space was definitively
illustrated in Radozhitsky's recit de voyage to Georgievsk, pub-
lished in 1823. I n flatlands during an early stage of the jour-
ney, the traveler impatiently asked himself, "But where was
that Caucasus?"16 "That" Caucasus was quite simply young
Pushkin's textual Caucasus, as affirmed by subsequent
allusions. Once he caught sight of the mountains, Radozhitsky
mimicked Pushkin (and Zhukovsky) by taking the snowy
summits for "clouds massed on the horizon." As Elbrus
loomed ever closer, the traveler ruminated about God in one
of many passages which might have been lifted from Rousseau
or Letters of a Russian Traveler ("majestic forces of the Creator
and the insignificance of human existence.") But the religi-
osity could not guide a none-too-skilled pen through a pic-
torial description of the mountain. To tackle this weighty task,
Radozhitsky simply cited "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" and
seconded its rhetoric of "majesty and dread." While con-
vinced that nothing more was needed to convey a proper
understanding of the sublime place, Radozhitsky also para-
phrased some lines from Zhukovsky's "To Voeikov," a text
given new currency as a citation in Pushkin's captivity tale.
All these features testified to the force of literature as a guide-
book which prepared the traveler to find "that" Caucasus
and gave him discursive tools to stage his own ego-centered
encounter with it.
By comparison to other travelers of the 1820s, Radozhitsky
endorsed Russian imperialism with unusual frankness (as
though hitting his stride for the job of war correspondent he
would assume later for the Northern Bee). His recit de voyage
opened with the statement of pride in tsarist conquest con-
ceived as a civilizing mission (the advent of "art and
science"). The outlook served him in good stead when some
Caucasian natives made an appearance much later in the
travelogue. He encountered Kabardinian and Ossetian chil-
dren among Russia's prisoners of war near Georgievsk and
pronounced the little captives cute as supernumeraries in the
"Asiatic ballets of Didelot."17 Momentarily saddened at the
thought of children wrenched from their parents and possibly
orphaned, Radozhitsky quickly soothed his conscience by
asserting that the adults were confirmed "savages" anyway,
whereas their offspring would now evolve through schooling
in Russia. Totally unconscious of his crushing condescension,
he extolled the empire's power to transform each little
"animal into a human being." The ideology of the civilizing
mission was there to explain away the violence of imperialism
which temporarily disturbed the traveler.
More fundamentally, however, the very rationale of the sen-
timental literary pilgrimage provided bigger blinders to the
rapaciousness of the Russian presence in the Caucasus.
Radozhitsky paid his opening tribute to the "scepter of art
and science" but then focused his travelogue on lofty com-
munion with the sublime. Alone with uplifting mountains in
an area far from battlefields, he essentially fashioned himself
as a cultivated venerator of nature. This sentimental posture
rhetorically depopulated a territory which was in fact the
homeland of peoples in the path of the expansionist Russian
state.
The morally soothing construct of pacific Russian pilgrim-
age to unpopulated wilderness recurred repeatedly in sub-
sequent travel literature. Like Radozhitsky, Nechaev knew
that the tribes were there, but his recit de voyage marginalized
them in order to appropriate nature as a private meditation
chamber. An ethnographic excursus into a Circassian village
allowed Nechaev to admire the women's "beautiful eyes" and
the men's "intelligent, proud and martial" bearing. But in
dealing with landscape, the traveler emptied the space of
natives. Thoroughly familiar with the Nouvelle Heloise,
Nechaev first compared Caucasian and Swiss topography in
order to insist upon the greater severity of Russia's border-
land. He then staged this devotional moment:
As I admired this wondrous scene, I thought: Does man not thusly
attain a solemn steadfastness of spirit only when he rises above the
lowly sphere of earthly pleasures? And to do so, must he not traverse
the primeval forest of passion and the thorny cliffs of misfortune?
. . . Highest and closest of all, two-headed Elbrus rises above the
throng of hoary giants. The mountain's main face expresses a
weighty calm, befitting a Tsar's majesty.18
Nechaev's next sentence noted tribal legends about the throne
of a god on Elbrus but dismissed them as typical of "peoples
living in perpetual childhood." Convinced of his intellectual
superiority, the traveler failed to notice his own act of over-
laying the mountain with affective meaning produced in the
print culture of Orthodox Russia.
Just as easily, the high-minded posture permitted Nechaev
to avert his eyes from Caucasian resistance to Russian
imperialism. In a wistful moment he remarked that, "One
would like to admire [the mountains] at closer range, one
would like to penetrate their stony depths as far as possible,
but their unwinking sentry never drops his weapon; and woe
to the curious, bold person who penetrates the last refuge of
unbridled freedom!"19 With the hint of extracting ores from
the "stony depths," this interesting comment signaled the
economic goal of tapping a colony's natural resources.
Nechaev also granted the natives' refusal to be dispossessed
without a fight. However, the travelogue's prevailing strategy
of sentimental tourism denied the political tensions admitted
here. Mostly alone with mountains bucolic as the Alps,
Nechaev professed that he had come primarily to "admire"
the Caucasus, with no real designs to "penetrate" more
deeply than the spas.
Sentimentality's efficacity as a blinder to imperialist
appropriation of the Caucasus was demonstrated again in
a recit de voyage to Georgia by Karl Reingardt, a doctor
from Wilno. As in the other travelogues already considered,
Reingardt produced landscape as a meditator's cell isolated
from cross-cultural strife. He set a serene, moonlit scene
near "glorious" Kazbek, capped with "eternal snow" and
regnant as the range's "sovereign mistress" (a feminine
variant of Pushkin's "tsar"). 20 Reingardt admired the panor-
ama beside the "hut of a mountaineer," but the native
occupant was nowhere in evidence. With neither real nor
metaphorical tribesmen to spoil the peaceful solitude, the
traveler relished his "isolation among mountains which
touch the sky," and plunged into speculations "about the
succession of centuries and the changing course of human
fate," the landing site of Noah's ark and the torments of
Prometheus. The revery was broken by the admission that
the Caucasian heights were still largely "inaccessible to
man and enlightenment." Natives antagonistic to Russian
bearers of "enlightenment" were thus acknowledged imperi-
ously (as creatures inimical to "man"). But to keep hostile
tribes from installing themselves in his text, Reingardt
immediately redirected the reader's eye back to more tracts
of rhetorically depopulated, sublime scenery, as he con-
tinued his trek.
As these cases illustrate, the sentimental journey recur-
rently had recourse to an implicit trope of the Caucasus as a
church reserved for Russian worshipers. Two more, particu-
larly undiluted examples may be cited to underline the point.
In an attitude of awestruck solitude, a certain Gerakov
reported this ecstatic experience: "Tears of emotion flow from
the eyes of the enlightened traveler facing these massifs too
immense to encompass at a glance. He kneels and exclaims:
'God exists and these are His wonders!'" 21 Another traveler,
likewise alone in the Piatigorsk region, appeared to speak from
a confession booth: "I bowed before the Almighty at the foot
of the Besh-Tau mountains and equated myself to earth and
dust. Indeed I am no more than dust set in motion by pas-
sions; and yet by taking wing, this animated dust can ascend
to talk to the Creator of the magnificent Caucasus, the Creator
of nature." 22 These travelers surely knew that the Asian fron-
tier was not really so empty and churchlike, but they had to
pretend that it was in order to replicate those sentimental
prostrations of the soul initially performed in a very different
political context in eighteenth-century writings about
Switzerland.23
ATTACKS ON THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
For all its prevalence, however, exalted communion with the

wild did not suit absolutely every Russian's taste. In direct
defiance of the Caucasian spa's therapeutic atmosphere, one
traveler in the late 1820s symbolized the romantic enthusiasm
for savage highlands as a disease.24 Although definitely
Byronic (a "British rage"), the malady was not merely
"spleen" but rather a "mental obstruction" analogous to a
blocked digestive tract. Appalled by the epidemic, the writer
refused to follow his compatriots' special Caucasian "diet"
of wild terrain. Although we cannot be certain, this cranky
assessment may have represented the view of a wider circle
of people tired of Caucasian gloom and glory but not motiv-
ated to denounce it in print.
In any case, by far the most celebrated assault on the senti-
mental gout de la montagne came from Pushkin's Journey to
Arzrum, previewed for the Literary Gazette {Literaturnaia gazeta)
in 1830 and then published in its entirety six years later.
There is a long critical tradition of viewing this travelogue
as a demystification of the romantic "The Prisoner of the
Caucasus." 25 No rigid dichotomy can be drawn, however,
because the Pushkin of the travelogue refused to deny com-
pletely "that" first Caucasus, the textual alpine realm of his
youth.26 The result was an ambivalent interplay between Jour-
ney to Arzrum and the imaginative geography of "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus."
Without a doubt, Journey to Arzrum drastically deflated the
pose of the gentleman traveler lost in lofty prayers to nature.
First of all, the writing turns the eye from landscape by linger-
ing on stopping points rather than Pushkin's passage along
the Georgian Military Highway and subsidiary roads. 27 Tiflis
receives extensive treatment when the author pauses there en
route to the camp of the Russian army. In the reverse move-
ment, home becomes the place to which he desires to return
as fast as possible. Given the focus upon destinations, the
intervening spaces become obstacles to overcome rather than
captivating subject-matter. As he approaches Tiflis, for
example, Pushkin proclaims sheer boredom with the scenery
and emits one of his recurring cries of eagerness to reach
Paskevich's army: "My impressions soon began to lose their
keenness. Hardly one solid day had passed, and the roar of
the Terek with its hideous waterfalls, the crags and precipices
no longer attracted my attention. An impatience to reach
Tim's possessed me completely. I rode past Kazbek just as
indifferently as I had once sailed past Chatyrdai" (in the
Crimea).28
Besides minimizing landscape, Pushkin's recit de voyage
punctured the sentimental bubble of alpine religiosity by con-
fronting readers with carnage. After leaving Tim's in search
of the tsarist army, the writer spotted Ararat where Noah's
ark supposedly landed. His response parodied the tradition
of reading Caucasian peaks as promises of salvation: "I stared
avidly at the Biblical mountain, I saw the ark moored on the
summit, full of hope for a new beginning and life; and I saw
the raven and the dove in flight, symbols of mortal punish-
ment and reconciliation" (437). Out of context, these lines
may seem free from irony. But Pushkin quickly shifted to the
war in Turkey and provided dispassionate glimpses of corpses
after a battle. Juxtaposed to a killing field, Ararat's religious
mythology was vitiated.
War intruded again to challenge the tradition of spiritual
uplift in the rugged heights in one of Pushkin's ambivalent
allusions to "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." The writer let
his imagination wander in a rare description of scenery: "The
mountains stretched above us. On their summits a herd was
creeping along like insects, barely visible. We could also make
out a shepherd, perhaps a Russian taken prisoner at one time
and grown old in captivity" (419). The remark evoked a
human drama similar to the one which enthralled Russian
readers of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" several years
before. However, Journey to Arzrum distanced itself from the
youthful poem by raising the possibility of permanent cap-
tivity and offering no hint of amorous consolation with a Cir-
cassian tribeswoman. Indeed, the very next paragraph of
Pushkin's travelogue cut the ground from under that type of
fantasy, so central in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus": "The
Circassians hate us. We have edged them out of their free
pasture lands, their auls have been destroyed and entire tribes
annihilated. With every passing day they move deeper into
the mountains and make attacks against us from there" (420).
No sheltered alpine space where a Russian was advised to
seek spiritual renewal (and might even romance a wild
woman), this Caucasus was a zone of hostilities with dispos-
sessed natives.
While eschewing the soulful meditations about nature
which might provide a rhetorical escape from these embattled
Circassians, Journey to Arzrum also stripped glory from the tsar-
ist conquest. In the continuation of the passage just cited,
Pushkin voiced the hope that Russia would prove able to
civilize the tribes by spreading Orthodoxy. But the trav-
elogue's first chapter illustrated a brutality far removed from
this pacific ideal of missionary activity. In an episode which
seemed to parody Radozhitsky's evocation of extras in an
"Asiatic ballet," Pushkin described the "grievous condition"
of "half-naked and repulsively dirty" children among pris-
oners of war at Vladikavkaz (421). Held before the reader
without further commentary, these little shackled victims of
tsarist conquest were neither rationalized away by reference
to a civilizing mission nor hidden from sight behind a curtain
of homage to wilderness.
But although the anti-romantic strategies of Journey of
Arzrum undermined sentimental travel literature's construct
of the purely pacific Russian worshiper of nature, Pushkin
none the less clung in certain ways to the restorative alpine
Caucasus of his youth. At one point the travelogue featured
mountain paysage as a "sanctuary" (422), a quasi-religious
symbol in harmony with the author's youthful trope of the
"new Parnassus." In the readership's intertextual field, this
lingering promise of artistic empowerment was made good
when Pushkin in fact wrote a poem about an experience
related in Journey to Arzrum — the arresting sight of the monas-
tery on Kazbek when the clouds suddenly parted.
In addition to this vestige of the "new Parnassus," the trav-
elogue retained three other tropes of the romantic years. Push-
kin engaged in interesting self-citation to record his first
glimpse of the mountains: "I saw on the distant horizon the
clouds which caught my eye exactly as they had done nine
years before. They looked just the same there in the same
place. It was the snowy summits of the Caucasian range"
(417). Like poetry by Byron and Zhukovsky, "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus" projected snow-caps as clouds, and the com-
parison had become a standard formula in recits de voyage.
Instead of seeking an entirely different formulation, though,
Journey to Arzrum upheld the cliche and even called attention
to Pushkin's primary role in establishing it in Russian letters.
Along with the irresistible clouds, the poet kept the over-
worked metaphor of the mountain as a potentate attended by
a suite: en route to Tiflis he hails Besh-Tau as a majestic pres-
ence "surrounded by other mountains, his vassals" (418). In
another case, Pushkin avoided the hackneyed formula "eter-
nal snows" but conveyed the same idea by quoting Horace's
line "stat glacies iners / Menses per omnes . . ." ("covered
throughout the year with immobile ice," 442). In interplay
with the other persisting cliches, it is not evident whether
the rather tired Latin citation was offered tongue-in-cheek or
rather with an approving nod, as though to show that hack-
neyed mountain gloom and glory could be made paradoxi-
cally "new" by placing a classical text in a Caucasian context.
Along with the line of "clouds" and the mountain ruler with
his "vassals," these latinized snows preserved "that" Cau-
casus produced by young Pushkin and made a place of pil-
grimage by Russian travelers.
Some lesser poets and poetasters demystified the territory
more unequivocally than Pushkin, who had a big personal
stake, after all, in "that" romantic Caucasus. Pavel Katenin's
"Caucasian Mountains" (1834) went so far as to call the
range a "row of ugly walls" probably created by the devil
rather than God.29 Obviously sick of the sublime, Katenin
disavowed the Parnassian connection to make the Caucasus
the "plague of poetry." In a similar development as of the
mid-1830s, certain other poets urged Russians to recognize
that their homeland's plains and broad, navigable rivers were
more beautiful than the Caucasus. 30
But these protests were merely potshots by comparison to
the demolition of sublime imaginative geography in
Polezhaev's "Erpeli." This poem of war in Chechnia and
Dagestan had a notable biographical foundation. Outraged
by Polezhaev's free-thinking burlesque "Sasha," Nicholas I
conscripted the young author into the infantry in 1826.31
Eventually the poet's regiment was sent to the Caucasus
where he spent four taxing years (without any recuperative
breaks in Piatigorsk).
Set entirely in the theater of war, "Erpeli" ridicules arm-
chair travelers who take a fancy to savage nature while sitting
cozily at home with a book. In the second of the poem's eight
parts, Polezhaev imagines the arrival of a well-read recruit -
a devotee of "scenes of wildness in all its primitive naked-
ness."32 The verse then unfolds as a tour of sites the newcomer
encountered in books before enlisting. Elbrus retains a modi-
cum of traditional grandeur as an "old, hoary Titan" whose
peak gleams through the clouds. Disillusionment mounts,
however, when the celebrated Terek strikes the recent arrival
as a "dirty swill." At the end of the excursion, Polezhaev
unmasks the neophyte as none other than his own former self,
now denounced as one of many "blockheads" who thought
Pushkin's Elbrus properly typified the Caucasus.
The deprecatory reference to young Pushkin invites analy-
sis of the overlap and divergence between "Erpeli" and Journey
to Arzrum. The two works parted ways politically, while
unequally sharing certain anti-romantic premises. Journey to
Arzrum featured the Caucasus as a combat zone but withheld
patriotic approval of the military onslaught by confronting
the reader with dispossessed Circassians and miserable little
prisoners of war. At the same time, Pushkin retained fondness
for the romantic achievement of his youth. By contrast,
Polezhaev unequivocally rejected romantic imaginative
geography but endorsed the ideology of the civilizing mission:
in displacing the tourist's alpine Caucasus with the ordeals of
"Holy Russia's" battle against Muslim "savages," "Erpeli"
totally subverted the sentimental literary pilgrimage and even
blamed Pushkin for captivating "blockheads" with mountain
gloom and glory in the first place.
The anti-sentimentalism of "Erpeli" far exceeded any disaf-
fection from the alpine ethos in Russia's Caucasian travel
literature. All the same, Pyotr Sumarokov's "Letters from the
Caucasus" bears special mention as a significant retreat from
heartfelt sublimity. Sumarokov vowed to escape the intertex-
tual circle. Various Russian visitors already have "surveyed
the sights," he remarked, "but I am not going to follow their
method. I am not going to give extracts from old books and
try to pass them off as something new."33 In fact, Sumarokov
did not prove wholly successful in his search for an untrod
authorial path (he could not forgo Kazbek's "eternal snows,"
for example). But even if not completely free of literary echoes,
"Letters from the Caucasus" struck a fresh note by eliminat-
ing quasi-religious sentiment and highflown rhetoric. Con-
vinced that the scenery had "become all too familiar by now"
to the Russian readership, Sumarokov indeed gave little atten-
tion to the mountains. He wrote instead about the spa's rou-
tine and recounted a visit to a Circassian village. This encoun-
ter with the natives betrayed an imperious thirst for oriental
exoticism: the tourists all found the women less beautiful and
the men less dashing than promised in Pushkin's "The Pris-
oner of the Caucasus." 34 The most disappointed member of
the Russian party even faulted a certain tribesman for looking
just like one of his serfs back home instead of having a suitably
"Asian face."
THE PERSISTENCE OF SENTIMENTALITY
Despite the various efforts to demystify the territory, Russian

travel literature remained largely sentimental in the 1830s. A
few quick citations will suffice to illustrate the strength of the
old gout de la montagne. The "eternal snows," the "splendid"
and "dreadful" mountains like "proud giants," the "mag-
nificent vistas," the "savage," roaring Terek were all reaf-
firmed by thrilled travelers.35 Most strikingly of all, the thirst
for spiritual therapy remained unabated. One Russian on a
solitary trek in the highlands in 1833 cast off the "chains of
the body" to fly "to the Creator of the universe."36 At the end
of the decade, another traveler reported the same exaltation
and exhorted readers to make their own ascents of the Cau-
casus in order to flee the vanities of high society.37 Already
present in Tepliakov's poem "The Caucasus" (1829), this
topos of exchanging the fool's gold of the beau monde for the
spiritual bedrock of pristine mountains was notably promoted
in Caucasian recits de voyage by Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, the dec-
ade's most popular writer (whose vigorous reassertion of the
subjective mode will be assessed in a later chapter).38
The genre of sentimental pilgrimage to the "Caucasian Alps"
would keep suffering attacks in Russia's literary market place.
Ethnography, plans for colonial development of the Caucasus,
and defenses of the civilizing mission began to steal more space
from landscape in travelers' accounts of the 1830s. Further-
more, that decade brought the publication of campaign notes
by Russian soldiers who sometimes debunked the aesthetic of
the Caucasian sublime and the fantasy of erotic adventure in
the wilderness.39 In yet a different fashion, Lermontov's A Hero
of Our Time (1841) would explode conventions of the floridly
rhetorical Caucasian journey, as we shall see.
But instead of palling, the pleasures of the sentimental liter-
ary pilgrimage remained keen and were even amplified once
travelers could add Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov to
their list of "guidebooks." The selective reading and outright
misreading which this entailed were well illustrated by
Evgeny Verderevsky's book From the Trans-Urals to Transcauca-
sia: Humourous, Sentimental and Practical Letters from a Trip
(1857). In contemporaneous publications about Shamil, Ver-
derevsky viewed the Caucasus solely as a war zone.40 But
unlike Verderevsky the publicist, Verderevsky the traveler
suspended conquest in order to pursue a literary pilgrimage
in the old, classically epistolary form. In addition to Pushkin,
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov helped nudge his pen.41
No matter what the "guide" was, however, the traveler
invariably drew sentimental inspiration. From the Trans-Urals
to Transcaucasia actually quoted Journey to Arzrum, for example,
but only to profit from Pushkin's self-citation of the "clouds"
which symbolized "that" Caucasus of the 1820s. Unfazed by
the demystifications of Journey toArzrum, Polezhaev's "Erpeli,"
anti-romantic campaign notes, or Lermontov's A Hero of Our
Time, Verderevsky could not part with the sublime imaginat-
ive geography first produced in Russian poetry of the 1820s.
As a tribute to the primacy of verse in young Pushkin's era,
the sight of Elbrus prompted Verderevsky to switch to poetry
to convey his "insuperable lyricism."42 One line of this verse
granted that the Caucasus was "bathed in blood." But this
grievous knowledge never seeped into the traveler's prose
account of his encounter with a romantic landscape he had
set out to find. Thus even at this late date, the sentimental
Caucasian journey was still thriving and ripe for the parodic
attack which young Tolstoy's The Cossacks (1863) would
mount against it.
As this chapter has shown, the sentimental literary pilgrim-
age to the Caucasus survived in Russian letters during the
whole conquest. This remarkably persistent phenomenon pro-
vided two sorts of psychological and cultural satisfactions.
The first was a form of compensation peculiar to Russia. By
preserving the literary fiction of the "Caucasian Alps," trav-
elers of the romantic era were in effect telling themselves that
Piatigorsk was as good as Switzerland. This was valuable
since many Russians, for one reason or another, could not
actually go to Europe (Pushkin, for instance, was never
allowed to travel abroad and was officially reprimanded for
the unauthorized trip to Erzerum). Although he had never
been to the West, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky defined the consola-
tory perspective in "Letter to Doctor Erman" (1831): "Any-
body who has seen the Caucasus in storm and sunshine need
have no regrets about not seeing Switzerland." 43 This prop-
osition recurred in Russian travel literature, sometimes
couched in rhetoric very likely borrowed from the increasingly
famous Bestuzhev-Marlinsky himself.44 On his first trip to
Europe in 1857, Lev Tolstoy would express the same outlook
less elegantly: in response to his relatives' delight with
countryside near Geneva, he told them the place was "rotten
by comparison to the Caucasus." 45
But in addition to filling a need to believe that Russia's
"own" mountains bettered Europe's, the fiction of the "Cau-
casian Alps" worked as a moral tonic by dissociating the sen-
timental traveler from imperialism's plundering designs.
Throughout the conquest, Russian recits de voyage favored the
posture of the sensitive soul content to aestheticize and
worship the Caucasus. In harmony with nature in this shel-
tered space, the sentimental traveler could feel purehearted,
disjoined from bloody warfare and not even implicated in
plans for economic appropriation of the territory. After the
tribes declared Holy War on Russia, travelers proved quicker
to denounce Muslim "savages" and complain about Georgi-
ans or Armenians too "lazy" to exploit their bountiful count-
ries properly.46 Many who underwrote imperialism so
directly, however, still liked to plunge back into peaceful con-
templation of nature. As particularly well illustrated in Ver-
derevsky's From the Trans-Urals to Transcaucasia, a Russian
might express animosity towards "treacherous" tribesmen
but then attempt to conceal political conflict by reassuming
the role of the cultivated tourist with no plans to dispossess
or exploit anyone. A reinforcer of the ideology of the civilizing
mission, the sentimental journey's ruling topos of the reverent
friend of nature insinuated that Russian intrusion in the terri-
tory was besmirching nobody's honor.
CHAPTER 5
The national stake in Asia
A two-faced Janus, ancient Russia simultaneously

looked toward Europe and Asia.
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
While physical geography inspired the alpine ethos just exam-
ined in poetry and travel literature, Russians considered the
Caucasus' native cultures strictly Asian. Ever since the mid-
eighteenth century, Russian map-makers had taken the Cau-
casian range as an outer limit of Europe.1 No universal con-
sensus on the matter reigned in popular imagination,
however. Instead of regarding the mountains as the vital
demarcation, certain travelers from Russia in young Pushkin's
era said farewell to "Europe" with apprehension and excite-
ment when they crossed the Terek river.2 The variability of
"Asia's" threshold and its capacity to stir irrational senti-
ments illustrates how arbitrary and affectively powerful such
delimitations can be. As Edward Said has stressed, the draw-
ing of a boundary between "us" and "them" always carries
a plethora of "suppositions, associations and fictions" about
the foreign people.3 In no way requiring the others' consent
about the character attributed to them, such structures of
thought basically convert the foreign into meaning about
"our" culture and mentality. An appropriation occurs, to
serve the needs of the observing writers and their compatriot
audiences.
As a preface to reading pertinent literary works of the
romantic era, the present chapter will explore the meanings
Russians deduced about themselves by rendering the Cau-
casus "Asian" or "oriental." We should note immediately
71
that these overlapping terms designated particularly broad cul-
tural spheres for the elite of Pushkin's time. The Mongols
loomed large in national consciousness as barbarians who had
oppressed the homeland for some two hundred and fifty years.
But in subsequent periods, the tsarist state had turned the
tables to extend power over various Asian peoples. Ivan IV sub-
jugated the Tatars of the Volga and Ural river regions. A push
into Kazazh areas began in the 1730s. Catherine annexed the
Crimea, advanced in the Caucasus and made new inroads into
Central Asia. Conquered in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies, Siberia also remained a very salient "Asia" for the Rus-
sian elite of the i82Os.4Beyond the confines of the multinational
empire itself, Russia maintained long-standing contacts with
China and other countries of the Far East at this time. India and
the lands of the Bible also featured, of course, in the manifold
Russian conception of the Asian world.
But if "Asia" encompassed many places, the Islamic East
acquired special prominence in popular imagination. Begin-
ning in the mid-eighteenth century, The Thousand and One
Nights drew Russians into a pan-European "collective day-
dream" about sultans and seraglios.5 Initially known in the
French translations of Antoine Gallard, the fairy tales also
became available in Russian translations issued in Moscow
in a fairly steady stream between 1763 and 1826.6 These col-
lections enjoyed great popularity right into young Pushkin's
heyday, when they were still regularly sold out at bookstores. 7
The exotic allure of The Thousand and One Nights was strength-
ened by many other western literary works. In addition to
famous philosophical tales about "wise orientals" (Montes-
quieu's Lettres persanes, Voltaire's Zaire), a massive, lowbrow
French literature of harem intrigues began circulating in
Russia in the early 1800s.8 Around a decade later, the oriental
poems of Byron immeasurably intensified the collective day-
dream of Muslim sensuality and violence which reigned
in Europe and Russia alike. Another classic of western
orientalism particularly well known in early nineteenth-
century Russia was Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh (1817), par-
tially translated by Zhukovsky as "The Peri and the Angel."
The national stake in Asia 73
During the period from 1810 to 1820 theatrical spectacles
in Russia also encouraged rapturous musings about Islam:
Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio played a major role, along
with the ballets of Charles Didelot, whose "Asiatic" pro-
ductions (so admired by the traveler Radozhitsky) included
a work based on "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." 9
In drawing the Caucasus into Islam's exotic cultural orbit,
the Russian upper classes of Pushkin's era postulated two,
quite different identities for themselves. On the one hand,
they assumed a western stance of superiority over the orient.10
To build an empire in Asia was to behave as a European
dedicated to the spread of Christian civilization and the reali-
zation of a colony's economic potential. This ideological pat-
tern took shape in Catherine's era when Russia began advanc-
ing in the Caucasus at the expense of the Ottoman empire
and Persia. Turkey ceded Kabarda to Russia by the Treaty
of Kuchuk-Kainardzhi (1774) and entirely withdrew from the
northwestern Black Sea coast after the war of 1787-92. Soon
after the annexation of Georgia, Russia progressively drove
Persia from its traditional spheres of influence in northern
Azerbaijan, a region which the Shah finally ceded in its
entirety by the Treaty of Gulistan (1813). The tsarist state
also won nominal suzerainty over Dagestan at the same time.
Further Russian campaigns against Persia and Turkey were
mounted between 1826 and 1829, a s w e have gleaned in dis-
cussing Pushkin's Journey to Arzrum. Finally and most dramati-
cally, the tribes of Chechnia and Dagestan arose in Holy War
against Russia in the late 1820s under the leadership of the
first Caucasian imam, Gazi-Muhammed. In light of the his-
tory of warfare and the exacerbation of conflict with the tribes,
educated Russians of Pushkin's era tended to view the Cau-
casus as an enormous battlefield where the Orthodox state
was locked in epochal combat with Islam.
Like the religious ambience, "European" economic objec-
tives of expansion into "Asia" also dated from Catherine's
reign. As most lavishly represented by the "oriental project,"
overlordship of the Caucasus was to bring Russia a chain of
trading outposts all the way into India. In Russia in the 1820s
the British Raj retained prominence as a colonial model to
equal or even surpass. By the second decade of the nineteenth
century, Russian journals were running articles about the
wealth which England was amassing as the ruler of India. 11
In this period Russia's own colonial ambitions in the Cau-
casus were not widely aired in publications aimed at the gen-
eral reading public, and even some high tsarist officials still
viewed the territory as a perpetual battleground rather than
a potentially valuable possession.12 But in certain circles, the
southerly Caucasus ("Transcaucasia") was gaining a repu-
tation as a richly endowed but backward region, to be devel-
oped for the supposedly mutual benefit of the native popu-
lation and Russia alike. Most notably, Alexander Griboedov
coauthored a plan for a Russian-Transcaucasian Trading
Company while employed as secretary to the tsarist legation
in Tehran in 1827.13 Although not enacted or even made
widely known in its time, this proposal conveyed a significant
perception of Georgia in particular as a tsarist colony awaiting
transformation in the imperial British manner. Just a short
while later, Russian journalists in Tiflis became fond of
describing Transcaucasia as a "tropical India," with the
implication that their homeland was going to reap lavish co-
lonial benefits.14
Central to imperialist tsarist ideology, the imposition of
oriental identity on the Caucasus undoubtedly allowed Rus-
sians to intensify their sense of Europeanness in religious,
moral and economic terms. On the other hand, though, Rus-
sian romantics provided fascinating demonstrations of how
futile it was to try to erect an ideological barrier between the
native realm and Asia. As Vasily Nikitin once argued, Russia
could not encompass itself in western civilization and declare
the orient its Other because the orient comprised an "organic
part of Russian history."15 Medieval Russia had cultural and
political roots in Asia, Asian peoples had comprised part of
the tsarist empire since the sixteenth century, and the names
of Tatar ancestry among the aristocracy of Pushkin's time
attested vividly to the vast country's unique blend of East and
West.16 In the light of such considerations, a Russian could
not believe in the alterity of the orient as readily and in-
variably as a European might. Most intriguingly of all, the
native realm's cultural heterogeneity gave Russian romantics
a stake in enhancing Asia rather than consistently acclaiming
the western civilization in which they knew they did not fully
belong. Of course, a good many European romantics too con-
strued the orient as the cradle of marvelous poetry and philo-
sophical doctrines which might regenerate spiritual life in the
West.17 But only in semi-Asian Russia did romantic consti-
tutions of the East provide therapy for a profoundly ambiva-
lent consciousness of national difference from Europe.
The contradictory patterns of meaning which Russia
devised about Asia formed the literary Caucasus' cultural
matrix to be explored now. When did Russian interest in the
orient begin to evolve? To what extent did Russians mimic
European attitudes, beliefs and. ideas about the Islamic East?
And in what respects did Russian discourse about Asia reveal
tensions with the West? In examining these questions, this
chapter will convey no Russian recognitions of a territory's
right to independence from the tsarist state. However, the
romantic enhancement of Asia revealed a Russian confusion
about cultural frontiers which would manifest itself in ideo-
logically significant disruptions of "civilized" identity in liter-
ary works about Caucasian mountaineers.
JOINING EUROPE'S RENAISSANCE ORIENTALE
Despite manifold contacts with Asians over the centuries,

Russia rather curiously entered oriental studies only very late
and then under European tutelage. As the eminent scholar
Vasily Bartold observed, the study of eastern cultures and
languages came to Russia as one of the western sciences and
did not flourish until the state perceived a vested interest in
the field.18 In the first half of the eighteenth century isolated
academicians in Russia attempted to persuade the govern-
ment to establish programs in oriental languages and Islamic
culture, but such proposals went unheeded or were even ridi-
culed as useless pedantry. The period of aggressive penetration
of the Caucasus brought a radical shift in attitudes in high
places. Catherine initiated some practical training of
interpreters in eastern languages. 19 However, the big push
toward establishing oriental studies came in the reign of Alex-
ander I. The tsar's first directive on university education
(1804) called for study of the languages of the Bible and the
Muslim peoples.20 Shortly after the annexation of Georgia,
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Kochubei, drew up a
related plan to institute faculties of three different groups of
languages in Kazan (Tatar, Arabic,Turkish), Tiflis (Persian,
Georgian, Armenian) and Irkutsk (Japanese, Chinese,
Manchurian). 21 Under the direction of S. Ya. Rumovsky,
Kazan University emerged as the major center of oriental
studies in Russia at this time. But significant developments
would take place in the capital cities too. The Lazarev insti-
tute of oriental languages was founded in Moscow in 1815;
and three years later St. Petersburg had an Asian Museum
and a university program of Arabic and Persian studies
initially manned by the Europeans Christian Frahn and two
French disciples of the pioneering orientalist, Antoine Isaac
Silvestre de Sacy.22
Perhaps the most politically and culturally eloquent
expression of Russia's urge to take the East under scrutiny
was Sergei Uvarov's "Projet d'une Academie Asiatique,"
written in collaboration with the German orientalist Heinrich-
Julius Klaproth in 1810 and published the following year in
Russian translation in the Herald of Europe. A future Minister
of Education (1833-49), Uvarov voiced dismay about his
country's isolation from the "renaissance of oriental studies"
inaugurated in the West in the late 1750s by the French trans-
lators of Sanskrit, Arabic and Zendic texts.23 He argued that
an Asian academy would be not a scholarly luxury but rather
a vital contributor to national interest and prestige:
Lying adjacent to Asia and exercising dominion over its entire
northern part, Russia retains all the more a political incentive - an
incentive so evident, so indisputable that the slightest glance at a
map suffices to demonstrate the truth of the matter beyond any
doubt. Russia, one might say, has gained its firm foundation in Asia.
An immensely long overland border serves as a point of contact with
all the peoples of the Orient. So how can it be that among all the
European nations Russia alone has paid no attention to Asia?24
As a child of the era of empire-building in the Caucasus,
Uvarov stressed the "evident" political objectives which
Russia could further by training orientalists. But even more
strikingly, the proposal attributed value to an Asian academy
as a cultural enterprise signifying membership in European
enlightenment. Instead of acknowledging an oriental compo-
nent within the tsarist homeland, Uvarov placed Russia
among the "European nations" and defined "Asia" as the
contiguous but utterly different place, to be approached for
investigation from the outside. In short, the proposal gave the
West's renaissance orientale the appeal of a cultural bandwagon
on which every truly civilized country was obliged to find a
seat.
Russian periodicals of young Pushkin's era recurrently pro-
claimed the Europeanness of subjecting Asia to intellectual
scrutiny. By the second decade of the nineteenth century
widely read journals drew upon French, British and German
publications to provide regular coverage of oriental philology
and translations of Arabic and Persian literature. 25 The Rus-
sian press also kept track of activities and publications of
professional associations like the Royal Asiatic Society of
London and France's Societe asiatique. 26 In the same spirit
of Europeanness, the work of Silvestre de Sacy was brought
to general attention when National Annals published "On the
Study of Arabic," the lecture Osip Senkovsky Qozef S§kowski)
delivered upon his accession to a chair of Arabic, Persian and
Turkic languages at St. Petersburg University in 1822.27 Only
twenty-two at the time, this bright local star of oriental studies
had begun his education in his native Wilno and then prac-
ticed Arabic for two years as a traveler in the Levant, decked
in local dress right up to the turban. During the twenty-five
years he held his academic post, he regularly published speci-
alized studies. But as we shall see in subsequent chapters,
Senkovsky also played a major role in the popular dissemi-
nation of hegemonic, Eurocentric discourse about Asia during
1834-47 when he edited the commercially unrivaled journal
the Library for Reading (Biblioteka dlia chteniia).
Russians keen to leap on the bandwagon of oriental studies
readily identified with Europe's self-image as the cultural
caretaker of an Asia now hopelessly mired in barbarism and
stagnation. Napoleon's invasion of Egypt had done much to
promote the belief that the conservation of eastern cultures
went hand in hand with military and political domination.
With its contingent of scholars including the codecipherer of
the Rosetta stone, Jean-Frangois Champollion, the Egyptian
campaign acquired a general reputation in Europe as a ven-
ture which enabled France to accelerate oriental studies and
hold an impressive lead in the field.28 This interpretation of
the military inroad was readily employed in Russia to build
an analogy with the possible cultural gains of tsarist conquest
of the Caucasus. In an article "On the State of Oriental Phi-
lology in Russia" (1825) the Heidelburg-trained orientalist A.
Richter hailed the Caucasian campaigns of Ermolov as a boon
for specialists such as himself: the deeds of the army were
going to assure entry into a Muslim realm formerly "inaccess-
ible to scholars." 29 Perhaps aware that the Armenian special-
ist, A. M. Khudobashev, had accompanied Ermolov to Persia
in 1817, Richter now linked arms with the general on the
march in the Caucasus. 30
A few years later the Moscow Telegraph (Moskovskii telegraf)
also associated cultural research with the conquest of the terri-
tory by characterizing la renaissance orientale as an "intellectual
Crusade." 31 This metaphor of Christian assault perfectly sym-
bolized the army as a trail blazer for scholars. Cited here as
"the masters of India" and the rulers of Algeria, the British
and French were praised for seeking the source of the Ganges,
studying the Bedouins and collecting relevant manuscripts
and artifacts. But Russia too had won cultural "trophies" in
the Crusade. At the conclusion of a war which eliminated
Persian power in the Armenian khanates of Erevan and
Nakhichevan (1826-28), the Turkmanchai treaty granted
Russia a store of manuscripts, subsequently made available
for study in St. Petersburg.32 Such events sustained percep-
tions of the Caucasian conquest as a Napoleonic advancement
of intellectual as well as political frontiers.
RUSSIAN PRIDE IN CULTURAL YOUTH
The Russian rush to join la renaissance orientale took place under

famously judgmental western eyes. As vividly attested in west-
ern travel literature since the time of Ivan IV, Europeans had
stigmatized Russia as a "rude and barbarous kingdom," a
place of "infinite brutality." 33 During the romantic era the
western charge of Asian backwardness and barbarism still
resounded, as notably illustrated in Voyage dans la Russie meri-
dionale (1826) by the French consul in Tiflis, Jacques-Frangois
Gamba. 34 Full of disdain for Russia's failure to transform the
Caucasus into a viable colony since the annexation of Georgia
in 1801, Gamba advised the French to move into the territory
themselves. He also made an unfavorable comparison
between la Russie meridionale and another "new country," the
United States: America was far more congenial to a Euro-
pean, he claimed, because it originated from Britain, "where
civilization had reached a high level." By contrast, Russia's
southern colonies "are offshoots of Russia itself, where one
habitually finds the habits and tastes of nomads." A firm
believer in the Enlightenment conception of progress, Gamba
assigned all Russia to a low, Asian rung on civilization's great
ladder. The same outlook would be found in a book much
better known today, the Marquis de Custine's La Russie en
i8jg. Writing at a time when anti-Russian sentiment was run-
ning particularly high in France, the marquis returned obsess-
ively to the theme that Russians were not truly civilized but
had merely acquired a thin veneer of occidental manners
which failed to hide the "Oriental," the "Tatar," or simply
the "bear" beneath the surface.35 For the Marquis de Custine,
as for Gamba before him, the Russians remained in essence
an Asian people inferior in every way to cultivated Europeans.
However, instead of cowing romantic Russians into meek
allegiance to western enlightenment, the traditional European
aversion to shades of Tatary was flouted by embracement of
Asia as part of the national self. The Russian elite found sup-
port for its contradictory claims to European and non-
European identity in an extremely influential product of la
renaissance orientate,]. C. L. Simone de Sismondi's De la littera-
ture du midi de VEurope (1813). In an excerpt published in
Russia in 1818 under the title "On the Arabs' Literature,"
Sismondi endorsed Europe as the caretaker of the decadent
orient's cultural patrimony. Indeed to his mind, a complete
collapse had left all the Arabs' finest literary products "in
the hands of their enemies in Christian monasteries and the
libraries of European states." 36 Seek not those glories in the
East itself, cautioned Sismondi: today's entire Arab world is
nothing but a desert of "tigers and tyrants," infested with
"huge nests of bandits" and devoted to "ignorance, slavery,
horrors and death."
But while charging the West with the task of preserving the
cultural treasures of a fallen civilization, Sismondi showered
praise on ancient oriental poetry as an achievement crucial
to the rise of European romanticism. He opposed the ethno-
centric theory of August and Friedrich Schlegel who insisted
that romanticism derived essentially from the Normans and
Germanic peoples (the "North"). 37 Without entirely dis-
counting the North as constituted by the Schlegels, Sismondi
advanced his "southern" theory. He allotted a decisive role
to the Moors' invasions of Spain and their subsequent influ-
ence on the literatures of the Romance peoples, and also attri-
buted great importance to the cultural impact of the Cru-
sades. With stress on the "magic," "enchantment" and
"frenzied passion" of ancient oriental poetry, Sismondi con-
structed an engaging citadel of romanticism avant la lettre.
Although Russian romantics were a diversified group,
many of them enlisted Sismondi to stake a worthy claim for
themselves in the international literary arena. They were
drawn into the South-North debate at a time when their tra-
dition of imaginative literature paled by comparison to Euro-
pean achievements. As Lauren Leighton has shown, Russians'
late entry into the European cultural domain and their pro-
nounced literary subservience to France in particular gave
them every reason to downgrade ultra-rational French tend-
encies and to assert instead that less developed nations have
greater access to the wellsprings of imagination required to
create an original (and thus truly national) literature.38 The
dynamic Hans Rogger termed "compensatory nationalism"
clearly was operating in this romantic accreditation of simple,
uncorrupted peoples.39 Beginning in the latter third of the
eighteenth century, the Russian elite's dread of national insuf-
ficiency vis-a-vis Europe stimulated a search for national pride
and even led to assertions of superiority. The classical formu-
lation appeared in Denis Fonvizin's letters from Europe writ-
ten in the 1770s and 1780s. Fonvizin primarily targeted
France as a cramped realm of cold calculation, the cash nexus,
legalism, hypocrisy and stupidity masked by witty manners
and politesse. In opposition to this construct of western alterity,
he attributed to Russians a pleasing simplicity, generous feel-
ing, authenticity in human relations, a richer spiritual life and
truer sense of freedom despite all the lack of liberty and civil
rights in tsarist society. A complex of inadequacy, focused on
intellect and sophistication, thus engendered a complex of
largely emotional superiority.40
RUSSIA S ROMANTIC LINK TO THE ORIENT
Keen to assert national dignity vis-a-vis Europe, the Russian

disciples of Sismondi's broad-based southern theory naturally
took their distance from the Schlegels' Teutonic ethnocen-
tricism. And yet in exhibiting this preference, Russians repli-
cated a certain German strategy of the "young" nation's self-
promotion vis-a-vis the orient.41 In a compensatory reaction to
the preponderance of Latin Christendom in the Renaissance,
German orientalists such as Klaproth arrogated to themselves
the preeminent place in the contemporary cultural flowering
inspired by the East: they sought to persuade the rest of the
world that they were the modern era's poetically superior
race, most akin to ancient Persia's artful idiom.42 Herder
played a complementary role by glorifying German primitive
poetry (Volklieder) as a product of anonymous, epic genius
comparable to the Sanskrit Vedas.43 In the German cultural
field, "oriental" thus converged on "barbarous" in a manner
which specifically devalued a French pride in reason and pro-
claimed the superiority of the "young" native land's Sturm und
Drang.
Like the Germans, Russians upgraded themselves in
relation to Asia during la renaissance orientale but with consider-
ably greater ammunition, since they could boast much more
genuine geographical, historical and cultural connections to
the East. A Klaprothian logic informed Russian pretensions
to special national capacities for oriental studies, for example.
The first direct Russian translations of Arabic and Persian
literature were published only in 1811 by A. V. Boldyrev, a
Paris-trained orientalist also employed as a tsarist censor. 44
Toward the end of the next decade, however, the Herald of
Asia (Aziatskii vestnik) anonymously ran the claim that Rus-
sians were bound to take the lead in translation because their
native tongue was by far the most suitable medium: only the
"noble soil" of Russian could permit the bright flowers of
Arabic poetry to bloom again with all their brilliance and
"natural perfume."45 This theme of the "last shall be first"
evolved over time. As a commentator in Telescope (Teleskop)
would put it in 1833, Russia was now proudly holding her
own in oriental studies, after apprenticing as the "little sister
of the other European powers." 46 Although retaining the
Eurocentric view of the field as an originally western science,
a later journalist would brag of Russia's record as a nurturer
of great specialists from within its own multinational confines:
some of "our" Asians have become world-class orientalists,
whereas neither the British nor French could point to simi-
larly enlightened Indians or Algerians in their midst. 47 While
thoroughly sanguine about centuries of tsarist subjugation of
the borderlands, this assessment made a virtue of fluidity
between "Russia" and "Asia."
The Russian literati's debate about nationally distinctive
romanticism displayed a similarly favorable disposition
toward the homeland's overlap with the East. Orest Somov,
for instance, proclaimed Russian affiliation to poeticized
an
Islam in "On Romantic Poetry" (1823), essay written
under the influence of Mme. de Stael's De I'Allemagne.48 An
author of fiction and verse, Somov perceived a fruitful inter-
play between the eastern past and the romantic present in
writings by Byron, Goethe and Thomas Moore, all well-
known Europeans inspired by the art and legends of the
Moors, Indians, Persians and Turks. But Somov then fea-
tured semi-Asian Russia as romanticism's most favored
breeding ground. With a sweeping glance from Finland to
Siberia via the "enchanting" Crimea and the Caucasus' "wild
terrors," he catalogued the "poetic riches" Russians could
sample without venturing onto foreign soil. After rapidly
sketching the empire's geographical and cultural diversity,
Somov brought his rhetorical eye to rest on the "tribes who
believe in Mahomet and serve in the sphere of imagination
as a link connecting us to the Orient." To be sure, the author
assumed an imperial posture. On the lookout for interesting
subject-matter, he showed no sign of realizing that non-
Russian nationalities swallowed up by the tsarist state might
justly yearn for sovereignty, or have a word to utter about
themselves. And yet it remains noteworthy that Somov
singled out Asian Muslims as the empire's preeminently
"poetic" group, most vital to Russians such as he. Monologic
and politically complacent as it was, "On Romantic Poetry"
clashed in this respect against Eurocentric imperialist rhetoric
about civilizing alien "savages" of the Caucasus.
A similar perception of welcome interchange between
Russia and Asia was advanced in other literary criticsm of the
era, including Kiukhelbeker's. Although at odds with certain
aspects of anti-classical sensibility, Kiukhelbeker joined the
general romantic call for a literature imbued with national
spirit. He accordingly warned his fellow writers not to
exchange Russia's former tutelage to France for enslavement
to German or British models. In his view, the future lay
instead in the homeland's realizing its culturally mixed
character: "By its geographical position alone, Russia might
assimilate all the mental treasures of Europe and Asia" (as
represented by Saadi, Hafiz and others).49 Kiukhelbeker fore-
saw here not mere imitation but rather the emergence of
"truly Russian" poetry which fused vital traditions of both
East and West. Around the same time, in 1827, a book
reviewer for the Moscow Herald (Moskovskii vestnik) articulated
a similar vision with greater historical elan : "Located between
the Orient and the West, our fatherland seems to have been
designated by nature to serve as a link in the chain of
humanity's universal development, to achieve a specific con-
junction of European culture and Asia's enlightenment."50
While all these statements were significant antecedents,
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky undertook an even more grandiose
effort to make romantic capital of Russia's Asian roots. His
essay on Nikolai Polevoy's historical novel The Oath on the
Tomb of the Lord attempted to synthesize the contradictory
theories of Sismondi and the Schlegels.51 Carelessly galloping
over centuries of comparative history, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
declared that the full blooming of romanticism in Europe in
the present era was a result of a merger between "southern"
forces (Moors, Crusaders, vivacious troubadours, unfettered
imagination) and "northern" ones (Normans, Germanic
tribes, severe legends, rationality). But where did Russia
belong in this scheme which made "South" equivalent to
"Orient" and let "North" double for "West?"
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's answer evinced the Russian national
need to convert semi-Asian identity from a liability into an
asset. His argument was inconsistent and oblique. With con-
summate disregard for Catholic Christendom and the
Renaissance, he argued that Russia's history had really been
very similar to Europe's and that Russian writers were flowing
in the general stream of romantic European culture. But then
he went off on another tack to underline the homeland's split
personality: "A two-faced Janus, ancient Russia simul-
taneously looked toward Europe and Asia. Its way of life com-
prised a link between the settled activity of the West and the
nomadic indolence of the Orient." Whatever his inconsisten-
cies, though, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky was clearly bent on
declaring the Asian heritage a virtue. He accentuated the
hardiness, bravery and chivalrous pride of Russian ancestors
steeled by constant fights with nomadic tribes of the southern
steppes. He evoked medieval Russian princes drinking fer-
mented mare's milk with khans of the Golden Horde. Most
boldly of all, he likened romanticism's own compelling power
to the Tatars who conquered Russia. Through such details
he outfitted Asia in dashing colors and fashioned a national
past in which a romantic could take immense pride. In fact,
the essay moved to the grand conclusion that it was Russia
which was destined to reach the peak of unfettered romantic
literary imagination akin to ancient Arabia: as cases in point,
the author cited his own historical tales, as well as Polevoy's
novel The Oath on the Tomb of the Lord. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
thus turned culturally mixed Russia into the vanguard of
romanticism, indebted to western literature, to be sure, but
now racing ahead into a glorious, distinctive future.
As in literary criticism of the romantic era, a sense of the
national stake in Asia also stirred in Russian music. Particu-
larly pertinent because of his Caucasian connections is Alex-
ander Aliabev (1787-1851), a composer born in Tobolsk.52
On the basis of dubious evidence Aliabev was exiled from
Moscow to Siberia for murder in 1828. Four years later, fail-
ing health brought him permission to visit the Caucasian spa
country, where he became acquainted with music of the Cir-
cassians, Georgians and other peoples. Soon afterwards, he
made song-gathering expeditions into Central Asia and the
Trans-Volga region as well. He published his collection
The Caucasian Singer in 1834, authored an opera based on
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's "Ammalat-Bek" and wrote music for
the "Circassian Song" of Lermontov's "Izmail-Bey." An
influential forerunner of Balakirev and other composers now
much better known in the West than he, Aliabev was a note-
worthy, early exponent of Asia as the key to a "special des-
tiny" for Russian music.
PUSHKIN THE AMBIVALENT INTERLOCUTOR
Young Pushkin's disclosure of Russia's national stake in Asia

proved exceptionally important, but he functioned here
strictly as a poet rather than essayist. Unlike the cases of
Somov, Kiukhelbeker and Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Pushkin
never sought to constitute a privileged Russian relation to the
orient in his expository writings. He fully shared his compa-
triots' general preference for Sismondi's theory, as shown in
the unfinished essay "On Poetry Classical and Romantic"
(1825). Indeed, Pushkin took a more extreme stand than his
source by entirely disregarding the input of the Normans and
ascribing exclusive importance to romanticism's oriental roots
(the Moors, East—West cultural exchanges during the Cru-
sades, troubadours).53 At the same time, however, a comment
on his verse cycle "Imitations of the Koran" held the "South"
apart from the Russian self: Pushkin declared to Viazemsky
that the oriental style could only be an adopted form for
today's "Europeans," too "cold" to match the spontaneous
frenzy of ancient Persia and Arabia.54
But for all the apparent rigidity of this dichotomy, the Euro-
pean posture was not Pushkin's steady state. One of his quips
to Viazemsky demonstrates nicely his destabilizing skepticism
about Russia's pretensions to western enlightenment.
Delighted about a lucrative offer for publishing part of Eugene
Onegin, Pushkin exclaimed, "Good old Russia! So it really
does belong to Europe. And I'd always thought that was just
a mistake of the geographers."55 This little joke had psycho-
logical depth. It conveyed a will to believe that the homeland
was still successfully engaged in occidentalization and mod-
ernization. At the same time, however, those erroneous map-
makers sprang from Pushkin's perception of Russia as more
western Asia than eastern Europe.
Pushkin's consciousness of Russia's distance from the West
was magnified by his personal identification with Africa in its
real and figurative dimensions. As often remarked, through-
out his career he cultivated contradictory self-images derived
from his two genealogical strains - the occidentalized Russian
aristocrat and the unruly blackamoor. One of his most
famous permutations of this dualism appears in the lyric "The
Poet" (1827). When the "holy lyre" falls silent, the poet is
"perhaps the most worthless of all the world's worthless chil-
dren," absorbed in trivial amusements of the beau monde. In
the inspired state, however, he turns "wild and severe,"
estranged from society and drawn toward Apollo's haunts -
the desolate seashore, the rustling grove. Andrei Siniavsky
made a persuasive, if deliberately provocative case for "wild
genius" as Pushkin's definitive posture. "Africa" in this read-
ing became the poet's inner world of sacred play - a perma-
nent resource of creative imagination aligned to "animals,
wild tribes and the forest."56 At war with Europeanized,
aristocratic society, this generic "Africa" fathered a band of
outlaws, rebels and primitives in Pushkin's literary works.
Prominent among them was Pugachev of The Captain's
Daughter, the romanticized peasant anarchist whom Marina
Tsvetaeva defined as the incarnation of "every poet's passion
for revolt."57 As we shall see shortly, the encounter between
the Russian and the Circassians in "The Prisoner of the Cau-
casus" was an early instance of the recurrent tension between
tame European and wild non-European identities in Push-
kin's writings.
While the author's own cultural allegiances were decidedly
mixed in this poem, his romantic enhancement of the Muslim
mountaineers allowed Russian readers to conceptualize an
orient satisfying to the imperfectly westernized national self.
As invented by Pushkin, the Circassians imparted to present-
day Asia dashing machismo, engaging simplicity, emotional
generosity and primitive poetry (rather than Sismondi's unre-
lieved "ignorance, slavery, horrors and death"). Despite the
poet's ambivalence about the matter, this catalogue of "sav-
age" virtues in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" launched the
Muslim mountaineers on a long literary career as the Asian
"others" whom nineteenth-century Russians proved eager to
embrace as surrogate selves. Indeed, so far as male personages
were concerned, the tribesmen were the empire's only orientals
so favored in Russian letters. Somov's essay "On Romantic
Poetry" has already given us an inkling of this exceptional
status: in all probability, this essay's warm words for Muslim
tribes as Russia's direct liaison to the orient were inspired to
a great extent by the recently published "The Prisoner of the
Caucasus."
Through interaction with his immediate audience, young
Pushkin thus disclosed Russia's national stake in a poeticized
Caucasian tribal milieu. Unlike Somov, Kiukhelbeker,
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky (and Lermontov, later on), Pushkin did
not articulate pro-Asian sentiments in his criticism, corre-
spondence or conversation. Indeed, he often averred staunch
commitment to Europe. However, in blurring lines between
"us" and "them," "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" inscribed
a consciousness of the orient as an organic part of Russia. 58
Pushkin's institution of romantic Circassia as a field of
national self-exploration made his performance paradigmatic
for the Caucasus of the military exiles Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
and Lermontov. In a crescendo of romantic anguish about
imperialist assault on a beautiful land and impressive moun-
taineers, they too would inscribe the Europeanized Russian's
incapacity to contemplate Asia without coming face to face
with the self.
CHAPTER 6
The Pushkinian mountaineer
He loved their simple way of life.

Pushkin
The romantic era's intensified preoccupation with national
identity gave "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" immense inter-
est as a textual encounter with Asia. First awakened in the
latter third of the eighteenth century, Russian national con-
sciousness surged high on the wave of patriotism produced
by victory over Napoleon.1 In this context the westernized
elite took a newly respectful view of the Russian peasantry as
the key to a shared national spirit. The borderlands of the
empire also attracted increased attention, as reflected in trav-
elogues and ethnographic studies. Like the Caucasus in
Bronevsky's book, the Crimea, Siberia, Central Asia, the
Urals and Ukraine all came under scrutiny as geographically
and culturally distinct areas which could clarify the relatively
Europeanized life of the Russian capitals. The depiction of
Circassian culture in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" was
absorbed into this wave of self-interested curiosity about
indigenous peoples of the empire's periphery.
The romantic engagement with the national peasantry as
well as primitive cultures gave special import to the mutually
conditioned poles of "civilization" and "savagery" implied in
Pushkin's poem. Labeled a "European" in relation to the
Circassians, Pushkin's captive from the beau monde represented
enlightenment understood as a western achievement in which
the upper classes of nineteenth-century Russian society sought
to participate. In the eyes of readers of the 1820s, civilization's
benefits encompassed the arts and sciences, the rule of law,
89
go Russian literature and empire
amenities of daily life and the manners of polite society. But
Russia's Europeanization had also spelled a twofold cultural
dissociation. To recall Vasily Kliuchevsky's famous analysis,
the occidentalized Russian nobles of Catherine's era remained
foreigners abroad, yet felt increasingly like strangers at home.
Alexander Griboedov strikingly conveyed the abiding, double
alienation in his domestic recit de voyage "A Trip to the
Country" (1826). A self-ascribed member of Russia's "injured
class of semi-Europeans," the writer perceived the peasant
village as the world of a "different tribe" - "wild," "incom-
prehensible" and "strange." 2 With resentful consciousness of
westernization's cultural, spiritual costs, Griboedov indicated
both the lack of full membership in Europe and the estrange-
ment from Russia's own rural "tribe." The elite's concern
with overcoming alienation by rinding native roots would
motivate much nineteenth-century Russian literature, in
which the peasant features often as an exemplar of the distinc-
tively national self.3
As suggested by Griboedov's notion of enlightenment as
affliction, inquisitiveness about the folk as an enigma to probe
in search of the Russian self operated in counterpoint to the
literary Caucasus' engagement with foreign primitives. Push-
kin was no avid admirer of Rousseau (whom he did pro-
nounce, however, a "defender of freedom and rights"). 4 All
the same, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" invited rumi-
nations about human and social losses incurred in the civiliz-
ing process. The issue acquired special immediacy through
Pushkin's transposition of certain Rousseauist motifs of eight-
eenth-century Russian treatments of the national peasantry
(Alexander Radishchev's Journey from Petersburg to Moscow,
Karamzin's "Poor Liza"). Bearers of a literary pedigree both
rustic and wild, the Circassians of "The Prisoner of the Cau-
casus" fascinated an elite readership sensitive to occidentali-
zation's negative impact on Russia. This peculiarly national
dissatisfaction gave Russian enthusiasm for Pushkin's primi-
tive mountaineers an edge of dissent from the Enlightenment
hierarchy which placed western Europe at the pinnacle of
world civilization.
The Pushkinian mountaineer 91
In their readiness to turn to poetry for a cultural investi-
gation pertinent to their own country's condition, Russian
readers of the 1820s granted "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"
much more ethnographic credence than it deserved {pace
critics who have lauded Pushkin's anthropological
"objectivity"). 5 Never within close range of the "free moun-
tain peoples" during his travels in the Caucasus, the young
author produced a tribal milieu through the monologic power
of uncontested imagination. He effectively silenced the Circas-
sians, as Stephanie Sandier has recently stressed (in reading
the poem as an act of rhetorical domination analogous to the
tsarist state's drive to subjugate the tribes). 6 Completely mute,
the Circassian warriors are indeed made knowable primarily
through violent action. The unnamed Circassian heroine
speaks at length, but as Zhirmunsky first observed, her con-
versations with the prisoner are a "false dialogue," a single
discourse about love distributed between two speakers. 7
Although she has supposedly taught the prisoner some of the
local language, the Circassian heroine speaks in the high
poetic style of Pushkin's day, and when she realizes that her
liaison with the Russian is doomed, she virtually parrots his
earlier, Byronic formulations about the pain of unrequited
passion.8
While uttering no culturally authentic word of their own,
these Caucasian "natives" none the less reward investigation
as Russian surrogates who disrupted imperialist ideology
about a "European" mission to civilize Muslim "savages."
As Russian commentators often have observed, Pushkin's vig-
orously free, stateless Circassia illuminated contemporary
Decembrist aspirations for political change at home. But of
more far-reaching interest, fluidities between "European" and
"Asian" identity in Pushkin's poem threw certain issues of
Russian self-definition into high relief in the context of imperi-
alist conquest. In ennobling the Circassians, Pushkin's cap-
tivity tale inscribed the Russian need to accommodate Asia
as a "young," energetic and poetic cultural force. The epi-
logue to "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" pursued a very dif-
ferent agenda, as we shall see. However, in launching literary
Circassia as the home of primitives affiliated to the Russian
readership, Pushkin's romantic captivity tale opened a mental
pathway of skepticism about the rectitude of the tsarist "paci-
fication" program. Did Russia itself not deviate attractively
from European standards of enlightenment? And if so, where
was the glory in the tyrannical state's war to "civilize" the
Caucasian mountaineers? Censorship made open discussion
of such questions unthinkable, but they arose in personal
papers of men who came of age in the Decembrist era.
THE MOUNTAIN WARRIOR
Spatial arrangements in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"

divide Russia from Asia. Like Pushkin's references to his own
travels, the plot of the captivity tale draws a demarcation
between Circassia and the readership's native realm. The poet
presents himself as a man returned from the frontier with a
story to tell (as in the epilogue's first two lines: "And so the
Muse, Dream's careless friend, / Has had her flight to Asian
countries"). In a parallel manner, the fictional hero's experi-
ence follows the trajectory of a round trip: he leaves Russia
(in some undisclosed way), is confined in the aul and then
makes his escape to retrieve familiar ground. Reinforced by
Pushkin's own reputation as a recent visitor of the Caucasus,
this pattern of action hinges on a Russian's crossing a border
with the intention of going back home again.
In conformity with treatment of the Terek in some Russian
travelogues of the era, Pushkin conceived the geographical
divider as a river. Part two of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"
mentions the Kuban, but the author incongruously evokes
the Terek as well, in the so-called "Circassian Song" about
Chechen raiders.9 As these details suggest, several associ-
ations seem to have fused in Pushkin's mind to make the
poem's watery boundary a topos of cross-cultural encounter
rather than an identifiable physical landmark.
Fraught with symbolic significance as the end of Russian
space, the geographically imprecise river in "The Prisoner of
the Caucasus" has the thrilling connotation of civilization's
last outpost. High drama is staged on these banks. After the
Circassian heroine frees the prisoner, they rush "toward the
shore" together. The Russian jumps into the water and swims
to the other side, while the despairing woman chooses to
drown. The location of the lovers' farewell, the heroine's sui-
cide and the Russian's triumphant end of his Asian adventure,
the river bank is also a combat zone where Cossacks stand
guard against the tribes from across the water. Although
voiceless, Pushkin's Cossack frontiersmen are salient markers
of the tsarist domain, as underscored in the captivity tale's
last lines: the glint of the guards' "Russian bayonets" assures
the hero that he has completed safely his passage from Asia.
But for all the tensions of the spatial arrangements, Circas-
sian and Russian identities interpenetrate one another exten-
sively in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." The poem's moun-
tain warriors have three major lines of affiliation with Russian
national aspirations and values: liberty, heroic machismo and
simple moeurs. The liberty of Pushkin's Circassians perpetu-
ated certain features of a long tradition of social thought orig-
inated by Montesquieu in De I'esprit des lois.10 Montesquieu's
theorie des climats drew correspondences between environmen-
tal zones, the temperament of the inhabitants and their forms
of sociopolitical organization. According to this scheme,
severe mountain terrain fostered small, isolated societies with
bellicose populations fiercely bent upon maintaining their lib-
erty. Common currency in Russia by the time of Catherine
II, Montesquieu's views about mountaineers were endorsed
in the writings of the eighteenth-century explorers whom the
empress sent to the Caucasus. Carried forward into Pushkin's
era, the outlook was perpetuated in treatment of the Circas-
sians and other tribes in Bronevsky's A New Geography and
History of the Caucasus.11
Wild liberty held menace, as Zhukovsky's "To Voeikov"
had insisted by depicting Caucasian tribes as vicious brutes
with no redeeming features. Immediately after celebrating the
beauty of mountains swathed in blue mist, Zhukovsky offered
a catalogue of ethnic groups, including some names invented
for rhymes.12 These tribes live in the "cliffs of freedom," a key
formula which conveys the idea of rocky heights as a realm
beyond law. Constantly on the prowl for travelers, the moun-
taineers value their weapons as "their treasures and their
gods" and prize a fine horse as a "fleet-footed comrade in
arms." When not on the war path, they roam the aul "on the
crutches of a sullen torpor," idly smoke a chibouk and talk
about their murderous exploits, as they prepare for "new
kills."
Although never designating the Circassians "savages"
(dikari), "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" retained several of
Zhukovsky's proximate formulations (the "treacherous pred-
ator" who is "born for war," the horse as "faithful comrade,"
weapons as "cherished" possessions). However, Pushkin si-
multaneously gave mountain liberty a positive ambience
reminiscent of the Alpine realm of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, the
Scottish highlands of Walter Scott and the forests of James
Fenimore Cooper's celebrated Indians. Once the captive is
led into the aul at the beginning of "The Prisoner of the Cau-
casus," a multisemantic notion of the "free life" emerges as
something possessed by the tribe and desired by the Russian.
The shackled captive immediately laments his lost svoboda
("freedom"), a concept which covers the possibility of moving
about as one wants.13 But the same passage mentions Circas-
sia's vol'nost' ("liberty"), a term which can connote anarchic
license but also was used regularly in Russian writing since
the eighteenth century to characterize the rights granted by
a political system. "Svoboda" and "vol'nost'" come to overlap
subversively in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." The Russian
"renegade from society" fled the beau monde and ventured into
Circassia primarily in search of a freer world. However, the
quest landed him in irons. This bitter twist of fate exemplifies
the danger of the stateless man's total liberty. Unconstrained
by law and the customs of civilized society, Pushkin's free
Circassians capture the foreign hero, kill a Cossack border
guard and behead slaves during the rambunctious festivities
of Bairam. In short, the totally free mountaineer sometimes
runs berserk, to transgress legal and moral bounds recognized
in Russian society.
Such literary manifestations of lawlessness undoubtedly
afforded readers a decidely lowbrow vicarious pleasure. Go-
gol's essay on Pushkin stressed the entertaining, illicit psycho-
logical satisfaction by drawing the following contrast between
the shabby world of tsarist officialdom and the excitement of
the wild frontier: even if the ''savage tribesman. . .butchers
his enemy while lurking in a canyon or burns down an entire
village, all the same he makes a bigger impression and
engages us more than our judge in a frayed frock-coat stained
with tobacco."14 Many homebodies in Pushkin's audience
sought escape from humdrum existence by plunging into a
tale of adventure, and violent action was no doubt particularly
mesmerizing for them.
Of greater cultural interest, the vicarious pleasure entailed
an eradication of difference between Circassian and Russian
capacities for violence. The poet asserts that the tribesmen
"feel proud" of their captive ("their booty") for the impassive,
"careless courage" he displays before the fierce war games of
Bairam and the decapitations. The mountaineers thus read
the Russian's Byronic sang-froid as tough machismo like their
own. The prisoner makes no direct response to the tribe's
"bloody amusements." But as he sits in enigmatic silence,
his thoughts turn to the Russian practice of dueling. He is
preoccupied with "meeting the fatal lead" himself. Duelists,
however, must be as prepared to kill as to die. By referring
to this potentially lethal manner in which Russian gentlemen
settled their accounts, "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" desta-
bilizes "civilized" identity. Rather than provoking an out-
raged sense of moral superiority, Circassia's "bloody amuse-
ments" send the prisoner into a daydream (or perhaps a
memory) about himself as a participant in a violent cultural
ritual of the Russian beau monde of young Pushkin's day.15
This ready transition between "their" violence and "ours"
accentuates the Circassian's status as an underground Rus-
sian self, curious about how it would feel to run amuck — to
"butcher" enemies wholesale or "burn down an entire vil-
lage" (as Gogol put it), without suffering pangs of Christian
guilt.
But along with the element of illicit psychological satisfac-
tion, the free tribesman's existence outside an oppressive state
structure appealed to the contemporary readership's more
high-minded political aspirations. In this era of the Decem-
brist movement there were many members of the elite who
had great hopes for Russia's liberalization. Relatively few
were prepared to risk conspiring against the state, but a large
number passively sympathized with the Decembrists'
common goal of displacing tsarist autocracy in a more or
less radical manner. Such readers were especially receptive to
literature about the exercise of personal freedom and politi-
cal liberties unknown in despotic tsardom.16 Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky, for example, played upon this chord in his tale of
medieval Novgorod, a city which had enjoyed considerable
independence from the Muscovite state. Pushkin's theme of
"Circassian liberty" likewise had a subversive undercurrent
about challenging tsarist tyranny. In "The Prisoner of the
Caucasus" this political aspiration for vol'nost' coincides with
the Byronic hero's curiosity about a "freer world" and blends
with his wanderlust and joy at retrieving his precious freedom
of movement when he escapes from captivity. Pushkin was
very conscious of the provocative innuendoes of vol'nost' and
svoboda. He had been exiled to the south largely for his anti-
autocratic ode to liberty, and in a letter to Gnedich in Sep-
tember 1822 he expressed surprise that the censor's "fateful
claws" had not deleted all references to a free life in "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus." 17
In this political context the violence inherent in "Circassian
liberty" had double valency: it held menace for outsiders (the
captive, the Cossack) but also reached into the readership to
establish a dynamic of cross-cultural bonding, primarily but
not exclusively with the men.18 Circassia's freely expressed
aggressivity reflected current Decembrist idealization of civic
courage, which Ryleev would soon symbolize as Elbrus. In
juxtaposition to the war games and decapitations of Bairam,
Pushkin refers to the Russian duelist as a "captive to merciless
honor" (a phrase used, minus the adjective, as an appellation
for Pushkin himself in Lermontov's "The Death of a Poet").
These words aptly designate not only the duelist's code but
also the virtue of a dedicated soldier or a conspirator with the
good of his country at heart: like a fighter in a war deemed
just, an armed insurrectionist must "mercilessly" steel himself
to risk death and shed blood in the service of honorable ideals.
Quite notably, some Decembrists, including Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky, felt moral incertitude, as they contemplated taking
up arms against the state.19 The unflinching bravery and mar-
tial prowess required in such an undertaking points to the
impressiveness of Pushkin's mountaineer as a resolute man of
action, ready to resort to violence for an honorable cause.
While apt to slip into excesses to set the "civilized" reader
agog, the tribesman's formidable exercise of martial arts
belonged inescapably to a configuration of soldier's virtues
valued in Russia, where the victory over Napoleon was fresh
in the collective memory, and a significant number of upper-
class men were contemplating armed revolt against the state.
Besides liberty and the highly ambivalent ethos of martial
heroism, Circassia's absence of luxury established another
cross-cultural affiliation with Russia. A community of pastoral
primitives, Pushkin's mountaineers are pillagers with an agri-
cultural base. The shackled prisoner is left alone the first day,
while the Circassians work the fields ("Cherkesy vpole"). Like
peasants, the villagers return toward evening with scythes in
hand ("Spolei narod idet v aul, I Sverkaia svetlymi kosami"). Farm-
ing modulates the poem's preponderant theme of violence, to
lend Circassia rusticity. Likewise, one section of Pushkin's
central "ethnographic" sketch presents the tribesman as a
pacific host accustomed to extend ritual hospitality to fellow
Caucasians. The rustic dimension, spartan hut, meager fare
and ready sharing with strangers illustrate the tribe's "simple
way of life," so admired by the prisoner (whose means of
witnessing the Circassian's nocturnal accommodation of a
passing traveler are left unexplained, however). Contempor-
ary Russian ethnography allotted favorable attention to the
Caucasian mountaineers' ritual hospitality, which conformed
to Marcel Mauss' classic study of the gift as a means of neu-
tralizing an outsider's potential danger. 20 But regardless of
how reliable Pushkin may or may not have been on this point,
his constitution of a pleasingly simple Circassian style of life
converged on the Fonvizinian catalogue of Russian claims to
superiority over the capitals of western enlightenment
(reciprocity instead of the cash nexus, generosity of spirit,
disdain for luxury, impatience with ceremony).
THE MOUNTAIN MAID
While excluded from the rites of hospitality between native

men in Pushkin's poem, the Russian captive benefits enor-
mously from the generosity of the Circassian heroine, the
"mountain maid." Like many a "savage" maiden in Euro-
pean literature stimulated by empire-building, the unnamed
tribeswoman nurtures the prisoner with restorative foods and
ultimately makes him a gift of herself.21 The extension of hos-
pitality to cover sex has an important antecedent in the story
of Dido and Aeneas, as Peter Hulme has analyzed.22 In the
context of European expansion into the "New World," this
old plot of the nurturing native woman and the traveler who
loves and leaves acquired an ideological content manifest to
us today. To quote Hulme's phrase, a myth of "cultural har-
mony through romance" came to surround the colonial
encounter (between Pocahontas and John Smith, for
example). In such narratives the primitive's spontaneous dis-
play of erotic affinities for the European interloper masked
imperialism's drive to domination. Imagined ties of senti-
ments displaced the exploitative, often bloody realities of co-
lonialist expansion. If only subconsciously, the comforting
implications of cross-cultural romance were quite probably at
work in the sympathy Pushkin's first readers expressed for
the Circassian heroine of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus."
However, the recriminations which rained down on Push-
kin's hard-hearted captive also evinced the Russians' fondness
for counting emotional generosity among their own national
virtues. With no compunction, the prisoner leaves the despon-
dent tribeswoman to drown after she frees him and leads him
to the river he swims to freedom. The poem's reviewers raised
gallant objections to this denouement. In the most telling
response, Mikhail Pogodin termed the Russian captive's
harsh treatment of the "innocent" Circassian "inexcusable in
every respect."23 The phrase "in every respect" suggested
both sexual and sociocultural abuse - the violation of a lover's
trust combined with disregard for the many non-erotic gifts
received as a passing stranger. Pogodin was in fact uncomfort-
able with the erotic content of Pushkin's tale: he found the
rhetoric of flaming passion ("fiery kisses," etc.) so indecent
that he scolded the poet for it.
This attitude revealed a strong preference for the Circassian
heroine as an intensely friendly rather than specifically sexual
creature. Viazemsky and other reviewers undoubtedly pro-
moted the vulnerable tribeswoman as an incarnation of
"natural" femininity (a conception which romantic Russian
women writers such as Elizaveta Gan would endorse in orien-
talia of the 1830s).24 But the lively Russian discussion of the
rebuffed Circassian cut across the sexes. In siding with the
generous primitive, readers were perceiving the "European"
hero as a man emotionally diminished by westernization. He
appeared as a walking admonition of the injuries enlighten-
ment could inflict, while the tribeswoman exemplified a gen-
erous nature uncorrupted by the beau monde. The Circassian
heroine thus transposed into a primitive key the Russian peas-
ant theme as treated in Karamzin's "Poor Liza," the tale of
a rural innocent who drowns herself after being seduced and
abandoned by a Muscovite nobleman.25
In conformity with his Byronic posture of the time, young
Pushkin shrugged off the sentimental recriminations of his
hero. When Viazemsky called the prisoner a "son of a bitch"
in a letter to Pushkin, the author replied that the Russian had
not really loved the tribeswoman and had wisely refused to
risk his neck in a rescue attempt in a treacherous Caucasian
river.26 This alliance between the author and hero may have
evinced a Byronic emulation of the rough way Muslims pur-
portedly dealt with their women. In a display of open admi-
ration for behavior which Europeans were supposed to
deplore, Byron once maintained that only "Turks" knew how
i oo Russian literature and empire
to handle women — by treating them as property, locking
them up and restricting their education to "agreeable arts." 27
Although Byron left it off his list, the murder of women for
drastic disobedience was another feature of his orient, as illus-
trated in "The Giaour." In both this poem and Pushkin's
"The Fountain of Bakhchisarai" wrathful lords execute
harem beauties by drowning. Pushkin's was by far the more
ambivalent text, but both works traded in a staple notion of
the Muslim's absolute subjugation of women. Identification
with brutal, "Asian" domination of women was even more
evident in "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" and Pushkin's
defense of its callous Russian hero.
In one significant respect, though, Pushkin deserted the
hero of the poem to align himself with Circassian womanhood
(just as he once admitted in a letter that the heroine was so
much the more successful character that he should have
named the tale after her). A rhetoric of temperatures in "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus" pits unrestrained Circassian eros
against cold "European" reserve. Invented as a hot-blooded
figure with "burning desire," "fiery" feelings and "flaming
kisses," the tribeswoman fails to enflame the cold hero: like
a "corpse" with "dead lips," the "renegade from society" has
a "sad chill" in his heart (less moved by love than
mountains). Although this pattern equates erotic fire with
Circassian femininity, Pushkin's treatment of tribal song blurs
the lines of cultural and sexual difference. In part two of "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus" a chorus of local women sings the
thoroughly ersatz "Circassian Song" about Chechen raiders
from "across the river." A participant in the same artistic
activity, the heroine sings to the captive. On the other hand,
however, the Russian hero "has grown cold to the lyre," as
well as youthful dreams of love. Pushkin thus connected Cir-
cassia's erotic "heat" to the production, performance and
appreciation of poetry. While isolating the cold "European"
hero from a cross-cultural world of song, this thematic com-
plex effects an intriguing alliance between the native female
singers and the male poet himself who features the Caucasus
as his "new Parnassus." So often conjoined in Pushkin's ere-
ative imagination, eros and poetry interconnect in "The Pris-
oner of the Caucasus" to forge another tie between Russian
romantic sensibility and Circassia's primitive culture. 28
THE SAVAGE VANQUISHED
If one accepts that the captivity tale converted the wild moun-
taineers into satisfying meanings about Russia, then one must
contend with massive interference from the epilogue. Its open-
ing sequence of autobiographical reminiscences preserves the
Circassian warrior as a dashing figure who enchanted the
Muse. But then comes commendation of tsarist campaigns
against the tribes since the early nineteenth century:
The glorious hour I will sing,
When o'er the Caucasus, grown wrathful,
Our double-headed eagle winged,
Anticipating bloody battle;
When o'er the Terek, steely-gray,
The Russian drums began to play,
Raising the roar of martial thunder,
And boldly entering the fray,
Came Tsitsianov, the commander.
Oh Kotliarevsky, scourge of war!
I'll sing your heroism in action,
Across the Caucasus you tore
Leaving a trail of black contagion
To deal a death blow to the tribes.
You later lost your taste for valor
And laid your vengeful sword aside,
Hankering after tranquil valleys,
You sampled peacetime's idle round
With honor as a wound still smarting.
But from the East the howls rebound!
Submit and bow your snowy head,
Oh Caucasus, Ermolov marches!29
Spoken in the poet's own voice, the epilogue applauds the
assertion of Russian power over the tribes and conveys zest
for the pageantry and bravado of war. Martially ferocious
Ermolov had a special celebrity which deserves mention. His
independent attitude toward the St. Petersburg authorities so
endeared him to the Decembrists that they designated him
head of the provisional government they meant to establish
after their coup d'etat. But as we shall see shortly, Decembrist
aims could accommodate easily the sort of chauvinism to
which Pushkin gave voice.
A generically distinct finale written about two months after
the captivity tale, Pushkin's epilogue has invited speculations
about its origins. It certainly does not envision an audience
of liberal-minded readers eager to savor innuendoes about
Circassian liberty. To the contrary, Pushkin was possibly
making a conciliatory gesture toward government officials, in
the hope of winning release from his exile. An alternative
factor may have been the young poet's susceptibility to a bold
political thinker of the day, the Decembrist conspirator Pavel
Pestel (one of five men hanged after the insurrection of 1825).
As laconically noted in his diary, Pushkin happened to meet
Pestel in Kishinev in April 1821, the month before he added
the epilogue to "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." In light of
Pestel's views, this encounter may have been vital. But inde-
pendently, a certain meeting of minds between Pushkin and
Pestel was unmistakable, as Boris Tomashevsky has argued.30
Like most, but not all the Decembrists, Pestel remained a
Great Russian chauvinist, while aspiring to overthrow the
tsarist state. His Russian Law advanced the view that border
security compels any large power to dominate little ethnic
groups on its periphery. A two-sided view of Russia's inter-
national standing made Asians particularly vulnerable in this
scheme. Along with other Decembrist adherents to the
Enlightenment idea of progress, Pestel regarded Russia as a
backward, retrograde force vis-a-vis Europe. In relation to
Asia, though, the semi-Europeanized homeland was granted
the "western" role. This outlook made Russian imperialism
in the orient fully compatible with a program for radical
reform and modernization at home. Interestingly enough, a
similar outlook was held by Alexis de Tocqueville, who
endorsed American democracy while asserting France's right
to beat Algeria into colonial submission.31
Pushkin's "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" exhibited the Pes-
telian readiness to deny small Asian tribes the right to national
self-determination. The captivity tale gave expression to the
yearning for liberty which was fueling the entire Decembrist
movement in Russian society at the time. The epilogue, how-
ever, suggested that so far as international relations were con-
cerned, the full exercise of political freedom was to be reserved
for the privileged citizens of big, subjugating states.
THE NOBLE SAVAGE'S TENACITY
But for all its stridency, the epilogue did not close down "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus" for the readership of the 1820s: it
was by no means the "last word" about the tribes and Rus-
sia's relation to them. Some minor writers showed elements
of continuity with Pushkin's celebration of imperial might
(Grigoriev's "Evening in the Caucasus," Nechaev's
"Recollections"). However, Pushkin's chauvinism struck no
receptive chord in the readership at large. Most reviewers,
for example, simply ignored the epilogue of "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus" and focused instead on the captivity tale's
unvanquished tribe (whom Viazemsky called an "unrefined
but bold, martial, handsome people").32 The dashing moun-
taineer's secure place in popular imagination is worth illus-
trating at some length, before we look more closely at public
silence which surrounded the chauvinistic finale of "The Pris-
oner of the Caucasus."
By far the most famous part of the poem, Pushkin's 121-line
sketch of Circassian culture was reprinted separately at least
six times during his lifetime.33 As noted earlier, Belinsky indi-
cated in the early 1840s that most Russian readers still knew
this section by heart, along with the description of the moun-
tains which directly precedes it. Pushkin's captivity tale also
inspired productions in other art forms: the "Circassian
Song" was set to music in the 1820s and included in twenty
different songbooks, while the amorous Circassian heroine
became the focal point of Charles Didelot's ballet, "The Pris-
oner of the Caucasus" (1823).34
But the major legacy was, of course, literary. As seen earlier
in discussion of imaginative geography, young Pushkin's stage
of mountain gloom and glory was brief, but it initiated a
vigorous tradition. Something similar happened with the
poetic "ethnography" of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus."
Pushkin himself would develop a much more sophisticated
perspective on the civilized man's quest for the primitive in
"The Gypsies" (written 1824), a poem about the Russian
Aleko who joins a band of Bessarabian nomads, marries one
of the women and ends by murdering her for infidelity. Unlike
"The Prisoner of the Caucasus" which basically converted the
Circassians into clarifiers of the Russian self, "The Gypsies"
displayed genuine anthropological insight.35 Written partly in
dramatic form, it produced distinctive voices for the gypsies
and suggested that a civilized outsider's intrusion into a
primitive society merely sows discord and destruction.
While Pushkin came to recognize the problematic character
of relations between primitive and civilized peoples, lesser
Russian writers of the 1820s stuck to inventing the Caucasian
tribesman as an Asian Naturmensch who sent back congenial
reflections to the semi-Europeanized self. The precise, non-
metaphorical language of Pushkin's central sketch of Circas-
sian culture did not transform the mountaineer into a symbol
of his natural environment. However, la theorie des climats was
current in Russia, and Pushkin did directly juxtapose the
rugged terrain and its inhabitants by having the captive
examine both in a continuous textual sequence. Seemingly at
one with the alpine landscape, the tribesman of "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus" had a sublime, gloriously "wild" character.
Minor authors such as Alexander Shishkov took the cue to
formulate a direct metaphorical equation between environ-
ment and the mountaineer. As though engendered by the land
itself, the tribesman became the "child of nature," the "severe
offspring of the Caucasian mountains." 36 Like two mirrors
face to face, landscape and inhabitants were mutually
stamped with whatever attributes the Russian writer imposed
on them (love of liberty, bellicosity, unbridled passions).37
The rare Russian perception of nothing but hideous "dread"
in rocky terrain in the 1820s predictably went along with a
hostile notion of the mountaineers themselves as "revengeful,
mean" marauders.38 But on the other hand, since Byronic
"friendship with nature" remained a common authorial pos-
ture throughout the romantic era, symbolic paysage sometimes
quite strikingly confounded civilized and uncivilized identity.
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's "Ammalat-Bek" would exemplify the
dualism by using the Terek river as a rhetorical emblem for
both the author and his tribal hero.
In a more complex instance of young Pushkin's legacy,
Nechaev's "Recollections" called attention to the mountain-
eer's bardic poetry. Rather than the feminine singers of "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus," Nechaev imagined a Chechen
rhapsodist commemorating the exploits of his land's "fallen
heroes." Based on a slender thread of ethnographic know-
ledge, the mountain bard owed most to Homer and Ossian,
the Russian readership's two major referents for "primitive
poetry" at the time.39 As we shall see, the Homeric enhance-
ment of the Caucasian tribesman would persist in Russian
writing during the jihad (when many a mountain "hero" had
clearly not "fallen"). The military exile Bestuzhev-Marlinsky,
for example, proclaimed the "majestic" Circassian warrior
the very "model of Ajax or Achilles."40 By the early 1850s
the accumulated force of Homeric allusions in the literary
Caucasus no doubt helped elicit one Russian ethnographer's
assertion that the Circassians would have loved the Odyssey
and recognized themselves in it.41
Although particularly prevalent in verse of the 1820s, young
Pushkin's impact was also evident in Alexander Yakubovich's
campaign notes "Fragments about the Caucasus." 42 Yaku-
bovich had some solid ethnographic information to ply,
including the self-ascribed name "Adyghe" rather than "Cir-
cassian" ("Cherkessy" in Russian). But "Fragments about the
Caucasus" was couched largely in romantic discourse. Yaku-
bovich employed the rhetoric of the sublime (nature's "dread
and glory"), promoted the idea of the tribes as children of
their rugged environment and injected excitement by
depicting his narrow escape from an ambush. Last but not
least, he presented the Caucasian warrior as a chivalrous
figure reminiscent of the Middle Ages, a veritable "knight"
of the mountains. As a writer in the tsarist army, Yakubovich
was a particularly interesting exponent of tribal grandeur.
Despite his status as a soldier, his campaign notes poeticized
the mountaineers, while remaining conspicuously silent about
the tsarist military effort. This equivocation about the recti-
tude of the conquest quite probably kept politically obsequi-
ous Bulgarin from printing a projected second installment of
"Fragments about the Caucasus" in the Northern Bee.
While all these cases illustrate the tenacity of young Push-
kin's heroic tribesman, a bucolic strain in the "Caucasian
epidemic" also merits note. As presented in the anonymous
prose work "The Circassian," published in the Nevsky Almanac
of 1829, t n e Caucasian hero was a pastoral highlander rather
than a Homeric fighter.43 A prisoner of war incarcerated in
Finland and interviewed by the Russian narrator, the tribes-
man is homesick, sorry he took up his sword and afraid he
will never see his fiancee again. An interesting confusion of
traditions occurred here: the bold warrior of "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus" was transmuted into a masculine version of
Pushkin's emotionally vulnerable "mountain maid" (whose
literary sisters would proliferate only in the 1830s). Virtually
indistinguishable from the gentle shepherds of eighteenth-
century Russian literature, the Circassian captive in Finland
was tearfully embraced by the narrator as a kindred spirit.
In the unfinished poem "Tazit" (written 1829-30) Pushkin
too imagined a pacific Caucasian tribesman alienated from
the local ethos of war and the vendetta. While far outnum-
bered by the literature's warriors, such sensitive tribal souls
illustrated an interesting Russian uncertainty about just what
constituted Asian wildness.
QUESTIONING THE RECTITUDE OF THE CONQUEST
The 1820s' obsessive concern with noble Caucasian savagery

bespoke the Russian national stake in Asia. Apt to feel touchy
about western perceptions of the tsarist homeland as a barbar-
ous country, the semi-occidentalized elite had a vested cul-
tural interest in keeping the Caucasian mountaineer a kindred
personage who provided a clear alternative to Europe per-
ceived as an overly civilized, cramped and moribund realm.
Questions of Russia's national character and status in the
world of nations, mixed feelings of inferiority and superiority
vis-a-vis the West, hopes for a freer society, and differing opin-
ions about the relevance of Europe as a model for Russia's
future evolution found a resonance in the literary Caucasus.
Romanticized in various ways, the mountain tribes sent back
flattering signals to their culturally heterogeneous receivers.
Yet it should be recognized as well that the romantic appro-
priation of the tribes as satisfying clarifiers of Russia was
accompanied by some expression of moral misgivings about
the conquest. The most famous instance was Viazemsky's pri-
vate protest against the Great Russian chauvinism of the epi-
logue of "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." In a letter to Alex-
ander Turgenev in September 1822, Viazemsky characterized
this section of the poem as an "anachronistic" ode of the
sort Mikhail Lomonosov wrote to please eighteenth-century
empresses:
I am sorry that Pushkin bloodied the last lines of his tale. What
kind of a hero is Kotliarevsky or Ermolov? What is so good about
his "leaving a trail of black contagion to deal a death blow to the
tribes"? That sort of notoriety makes your blood run cold and your
hair stand on end. If we were bringing enlightenment to the tribes,
then there would be something to sing about. Poetry is not the ally
of butchers. The political life may need them, and then history must
judge whether their acts were justified or not. But a poet's anthems
should never glorify slaughter.44
Most vexing of all, continued Viazemsky, he did not dare
scold Pushkin in his review, lest he fall afoul of censors, ready
to pounce on unacceptable opinions about the Russian mis-
sion to civilize the Caucasus. Viazemsky was no radical pre-
pared to risk speaking his mind publicly, and he even allowed
that "history" might absolve the iron-fisted subjugation of the
tribes. But in this letter to a friend, he withheld approval of
the conquest, punctured the state's self-image as an agent
of enlightenment and conveyed revulsion for the "pacifiers'"
blood-curdling deeds. A similar fear of official reprisals might
have compelled other commentators to refrain from express-
ing their reservations about the war in reviews of "The Pris-
oner of the Caucasus."
Viazemsky's refusal to condone the Russian conquest as a
civilizing mission has parallels in the writings of two little-
known Decembrists. Even that staunch advocate of imperial
expansion, Mikhail Orlov saw both futility and irony in Rus-
sia's war against the Muslim tribes: "It is just as hard to
subjugate the Chechens and other peoples of this region as to
level the Caucasian range. This is something to achieve not
with bayonets but with time and enlightenment, in such short
supply in our country." 45 Much more in line with Viazemsky's
sentiments, Nikolai Lorer bluntly questioned imperialism's
moral rectitude and even asserted the tribes' right to sover-
eignty. In memoirs partially published in the late nineteenth
century, Lorer recalled his military exile on a Black Sea front
in the 1830s. At one point he referred to the Caucasus' "divine
sites" and wondered if "forces of enlightenment" might
eventually possess them. He then distanced himself from the
conquest in ethical, as well as strategic terms: "Fire and the
sword will yield no good; and besides, who gave us the right
to use such means to try to impose education on people now
perfectly satisfied with their own freedom and property?" 46
Lorer thus recognized national self-determination as a global
birthright, by contrast to Pestel's doctrine of a big state's
prerogative over bothersome little ethnic groups on its peri-
phery. Military exile greatly contributed to Lorer's misgivings
by acquainting him with horrific manifestations of bestiality
in the tsarist general Grigory Zass. In eerie anticipation of
Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Zass collected
tribesmen's heads, impaled them on stakes around his house
and occasionally sent specimens to anatomists in Russia and
Berlin.47
The varied reservations about tsarist pursuit of a European
"civilizing mission" suggest that the Russian elite of Pushkin's
era had not arrived at a consensus about its relation to the
Caucasian tribes. The national stake in Asia largely explained
the thriving fortunes of the noble savages who illuminated
Russian cultural values, emotional ideals and liberal political
aspirations. However as best illustrated by Viazemsky's pri-
vate outcry against Pushkin's textual alliance with butchers,
the readership's romantic engagement with the Caucasian
mountaineers also apparently betrayed skepticism about Rus-
sia's credibility as the agent of western enlightenment and
evinced some qualms about war as any civilizer's tool. Ermo-
lov's campaigns were generally thought to have widened the
southern border's zone of security. But did the future hold a
recurrently embattled frontier, a program of educating the
tribesmen or a war of extermination? Should a European
power be allowed to eradicate the admirable features of Asian
primitivity, especially by means of the sword? And was Russia
sufficiently occidentalized to arrogate this task to itself in all
good conscience? The Caucasian oeuvre of the military exile
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky would anxiously inscribe such questions
about the rectitude of bloody conquest in the name of Euro-
pean civilization.
CHAPTER 7
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's interchange with the

tribesman
A dagger in experienced hands is as good as an axe, a

bayonet or a sword.
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
After being exiled for participation in the Decembrist revolt,
the belletrist and critic Alexander Bestuzhev embarked on a
second literary career as Marlinsky, the pseudonym under
which he gained fame as a writer in the Caucasus. No longer
widely read today even in Russia, he enjoyed phenomenal
popularity in his lifetime. To be sure, he had detractors. In
a review of 1840 Belinsky castigated his romantic excesses
and declined to plow through a new edition of his collected
works.1 Discriminating men of letters such as Ivan Turgenev,
Ivan Goncharev and Tolstoy also came to judge Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky unreadable: they associated him with puerile
adventure stories, while granting, however, that they had
loved him during boyhood and adolescence.2 But the deroga-
tory judgments of Belinsky and the literati in their maturity
represented a minority opinion.
Mikhail Semevsky evoked the prevailing, less sophisticated
climate in an article in National Annals in i860. Semevsky
recalled the time when the public at large did not know the
identity masked by Bestuzhev's nom de plume:
Marlinsky! Marlinsky! Thirty years ago that name was being
repeated with enthusiasm by virtually all the men and women read-
ers of Russia's books and journals. As a person of the period put it:
"They saw in him the Pushkin of prose. One of his novellas was
the most reliable lure to attract subscribers for a journal or pur-
chasers for an almanac." Who at the time did not read Marlinsky's
110
Marlinsky's interchange with the tribesman 111
brilliant stories, novellas and novels? Who did not find them
enrapturing and thoroughly engrossing? His similes were learned
by heart, he was copied, his works sold like hotcakes, and his biogra-
phy - his life - attracted the interest of the mass of men and women
readers. Often not knowing Marlinsky's real name, the women
made up fabulous stories about him, he was elevated to heroic stat-
ure, and the charming admirers of the talent of the author of
"Ammalat-Bek," "The Frigate Hope" "The Test," and so forth,
fell in love with him via the printed page.3
While making many interesting observations, Semevsky

raised two major points to be explored in the present chapter.
First of all, he dwelled on the readers' intensely emotional
responses and suggested that women were affected differently
than men. More fundamentally, he evoked a vast mystery of
identity particularly germane to Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's writ-
ings about the Caucasian conquest.
Part of the intriguing mystery resided in the generic diversity
of the author's Caucasian corpus. Arrested and deported after
the Decembrist revolt, Alexander Bestuzhev spent several years
in Siberia before being transferred to the Caucasus as a soldier.
He arrived in the territory in 1829 when Russia was battling
Chechen and Dagestani tribes led by the first Caucasian imam,
Gazi-Muhammed. While average readers remained ignorant of
"Marlinsky's" personal history, they had no doubt that he was
in the thick of action. He cultivated his identity as a soldier
especially strongly in ''Letters from Dagestan" (1830), campaign
notes which conveyed an impression of escalating war. Besides
characterizing Gazi-Muhammed as a "tireless fanatic, bran-
dishing new heads from every canyon like a hydra," this essay
spoke of the "Asian instinct for hatred" and compared the jihad
to colonies of swarming ants, an overflowing river and flooding
mountain streams.4 At the same time, though, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky characteristically blurred the "Asian" profile by
repeating hearsay that Gazi-Muhammed was the grandson of
a Russian turncoat — the offspring of anti-tsarist sentiment in
the readership's own country.5 If ascendant in the campaign
notes, the military persona conversant with danger asserted
himself more subtly in other genres as well. Little bits of war
correspondence entered the semi-fictional historical tale
"Ammalat-Bek." Recits de voyage featured the military traveler
between battles; and in "The Red Veil" the Russian narrator
on campaign near Erzerum recounts how a Turkish beauty
was murdered by a compatriot for loving a tsarist officer.
The soldier's merger with the ethnographer proved
especially productive in Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's Caucasian
output.6 As explained at length in his "Story of an Officer
Held Prisoner by Mountain Tribesmen (1834)," he took mili-
tary service as an opportunity to learn about the Caucasus'
indigenous cultures. The first part of this hybrid narrative is
indeed a reliable ethnographic essay about a small Dagestani
tribe. Moreover, a bracing current of cultural relativism
rippled through the text. In underlining the existence of dis-
tinctive traditions, moeurs and levels of material development
among the Caucasian tribes, the author warned his readers
not to dismiss these peoples as "savages." 7 Moreover, he
reminded his compatriots how the "English peer, the French
wit and the German professor" have so often derided Russia
for backwardness (42). But after exhibiting sensitivity to the
world's multiplicity of cultures and challenging Eurocentric
standards of "civilization," Bestuzhev-Marlinsky switched
generic gears to move from the ethnographic essay into the
second part of his work - a mock-utopia heavily reliant on a
fantasy of the mountain women's sexual availability.
The introduction of the two-part "Story of an Officer Held
Prisoner by Mountain Tribesmen" tellingly announced both
the ethnographic and fanciful impulses. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
lamented Russian readers' ignorance of the Caucasus and pre-
pared them to receive new data. But he disdained dry factu-
ality: convinced that people prefer to learn from a teacher
"without a pointer in hand," he promised to dress his "use-
ful" piece of writing in the "pleasant coat" of lively novelistic
form.
This earnest aspiration to combine edification with enter-
tainment underlay "Ammalat-Bek" (1832), the writer's most
famous semi-fictional work about the Caucasus. Set during
1819-28, the tale sprang from a historical incident in Dages-
tan: after nearly four years of apparent friendship between
them, Ammalat-Bek killed Evstafy Verkhovsky, the tsarist
colonel who had intervened to persuade General Ermolov not
to execute the tribesman for raids into Russian territory. Vio-
lent action superabounds in Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's narrative
(the slaughter of animals, combat, murder, grave-robbing and
decapitation). But the sensationalism coexists with the
author's effort to assure readers that he is telling a "true
story," as proclaimed in the subtitle {byl') and argued in the
afterword, the "Note." While in the Caucasus, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky encountered various tribes and studied Azeri, des-
ignated the "Tatar" tongue by Russians of the epoch.
Linguistically adept, he was known to pass as a Dagestani
and sometimes disappeared into the mountains for several
days at a time, feeding speculations about his political
allegiances.8 Without a doubt, this colorful writer had know-
ledge to impart, and long sections of "Ammalat-Bek" purvey
reliable information about language, local customs, religion,
history and so forth. In notable contrast to Pushkin's phony
"Circassian Song," Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's tale includes au-
thentic folklore - the tribal "death songs" expertly rendered
in Russian verse by the author and discussed in one of his
thirty-nine footnotes. Significant as an openly didactic appar-
atus, the annotations also deal with Islam, recent battles,
tribal clothing, horsemanship and weapons.
However, even if we grant that "Ammalat-Bek" commands
a considerable amount of factual knowledge, this still leaves
open the big issue of the way meaning is created in a literary
text. Despite the work's ethnographic excursuses, the quasi-
scholarly practice of footnoting, and the protest to truth in the
afterword, "Ammalat-Bek" is dominated by an exceedingly
affective discourse which bedazzled the author's devotees, as
recollections from the period attest. Indeed as we shall see, the
flashy oriental "coat" in which the "true story" was bedecked
seems to have totally monopolized most readers' attention.
In sweeping Russians off their feet, "Ammalat-Bek" refused
to deliver a coherent political message. An exemplary case of
destabilized cultural identity, the tale made a muddle of the
civilizing mission by inventing the Dagestani hero as both the
Islamic other and a surrogate self. On the one hand,
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky often seemed to retain allegiance to
Russia as the "European" power destined to expand into
backward Asia. But on the other hand, his romantic sensi-
bility and embattled relation to the tsarist state produced
drastic confusion about the rectitude of the war against the
tribes. Exiled for insurgency and placed under police surveil-
lance in the Caucasus, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky suffered tsarist
political harassment until his death. He was a romantic rebel,
and the production of dashing Asian outlaws evidently
afforded him psychological satisfaction. A riveting surrogate
of the Russian self, Ammalat-Bek delighted readers and
stimulated their daydreams of the writer as a renegade
enlisted in the jihad. As a rule, however, the enraptured con-
sumers missed the demoralizing intimations of Russian vio-
lence in "Ammalat-Bek": in his interchange with the tribes-
man, the military exile Bestuzhev-Marlinsky disclosed a
punishing anxiety about the war purportedly undertaken for
the benefit of Christian civilization.
THE DUALITY OF THE ORIENT
Major contradictions of "Ammalat-Bek" are distilled in dual-

istic projection of the orient. The tale's opening pages situate
Dagestan in seductive Islamic terrain not previously associ-
ated with Caucasian tribes. In a deviation from literature of
the 1820s, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky excludes mountains, to evoke
instead a balmy clime reminiscent of the Turkish coast in
works by Byron, or the Crimea in the Russian poetic tradition
represented by Pushkin's "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai."
An exquisite place in springtime, Ammalat-Bek's homeland
is full of fragrant roses, nightingales and plane trees like
"Muslim minarets." 9 In another instance of the prettified
orient so admired by romantics, the hero and his friend
Safir-Ali loll on a colorful carpet, absorbed in a discussion of
the Persian poets Saadi and Hafiz (232).
In tension with the intimations of eastern enchantment,
"Ammalat-Bek" also conjures the menace of Islamic fanati-
cism. The story is set in the context of the jihad fired by
agents from Istanbul and sustained by local bigots who
preach hatred of Russians (152, 160). However, a footnote
maintains that most Caucasian tribesmen are "bad Muslims"
who do not actually practice their religion (162). The varying
force of Islamic antagonism to giaours is indeed borne out
in the tale. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky invents Ammalat-Bek as a
chieftain open to gestures of friendship from Russians, while
Akhmet-Khan is the wicked bigot who incites the hero to
murder by demanding Colonel Verkhovsky's head as the
brideprice for his irresistible daughter Seltaneta. 10
While waffling about the significance of Islam in Ammalat-
Bek's primitive make-up, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky offers stock
notions of oriental slave trade .and despotism. Shortly after
Russia's siege of Anapa in 1828, Bulgarin declared the event
a victory for "European culture." 11 "Ammalat-Bek" concurs
by featuring Anapa as a weapons-supply center for "mountain
bandits" and a "bazaar where the tears, sweat and blood of
Christian captives were put on sale" by the Turks (261). With
a selectivity which would characterize many of his compa-
triots' later obsession with the "barbarous" Ottoman slave
trade, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky waxes indignant here, while
repressing Russian serfdom, an institution which made the
vast mass of the population the property of the upper classes.
Of course, as a Decembrist exile, he wrote under terrible con-
straints and could make no indictment of Russia. Was he blind
to the parallel with serfdom? Or did he expect readers to catch
the subversive drift of his rhetoric about "our" victory over
merchants of human beings? A similar streak of ambiguity
runs through his discussion of cruel tyranny as the tribes'
legacy from Persian and Turkish overlords. As in the case of
slavery, on this point too Russia was fenced off from oriental
evil, although home-grown despotism was something which
had led the author himself to participate in armed insurrec-
tion against the state. But perhaps Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
conceived a hierarchy of despotisms in which Nicholas I, for
all his viciousness, fared better than a Persian shah or Turkish
pasha.
In the definitive assertion of divided feelings about Asia,
"Ammalat-Bek" deprecates the Caucasus for backwardness,
while capturing its allure as a lush garden. Contained in one
of Colonel Verkhovsky's fabricated letters to his Russian
fiancee, this passage articulates a standard European view of
the whole East's cultural and personal retardation:
I am very glad that I will be leaving Asia, that cradle of mankind,
where the mind still remains in swaddling clothes. The static
character of life in Asia over the course of centuries is astounding.
All efforts at amelioration and education have been smashed to
smithereens against Asia: it belongs most assuredly to space rather
than time. The Indian Brahman, the Chinese mandarin, the Persian
bek and the Caucasian mountain chieftain are now just the same
as they have been for two thousand years. What a sad truth! . . .
The sword and knout of conquerors have left them unmarked as
water; the books and models provided by missionaries have not had
the slightest impact. Sometimes they change their prophets but
never acquire the knowledge or virtues of outsiders. I am leaving
the land of fruit to be borne back to the land of work - that great
inventor of everything useful, that animator of everything lofty, that
alarm clock of the human soul, which has fallen into a voluptuous
sleep here in the bosom of that charmer, nature (245; ellipsis mine).
In this assessment the Caucasus is drawn into a stereotypical
orient where the natives are sunk in sensual indolence, oblivi-
ous to time and impervious to European schemes to transform
them.
The clash between the oriental "land of fruit" and the
European "land of work" coincides quite strikingly with the
Freudian opposition between eros and civilization. A believer
in a Russian civilizing mission in the Caucasus, Verkhovsky
upholds the value of industriousness, discipline and efficiency,
while professing disdain for the urge to loll about in a blissful
stupor of creature comfort. In this avowed rejection of Asian
sloth and pleasure-seeking, we see a defense of the Freudian
reality principle which is directed toward repressing the id
and redirecting, or sublimating, erotic desire toward the pur-
suit of socially valuable goals. But the trope of the "land of
fruit," outside the flux of time, injects much tension into the
passage. This symbolic notion conjures a pastoral or Arcadian
world of natural abundance where no great effort is required
to obtain the necessities of life and a high level of instinctual
gratification prevails. As a later chapter will show, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's recits de voyage would explicitly call the Caucasus
an "Eden," beautifully pristine but ripe for economic exploi-
tation by industrious men. The "land of fruit" in "Ammalat-
Bek" crystalizes the same range of divided feelings about the
territory as a backward but seductive part of the globe.
ELIMINATING THE SAVAGE
In his vacillations about wild Asia, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky both

underwrites and disrupts Eurocentric ideology about the
tribes. A loyal son of the "land of work," Verkhovsky espouses
the civilizing mission understood as an educational program
rather than General Ermolov's strategy of military subju-
gation. To judge by Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's recit de voyage "The
Caucasian Wall (A Letter from Dagestan)," the benevolent
imperialist Verkhovsky conveys the exiled author's own will
to believe in the rectitude of the conquest in which he was
participating. Like the writer in real life, Verkhovsky visits
the remains of an ancient Persian fortification near Derbent,
one of the towns seized by Peter I in an invasion of 1722.
Verkhovsky's assessment of Peter exactly matches the opinion
expressed in Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's own voice in "The Cau-
casian Wall."12 In both texts, the Russian military traveler
proclaims the tsar the "Demigod of the North," imagines him
at the site of the wall and hails him as the visionary west-
ernizer who "wrenched Russia from the sphere of Asia's
decrepit kingdoms and trundled it into Europe with his
mighty hand" (216).
The ideology of the civilizing mission is likewise served by
Ammalat-Bek's private journal. In an act of authorial ventril-
oquism, the Caucasian hero "corroborates" Verkhovsky's
view of oriental backwardness. The tribesman's diary thanks
the colonel for ending his long sleep and inducting him into
the "new world" of enlightenment. Similarly, as an echo of
Verkhovsky's characterization of Asians as babes in intellec-
tual swaddling clothes, Ammalat-Bek expresses a belittling
conception of himself as a child compared to Europeans.
Along with motifs of cultural slumber and infancy, the journal
also features two of the tale's numerous tropes of animality:
Ammalat-Bek likens his former self to a falcon who cannot
fathom his hood, or a horse who knows not why humans shoe
him.
But most comprehensively of all, "Ammalat-Bek" under-
writes the ideology of the civilizing mission by shaping a plot
which culminates in the wild man's apparently preordained
elimination. The ethnographic excursuses and the highest
concentration of annotations come at the very beginning, in
chapter one. The quasi-scholarly business of footnoting is
abandoned entirely by chapter ten, after which ghastly thrills
are amassed. First Ammalat-Bek shoots Verkhovsky on a
lonely road and makes his escape. Like a "jackal," the mur-
derer sneaks back to the Russian camp at night, digs up the
colonel's grave, reels at the stench of the corpse and hacks off
the head with repeated blows of his dagger. Ammalat-Bek
then rushes hellbent to Akhmet-Khan to exchange the head
for Seltaneta. But now on his deathbed, the Khan is revolted
by the bloody offering, curses Ammalat-Bek and deprives him
of Seltaneta forever. Ill judged for the murder by other local
people as well, Ammalat-Bek becomes a renegade warrior,
still enhanced, however, by tragic grandeur: explicitly accused
of "fratricide" by Safir-Ali, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's hero con-
verges on Cain, the primal murderer so compelling to roman-
tic imagination.13 In the story's last line Ammalat-Bek dies
fighting the Russians at Anapa (chapter fourteen). As though
by the hand of fate, his killer is Verkhovsky's brother, a major
piece of undeclared poetic license on Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's
part. In a typically imperialist "solution" to conflict between
the savage and civilization, "Ammalat-Bek" thus extermi-
nates the Caucasian hero in action presented as unplanned
Russian retribution for the death of one of "our" own.14
Marlinsky 's interchange with the tribesman 119
A dramatization of savagery running amuck and ultimately
eliminated, this denouement harmonizes perfectly with the
endorsements of civilization in Verkhovsky's letters and
Ammalat-Bek's journal. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky provides a
gripping fictive demonstration of the view that wildness is
destined to be eradicated, if not properly mastered and con-
tained: just as the animal in man must be tamed through
book-learning, the acquisition of Christian ethics and good
manners, so too shall the Russian soldier shoot the Muslim
bandit who refuses to be reconstructed. Savagery meets its
demise, with the implication that a fraternity of Europeans is
fated to prevail.
SURROGATE EROS
But the very refusal to kill Ammalat-Bek until virtually the

last stroke of the pen inscribes a fierce authorial attachment
to the oriental surrogate (whose initials Alexander Bestuzhev
happened to share). Perhaps with the censor and police in
mind, the exiled writer in certain respects legitimized the Cau-
casian conquest as the march of European progress. "Amma-
lat-Bek" continually subverts itself, however, by allowing
civilized Russia and savage Dagestan to collapse into
one another. Belinsky once complained that Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's handsome Muslim tribesmen looked and talked
all too much like the tempestuous Novgorodians and Livon-
ians in two of the author's other historical writings. To carry
the logic of this astute observation further, Ammalat-Bek not
only resembles these characters of very distant eras but even
more intriguingly emerges as the underground self of
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and his enthralled readers in the period
of imperialist war in the Caucasus.
The interchange between Ammalat-Bek and the author is
strikingly signaled in the Terek's treatment as their shared
symbolic emblem. The story draws Ammalat-Bek into seman-
tic alignment with the river by describing both as bestial,
savage, raging and rebellious. Furthermore, the waterway's
course to the Caspian Sea is described in anthropomorphic
language in a long passage near the beginning of chapter four.
In this sequence the Terek first enters as a bandit, rejoicing
in his liberty and stealing boulders as he storms through the
Darial Pass. In making a turn through eastern lowlands, the
river becomes a "Muslim" and then a stolid "worker" at a
mill. This passage seems to recapitulate the civilizer's goal
of transforming wild tribesmen into enlightened, cooperative
subjects of the tsarist empire. But Bestuzhev-Marlinsky sets
up interference by introducing a rhetorical line of self-
identification with the Terek. In a traditional flight of enthusi-
asm for the sublime "dread" of Darial (cliffs, toppling boul-
ders and torrential storms), chapter four ushers in the river
as a "ferocious beast." The conclusion of this first paragraph
intensifies the thrilled ambivalence: illuminated by lightning,
the Terek fulminates with "fiery foam," its choppy waves
"like spirits of Hell stabbed by the archangels' sword." The
motif of Satanic revolt is compounded by a trope of the river
as a "genius, struggling with nature," his force derived "from
the heavens." At once a sublime beast, the supreme fallen
angel and an embattled genius, the Terek conjoins Ammalat-
Bek with Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's romantic ideal of himself.
This symptomatic interchange between the writing subject
and the Muslim tribesman reflected a conception of homo sapi-
ens which expanded "Asia" into a space in the human psyche,
something on the order of the Freudian id. In a letter to his
brother Pavel in 1828 Bestuzhev-Marlinsky maintained that
"passions are the same everywhere, although they differ in
their object and expression."15 Emotions are "naked" in
savage people, he continued, while in civilized societies they
acquire a "genteel cover." Largely on the basis of this notion
of layered personality observable throughout the world, the
author fashioned a literary biography of Ammalat-Bek, a man
about whom he had no written sources. More preoccupied
with psychology than anthropology, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
presumed to lay bare the mind of the Caucasian hero in order
to explain his act of murder.
The writer's conviction about humanity's shared passions
produces two inordinately unstable cultural dichotomies
about love in "Ammalat-Bek." A pivotal assessment of erotic
fire appears in Verkhovsky's second letter to his fiancee:
Ammalat is in love, and what a love it is! Never in all my youthful
ardor did I experience a love so frenzied. I burned like a censer,
kindled by sunlight; he blazes as a ship set afire by lightning in a
stormy sea. You and I, Maria, have read Shakespeare's Othello sev-
eral times, and only the raging Othello can give you some idea of
Ammalat's tropical passion (243).
The imagery of fire furthers the same poetic purpose as the
tale's ruling trope of the orient as a balmy garden (where
the stupendous mountains of "eternal snows" are excluded).
Suffused with a "tropical" atmosphere, Asia is conjured in
"Ammalat-Bek" as one big torrid expanse, encompassing
Othello as readily as Dagestanis. Similarly, at other points in
the story the Caucasian hero is likened to the sun, dispelling
the snow which falls on Seltaneta's heart in his absence. This
symbolic pattern of wintry feeling and blazing passion is
endorsed predictably from "inside" Ammalat-Bek: after read-
ing some Russian literature provided by Verkhovsky, the
tribesman remarks in his journal, "How sluggish and cold
their love is, like a moonbeam shining on ice." But for all the
protestations to difference, the very imagery of frigidity and
heat conforms to Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's belief that "passions
are the same everywhere." The tribesman's erotic energy is
a raging, elemental force, while the metaphor of an incense-
burner safely contains the Orthodox Russian's little "flame,"
associates it with church and thus intimates holy matrimony.
Both the "European" and Asian lovers partake in the same
fiery substance, even though it assumes different forms.
The cross-cultural similarity of erotic experience is insinu-
ated likewise in a wobbly dichotomy about the sex drive as a
beast within. Verkhovsky articulates the notion in another
letter to his fiancee: "Our passions are domestic animals or,
if they be wild, beasts which have been tamed and made
docile, trained to dance on the rope of decorum with a ring
through the nose and claws clipped. In the Orient they are
tigers and lions running free" (201-2). As the emblem of
"our" side, Verkhovsky immediately proposes a domestic
animal but then evokes a dancing bear. This trope puts a
heavy accent upon training and repression. For Russians and
orientals alike, however, erotic desire is presented as a beast -
and potentially even a savage beast - which is merely subdued
and leashed in the civilized world. As in the case of symbolic
"fire," Ammalat-Bek's ferocious passion for Seltaneta thus
converges toward "our" experience, instead of attesting to
irreconcilable difference.
Far from denying the concept of raging, fiery eros as some-
thing too threatening to accommodate in "European" iden-
tity, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky cultivates it with obvious relish. He
even lifts Ammalat-Bek to tragic Shakespearean stature by
likening him to Othello, a prototype of the erotically intense
non-European whose love for a woman was manipulated by
a vicious schemer, leading him to commit murder. Linked
to such phenomena as the sun, the garden, and the Terek,
Ammalat-Bek is a Naturmensch who lives by depths of the
heart, instinct and spontaneous feeling, as opposed to reason,
social etiquette and the conventional moral codes of the Rus-
sian reader's world.16 Clearly absorbed by "Asia" as a realm
of illicit sex, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky projects onto the Dagestani
primitive a daydream of utterly uninhibited erotic desire, just
as the imaginary part two of the "Story of an Officer Held
Prisoner by Mountain Tribesmen" depicts a neverland where
beautiful local women are routinely made available as
bedmates for visitors, including the Russian captive. As exem-
plified most straightforwardly in the latter case, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky had no qualms about identifying with oriental eros.
THE VIOLENT SURROGATE
But if openly romanticizing the tribesman's conflagrative,

tigerish libido, the author identifies with Ammalat-Bek's mur-
derous aggressivity in a largely unconscious, covert manner.
Of course, this line of affinity between the writing subject and
his Caucasian hero utterly undermines the moral foundation
of the tsarist civilizing mission in "barbarous" Asia. As we
have seen, the tale of passion and murder in Dagestan imputes
a good deal of bloodlust to the Islamic killer, by contrast to
principles of Christian kindness and forgiveness incarnated in
the victim Verkhovsky.17 However, the center does not hold
in this clash between "oriental" aggression and Russian
mercifulness.
The apparently unconscious nature of the destabilizing
treatment of violence comes to light in the representation of
the tsarist military man as decapitator. In his first letter from
the front Verkhovsky recounts how his fellow soldiers cut off
the heads of bullocks with swords and even daggers in order
to exhibit their expertise with the weapons (chapter five).
Within a tale in which so many words are expended in defin-
ing oppositions between Dagestanis and Russians, a reader
contemplating the whole story may well start wondering just
what the difference is between the tsarist military men, mind-
lessly decapitating animals in .a display of martial arts, and
Ammalat-Bek's purportedly "Asian" proclivity to violence
and the particularly grisly business of beheading. Yet
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky shows himself unaware of the extent to
which he dismantles "civilized" identity by introducing the
tsarist soldier as a killer, relishing senseless slaughter. The
episode is relayed through the eyes of the spectator Verkhov-
sky in a tone of boisterous camaraderie and amazement at
the physical prowess, as though a sporting event were taking
place. The Russian soldiers vie with one another with gusto;
and in a scene which sprang strictly from the author's imagi-
nation, General Ermolov is shown decapitating a bullock with
one blow of his sword. Furthermore, as he begins the act,
the Russian commander-in-chief assumes formidably heroic
proportions in a comparison with Odysseus, preparing to kill
Penelope's suitors.18
Irony is oddly absent in this episode in which Verkhovsky
marvels at acts of decapitation (with no inkling that a dagger
will behead him by the end of the story). Indeed, the colonel's
perceptions thoroughly fuse with authorial speech. Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's footnote to the scene of sportive slaughter assures
the untraveled members of the "European" audience that
such astounding feats are commonplace in Asia: "A dagger
in experienced hands is as good as an axe, a bayonet or a
sword." Far from ironizing, this psychologically interesting
annotation invites the Russian reader to experience an amaze-
ment which the author himself seems to have felt personally
and then projected onto Verkhovsky as a newcomer at the
oriental front. Furthermore, the reference to the Odyssey in
"Ammalat-Bek" conveys the identical outlook Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky expressed in personal correspondence about his
regiment's "Homeric skirmishes" with Gazi-Muhammed. 19
All these features of the text - Verkhovsky's merger with the
author, the annotation about the force of a dagger "in experi-
enced hands," and the Homeric allusion - proclaim
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's obliviousness to the link established
between Ammalat-Bek and the Russian military men as kil-
lers and decapitators.
The passage about killing animals discloses Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's troubled alliance with Ammalat-Bek as his vio-
lent underground self. In an evidently involuntary manner,
the comment about the "experienced" wielding of a dagger
conjoins the Asian weapon of choice with standard tsarist
military equipment - the bayonet and the sword. This triad
opens a breach in "civilization's" camp by intimating the
"savagery" of killing on the battlefield. The detail illustrates
the more sweeping operation of a projective mechanism iden-
tified in Dominique Mannoni's classic study of the psychology
of colonization: in a manifestation of "obscurities of the
unconscious," the "civilized" man attributes to the "savage"
dastardly impulses which reside in himself.20 In essence, the
tale of Ammalat-Bek's treacherous murder of Verkhovsky
proclaims lethal aggression a quintessentially oriental pro-
clivity but simultaneously endorses as virile, martial action
the facility for killing which Russian soldiers themselves had
to possess, as Bestuzhev-Marlinsky knew well from his per-
sonal experience in combat against the tribes.
These disclosures of profoundly divided feelings about
bloodshed have a clear connection to the author's history as a
Decembrist. In the Novgorod tale "Roman and Olga" written
prior to the insurrection of 1825, Alexander Bestuzhev had
MarHusky's interchange with the tribesman 125
revealed anxiousness about his capacity for heroic martial
action.21 Perplexity about violence in the name of a political
ideal would also find release in "The Frigate Hope" (1833).22
So too is "Ammalat-Bek" obscurely invaded by psychic tur-
moil about participating in military carnage. When
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's Caucasian tale dwells upon the Rus-
sian soldier as a proficient butcher comparable to Odysseus,
the victims are animals rather than Muslim guerrillas. But in
parallel to an old horse which Ammalat-Bek beats to death
in afitof fury early in the story (as a foreshadowing of his
equally pitiless murder of Verkhovsky), the decapitated bull-
ocks stand in for men - the tribesmen whom Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky was helping to slaughter in the service of the Rus-
sian state. Although survival in combat requires killing
without remorse, this capacity cannot be promoted with relish
by a Christian, even in wartime. However, by displacing the
Russians' exercise of martial arts onto animals, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky could openly admire violence as a "Homeric"
virtue. The Dagestani shadow of Odysseus, the romanticized
killer Ammalat-Bek embodied the author's illicit ideal of the
skilled man of arms totally outside Christian morality.
ASIA IN THE READER
The contemporary readership registered the seductive inter-

change between Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Ammalat-Bek in
ways conditioned by gender. Women were not entirely
immune to the tale's militarized wanderlust. Primarily restric-
ted to the domestic scene, they sometimes envied a man's
opportunity to escape tedium by going to war in the sublime
Caucasus. Rostopchina conveyed such sentiments in a verse
addressed to her brother Serozha, about to embark on a tour
of duty in the territory.23 A desire to experience the martial
life would surface more elaborately in a late nineteenth-
century story by the nonentity Vera Zhelikhova, whose her-
oine at a Caucasian fort learns to ride like a mountain brave
(dzhigit) and defies her husband by taking risky horseback
excursions disguised as a man.24 Such literary works by and
about women expressed a wish to participate in the rugged,
dangerous life of campaigners in the Asian wilderness.
However, instead of identifying with valiant men in fic-
tion, the typically homebound women readers of "Ammalat-
Bek" were more prone to embrace the tale's oriental eroti-
cism. According to Semevsky's article cited at the beginning
of this chapter, women "fell in love with [Marlinsky] via
the printed page." But daydreams about the author himself
blended together with thrilled curiosity about the dashing
savage, Ammalat-Bek. In the estimation of the nineteenth-
century Caucasian regional specialist E. G. Veidenbaum,
all Russia's "sentimental ladies and girls were enraptured
by Seltaneta's ardent lover."25 Not in the least repelled by
the tribesman's murder of benevolent Verkhovsky, these
readers were cultivating a secret ideal of the wild man's
"tigerish" erotic powers. Ammalat-Bek represented a wish-
fulfilling alternative especially for women of romantic tem-
perament who found themselves in dismal marriages in
Orthodox Russia. Writings by secondary authors of the
period again prove illuminating. Rostopchina, who was
unhappily wed to a somewhat younger habitue of the beau
monde, imagined a civilized woman's affair with a Caucasian
tribesman in a poem beginning, "In the mountains I met
a Circassian and swore an everlasting love." 26 Set to music
in the 1840s, this song became popular in Russian salons
and encouraged women to keep swooning over torrid erotic
gratification. In a more lurid key, Elizaveta Gan's story "A
Recollection of Zheleznovodsk" also revealed Ammalat-
Bek's force as a Russian woman's repressed ideal of savage
eros.27 As the next chapter will detail, this work recounts
the adventures of a lady taken prisoner by tribesmen and
nearly raped by a local "prince." Like Rostopchina, Gan
had a miserable marriage (to a boorish general much older
than she), and a yearning for some erotic charge in life
overflowed into her literary activity. Completely in accord
with a traditional discourse about spontaneous, "natural"
passion, Rostopchina's poem and Gan's story illustrated the
self-involved erotic daydreams which Russian women read-
ers, and readers turned writers, were wont to spin around
the passionate tribesman Ammalat-Bek.
While Russian women took to Ammalat-Bek as an illicit
erotic ideal, men in the readership followed Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's own route of emulating the Asian killer as an
underground self. Most of these readers, though, betrayed
no anxiety about exercising violence against the tribes in
combat. On the contrary, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's Caucasian
oeuvre prompted many Russian men to enlist in the army
in the 1830s and 1840s. As recollected in several memoirs,
the author instilled eagerness to see the spectacular Cauca-
sian wilderness, experience the thrills of battle and make a
brilliant military career in the hottest theater of war then
available. Arnold Zisserman's Twenty-Five Years in the Cau-
casus best expressed the collective syndrome. Zisserman
recalled how he rushed to the nearest recruiting station
after falling under the sway of "Ammalat-Bek" at the age
of seventeen. He stressed the pleasures of the text by defin-
ing it as a "seductive" work, full of an "ardent fantasy"
which "sent gullible young souls into ecstasy and lured
them to the Caucasus." 28 In a rather common experience,
however, young Zisserman found the soldier's life much
duller than literature had promised. None the less, he
continued to perceive a rousing "poetry of warfare" in
battle. The same sort of experience was conveyed in a
memoir by I. von der Hoven, a soldier who actually met
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky in the Caucasus. 29 Von der Hoven
asked for a transfer from Petersburg to the southern front
after reading Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's "wonderful descriptions
of nature," especially in "Mulla-Nur," a well-known work
about a Caucasian bandit similar to Robin Hood. Compar-
able testimony was provided by other veterans who recol-
lected how they joined the Caucasian army in search of
the landscape and the rousing martial action they had
discovered reading Bestuzhev-Marlinsky (as well as
Lermontov).30
This interesting body of memoirs transmitted no osten-
sible sense of commitment to a civilizing mission. Instead,
these Russians spoke a romantic nineteenth-century idiom
about war as courageous action. They did not count patriot-
ism among their motivations for becoming soldiers, nor
directly express an urge to exterminate "savages." A tour-
istic rather than jingoistic sentiment ran through the recol-
lections, as the themes of wild nature and the "poetry of
warfare" recurred. However, the very act of enlistment
brought these excited male readers onto the battlefield to
test their martial prowess against the legendary tribesmen.
Only slightly represssed in the memoirs, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's own sort of secret attraction to Ammalat-Bek's
violence ran just beneath the surface of the enlistees'
expressions of enthusiasm for wilderness and the bravura
of campaigns. If overtly preoccupied with the Caucasian
war as an event affording opportunities for travel and a
prestigious military career, the readers knew they were not
embarking on a pleasure trip by joining the army. Their
memoirs also made it clear that they did not enlist in order
to have desk jobs. They longed instead to enter a world of
machismo and experience themselves as heroes in combat.
This desire put Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's male devotees upon
a course of action which supplanted the vicarious experience
of reading about slaughter with the reality of war, giving
release to violence. For all the talk of valor and the "poetry"
of nature, joining the Russian army meant getting a license
to kill. In the theater of war the morality of the civilized
Christian world was set aside, so that acts punishable as
crimes at home in peacetime would win admiration and
medals for the soldier. The recruit would have to prepare
himself to be effective in the killing fields, acquiring the
"Homeric" skill with weapons which "Ammalat-Bek" cel-
ebrated most forthrightly in the episode about beheading
bullocks.
These readers acted out identification with Ammalat-Bek,
the tale's primary, riveting model of the dashing killer. The
Russian practitioners of martial arts, including General Er-
molov, appear only in cameo roles, while the victimized Ver-
khovsky is never shown doing anything violent: the exponent of
enlightened behavior and Christian virtue, he certainly could
not have been emulated too enthusiastically by the young
recruit (unless we posit a death-wish as a guiding element in a
soldier's psyche).31 By contrast, the Asian outlaw Ammalat-
Bek set the compelling, illicit standard of what a successful
soldier must be, precisely by dramatically flouting Christian
society's moral and legal strictures against killing. In legitimiz-
ing murder, war in effect set loose the "orient" within. One
Russian veteran of Caucasian campaigns recalled the experi-
ence in these telling terms: "Not blood but lava ran in my
veins," he declared, claiming that his brother-in-law even
called him " 'Ammalat' - and 'Vesuvievich,' to boot!" (i.e., a
patronymic based on the name of the volcano). 32 Untroubled
by the moral and ideological implications, this tsarist soldier
had taken pride in releasing his "savagery" on the Asian
battlefield.
All the testimony to Ammalat-Bek's status as an illicit ideal
of unleashed eroticism and violence can be underlined by
remembering how Bestuzhev-Marlinsky merged with his
Caucasian heroes in the minds of his devoted readers of both
sexes. The colorful machismo of tribesmen like Ammalat-Bek
and Mulla-Nur was so intense that the author's death in
combat in 1837 became surrounded with fabulous stories
about his defection to the enemy. As news of his demise gradu-
ally reached the Caucasian spa country and the Russian
heartland, rumors arose that he was still alive, fighting with
the Muslim tribesmen and living in the mountains with five
native wives.33 Of course, this fantasy captured the very
essence of the oriental existence of uninhibited erotic gratifi-
cation and freely expressed aggressivity which the author's
semi-fiction had produced. When Arnold Zisserman was on
mission from the Caucasus in the late 1840s, a St. Petersburg
civilian actually asked him "if it were true that Shamil was
Marlinsky, turned renegade and made leader of the tribesmen
after arranging to feign death in combat." 34 Enthralled by
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's noble primitives, this Russian man
conceived Shamil himself as a compatriot who had turned his
gun against the tsar.
As the query about Shamil so perfectly illustrates,
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's Caucasian oeuvre generated a pro-
longed mystery of authorial identity which was at once the
semi-Europeanized readers' unresolved question about who
they really were in relation to the tribes. Ammalat-Bek's
popularity certainly conforms to the general rule that most
readers everywhere prefer a sublime villain to a good, bland
hero. But the annals of European literature inspired by
imperialism offer no case quite like the production and
reception of this Caucasian tale. Could the British, for
example, have ever been so enraptured by a Friday who
shot and decapitated Robinson Crusoe? The unlikelihood
of such a response in the British context points back to
semi-Europeanized Russia's national stake in Asia (while
undoubtedly also testifying to the enormous importance of
racial difference in European writing about Africa and the
Caribbean). Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's dashing tribal outlaws
quite possibly afforded vicarious political satisfaction to
Russians repelled by Nicholas I.35 The cultural pay-off was
more evident, however. As a Naturmensch akin to Othello
(but none the less a member of the readership's own "white,
Caucasian" race), Ammalat-Bek served Russian national
esteem by equating the orient with emotional intensity,
macho vigor and inspired primitive poetry.36
There was indubitably another dimension, which had
its own complications. Given the profound ambivalence of
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's tale, some contemporary readers
quite likely took vicarious pleasure in Dagestani eroticism
and violence without renouncing belief in Russia's "Euro-
pean" stature and the consequent legitimacy of war against
the tribes. The Russian men whom Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
drew into the Caucasian killing fields even turned the
martial lessons of Ammalat-Bek against his tribal brothers
in real life. On the other hand, l however, at least one of
these enthralled male readers shared Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's
own anguished confusion about war as the means to a
supposedly benevolent end. Unlike the Russian soldier who
lauded the ferocious "lava" in his veins, Zisserman wrote
with shame about the "bestial instincts" he had discovered
in himself and his comrades on the Caucasian battle-
ground.37 Although generally well repressed by the "poetry
of warfare" in Zisserman's recollections, even this momen-
tary recognition of appalling savagery in "us" was
significant.
More than any of his other Caucasian writings, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's "Ammalat-Bek" attempted to negotiate the ter-
rible gap between the romance of an empire in the orient (the
"poetry") and the stark brutality of imperialist war in action
(the "bestiality"). In military exile the author was serving
Nicholas I as an exterminator of Asian peoples with whom
he identified to a great extent. The circumstances of
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's death suggest that the ethical strain
ultimately proved unbearable: in an act often judged as delib-
erate suicide, the writer made a foolhardy charge during
pitched battle at Cape Adler.38 After being wounded severely
in the chest, he was dragged aside by comrades while fighting
continued. His body was never recovered and presumably
was hacked to pieces. Whatever may have prompted it, this
violent end tragically harmonized with the ideal of stalwart
heroism celebrated in the tribal death songs of "Am-
malat-Bek.'
Both a fortifier and subverter of imperialist ideology, the
schizoid "Ammalat-Bek" predictably produced a double-
sided legacy in Russian literature. On the one hand, more
than any previous writer, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky encouraged
readers to approach the Caucasus as a Muslim field where
they might feel a confident kinship to Europe. In praising
Peter the Great, "Ammalat-Bek" even defined the goals of
tsarist imperialism in Asia as the defeat of "barbarism" and
the pursuit of the "good of mankind." This was a hegemonic
line of thought pursued in the 1830s and 1840s in Russian
pulp which reduced the tribesman to a subhuman creature
fated to be wiped from the globe. But while Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky may have given some inspiration to these little
orientalizers, he himself was clearly plagued by grave doubts
about the imperialist view of war as regenerative violence
necessary to build a better world. His unresolved conflicts
about the tsarist conquest of the Caucasus would re-echo in
late writings of Lermontov, the military exile who attained a
frankly self-reproachful recognition of bestiality in Russia's
war against the tribes.
CHAPTER 8
Early Lermontov and oriental machismo
"With oriental languor in his eyes,

He was a poison to our women!"
Lermontov
By contrast to the tremendous public impact of "The Prisoner
of the Caucasus" and "Ammalat-Bek," "Izmail-Bey" pro-
voked hardly any reaction from its immediate readership. A
product of Lermontov's adolescence, the poem was first pub-
lished with the censor's deletions in 1843. The posthumous
appearance conformed to a peculiarity of the author's career.
Although a precocious talent who began writing in his teens,
Lermontov published little verse before dying at the age of
twenty-six in a duel in the Caucasus in 1841. He made his
first big mark on the Russian literary scene when the novel
A Hero of Our Time appeared the year before his death. The
sole edition of verse prepared in his lifetime also came out in
1840. Marred by traits of juvenilia, "Izmail-Bey" was just
one of many works never revised to meet mature Lermontov's
high standards for publication.
The poem none the less rewards attention as Lermontov's
earliest disavowal of Eurocentric ideology about civilizing the
Caucasian Muslim tribes. "Izmail-Bey" does not grapple
with the era's vexed questions of Russian national identity.
However, Lermontov's awareness of Islamic culture was
awakened by the study of oriental literature and philosophy
in 1830-32 at Moscow University, where one of his professors
was the Russian Arabist, Boldyrev.1 This exposure to the
thought of ancient Arabia and Persia left the writer with a
life-long affinity to eastern responses to the mystery of fate,
as A Hero of Our Time would demonstrate. Even more signifi-
cantly, like earlier romantics such as Somov and Kiukhel-
beker, Lermontov developed a view of privileged Russian
relation to the Islamic East's storehouse of cultural treasures.
In 1841 he remarked to an acquaintance that Russia should
stop "trying to match Europe and the French" and draw
instead upon Asia's insufficiently understood "cache of
riches."2 While perhaps not free of the condescending hint
that orientals had not fully fathomed their own philosophical
heritage, this recorded conversation shows Lermontov's align-
ment with other writers and intellectuals of the romantic era
who thought Russia would realize its national identity in a
synthesis of European and Asian cultural forces.3 No outright
denial of the enduring value of certain western achievements,
the synthetic viewpoint nevertheless was inimical to the Euro-
centrism which underlay justifications of the Caucasian con-
quest as a civilizing mission.
Lermontov's disaffection from ideological premises of Rus-
sia's war against the tribes was already expressed in "Izmail-
Bey," but with a lurid stamp of approval for oriental ma-
chismo in its martial and sexual manifestations. Not yet the
commissioned officer trained at a St. Petersburg military
academy in 1832-34, the poet unequivocally identified with
Izmail-Bey, the Muslim who slaughters tsarist soldiers on
Caucasian battlefields and steals their women in the erotic
combat zone of Russia's beau monde. Wild libido and violence
imbued all six Caucasian tales young Lermontov wrote in the
late 1820s and early 1830s. In "Izmail-Bey," however, the
sensational material was harnessed to a denunciation of
Russia as an empire of slavery and genocidal warfare. Of
course, the censor expunged many pertinent lines in 1843;
but even so, Lermontov's alliance with his tribal hero was
unmistakable. 4
As the story of a Muslim Don Giovanni who reigns supreme
over Russians in war, "Izmail-Bey" brings fascinating issues
of gender to bear on imperialism. The performance of an enfant
terrible, the poem envisions a "crowd" of Russian readers open
to shock. But the most readily disconcerted reader was a
Early Lermontov and oriental machismo 135
Europeanized Russian male with a double-barreled anxiety
about orientals' outmanning him in war and love. Young Ler-
montov confirmed this reader's worst fears by stressing
Izmail-Bey's erotic success with Russian women: there was a
gender division in the imperial ranks. The women readers
who swooned over Ammalat-Bek must have already put Rus-
sian manhood on guard. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, however, had
kept his Dagestani Othello erotically confined to Asia,
whereas Lermontov turned Izmail-Bey loose in the North. To
judge by the reticence of the first readers, the conjunction of
martial and sexual force seems to have made "Izmail-Bey"
virtually taboo. The year of publication had proved propitious
indeed for the poem's enfant terrible: by 1843, Shamil was
alarming Russia with his military prowess and had absconded
with one of "our" women, the Armenian Anna Ulykhanova
who became his favorite wife. By definition a thing not to be
spoken, the "taboo" of oriental machismo's double threat
shall be inferred in this chapter largely by listening to Belin-
sky, an extensive commentator on the literary Caucasus who
pointedly evaded "Izmail-Bey." 5
SEEKING A HOME IN THE SOUTH
All of Lermontov's early Caucasian tales prominently feature

violence and carnality. "The Circassians" details bloody
battle between Russians and tribesmen. In Lermontov's "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus" the Russian protagonist is shot
dead by the father of the enamored Circassian heroine, who
conforms to her Pushkinian prototype by drowning herself in
a river. "Kally" ("bloody" in Ossetian), "The Aul Bas-
tundzhi" and "Hadji Abrek" have lurid denouements in
which ravishing tribeswomen (a lightly clad sleeper, a bather,
a bosomy dancer) are butchered by local men driven by a
vendetta or crazed by unrequited passion. Exceptionally pub-
lished in the poet's lifetime, "Hadji Abrek" (1835) appeared
without his permission (and to his immense vexation) in Sen-
kovsky's Library for Reading, a regular haven for tawdry
orientalia.
But unlike the era's common lot of orientalizers, Lermontov
overlaid the Caucasus with a quest for home apparently
related to his unhappy family life. Three years old when his
mother died, he was taken in hand by his wealthy maternal
grandmother Arsenieva (nee Stolypina) who notoriously
doted on him and isolated him from his father, her social
inferior.6 An anguish about lost parents surfaced in Lermon-
tov's adolescent verse in the form of orphans, outcasts and
brooding criminals (including men accused of killing their
mothers in childbirth). The Caucasus, though, was an
especially favored site in these writings.
With an emotional pitch previously unsounded in Russian
literature, Lermontov invented himself as a child of the
southern territory, where Arsenieva took him at the ages of
three, five and ten. The writer seemed primarily in search of
a surrogate male parent. Most tellingly, the dedication to
"The Aul Bastundzhi" asks the Caucasus to bless the poem
as a "son." No gentle maternal presence, this land is a "severe
tsar of the world" who is addressed, however, as an adored
but stony male parent: "At heart I am yours, forever and
everywhere yours!" cries the poet, even "in the North, a
country alien to you." "Hadji Abrek" and "Izmail-Bey" con-
struct similar affective bonds between the writer and a moun-
tain habitat whose traditionally rugged, masculine character
is mirrored by the heroes' brutal energy. Indeed one might
wonder if the tales' violent machismo, conjoined with sublime
landscape, was not providing the author a good deal of
psychological compensation for a father overruled by a
possessive grandmother.
Cast in filial relation to the Caucasus in its conventionally
sublime guise, Lermontov took a notable interest in the tsarist
conquest as a maker of orphans, resembling himself. Passion-
crazed Selim ("The Aul Bastundzhi") has lost his father in
battle, and his mother has died in childbirth. Izmail-Bey also
lacks parents. Again, the mother has died in childbirth (the
infant's "crime"), while a vendetta forced the father into
hiding. In an extension of the bereft personal condition, Ler-
montov likewise featured the tsarist army's destruction of
tribal villages, after seeing such a site as a boy. Victims of
expansionist Russia, these dispossessed Caucasians embody
homelessness on a communal scale ("The Aul Bastundzhi,"
"Izmail-Bey").
While eclipsed by the masculine union of the poet, rugged
country and orphans who grow into macho heroes, a search
for the mother also figured in Lermontov's Caucasian
juvenilia. The short lyric "The Caucasus" (1830) conveys the
poet's sense of discovering at last the place where he belongs.
After equating the "southern mountains" with the "sweet
song of a fatherland" (otchina, etymologically related to otets,
"father"), he refers to his mother's death and basks in her
gaze as he stands on the "summits of the cliffs." The last
stanza recalls a "pair of divine eyes," a phrase generally
thought to evoke the precocious romantic love which Lermon-
tov in an autobiographical jotting of 1830 claimed to have
experienced for a little girl whom he met during childhood in
the Caucasus. This combination of the lost mother and the
unforgettable girl imparts tender feminine character to the
highlands where the orphaned male speaker finds comfort.
THE POET'S IDENTIFICATION WITH IZMAIL-BEY
Lermontov's deep-seated emotional engagement with the

Caucasus in loco parentis gave him an incomparably unabashed
zest for tribal surrogacy uncomplicated by pretensions to
extra-literary authority. Certain Russian critics have argued
otherwise. With a sideswipe at "bourgeois comparativism" in
thrall to Byron and Hugo, A. N. Sokolov in the Stalinist era
contended that Lermontov's entire Caucasian corpus arose
from reliable ethnographic and historical knowledge stock-
piled by the author since childhood.7 Less vociferously, other
critics of the 1940s and 1950s detected echoes of tribal folklore
in Lermontov's early tales.8 But as U. R. Fokht argued nearly
twenty years ago, the "psychological aspect of the mountain
tribesmen" always held Lermontov's greatest interest. 9
Frankly offered as products of the Muse, the poet's Caucasian
surrogates have ethnographically appropriate decor but vir-
tually no didactic paraphenalia (footnotes, the subtitle a "true
story," an explanatory preface or afterward).
"Izmail-Bey" is an exemplary illustration of Lermontov's
general withdrawal from the extra-literary enterprise best rep-
resented by Bestuzhev-Marlinsky but founded by footnoting
poets of the 1820s. The most widely accepted historical proto-
type of Lermontov's hero was Izmail-Bey Atazhukov, a Ka-
bardinian taken captive as a boy in the 1780s and educated
in Russia.10 The author was familiar with the political history
of this man who won a tsarist Cross of St. George in combat
against Turkey, then went back home and joined the war
against Russia. But "Izmail-Bey" drastically tampered with
Atazhukov's biography in order to suit one of the poet's recur-
rent romantic preoccupations - the clash between an extra-
ordinary individual and the common herd. Lermontov's lack
of concern with historical reconstruction was matched by a
nonchalance about cultural authenticity, as exemplified by
the "Circassian Song" of "Izmail-Bey." With a refrain advis-
ing a young man to buy a good horse instead of getting mar-
ried, this rhythmically catchy production was largely derived
from an eighteenth-century collection of Russian folk songs
and would be recycled for Kazbich, the Chechen bandit in A
n
Hero of Our Time.
Offered as an "oriental tale" with epigraphs from Byron
("The Giaour," "Lara") and Walter Scott {Marmion),
"Izmail-Bey" is emplotted not as political history but rather
as a revelation of the hero's secret erotic passion. The tale's
framing stanzas place an omniscient author in monologic
relation to Izmail-Bey. The Russian poet is a "traveler" in
the Caucasus with a silenced Chechen guide who is the puta-
tive source of the story. The narrator vows to transmit the
tale to "the distant North," in order to keep it from perishing
"as a secret unknown to the crowd" (1: 5). 12 He thus knows
the whole story from the outset but likes to tease readers with
questions. Did the "wrath of Mahomet" drive the Circassians
into the mountains? he asks, for instance, before immediately
revealing the true culprit, the Russian state (1: 8). The rhetori-
cal questions typify the narrative's overall strategy of defer-
ring the ultimate revelation. A work of 2289 lines, "Izmail-
Bey" delivers its big secret only in the epilogue after the hero
is shot by Roslambek, the "cruel brother" who envied his
local popularity and resented his insistence on fighting Russia
openly, instead of engaging in sneaky tactics. When the vil-
lagers prepare Izmail-Bey's body for burial, they misread
signs of his fourteen-year sojourn in Russia. They take his St.
George award as the Christian cross of an "accursed giaour"
and are puzzled by a golden curl in his locket. The
(uncensored) poem's audience, however, has been prepared
to interpret the lock of hair as a talisman from a Russian
Orthodox woman loved by the Muslim hero but abandoned
because religious differences made their marriage impos-
sible.13 Privy to the golden curl's meaning, the reader fully
understands at last why Izmail-Bey back home in the Cau-
casus spurns the love of the be'autiful tribeswoman Zara (who
disguises herself as a male retainer in order to watch over
him).
The strategy of sharing a "secret" with the audience
amounts to little more than producing Izmail-Bey as the
poet's alter ego in Circassian garb. While supplying touches
of local color here and there, Lermontov shapes his hero so
thoroughly in his own Byronic image as to deprive him of
separate identity. Like the wandering narrator, the tribal hero
first appears as a "traveler" and remains a displaced person
throughout the story. The poet also calls attention to the "cold
glint" in the tribesman's dark eyes, likened to those of "our
young men" (1: 13). A motif which would be central in the
depiction of Pechorin in A Hero of Our Time, the icy gaze like
"ours" functions in "Izmail-Bey" to brand the Circassian
with contemporary Russia's Byronism - estrangement, trau-
matic disappointment in love, and a cold reserve masking a
sensitive core. The Caucasian hero himself, however, lacks
the very habit of self-reflection and has no consciousness of
his Byronic qualities. He is simultaneously denied even the
semblance of a national culture. As a baby, for example, he
hears the "raging howl of a storm" rather than lullabies (11:
4). When he returns to the Caucasus to find his village razed,
he vows to take revenge against Russia but has no sense of
patrie or religious commitment. As the military showdown
draws near, in fact, the poet asserts that Izmail-Bey resists
tsarist power not for the sake of his "fatherland" nor even his
local aul but simply for his "native cliffs" (in: 4).
But for all the inauthenticity of this Naturmensch in Byronic
cloak, the enfant terrible interestingly employs him as a mask
to taunt readers rather than stroke their imperial egos. Like
Izmail-Bey, stupidly reviled by locals as an "accursed giaour"
after his death, the poet stands in tension with his own
"crowd," his addressees in the North. A word already
freighted with philistinism in Pushkin's writings, "crowd" in
Lermontov's work also signified Russian high society's vulgar
self-importance and snobbery, lethally inimical to the poet.
Scorn for the beau monde first erupted publically in the work
which brought Lermontov fame and his first exile to the Cau-
casus, "The Death of a Poet" (1837), written in memoriam to
Pushkin as a victim of intriguers at Nicholas' court. "Izmail-
Bey" was beginning to cultivate this alienation in private. A
self-styled "singer" with a "proud heart," Lermontov's per-
sona disdains glittering society with its worldly rewards ("a
crown"). The sensibility bonds him to the "proud" tribal
"singer" who performs the "Circassian Song" and has no
interest in "gold." After locating himself in a cross-cultural
brotherhood of poets, the Russian writer emulates the "primi-
tive" bard by fashioning a Homeric simile of tribesmen going
into battle like a flock of cranes (m: 16).
In embracing Izmail-Bey's milieu as his spiritual home
("my splendid Caucasus"), the enfant terrible challenges Rus-
sian readers convinced of their superiority to "savages." The
poem conjures a Golden Age of freedom when Circassians
coexisted happily with the tsarist state (1: 6). But the "danger-
ous enemy" to the north upset the balance by encroaching
upon the tribes' "beloved homeland" and forcing them into
"voluntary exile." Russian aggression against the primitive
community is then writ small in the Circassian hero in a
manner casting aspersion on the poem's envisioned readers
(1: 12). Upon introducing Izmail-Bey, the narrator strikes one
of his recurrent interrogative poses to wonder how the tribes-
man has fared during his long absence from home: perhaps
he has been "infected in stifling Europe by debauchery and
the poison of enlightenment." Stated for the first time in the
literary Caucasus, this Rousseauist proposition made the
reader's country the tribesman's corrupter rather than his
civilizer.14 By eliminating these lines about Russia's evil, the
censor sheltered the envisioned "crowd" from the full brunt
of Lermontov's Rousseauist attack on civilization. With the
cut restored, however, one sees how the poem aimed to incul-
pate self-satisfied consumers complicit in imperialism.
THE INTERCHANGE BETWEEN MILITARY AND SEXUAL

PROWESS
As inhabitants of the land made "foreign" and "alien"

through the eyes of Lermontov's tribal surrogate, the Euro-
peanized readers are situated in an ideological field victori-
ously assaulted by interrelated martial and erotic weaponry.
Shortly after Izmail-Bey's entry in the poem, his brush with a
spokesman for tsarist conquest leads to murder by the sword.
Unlike Ammalat-Bek who kills a benefactor committed to
educating him, Izmail-Bey slaughters a "sneering Cossack"
who happens to be hunting in the area where his aul used to
stand (1: 15). When the hero seeks information about the pile
of rubble he has just seen, the Cossack treats him as a paltry
alien: the place was laid waste five years ago when "your
intrepid people got scared of the Russians!" A brash advocate
of the dispossession, the Cossack boasts that the villagers went
into hiding from "us." Izmail-Bey cuts him down with his
sword, his cold eyes now flashing like the blade's "bloody
steel" and his cheeks aflame "like Etna's lava." Entirely elim-
inated by the censor in 1843, this volcanic episode has a sharp
political edge. Like the duelist's code of "merciless honor"
which blurs into Circassian violence in Pushkin's "The Pris-
oner of the Caucasus," Izmail-Bey's instinctive slaughter of
the Cossack is revenge for dire insult. In this case, however,
the unflinching attack takes place cross-culturally, and for the
first time in the literary Caucasus the man who gets his just
deserts is bragging about imperial Russian might.
"Izmail-Bey" treats war in a politically similar way. The
opening stanzas of part three depict Russia as a "new Rome"
brutally expanding its dominion through assault on the
Circassians:
Where are the mountains, steppes and oceans
Unconquered by the Slavs in war?
And where have enmity and treason
Not bowed to Russia's mighty tsar?
Circassian, fight no more! Likely as not,
Both East and West will share your lot.
The time will come: you'll say, quite bold,
"I am a slave, but my tsar rules the world."
The time will come: the North will be graced
By an awesome new Rome, a second Augustus.
Auls are burning, their defenders mastered,

The homeland's sons have fallen in battle.
Like steady comets, fearful to the eyes,
A glow is playing 'cross the skies,
A beast of prey with bayonet, the victor
Charges into a quiet dwelling.
He kills the children and the old folks,
And with his bloody hands he strokes
The unmarried girls and young mothers.
But woman's heart can match her brother's!
After those kisses, a dagger's drawn,
A Russian cowers, gasps - he's gone!
"Avenge me, comrade!" And in just a breath
(A fine revenge for a murderer's death)
The little house, delighting their gaze,
Now burns: Circassian freedom set ablaze!
A deflation of contemporary cant about Holy Russia's civiliz-
ing mission, this passage casts the readership's troops as
predatory "beasts" (khishchnyi zver) and "murderers" whose
targets are children, women and the elderly. Interestingly
enough, the censor of 1843 left the r a id intact but deleted the
first stanza about "Augustan" Nicholas' "new Rome." The
selective excision suggests that readers who brought jingoistic
passions to the poem could take "delight" in the razed village,
just like the textual soldiers. However, this pleasure could be
had only by donning astoundingly large blinkers to Lermon-
tov's excoriation of the tsarist army.
The Russian raid with its atrocities against civilians sets
the scene for defensive action from Izmail-Bey's side. The
dynamic of rightful retaliation is intensified by an echo of the
hero's murder of the "sneering Cossack." When the tsarist
army attacks Izmail-Bey's home territory, fearless Cossacks
lead the charge and immediately kill several Circassians
(HI: 19). But then the hero cuts a "bloody path" into the fray
and "mercilessly" annihilates enemies right and left, like a
"young lion" protected by the "Prophet" (m: 20). Lermontov
lets Izmail-Bey "hack his way" through the tsarist army with
impunity (whereas Ammalat-Bek was ultimately felled by a
Russian). Wounded but not eliminated by a foreign hand,
Izmail-Bey resists for two more years, only to be murdered
by Roslambek, his ignoble brother who incarnates the univer-
sality of malice. At the end of the story the poet's tribal alter
ego is gone, but his "merciless," Homeric rage to kill the
imperialist dispossessors is never contained by the Russian
side.
In identifying with Izmail-Bey as an annihilator of soldiers
who serve the "new Rome," Lermontov unifies the warrior
with the lover whose "secret" is laid bare after death. The
enfant terrible thus enlarges his performance to provoke readers
with a professed horror of Asia's excessive libido. The relevant
cultural horizon lies not in the Othellan passions of Ammalat-
Bek but rather in a standard Eurocentric conviction about
Muslims' gross sensuality. A perfect example of the outlook
appeared in the Russian press during Lermontov's ado-
lescence in Ilya Radozhitsky's retelling of "Kyz-Brun"
("maiden's promontory"), a Circassian legend about a young
wife falsely accused of adultery and thrown from a cliff.
Radozhitsky turned the tale to the same ideological ends he
served by applauding tsarist conquest in his travelogue "The
Road from the Don River to Georgievsk." To characterize the
victim's husband in "Kyz-Brun," Radozhitsky digressed on
the Muslim tribesmen's erotic sensibility in a dreadfully writ-
ten passage:
For them, buying a wife means acquiring a piece of necessary prop-
erty. There a man is rarely aroused to the feeling of noble passion,
let alone mutual attraction. Nothing but a thirst for pleasure, as
non-specific as the need to eat and drink, makes him obtain this
source of delight, for which she is strictly kept in a harem like fruit
secreted in a greenhouse.15
With these infelicitous words Radozhitsky invited his readers
to join him in the ranks of "noble" Christians appalled by
oriental lust.
A like-minded vision of Izmail-Bey as an Asian sex maniac
is written into Lermontov's poem in the personage of a Rus-
sian military man once engaged to marry a blonde woman
seduced by the Circassian hero. The jilted fiance holds forth
as a secondary narrator, the source of a tale within the tale
(n: 22-27). Bent on revenge, he roams the wilderness near his
Caucasian military encampment and encounters Izmail-Bey
at night. The Russian fails to recognize his prey and pours
out his story to him. Left fully intact in the censored text of
1843, this recollection reduces the hero to aggressive
sexuality.16 When first introduced in the poem, Izmail-Bey
has the glacial eyes of "our young men." According to the
soldier, however, the ocular ice melted to "oriental languor"
in the presence of Russian women. He claims that "voluptu-
ous and cunning" Izmail-Bey displayed an insatiable urge to
erotic conquest in Petersburg, where "not a single" targeted
woman could "escape his art." More than personally
affronted, the would-be avenger regards the Circassian's inde-
fatigable pursuit of Russian women as a cultural and political
offense - an outsider's "contempt for the laws of a foreign
land." Within the story constructed by the omniscient nar-
rator, the curl in Izmail-Bey's locket implies an enduring
attachment to the blonde woman. None the less, through the
word of the soldier, who asserts that Izmail-Bey had number-
less conquests, the poem offers an outraged masculine view of
womanizing as an act of aggression against Orthodox Russia.
As practiced by the Circassian Don Giovanni, sexual con-
quest becomes an extension of the jihad. In a realization of
the metaphorical notion of the ladykiller, the poem builds a
parallel between scoring on the battlefield and in the boudoir.
When recalling Izmail-Bey's strategems to ensnare the belles
of Petersburg, the fiance laments, "He was a poison to our
women!" The "poisoner" accumulated his female "victims,"
caught the blonde maiden in a "fatal net" and acted as "her
killer."
The phallic connotations of Izmail-Bey's sword condense
the parallel between his victories in the Caucasian killing field
and the North's erotic combat zone. During the battle scenes
of part three the jilted Russian fiance wrathfully charges his
enemy (111: 19—23). As usual, however, Izmail-Bey wins the
cross-cultural duel: his trusty sword swiftly decapitates the
hapless challenger (in a clear throwback to Ammalat-Bek).
The head of Lermontov's tsarist soldier falls from his "shud-
dering body" like "ripe fruit from a young branch." Although
a singularly inept figure of speech for beheading a horseman,
the severing of pendulous fruit from a branch evokes another
form of mutilation - castration. As Freud cautioned, "some-
times a cigar is just a cigar," but the phallic import of Izmail-
Bey's blade can be substantiated by other nineteenth-century
Russian material. For example, in M. Liventsov's piece of
pulp "Memoirs of a Lady Held Prisoner by Mountain Tribes-
men" the captors strip the Russian heroine and her maid to
their underwear and sell them at a local slave market.17 As
he ogles them during the bidding, the handsome tribesman
who purchases them keeps convulsively squeezing the handle
of the dagger on his belt. More pertinent to "Izmail-Bey,"
however, is the phallic symbolism of blades in other verse by
Lermontov, including the trope of the knife in the seduction
scene of "The Demon."18 Last but not least, we may recall
how the poet provoked his fatal duel with N. S. Martynov
by making him a laughing stock at Piatigorsk. According to
numerous memoirs, the bantering which most infuriated Mar-
tynov concerned the tribal dagger he was fond of wearing.19
Saddled with Lermontov's appellations such as "Vhomme du
gros poignard," Martynov found the apparently risque jokes
most intolerable in the presence of women.
BELINSKY AS THE DISCONCERTED READER
In the final years of Lermontov's life, history began assemb-

ling for "Izmail-Bey" an unsurpassable readership for an
enfant terrible - the Russian contemporaries of the Caucasian
imam martially ascendant and newly married to a converted
Armenian. Under Shamil's leadership in the latter half of
the 1830s, the Murid resistance movement assumed daunt-
ing proportions in the eyes of high-ranking tsarist military
men. General Evgeny Golovin called the imam the "most
savage and dangerous" enemy Russia had ever faced in
the Caucasus: "His power has acquired a religious—military
character of the sort Mahomet used to shake three-quarters
of the globe at the dawn of Islam." 20 The conditions of
guerrilla warfare disadvantaged the Russians, provoked
their frustration and scuttled their morale. Nicholas' dis-
pleasure with the army's performance led him to change
the commander-in-chief several times during the decade
and to visit the theater of war himself in 1837. The tsar
ultimately concluded that a bigger army held the key to
victory. In a dispatch of November 1843 n e promised his
generals "more troops than the Caucasus ever dreamed of,"
so that Russia might annihilate the tribes and "take the
mountains" at last.21 The Muslim "bandits" were certainly
far from capitulating. That very summer, Shamil had
attacked several Russian forts and allied towns in Dagestan,
inflicting an unprecedented number of casualties. As recol-
lected by Arnold Zisserman, the imam's military prowess
shook the confidence of the tsarist high command and the
rank and file alike.22 It no longer seemed out of the question
that Shamil might prevail. Indeed, according to Nikolai
Dobroliubov's assessment published just after Shamil's sur-
render, the imam gave the "terrifying impression" of being
"invincible" in 1843.23
But besides putting the fear of Allah into Russia with the
jihad, Shamil scored his coup on the erotic front with Anna
Ulykhanova. From a family of Armenian merchants in
Mozdok, Ulykhanova was abducted by the Murid chieftain
Akhverdi Mahoma in the early 1840s.24 Approximately six-
teen at the time, she was taken to the imam, roughly twenty-
five years her senior. Despite her brothers' repeated efforts to
ransom her, Ulykhanova stayed with Shamil and became his
wife after converting to Islam. Subsequently called "Shuanet"
and destined to be Shamil's favorite, she remained with him
the rest of his life, to share his exile in Kaluga after his
surrender.
The cultural and personal shock of Shuanet's behavior was
registered in Prince Iliko Orbeliani's official military report
about his captivity in Dargo, Shamil's home base in Dagestan.
Held for ransom for several'months in 1842, the Georgian
officer recalled conversations with Shuanet in which he
"reproached her for evidently having forgotten her religious
faith, her family and country, and abandoning herself whole-
heartedly to an enemy of Christianity." 25 The response he got
was a profession of love. Forced to confront the fact of erotic
charisma, Orbeliani clearly sought to fathom the mysterious
workings of emotion which had made Ulykhanova forsake
Christendom, kin and country. He also tried to comprehend
the renowned "enemy of Christianity" as a lady's man.
Amazed to discover that Shamil was not the "staid imam we
usually picture," Orbeliani described the leader of the jihad
playfully leaping about the room with Shuanet and showering
her with endearments.
Although Lermontov would call Shamil a "rascal" during
his military service in 1840, it is not clear to what extent
Russian civilians were apprised of the reputation the imam
held in the tsarist army.26 The Russian press certainly was
not publicizing the homeland's military setbacks. In one way
or another, though, officers on leave at the Piatigorsk spas
and in Russian cities presumably carried word of the army's
defeats, frustrations and flagging morale. Similarly, Shamil's
union with Ulykhanova did not immediately become a cause
celebre among Russian readers. As shown by Orbeliani's
report, however, this development in the imam's personal life
was noted with interest by the tsarist high command. Like
Shamil's military successes, his marriage too probably gained
a certain notoriety within the civilian Russian readership,
especially in the frontier area.
Since the real, historical readers had so little to say about
"Izmail-Bey" (or Shamil, for that matter), we cannot docu-
ment how well they realized the ideal of the gender-divided
audience envisioned in the poem.27 But by turning now to
Belinsky, we can plumb this silence about Lermontov's macho
oriental hero. The sensitivity of the subject was quite amus-
ingly disclosed in the critic's treatment of Elizaveta Gan's
oriental tales. Gan's story "A Recollection of Zheleznovodsk"
is a fantasy of the Caucasian tribesman as a sublime rapist.
Narrated in the first-person, the fictional memoir opens with
the heroine's celebration of horseback-riding alone amidst
"wild nature" near Piatigorsk. Two solicitous Russian officers
insist on accompanying her one day in order to protect her
from Circassian "bandits." Tribesmen ambush the party, and
the lady faints. When she regains consciousness to find herself
bound and slung across a horse, she experiences a thrilled
apprehension about her situation: "So my dream had come
true: fate was casting me into that country which I had
desired to see for such a long time - into the canyons, the
refuge of the wild sons of nature. I was going to see the Cau-
casus in all its charm and terror." 28 Put to the service of femi-
nine desire, the traditional rhetoric of sublimity expresses an
ambivalent "dream" to venture deeper into dangerous terri-
tory. Wilderness begins functioning here as a metaphor for
more intimate knowledge of the savage "sons of nature"
themselves.
Caucasian "charm and terror" are personified in the tribes-
man who tries to rape the captive woman. The appearance
of the sublime sexual aggressor is forestalled by preliminaries
which stress the tsarist officers' unmanliness. Timid with their
captors, the Russian men ungallantly permit the heroine to
be ushered away, even though she begs for protection. After
several days of solitary confinement, a sympathetic tribes-
woman passes the heroine a note from the officers, outlining
a plan for escape. But that very night a "dark figure" sud-
denly enters the captive woman's quarters and prevents her
from joining her compatriots whom she hears galloping away
to freedom. The intruder participates in stormy nature and
the local nobility (although not a word about the tribe's class
structure is uttered elsewhere): "Lightning flashed. I saw the
prince, and his eyes gleamed more dreadfully than all the
sky's lightning." This image of the elemental rapist-prince
sustains the mixed feelings articulated in the heroine's first
intimation of terrifying charm.
With its ruling spatial metaphor of dangerous terra incognita
which Russian men forbid the heroine to enter alone, the story
allowed Gan to flirt with erotic experience declared off-limits
by her society - the same realm of oriental machismo conjured
in "Izmail-Bey." However, unlike Lermontov with his
Byronic relish for womanizing, Gan retreated at the crucial
moment instead of crossing the boundary: the accosted cap-
tive seizes the prince's dagger and cuts her throat to preserve
her virtue. "A Recollection of Zheleznovodsk" none the less
leads readers away from the conclusion that sex with a tribes-
man would be worse than death. Instead of dying, the heroine
awakens safe in her bedroom with the adventure revealed as
a dream. But the author refuses to apologize for her tale or
draw a cautionary moral from it. To the contrary, she betrays
a phallic preoccupation as she brags about her heavily
charged imagination, ignited and firing like an "overloaded
cannon" (61). Convinced that readers with little "powder"
in their hearts will dislike her story, she swears to "keep
having such dreams every night and describe them in even
greater detail." With this final jeer at polite society, Gan allot-
ted the lustful tribesman a continuing place in her erotic fan-
tasy life (but wrote, as usual, under her pseudonym Zeneida
R-va). The dream's expression of the illicit desire to be rav-
ished by a savage in all his "charm and terror" was thus fully
sustained in the "prisoner's" waking hours.
In pertinent, interrelated responses to the literary Cau-
casus, Belinsky donned the uniform of one of Gan's tsarist
soldiers, keen to chart the boundaries of proper erotic terrain
for Russian ladies, and ready to warn all civilized folk to steer
clear of the orient. Although he admired Gan as the most
remarkable Russian-woman writer of the period, the critic
curtly dismissed "A Recollection of Zheleznovodsk" as a silly
imitation of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky.29 Today's reader will no
doubt concur. And yet Belinsky's response bespoke some
nineteenth-century Russian masculine discomfort over a lust-
ful Asian prince contrasted to unheroic tsarist officers. This
becomes clear in reading Belinsky's warm appraisal of Gan's
"Dzhelaleddin," the story of a love triangle between the
eponymous Crimean Tatar prince, a fickle Russian seduc-
tress, and the Crimean woman Emina, passionately devoted
to the hero. Belinsky disliked certain "strong echoes of the
Marlinskian manner" in "Dzhelaleddin" but valued the her-
oine who loved her man "with all the ardor of oriental pas-
sion."30 The critic focused on the denouement to make his
point. Dzhelaleddin commits suicide after the "cold" for-
eigner abandons him, but Emina is there to drive away the
ravens and tenderly beshroud his corpse. After the prince's
burial, she goes insane, burrows into his grave and dies, her
mouth chock-full of dirt. Touched rather than amused, Belin-
sky endorsed this incarnation of the oriental love slave and
flowed with Gan's drift about the model's pertinence to Rus-
sian women: "More than a man," wrote the critic, "a woman
is created by nature for love," even though she should not be
consigned to the "exclusive service of love," as in Asia's
harems. Considered together, Belinsky's responses to Gan's
two oriental tales suggest that Russian masculine pride
assumed a big role in his readings. The critic found Emina a
satisfying incarnation of elemental femininity, the orient at its
best. On the other hand, "A Recollection of Zheleznovodsk"
dealt a blow to the national male ego by accrediting the Rus-
sian horsewoman's dream of ravishment by a sublime tribes-
man, pitted against pesky, lily-livered tsarist officers.
As illustrated in the article on Gan, Belinsky's commentar-
ies on the literary Caucasus regularly marshaled a discourse
of oriental alterity. A preeminent Westernizer, he equated
Asia with barbarism and consistently sought inspiration in
31
Europe for Russian reform. The outlook made him sanguine
about the tsarist conquest of the Caucasus. His major article
on A Hero of Our Time, for example, condoned the victimization
of Bela, the Circassian tribeswoman whose abduction by the
Russian aristocrat, Pechorin, eventually causes her death. In
Belinsky's view, poor Bela had suffered but was doomed from
the outset: this "semi-savage daughter of wild canyons"
wanted only love, whereas the Europeanized Pechorin had
more complicated intellectual and cultural needs. 32
Belinsky took a different Eurocentric tack in an article on
Polezhaev in 1842. Without noticing how he might have
applied the admonition to Pechorin (or perhaps subcon-
sciously inspired by him), the critic now warned Russians to
stay out of Asia for their own moral well-being. The discussion
revealed a conception of the orient as the global seat of sexual
depravity. Although Belinsky praised Polezhaev in many
respects, he faulted his stress on eros, particularly in the long
poem "The Harem." Also known as "The Renegade," this
work features a Russian hero eager to exchange his Christian
cross for the Koran in order to romp in a seraglio with gor-
geous concubines. With an endless horizon of oriental lust
in mind, Belinsky assumed that the censor's many cuts had
removed unspeakable indecencies (although today we know
the official target was blasphemy rather than sex). 33 In culmi-
nating his argument, the critic blamed the Caucasus for
depraving Polezhaev. Conscripted and sent to the territory at
a tender age "when Europe had but momentarily stirred in
his soul," the young poet was unable to cope with Asia. The
wicked id of the Caucasus had dug its clutches into a Russian
and set him on a path which invariably leads to the "death
of soul and body, shame and destruction during one's lifetime
and beyond the grave." 34 This conclusion evoked not only
spiritual corruption but a sexual athlete's physical deterio-
ration, the threat of venereal disease and reputations ruined
forever. A champion of social justice now enthroned as the
founding father of the nineteenth-century Russian intelligent-
sia, Belinsky lived a brief life of political passions. While
giving him all due respect on that score, however, one senses
that his orient was a tortured projection of everything he felt
he had missed in the erotic life.35
Belinsky's various responses to the literary Caucasus
declared him the perfectly vulnerable masculine reader envi-
sioned in "Izmail-Bey." He could not be accused of the social
snobbery of Lermontov's targeted "crowd," but he had their
political convictions about "European" superiority to the
tribes. Of equal importance, Belinsky's related notion of Asia
as the id of the world and his readiness to delineate the Rus-
sian woman's proper sentimental territory left him hypersen-
sitive to the erotic component of Lermontov's anti-imperialist
performance. The critic had constructed "his" Lermontov in
reading A Hero of Our Time and was apparently too discon-
certed for words by the enfant terrible who jeered in "Izmail-
Bey," "I am the savage, invincible in battle and lethal to
'your' women!"
The political convictions and sexual anxieties inferable
from Belinsky's evasion of "Izmail-Bey" can be more sharply
captured by comparing Friedrich Bodenstedt's enthusiastic
appraisal of the poem. A German writer brought to Russia in
the early 1840s as a tutor in the Golitsyn family, Bodenstedt
ranked "Izmail-Bey" above Lermontov's "Mtsyri" ("novice"
in Georgian), a late Caucasian tale in verse now solidly estab-
lished in curricular and critical canons. As seen in Die Volker
des Kaukasus und ihre Freiheitskdmpfe gegen die Russen, Bodenstedt
was one of Europe's main advocates of the tribesmen. He
romanticized them as intrepid fighters for freedom and
ecstatically pronounced their death songs Homeric. 36 It is per-
haps not by chance that Bodenstedt also considered Russia's
upper classes ravaged by pederasty.37 Though he did not
openly speculate about the sexual behavior of Shamil and his
warriors, Bodenstedt apparently regarded them as the Cauca-
sian war's "real" men in every respect.
This lonely German voice from the past implies much about
the relative neglect "Izmail-Bey" suffered in Russian com-
mentary of its era. The tale's publication in 1843 invested
Lermontov's hero with the awesomeness of Shamil, the leader
of the jihad with an Armenian apostate among his wives.
Unforeseeable by the poet, the convergence was revealed only
posthumously, when the imam's martial power reached a
peak. As long as Shamil posed a real military threat, Izmail-
Bey's formidable performance in combat seems to have hit
too close to home for the Russian censor to tolerate. Further-
more, the prominence of sexual conquest in "Izmail-Bey"
made the tribal hero a shadow of Shamil as a real-life Dages-
tani Othello who had outdone Ammalat-Bek by finding an
Armenian Desdemona. In this context Russian men must
have preferred to forget Izmail-Bey and quite likely pressured
curious women of Gan's ilk to keep illicit daydreams about
the tribesman's erotic secret to themselves.
THE TABOO ABOLISHED
But if history momentarily established a taboo of Izmail-Bey

as the specter of Shamil, the course of events ultimately
brought Lermontov's poem into the cultural mainstream.
While not fully available to the readership during Shamil's
phase of stunning military victories in the early 1840s, the
battle scenes of "Izmail-Bey" were ranked among the "high-
est glories" of Lermontov's verse by a Russian critic four dec-
ades later.38 Of greater import, in the mid-1850s, when Sha-
mil's defeat was clearly just a matter of time, Russian readers
began to vent their repressed but evidently burning curiosity
about the Caucasian tribal way with women. In dealing with
this subject, Russian women sounded very different from Rus-
sian men.
The colloquy between a masculine and feminine viewpoint
started in Evgeny Verderevsky's Shamil's Prisoners (1856), one
of the most avidly read books in Russia at the time. Based on
interviews, this work recounted the experiences of the Geor-
gian princesses Chavchavadze and Orbeliani who spent over
eight months of 1854 to 1855 as captives in Shamil's house-
hold along with some of their children and a French govern-
ess. Verderevsky's preface promised "bloody horrors" to
equal the worst deeds of James Fenimore Cooper's Indians. 39
In fact, however, no bloodshed nor molestations were forth-
coming (although an infant daughter fell from Orbeliani's
arms and was trampled by horses during the flight from
Georgia). Once installed at Dargo, the princesses expressed
nothing but respect for Shamil as a humane jailer and devoted
father (who had abducted them, after all, to exchange for his
son spirited off to Russia as a boy, some twelve years earlier).
Shamil's qualities as an adored husband also featured promi-
nently in the princesses' account. They remembered
(Russian-speaking) Shuanet as a consoling presence during
their captivity and relayed her love for Shamil in passages
of direct discourse. But whose words were these really? The
verbatim ascription is dubious given the passage of time (and
the absence of note-taking at Dargo). However, Shuanet's
Shamil evidently made an impression on the Georgian prin-
cesses. As quoted by Verderevsky, the women thus captured
the imam's allure as a Dagestani Othello, while the book's
preface recoiled from him as the perpetrator of "bloody
horrors."
Later expressions of Russian interest in the tribesman's
erotic life bear complementary testimony to the gender divi-
sion in the envisioned audience of "Izmail-Bey." Attitudes
similar to those of the Georgian princesses were transmitted
in memoirs by M. Chichagova, the wife of one of Shamil's
Russian overseers in Kaluga. Chichagova exuded fond mem-
ories of Shamil and professed great friendship with Shuanet.
Among her recollections of heart-to-heart talks with the
"Armenian apostate," Chichagova shed a tender glow on
bonds of sentiment between the renowned polygamist and his
patently favorite wife.40 On the other side of the gender gap,
a Russian veteran of the Caucasian war ruminated about
Shamil's private life strictly in terms of virile domination:
Shuanet's "man and master" from the first, the imam had
never lost his capacity "to enchain the beauty's heart." 41 Even
more tellingly, another Russian veteran opined that the tribal
warriors' mind-boggling capacity to fight the tsarist state for
more than thirty years resided somehow in their "unlimited
power over woman."42 This haunting suspicion totally
exposed the Europeanized Russian man's soft spot targeted
in "Izmail-Bey": was the oriental's daunting military power
not matched by enslaving virility in the erotic life?
The historical material suggests that the ideal, gender-
divided readership of "Izmail-Bey" finally got in touch with
itself When the war was over, Russian men could speak their
formerly anxious envy of the oriental way with women. On
the other side of the division, Russian women could more
freely indulge their curiosity about "abandoning oneself
wholeheartedly" to a dashing tribesman. Lermontov had not
allowed any of Izmail-Bey's erotic conquests to utter a single
word. However, in constructing a Circassian incarnation of
oriental machismo in its martial and sexual dimensions, the
poem left open a space where Russian women could slip into
sentimental reveries, while their male compatriots had night-
mares about being outmanned in love and war.
CHAPTER 9
Little orientalizers
Looming in a swirl of fog,

Shah-dakh stands in steely armor,
Cast from granite through a wonder
Worked by Allah in his forge.
Dmitri Minaev
The varied disruptions of imperialist ideology in "The Pris-
oner of the Caucasus," "Ammalat-Bek" and "Izmail-Bey"
can be appreciated all the more through contrast with largely
obscure Russian litterateurs who unreservedly underwrote
war against the tribes. Concentrated in the 1830s, these little
orientalizers discursively coincided with Pushkin, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky and Lermontov in many respects (cross-cultural
encounters, the rhetoric of dread and glory, the preoccupation
with wild liberty, violence and eros). But this body of second-
rate and purely hack literature entertained no doubts about
boundaries between Russia and Asia. Intent upon demon-
strating the Caucasus' savage alterity, the little orientalizers
administered une therapeutique du Different by reducing the
tribesman to barbarism and depravity, they sought to assert
what Russians were not in order to lend the conquest "Euro-
pean" legitimacy.1 The romantics' noble primitives with their
Homeric machismo, emotional authenticity, ritual hospitality
and native songs were thus expelled by the Asian wild man
conceived as a repellent animal. In the meantime, though, the
Caucasian tribeswoman held her ground as an erotic ideal.
Literary apologetics for imperialism in this period were
surely encouraged by the steady rise of the Murid resistance
movement under the three imams, Gazi-Muhammed,
.56
Little orientalizers 157
Hamzat-Beg and Shamil. Like the famous Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky, lesser Russian writers in uniform produced litera-
ture in this context of intensifying warfare. Alexander
Polezhaev and Pyotr Kamensky, for example, were cam-
paigners who conveyed ill will toward the enemy. The ferocity
of the fight, the degeneracy of the Muslim warriors and the
justness of Russia's cause became standbys in this literature.
A lack of biographical information makes it impossible to say
if certain authors served in the army. But whether on the
basis of personal experience or merely hearsay about the war,
the little orientalizers transmitted hostility toward the back-
ward "bandits" who refused to bow to the mighty Russian
state.
During the 1830s the conquest also acquired a new eco-
nomic ambience conducive to denigration of the tribesman as
a bloodthirsty, lustful animal. As the next chapter will detail,
the territory's economic potential as a Russian colony gained
wide public recognition in this decade. Literature rarely
broached the subject directly. Writers trafficked instead in the
tribal warrior's wickedness, a Russian's risk of falling captive
and the possibility of romance with a gorgeous "daughter of
Mohammed." 2 But if only covert, a growing awareness of the
war's economic implications very likely helped generate the
literature's rigid dichotomy between vicious Asians and
enlightened Russians: more hideous "savagery" was projected
onto the wild mountain men, and fiercer commitments to
"civilization" were made as economic stakes of the Caucasian
conquest were increasingly advertised in Russia.
OUR ALGERIA
Pyotr Kamensky was one of the era's most popular apologists

for escalating warfare. The author of potboilers such as Dead
Men's Heads, or Russians in Ckecknia, Kamensky specialized in
sensational tales of oriental sex and violence, graced with foot-
notes on Islamic culture and the politics of imperial expan-
sion. He won a considerable following in Russia and was even
dubbed "our Cervantes" by Andrei Kraevsky, the founder of
the well-known National Annals {Otechestvennye zapiski, 1839-
84).3Aesthetically alarmed by Kamensky's ascendence, Belin-
sky tried to set indiscriminant readers straight by belittling
him as a hapless imitator of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky.
Kamensky's Caucasian oeuvre is definitively illustrated in
the harem drama, "Kelish-Bey."4 Set in Muslim Abkhazia
in the 1770s, the tale recounts the tensions of an erotic triangle
composed of the old eponymous hero, his Georgian concubine
Fatma, and her secret lover Asian, Kelish's son. In an echo
of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Kamensky uses a rhetoric of heat to
represent the illicit passion of Fatma and Asian. Likewise,
elemental nature rages through "Kelish-Bey," to reach a fren-
zied pitch in the denouement when Asian kills his father by
stabbing him and then shooting him for good measure ("Oh
tribesman, capable of crimes which would make cannibals
shudder!" cries the author). Mistakenly convinced that Asian
has forsaken her, Fatma commits suicide by leaping into the
Black Sea. As an accompaniment to the murder and suicide,
fiery streaks of lightning flash in the sky, a hurricane shakes
the forests, and a blizzard roars in the mountains.
Immediately after the tumultuous denouement Kamensky
enters to sanction Russian conquest of the Caucasus. In an
abrupt shift from the eighteenth century to the present, he
introduces the calm, purposeful voices of tsarist military men.
The very precision of the date ("August 31, 1831") contrib-
utes to a semblance of order, stability and control, as opposed
to old Abkhazia's chaos and depravity. With no awareness of
the oriental tale just told, the soldiers simply function as con-
duits for an authorial message: Russia must persevere in the
effort to tame the Caucasus by displacing the "dagger and
sword" with the "cultivator's plow and sickle," the manufac-
turer's tools, the tradesman's scales and money. Through
these metonymic symbols of a future era of agriculture, indus-
trial development and commerce, "Kelish-Bey" signals the
economic objectives inextricably bound to the avowed moral
and religious objectives of the Caucasian war.
In a quintessential expression of imperialism's treasured
myth of regenerative violence, Kamensky's conclusion calls
for mass extermination of the tribes as a measure necessary
for eradicating "savagery" from the globe. "Kelish-Bey"
builds an analogy between the Caucasus and Algeria where
the colonial ventures of the French led to conflict with the
Bedouins under the leadership of Abd al-Qadir in the 1830s.
In the words of one of Kamensky's officers, the French "travel
a hard road, shedding blood every step of the way, but they
keep moving forward and do not abandon their effort to con-
quer the Algerian and transform him." Kamensky's mouth-
pieces then argue that the Caucasus' Muslim regions have an
unusually "wild soil of savagery" because they never attained
the level of ancient Arabic civilization in Algeria. "Kelish-
Bey" thus implies that Russia must pursue its bloody fight
even more relentlessly than the French in Algeria. A means
of transfiguring military aggression into une mission civilisatrice,
the Algerian analogy popularized by Kamensky was taking
shape around this time in official reports of the tsarist Minis-
ter of War, Alexander Chernyshev.5 Such views of the Cau-
casus as another Algeria would become commonplace in
Russia, as well as France.6
Kamensky's justification of war in the name of civilization
gave popular literary expression to the era's upsurge of jingo-
ism. In 1829 m a ^tter to General Ivan Paskevich, Nicholas
I summarized Russia's possible courses of action toward the
tribesmen as "pacification or extermination," two terms
which ominously coalesced.7 The tsar's formulation captured
in a nutshell a more widely circulating belief that the back-
ward Caucasian natives understood nothing but force and
could not be civilized through peaceable means such as the
development of trading companies or educational efforts
(captured in literature by Verkhovsky's benevolent plan to
enlighten Ammalat-Bek). Jingoism was aired freely in "A
Trip to Georgia," for example. A diatribe against pacific
approaches, this unsigned article by a Russian functionary in
Tiflis advocated crushing the Muslim tribesmen in "bloody
battle" as swiftly as possible.8 Convinced that "Asians" inter-
pret reconciliatory gestures as signs of cowardice, the author
singled out Chechens for special abuse: in his words, the
tribesman was a "wild animal" with "only the outward form
of a human being," a "vile, fearful enemy" with "all the
cruelty of a bloodthirsty beast." An open release of "contempt
and loathing" for the tribal enemies, "A Trip to Georgia"
offended Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's brother, Pavel, and provoked
him to decry its crude formulations in a piece published in
Son of the Fatherland.9
However, protestations of belief in noble Caucasian savages
became all but non-existent in Russian periodicals of the era.
In an article of 1837 M. Vedeniktov [sic] retained hope in the
possibility of peacefully civilizing the Muslim tribes (even as
he degraded them as "wild animals" and "children"). 10 But
the tide of "contempt and loathing" was running high. Fully
in harmony with "A Trip to Georgia," Ya. Saburov's recit de
voyage "The Caucasus" (1835) asserted that Russia would
surely have to exterminate the tribes since they were too hope-
lessly immersed in barbarism to be transformed through
enlightenment.11 Members of the Russian elite in Tiflis con-
tinued to speak of the war in similar terms twelve years later:
upon meeting an American visitor, they assured him that the
Muslim tribesmen were just like "your Indians" and could
be "quieted" only through "extermination, owing to their
natural energy of character." 12
POETRY ABOUT WAR
The conduct of war in the Caucasus found its major singer

in Alexander Polezhaev, a poet of some enduring reputation
who heartily served his era's Muse of lurid orientalia. Thanks
largely to his treatment of the hard lot of the common soldier,
Polezhaev figures among the "realists" in Soviet Russian criti-
cism.13 However, this label disregards the large arsenal of
rhetorical devices which heighten his depiction of campaigns
to quell the jihad. Polezhaev's characteristic technique can be
best sampled in "Erpeli," the more artistically ambitious of
his two long poems of battle. Through symbolism contained
in several of its eight sections, "Erpeli" renders Russia's fight
against Gazi-Muhammed as a clash between light and dark-
ness. This typically imperialist symbolism sprang very readily
to mind in Russia in an era when "enlightenment" was a
common synonym for the civilizing mission, encoded by wri-
ters through such tropes as a tsarist "lamp" piercing a "cur-
tain of ignorance." 14 But as we shall see, Polezhaev's dichot-
omy of Orthodox light and infidel darkness had much deeper
roots in Russian culture. It figured already in the great medi-
eval epic The Lay of Igor's Campaign. Of greater historical
immediacy, "Erpeli" replicated the symbolic dynamics of Lo-
monosov's famous ode on the tsarist seizure of the Turkish
fortress Khotin in Moldavia (1739).15
Polezhaev's ruling metaphor of war against Gazi-
Muhammed is the "light of day in struggle against a shroud
of fog."16 On one side of the epic battle stands "Holy Russia"
with a resplendent army of "knights" (the bogatyri of national
legend). The "god of golden light" - the sun - flashes on
the soldiers' weapons and Christian crosses. Dawn arrives
momentously for the tsarist troops, and brilliant moonlight
illuminates their military camp stretched out like a "white
giant" at night. In opposition to bright Orthodox Russia, the
Muslim forces are rendered as godless barbarians lost in the
dark of religious obfuscation. Polezhaev calls the tribesmen
the collective "new Satan," a "throng of exiled demons," and
an army of "devils and thieves" led by Gazi-Muhammed and
"Magogs" (local feudal lords) in the service of "invisible
Allah." These figures of exclusion from Christendom are com-
pounded by motifs of Muslims as "children of darkness" akin
to night, fog, rain and murk. Their mountain habitat is a
gloomy "mythological kingdom of subterranean shades and
spirits," whereas the Russian sons of light are attracted solely
to the Caucasus' sunny, pastoral world of "Elysian valleys."
Animal imagery further heightens the clash between light and
dark (exactly as in Lomonosov's ode on Khotin): Polezhaev's
Muslims are flocks of "ferocious wolves," while Holy Russia's
soldiers fight as "eagles" for the "house of Romanov."
In a jingoistic extension of cultural monologism, "Erpeli"
places a violent military agenda in Gazi-Muhammed's mouth.
As an illustration of "senseless prophesizing," the imam vows
to send Russia "back across the Don." Although presented
as an insane military objective, this threat makes a lot of sense
poetically by echoing a well-known motif of The Lay of Igor's
Campaign, where the Don lies deep in the territory of the
enemy, the Polovtsians. Polezhaev's refrain about the Don
thus enhances the Caucasian campaign with the legendary
splendor of Christian Kiev's skirmishes with nomadic pagan
tribes of the southern steppes. In additional passages of direct
discourse Gazi-Muhammed announces his plan to raze Rus-
sian fortresses, attack Cossack stanitsy (border settlements)
and wreak the worst vengeance upon the Christians' "chil-
dren, wives and maidens." The threat against women and
children was particularly inflammatory in wartime. But the
violent exhortation which Polezhaev put in Gazi-
Muhammed's mouth more generally invited readers to view
the Caucasian war as defensive Russian action against the
brutal jihad.
Several short poems of the era also contrived voices for
tribal enemies. Like "Erpeli" itself, these minor exercises in
cross-cultural ventriloquism had a certain precedent in Gri-
boedov's "Predators at the Chegem" (a title possibly imposed
by Bulgarin for publication in the Northern Bee in 1826).17 Also
known as "Sharing the Booty," this verse is written as a tribal
cry of victory and probably was inspired by a recent devastat-
ing attack by a force of Kabardinians and Circassians against
a Cossack stanitsa. Although exultant crowing predominates,
Griboedov's "native" voice asks Russia why it makes war
against the Caucasus. This stance of the provoked victim cast
the readership's country as the originator of a cruel conflict
(an unsettling insinuation glossed over in Bulgarin's jingoistic
commentary on the poem).
Unlike Griboedov's song of successful pillage against belli-
cose Russia, later ventriloquistic verse invented strictly
wicked "native" speakers, like Polezhaev's Gazi-Muhammed.
The central protagonist of Liukan Yakubovich's "The Circas-
sian" (1838) rallies local youths to join a raid against the
Russians in order to enjoy "a little shooting and hacking." 18
After the speaker is killed, his heartless comrades are plunged
in interior monologues about competition for possession of
his weapons, horse and wife. In Prince Dmitri Kropotkin's
"Lezgin Song" (1837) a tribeswoman bids farewell to a
departing local warrior and begs him to bring her back a
Russian's head.19 M. Venediktov did yet another variation
on the politically potent technique of direct discourse in "Song
of the Trans-Kuban Tribesmen" (1835).20 Written as a prayer
asking Allah for assistance against the campaigns of General
Zass, this poem announces a Caucasian cutthroat's intention
to avenge tsarist military victories in his native realm. In a
vicious circle Venediktov's incensed Muslim serves as a
rationale for Russia's continuing bloody warfare.
THE MOUNTAINS OF ALLAH
Besides singing the heroism of Holy Russia's war, little orien-

talizers also used landscape to constitute the Muslim tribes-
man as a loathsome, bellicose beast. This entailed suppression
of the 1820s' theme of the Caucasus as a Parnassian site of
spiritual uplift for the civilized traveler. Pushkin's Journey to
Arzrum still called the untamed terrritory a "sanctuary" of
pristine nature. But literature governed by la therapeutique du
Different completely disavowed such notions of an attractive
wild refuge and turned Russia's Alps into the hostile range of
Allah.
This shift in imaginative geography possibly had origins in
"View of the Mountains from the Kozlov Steppes," one of
Adam Mickiewicz's Crimean Sonnets first translated into Rus-
sian in the 1820s. In Mickiewicz's dialogue between the pil-
grim and the mirza, the Crimean range emerged as Allah's
creation where the faithful move into exalting proximity to
Him. A line of creative evolution seems to have passed from
Mickiewicz's poem to Lermontov's "Hastening northward
from afar," a lyric composed when the poet was returning to
Russia from his first exile in the Caucasus in 1837.21 Lermon-
tov personified Kazbek as a white-turbaned "sentry of the
Orient," but he also described the mountain as "Allah's eter-
nal throne." As in Mickiewicz's sonnet, Lermontov's Islam-
ized peak evoked a spiritual aspiration to make contact with
the starry heavens.
Unlike Lermontov's perception of powerful, soaring beauty
in Kazbek, lesser Russian versifiers of the era infused antagon-
ism into orientalized mountains. Dmitri Oznobishin's "Cau-
casian Morning" conjures a sensuous valley menaced by
looming peaks.22 Most likely inspired by Georgia, the site is
characterized initially by rustling foliage, roses, a pearly river,
gentle animals and low-lying mountains crowned by a
"golden diadem" of sun. Erotic promise imbues the scene, as
the poet feminizes a blossom and a fruit tree, desirous of
loving attention from the masculinized sun and breeze. The
last third of the poem then shifts abruptly from the garden to
rugged mountains perceived as bastions of Islamic power.
The green forest lands of Mashuk become a "shah's emerald
saddle-cloth." Elbrus' two peaks (only one of which is
snow-capped) appear as a "padishah's tent" and the "lord of
a hivernal land" in a "silver turban," with his "hips" curved
across the clouds "like a Circassian saber." Finally, Besh-Tau
and Piatigorsk's four other peaks are symbolized as creatures
from Persian demonology, "terrible Divi on sentry duty." 23
Laden with emblems of the Islamic East, the mountains of
"Caucasian Morning" radiate hostility to Christendom and
the terrestrial paradise summoned in the first two-thirds of
the poem.
While Oznobishin used varied tropes of orientalization
(including the mountain as a turbaned warrior), anthropo-
morphism totally dominated Dmitri Minaev's "Reproach
against the Caucasus," the verse which provides the epigraph
of the present chapter. As befitted the widespread allegorical
notion of Islamic "darkness," Minaev imagined the Cauca-
sian range at night. In nocturnal gloom Mt. Shah-dakh towers
as a giant in chain mail, a spiked helmet and granite armor
forged by Allah. After establishing this bellicose monster as
a personification of the Muslim tribes, Minaev censured the
Caucasus as a "criminal predator" guilty of murdering a
"divine nightingale," a "bard" who sang the territory's
praises to "us" in the North. Written too early to refer to
Lermontov, the poem no doubt alluded to Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky. The popular author of "Ammalat-Bek" had men-
tioned Azerbaijan's Shah-dakh in a travelogue and was
remembered with reverence by other Russian poetasters in
the late 1830s, relatively soon after news of his death in battle
had spread.24 A self-styled advocate of romantic Russian sen-
sibility, Minaev "reproached" the Islamized Caucasus for
viciously executing the Koran's death sentence against
infidels.
By making the orientalized territory the enemy of poetry,
Minaev challenged the old literary traditions about the Cau-
casus as Parnassus and the home of native song. This aspect
of the work interacted with contemporaneous Russian debate
about the poetry of primitive cultures. During the era of the
jihad an epic conception of the Caucasian tribes continued
to find an important spokesman in Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, as
indicated by the death songs in "Ammalat-Bek." As articu-
lated at length in his essay on Polevoy's The Oath on the Tomb
of the Lord, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky subscribed to a romantic
belief in the primitive's natural gift for poetry, as manifested
in cases so diverse as the Caucasian tribes, the ancient Arabs
and Scandinavians of the fjord country.25 Baron Ekshtein's
article "Ancient Poetry of the Arabs prior to Muhammed"
(1831) had likewise drawn a bardic affiliation between fjords
and desert sands.26 But as implied in Ekshtein's title, the
heyday of primitive Arab song was situated in the distant
past, before the advent of Islam. Left largely implicit in this
discussion, an indictment of Islam moved into the foreground
in Senkovsky's "Poetry of the Desert," published in the Library
for Reading in 1835.27 A respected orientalist of the time, Sen-
kovsky praised the Bedouins' talent for excellent verse but
maintained that Islam had sent artistic activity into sharp
decline throughout the Arab world: the teachings of "Maho-
met" were utterly inimical to poetry, he argued, because they
squelched "freedom of imagination" and compelled the faith-
ful to concentrate their energies on war against the infidel.
Fraught with implications about the Caucasian tribesmen,
the recriminations against Islam in Senkovsky's "Poetry of
the Desert" showed the editorial bias which favored Minaev's
"reproach" for the LibraryforReading. When Senkovsky pitted
"Mahomet" against artistic creativity, he implicitly withdrew
the Caucasian warrior from the Homeric-Ossianic brother-
hood promoted in Russian literature in the 1820s, in "Amma-
lat-Bek" and various theoretical discussions of primitive
bards. If the consolidation of Islam spelled decline for Arab
poetry, so too might Muridism be accused of annulling the
Caucasian mountaineers' capacity for song. Minaev's
"reproach" advanced just such a proposition in literary form
by projecting the southern territory as a monstrous poetry-
killer outfitted in Allah's armor and unconditionally inimical
to Russians.
ROMANCING THE WILD WOMAN
While reviling the tribesmen in assorted ways, little orientaliz-

ers fabricated sensational stories of love between the Cauca-
sus' Muslim women and Russian men. Not overtly concerned
with empire-building, these tales underwrote tsarist conquest
by implying that chivalrous, valiant Russians were needed to
rescue the women from their homeland's barbarism. A sharp
division by gender thus split the literary population of sav-
ages. On the one side stood irredeemable brutes driven by
fanaticism, lust and greed for profits of the slave trade. On
the other side were captivating tribeswomen readily romanced
by Russians and often murdered by kinsmen for loving
giaours. A testimony to a persistent obsession with the orien-
tal love slave, these Caucasian heroines belonged to the per-
iod's larger literary gallery of geographically diverse Asian
enchantresses (odalisques, harem queens, Arabs and the
Turkish beauty in Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's popular story "The
Red Veil"). 28
The general syndrome of vilifying the tribesmen while idea-
lizing their sisters was first manifested in Alexander Shidlov-
sky's extensively annotated poem "The Grebensk Cossack"
(1831).29 The Lezgin heroine Zara exemplifies a standard
fantasy of "savage" sex. As this "mountain maid" sits alone
in the wilderness, a handsome Cossack comes riding by, and
they make love without exchanging a word. Shortly after this
fiery encounter, they marry. A fierce exponent of liberty, Zara
sets free a tribesman whom her husband has taken captive.
But the prisoner turns out to be her brother, who kills her for
marrying a giaour and depriving the family of the money
she would have fetched from an Ottoman slave trader. Like
Pushkin's prototypal "mountain maid," Shidlovsky's erot-
ically vibrant, nurturing tribeswoman is annihilated. How-
ever, by contrast to the Circassian in "The Prisoner of the
Caucasus," Zara dies by the hand of her own Muslim kin. A
man of the remote past not yet regularized as a border guard,
Zara's husband is a freebooter engaged primarily in hunting
and fighting. But if quasi-savage himself, Shidlovsky's Gre-
bensk Cossack hero assumes a relatively more civilized stature
vis-a-vis the vicious Muslim men of the tale. The woman has
chosen the giaour as her mate, and he avenges his wife's death
by killing her brother and incurring a mortal wound himself
in the process.
The Cossack would reappear as an Orthodox soldier in
Nikolai Gnedich's "A True Story of the Caucasus," a poem
set in the reader's own period of the jihad. 30 "Blinded by
passion," the love-struck hero has proposed marriage to the
tribeswoman Fati and even promised to convert to the "law
of Mahomet." But he temporizes, unable to renounce Chris-
tianity. Fati's brother finally comes to the Russian camp and
tosses his "dishonored" sister's head at the Cossack's feet.
The stunned hero falls to his knees and kisses his fiancee's
head. When his comrades come looking for him the next
morning, he apparently has vanished into the wilderness, per-
haps to take revenge against the savage. In this case the
Orthodox man contributes to the demise of the beautiful
oriental because he cannnot live up to his promise to convert
to Islam. The tribeswoman is thus sacrificed to her lover's act
of cultural heroism: by holding fast to the religion so central to
his national identity, the Cossack asserts belief in Christiani-
ty's superiority to the competing creed.
Another member of this valiant breed appeared in P. Mar-
kov's poem "Zlomilla and Dobronrava - Two Mountain
Maids, or Meeting a Cossack" (1834).31 The tale is narrated
by the Cossack hero. In the wilderness he comes upon a
"bestial Chechen" with his sword ready to strike Zlomilla, a
half-naked Circassian beauty crouched at his feet. The
Cossack immediately dispatches the aggressor with his rifle
and begins kissing the semi-conscious woman ("That maid
was my reward!"). However, even though Zlomilla deliriously
strips off all her clothes, the hero is too gallant to take further
advantage of her. She explains that her aggressor was her
lover, who murdered her parents when she refused to run
away with him. Zlomilla develops affection for the kindly
Cossack, but loyalty to her own people eventually prevails.
She betrays him, he is taken captive and marked for
execution. Overcome by guilt, the tribeswoman then drowns
herself.
"Zlomilla" is a coinage suggesting "mean but nice," and
it epitomizes the heroine's flawed but basically positive
character in interaction with the outsider. Although Zlomilla
behaves nastily to the Cossack, she repents by committing
suicide. Markov accordingly declares the oriental beauty's
capacity to rise above the viciousness of her native realm and
opt for Christian values. Moreover, readers know from the
outset that the Cossack narrator lived to tell his tale. Exactly
how that happened remained untold because the second part
of "Zlomilla and Dobronrava" never appeared. The title,
though, promised to introduce another "mountain maid,"
Dobronrava, a name connoting "good ways." One can only
speculate about the turn the plot was to take. Dobronrava
surely freed the captive. But did she flee with the Cossack, or
was she destined to join literature's ranks of Caucasian
women who die for loving tsarist military men?
The plot of cross-cultural romance would reach an apogee
in N. Zriakhov's The Russians' Battle with the Kabardinians, or
the Beautiful Mohammedan Dying on the Grave of Her Husband.
Initially published as a chapbook in 1843, the work was
reissued subsequently many times, sometimes in anonymous
versions.32 The wounded Cossack hero Andrei is taken pris-
oner by a Kabardinian prince and held for ransom. The prin-
ce's daughter Selima nurses Andrei back to health, and during
the convalescence he rapidly persuades her that Orthodox
Russia is superior in every way to Muslim tribal culture.
Selima renounces her homeland, flees to join Andrei after he
is released, and marries him. The happily wedded couple
settles in the spa country where a baby is born. But the Rus-
sian husband never recovers from his old wounds (or else, in
a variant version, is killed by an avenging Muslim tribesman).
The bereft Selima then dies of grief in the cemetery. Although
both parents expire, their offspring endures as a potent incar-
nation of the myth of empire-building as a realization of elec-
tive emotional affinities.33 Destined to become one of Russia's
best known pieces of literature about the conquest, this tale
of cross-cultural marriage would run into nine editions by
1850, to reach the phenomenal circulation of 50,000 copies.34
Cossacks were especially effective carriers of these stories'
message that tribeswomen were a good, assimilable popu-
lation for the Russian empire, even if their male relatives
deserved extermination. As Tolstoy's The Cossacks would illus-
trate definitively, the technically Orthodox but completely
non-Europeanized Cossack communities along the Terek
comprised a fascinating cultural buffer zone for the west-
ernized Russian elite.35 The Grebensk Cossacks' rebellious
history and cultural distinctiveness were indicated in some
footnotes to Shidlovsky's poem. But for the most part, the
literary Caucasus prior to Tolstoy underplayed these fron-
tiersmen's differences from Russia. Instead of focusing on
former days of freebooting, writers emphasized the Cossacks'
present service as border guards and tsarist soldiers (as seen
in Pushkin's "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," Nechaev's
"Recollections," much of Shidlovsky's commentary to "The
Grebensk Cossack," Lermontov's "Izmail-Bey" and the
cross-cultural love stories of Gnedich, Markov and Zriakhov).
Loaded with a history of assimilation into Christian tsardom,
the gallant Cossack romancer of the Muslim tribeswoman
readily functioned as a bridge between occidentalized Russia
and the wild but civilizable Caucasus.
A related Russian poem of cross-cultural erotic alliance dis-
pensed with the Cossack but retained the symbolic notion of
"marrying" the beauty of the wilderness (symbolized by wild
women) with the hardy masculine force of Russian civiliza-
tion. Written partly in dramatic form, V. Zotov's "The Last
of the Kheaks" (1842) has no Russian among the dramatis
personae.36 However, the author intrudes to assume the mas-
culine civilizer's role. A slave to the mountain chieftain Eli-
Egrukh, Zotov's Kheak tribesman falls in love with his mas-
ter's fiancee after saving her from drowning and lasciviously
administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. To go along
with the geographical vagueness and scarcity of names, no
steady plot-construction or delineation of character occurs in
the tale. Prior to the violent denouement, the Kheak hardly
sees the woman again. However, he seizes upon her as a tool
of revenge when his fugitive father is tracked down in his
mountain hide-out and killed by a mob loyal to Eli-Egrukh.
Shortly after the old man's death, the Kheak abducts Eli-
Egrukh's fiancee from her bed, drags her to a cave in the cliffs
and gloats as she lies before him naked to the waist. Despite
her assumption that she is going to be raped, the woman
boldly warns the Kheak that the chieftain will punish him.
But the abductor explains that revenge, rather than lust, is
motivating him. At the end of the poem he knifes the woman
and decapitates her, before Eli-Egrukh's rescue-party arrives.
As the voice from outside the "savage" realm, Zotov injects
"our" (strictly masculine) view of the Caucasus as a dualistic
territory divided along lines of gender. In the first section of
a long passage beginning "we have a region in the South,"
the poet contrives a "Hell" of rugged mountains, "mean"
streams and tribal guerrillas who thirst for blood like "tigers."
Thoroughly inimical to "us," this "dreadful" place is immedi-
ately contrasted to "Heaven," dear to "us." Zotov repeats
the line "we have a region in the South" but now evokes a
pacific realm peopled by voluptuous beauties. With pastoral
motifs Russian writers associated primarily with Georgia, he
summons a terrestrial paradise of roses, grapes, myrtle, olive
trees, laurel and silvery waters. The local women's nationality
is not specified, however: they are just generic orientals with
pearly teeth, coral lips, raven locks and generous bosoms. All
the promise of an Asian Eden is associated here with women,
pitted against barren, infernal terrain and the masculine
menace of the jihad.
In championing the Caucasian woman while damning her
kinsmen, all these tales underwrote imperialism by ennobling
the Russian as enemy of barbarous Islam. To judge by the
memoirs of a military man, even Nicholas I was not immune
to this fiction. In a conversation of 1838 the tsar remarked
that the Caucasian war might end more quickly if mass mar-
riages were arranged between his soldiers and tribeswomen
rescued from the ships of Ottoman slave traders: the Muslim
relatives of these Christianized wives would feel prohibited
from killing their new in-laws, and combat would gradually
grind to a halt.37 The memoirist said that he tactfully
reminded Nicholas that many of those women would rather
"die than marry giaours." This anecdote and the rejoinder
about cultural values on "their" side illustrate the blinding
power of literature's mythology of romancing the tribes-
woman into civilization. Quite interestingly, the pivotal fic-
tion of the chivalrous Orthodox soldier would be exploded in
Ivan Golovin's hybrid book The Caucasus written in emi-
gration in the 1850s. Without referring to literature in this
context, Golovin maintained that women whom tsarist forces
retrieved from slave ships were frequently transported to Rus-
sian forts "to be violated by the soldiers." 38 Golovin was a
notorious character, universally despised by the Russian
emigre community in Paris, but on the whole his book has
an unsensational, believable tone.
Besides endorsing the ideology of the civilizing mission, lit-
erature's mythology of the tsarist soldier as the seductive pro-
tector of abused oriental women quite possibly earned a
psychological dividend on the domestic front by assuaging
Russian guilt about serfdom. This is suggested by the fixation
on the Ottoman slave trade in writings about the Caucasian
tribes, as well as Georgia. Abolished only in 1861, serfdom
entailed the regular sale and purchase of peasants, with some
markets specializing in women. How removed from the base
"Asian" could the Russian buyer or vendor of human prop-
erty feel? Little orientalizers buried this question by insisting

that the Islamic East monopolized a contemptible traffic in
human beings and the treatment of women in particular as
marketable property. Like the more sensational depictions of
violence against Caucasian beauties (especially for loving
giaours), the prominent theme of tribesmen in cahoots with
slave traders, or merely hungry for the local brideprice, dis-
sociated Russia from the use of people as commodities and,
more specifically, from the exploitation of women.
EPHEMERAL ORIENTALIA's IMPACT
As this chapter has shown, little orientalizers imposed a

system of alien, fearsome cultural references on a territory
which the Pushkinian poetics of space had constituted as
alpine wilderness, cherished for its rejuvenative, inspirational
power. Although the traditional rhetoric of dread and
splendor still thrived in Russian literature and travelogues of
the 1830s, the old imaginative geography was modified by
the symbolism of Allah's mountains hostile to enlightened
Orthodox Russia. Increasingly obsessed by Islam, poets such
as Oznobishin retained from young Pushkin's era the giant,
sovereign and sentry as favorite tropes for peaks. But with
the escalation of the jihad, these figures of speech acquired a
newly menacing character, as epitomized by Minaev's
"Reproach against the Caucasus." To a limited extent, land-
scape was similarly orientalized in travel literature in this
period. In Saburov's "The Caucasus," for example, Besh-Tau
wears a "multicolored Muslim turban," a sparkling river is
a "Lezgin saber," and Elbrus is personified as a gigantic "lion
of the desert," an inept trope associating Caucasian moun-
taineers with Arabs of the hot sands. 39
The displacement of Parnassian heights by Allah's moun-
tains existed in mutually reinforcing relationship with the
1830s' newly simplistic invention of the Caucasian Muslim
tribesman as a vicious, lustful beast excluded from civilization
just as adamantly as the compliant oriental woman was
invited in. The savage braves thus lost their ambivalent
romantic aura as free Naturmenschen and become unidimen-
sional sons of Allah - "children of darkness," "animals" and
"fanatics." Reduced to the oriental other, the tribesman pro-
claimed Russia's Europeanness and consequent right to sub-
jugate the Caucasus in the name of civilization.
But how persuasive was the little orientalizers' propagation
of savage Muslim alterity? Two kinds of criteria are pertinent
to this question - the aesthetic and the political. Zotov's "The
Last of the Kheaks" strikes us now as pure doggerel in the
service of empire-building, but the poem was published by
Russia's Imperial Academy of Sciences. The imprint of this
prestigious institution gave Zotov's lurid tale the status of
high culture and exemplified how pulp about the tribes could
satisfy both the literary and ideological demands of people in
high places. By contrast, Belinsky's responses to the literary
Caucasus often showed an interesting divergence between aes-
thetics and ideology. The critic sought to guide readers away
from cheap sensationalism but regularly promoted fictions of
Asian alterity in his own writing. This made him a strange
bedfellow of Kamensky and like-minded hacks of the period.
Belinsky deplored the horrid style of Kamensky (and Zotov)
without noticing that he himself participated in the invention
of "Asia" as inner bestiality which the "European" spirit
must control.40 Likewise, Belinsky's ideal of self-abnegating,
oriental femininity coincided completely with the model
Kamensky and his ilk recommended to Russian women, in
opposition to cold-hearted, R&lzdLcmn femmes fatales of the beau
monde.41
For all his own lack of sophistication about the "Orient,"
Belinsky sensed that the least aesthetically discriminating
readers were probably most vulnerable to political influence
from the little orientalizers. In the estimation of the Soviet
Russian critic Gadzhiev, these "reactionary" writers warped
quite a few minds.42 Necessarily the fruit of speculation, this
judgment rings true to common sense. The shortage of news
in the Russian press encouraged readers to formulate ideas
about the Caucasian war on the basis of literature, as well as
conversations with military men on leave in the spa country
or capital cities. Thanks to belles-lettres' high profile, little
orientalizers' stories of Muslim wickedness, brutality and
fanaticism conceivably persuaded many gullible Russians that
the tribesmen would have to be killed en masse so that Chris-
tian civilization might expand.
And yet despite the heavy hand of la therapeutique du Different
in Russian writing, the ambivalent oeuvre of Bestuzhev-Mar-
linsky still reigned supreme in the literary Caucasus in this
period (as Gadzhiev was quick to note). "Ammalat-Bek"
undoubtedly provided Eurocentric hacks with an important
narrative model which proclaimed that recalcitrant tribesmen
risked extermination. However, in expanding "Asia" to
encompass the id, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky teased Russians into
ruminating about how much "oriental" eros and violence lay
beneath their own "genteel coats" of civilization. An
intriguing eradicator of firm boundaries between "us" and
"them," he stimulated the readership's extraordinary fan-
tasies of him as Shamil or at least a defector, now fighting
the tyrant Nicholas I. In the cultural field of the 1830s these
politically disruptive dynamics coexisted with the little orien-
talizers' jingoistic convictions and with Bestuzhev-Mar-
linsky's own equivocal critique of Asian backwardness. A sub-
versive romantic discourse about the tribesmen still lived, to
nurture any skepticism a Russian reader harbored about the
ideology of the European civilizing mission.
CHAPTER 10
Feminizing the Caucasus
Oh my darling! How enchanting you are now!

Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
European authors have often portrayed imperial power as
male dominance over the feminized colonial realm. 1 Writers
in Russia during the reign of Nicholas I showed the same
rhetorical bent. Rostopchina's poem "The Forced Marriage"
(1847) allegorized tsarist repression of Poland as an "old
Baron's" abuse of his rebellious young wife, wed against her
will.2 The preeminent Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko
repeatedly depicted his homeland as a woman ravaged by
masculinized Russia, Poland or her own politically dislocated
native sons.3 While preserving the same gender relations,
Alexander Odoevsky contrived a contrary myth of powerful
masculine seduction in "The Marriage of Georgia and the
Russian Kingdom" (1838).4
Although Georgia received such treatment more consist-
ently than other regions of the Caucasus, the whole territory
was drawn into a rhetoric of feminization and erotic interac-
tion in Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's cycle of recits de voyage which
were published separately between 1834 and 1836 and then
collected among his "Caucasian Essays." The Russian word
Kavkaz (Caucasus) has masculine gender, but the territory
was perceived at the time as the realm of untamed priroda
(nature), a feminine noun. Since gender is imbedded in the
language, priroda to the Russian ear does not automatically
conjure a female personage. To underscore the point we need
only to remember how Russian poets usually disregarded
the feminine gender of gora (mountain) to favor tropes of
masculinization for peaks (tsars, sovereigns, sentries, warriors
and giants). Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, however, took feminine
priroda as an invitation to personify the Caucasus as a woman,
while repressing the grammatical femininity of Rossiia
(Russia) itself. "Ammalat-Bek" dropped a hint of things to
come by featuring Dagestan as a "land of fruit" where the
natives "nestle in the bosom of that charmer, nature." Partly
inspired by Dagestan, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's recits de voyage
relate a largely solitary trek from Derbent to the Alazani
valley in Georgia. The itinerary thus unfolds in the southerly
region which nineteenth-century Russians commonly called
"Transcaucasia." But Bestuzhev-Marlinsky mapped a larger
country of the mind by consistently writing about the "Cauca-
sus," Kavkaz. Indicative of broader tendencies at work in the
period, these travelogues gave voice to a newly heightened
perception of the entire Asian terrain as "virgin" terrain ripe
for Russian exploitation.
THE PASTORAL AMBIENCE
The Russian readership's awareness of the Caucasus' poten-

tial as a colony began intensifying dramatically in the 1830s.
A major publicizer of the economic stakes of the war against
the tribes was Platon Zubov (an architect of the "oriental
project" under Catherine II). 5 The frontispiece of Zubov's
Picture of the Caucasian Region (1835) showed towering moun-
tains beneath the Romanov double-headed eagle topped with
a crown over an " N " for Nicholas. Worth a thousand words,
this image of tsarist supremacy set the tone of the discussion.
Zubov argued that Russia had to take the Caucasus' "lazy"
natives in hand to effect a "colonial transformation." His
catalogue of the territory's natural wealth included oil and
minerals, tea, coffee, cotton and sugar cane, silk production
and fishing. But in Zubov's estimation, "fear of the tribes-
men" prevented Russia from tapping these "luxuriant gifts of
nature." He hoped the tribes might convert to Christianity,
renounce their life of brigandage and become willing subjects
of the tsarist empire. Behind this stated wish, though, lay the
Feminizing the Caucasus 177
sinister threat that recalcitrants would have to be eliminated,
lest they block the influx of hard-working Russian settlers
needed to achieve colonial transformation. Exactly the same
outlook was expressed in 1837 in the Library for Reading in the
anonymous review of another book which outlined an
imperial Russian agenda in the Caucasus. 6 In reiterating the
theme of "generously endowed nature," the commentator
claimed that the Asian territory promised Russia even greater
wealth than India brought the British. But like Zubov's book,
this article too blamed bellicose Muslim tribesmen for thwart-
ing the march of economic progress.
In addition to such wide-ranging discussions of empire, the
Russian press from the 1830s onward provided many specifi-
cations of the Caucasus' natural resources. This occurred both
in periodicals with a general readership and in publications
with specialized audiences, such as the Journal of Mining.1
Although not necessarily invoking the claims of civilization
or even mentioning the Muslim tribes, the various Russian
authors who wrote about minerals, silk production, salt
deposits and the like were obviously indicating potential pro-
fits for the tsarist empire. Such reporting helped establish an
image of the Caucasus as the source of phenomenal booty for
the Russians in the ongoing war.
The evolving notion of natural plenitude gave the territory
a new pastoral ambience, at odds with the rocky sphere of
mountain gloom and glory. By the end of the 1820s, a passion
for grassy hills and valleys erupted in recits de voyage about
Georgia (as well as in imaginative literature). In common
with Rousseau's writing about the Alps, Russian travelers of
the era perceived Georgia's lowlands as inviting, hospitable
terrain nestled amid stark, barren mountains. 8 Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's travelogues participated in the trend by lavishing
rapt attention on valleys in present-day Azerbaijan, as well
as Georgia. In the same spirit, another traveler of the era
celebrated fertile Gelendzhik on the northern coast of the
Black Sea.9
Perhaps especially acute in natives of Russia's wintry clime,
the pastoralism conveyed a longing for a realm of natural
abundance. The opening sentence of Griboedov's proposal for
a Russian-Transcaucasian trading company articulated the
wish by attributing unlimited plenitude to the Caucasus'
southerly regions: "nature has prepared everything, but
people have not yet taken advantage of nature." 10 Without
displaying Griboedov's hope of achieving mutual rewards for
the colonizer and the colonized, a staunchly chauvinistic Rus-
sian official in Tiflis similarly maintained in the early 1830s
that just a few enlightened entrepreneurs would suffice to
make nature yield its bounty in Georgia (as long as the
"bloodthirsty" tribes of neighboring areas were checked). 11
Although not actually proclaiming the place "paradise," both
Griboedov and this tsarist functionary conveyed a conception
of a realm so richly endowed that man might derive benefits
from it with a minimum of work. A Russian traveler of the
late 1820s had made the inferences explicit by christening the
pristine Caucasus "Eden." 12 The imagery of the great garden
recurred repeatedly in Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's writings, as
already illustrated by the trope of Dagestan as the "land of
fruit" in "Ammalat-Bek." Contemplated at length in this
figurative light, the Caucasus in the author's travelogues
became "paradise on Earth" where the civilized interloper
stood entranced "like Adam . . . on the first evening of his
life" (201).13
The ideal of Edenic abundance was readily loaded with
erotic overtones connoted by "virgin land." A terrestrial para-
dise assures a good life with relatively little effort. As Annette
Kolodny has argued in her study of American writers, this
pastoral yearning often bespeaks a desire to experience the
land as a nurturing female who creates a warmly satisfying,
comforting environment for the individual. 14 Early American
colonists, for example, fashioned metaphors of their country
as a great mother but also gendered her as a loving maiden
whose fertility begged to be exploited. Nineteenth-century
Russian writing about the Caucasus exhibited the same urge
to feminization, with the spotlight squarely centered on the
passive virgin ready to satisfy male desire and indeed just
waiting for man to take advantage of her.15 Competing tropes
like the priestess, sister and mother occasionally featured in
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's travelogue cycle and related writings
by some of his contemporaries. But objects of erotic yearning
were the leading ladies in the figurative drama we shall now
begin exploring.
THE RAPE OF THE TERRITORY
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's role as a feminizer of Caucasian wil-

derness must be assessed within the general stylistic texture
of his recits de voyage. Soviet Russian criticism gave his travel
cycle the "realist" seal of approval by pouncing upon
infrequent passages of concrete description. 16 For the most
part, however, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's accounts are sentimen-
tal and extravagantly rhetorical. Intently centered on his
inner experience, he ignores his,balmy surroundings for long
stretches at a time, as illustrated by an extended evocation of
wintry Siberia, his first place of exile (184-87). More typi-
cally, Caucasian landscape holds his attention but sends him
into flights of rapture, short on pictorial detail. In a cogent
response to the sentimental style, the historian Nikolai Dubro-
vin once remarked that Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's travelogues
might have been penned in Switzerland as readily as the
Caucasus.17
Although Bestuzhev-Marlinsky announces didactic aims
elsewhere (as in the introduction to "The Story of an Officer
Held Prisoner by Mountain Tribesmen"), his recits de voyage
defend writing as creative distortion. The section entitled
"The Road to the Town of Kuba" flatly tells readers not to
expect objective description: "Anybody who imagines that my
essays are acquainting him with the Caucasus, rather than
with me myself, is sadly mistaken" (130). Here a principle
of self-expression completely overrides the didactic impulse.
Unconcerned about the potential educational value of a text,
the travelogue promises to invent rather than transmit realia:
"That is why it is absurd to demand that a poet do life-like
portraiture of a place: he would cease being a poet if he went
about such a task. His compass is his mind, his palette - his
heart, and his brush - imagination" (122-23). With this
strong defense of the primacy of inner vision, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky places himself among the "poetic" writers, fully
licensed to create imaginative geography rather than provide
a pictorial record of the road.
The aesthetic of distortion transfigures the Caucasus into
a sign system to be deciphered by the writer. Perhaps mindful
of Byron's epigraph about the big book of nature {Childe Har-
old's Pilgrimage), Bestuzhev-Marlinsky employs a telling series
of semiotic metaphors. He refers to the outskirts of Kuba as
a "nice preface" which whets the appetite for a disappointing
"book," the town itself (139). Steeped in imaginative Cauca-
sian geography of the 1820s, he views mountains as the "orig-
inals" of literary "copies" he "read" back home (152-53).
The stars participate too in this series of tropes: gazing at the
heavens on a clear night, the author reads the celestial bodies
as letters spelling the big, glorious "word — GOD!" (172).
Along the same lines, his journal of the period decodes the
mountains' snowy crest as a "hieroglyph" promising pure
souls eternal life in heaven (263).
As these notes of spiritual uplift would suggest, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky often assumes a reverent posture toward the wil-
derness. At twilight in the mountains in "The Last Post on
the Way to Staraya Shamakha," the traveler bows his head,
exclaims "Thy will be done!" and voices the following
"prayer":
Fate has guided my life along a path of thorns and stones, through
night and clouds, but stars shone upon me at times, and I learned
to be grateful for every ray of light that reached me. Sparks of
divine grace flew down upon me most often and most purely when
I wandered to the summits of mountains. Then my soul understood
the hymn of praise, "Glory to God in the highest, peace on
Earth!" (171)
Typical of many passages in the travelogue cycle, this
"prayer" cultivates the soulful gout de la montagne made
fashionable in Russia by Rousseau's and Karamzin's Alpine
writings and then reproduced in the 1820s by secondary
Russian poets of the literary Caucasus such as Tepliakov.
To judge by Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's jottings on the Paradiso,
Dante also fed his notion of mountains as the realm of
"higher" things.
As illustrated by the writings of two of Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's compatriots, the tradition of moral exaltation was
by no means inherently incompatible with symbolizations of
the territory as a woman. In the anonymous "Recollections
of the Caucasus," the Russian traveler reverently beholds
Gelendzhik as a "beauty" (or "belle" krasavitsa) whose moral
purity enhances her physical attractiveness: "Which of us has
not fallen in love with her? In whose soul has she not aroused
lofty feelings and ideas? She always nourishes the soul, as
faith nourishes Christians! She is the world's temple, where
God is praised!"18 Religiously exalted without a hint of carnal
desire, the beautiful land is invested with the holiness of a
priestess revered from afar. In similar evasion of the erotic, the
minor belletrist Count Vladimir Sollogub would call Georgia
Russia's "sister" (whereas most writers tended to symbolize
the Caucasian land as an object of Russian male desire). 19 A
functionary in the ministry of foreign affairs, Sollogub brooked
no hint of incest: in compliance with grammatical gender, he
symbolized Orthodox Russia as a protective woman with little
Georgia under her wing in a religious sorority. Again, a note
of piety and lofty intentions accompanied the trope of femini-
zation, as in the travelogue about Gelendzhik. Indeed, Sollo-
gub solemnly declared that tsarist objectives in the Caucasus
were "purely religious."
But by telling contrast to those symbols of inviolate femi-
ninity, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's personifications of the Cau-
casus as a woman appear in arenas of erotic combat. His
reverent urge to pray to the territory thus proves unsteady,
as betrayed by his very choice of Biblical allusions. While
Edenizing the land, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky seeks to repress the
Fall by envisioning Adam "on the first evening of his life" —
newly created and all alone like a perpetual child. However,
a loss of innocent relation to the Caucasian garden is symboli-
cally inscribed in the travelogues' rhetorical patterns of erotic
desire.
One of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's principal metaphorical plots
advertises the erotic enticement of the feminized Caucasus
and foresees her loss of virginity. Nature initially touches the
traveling narrator like a "beloved woman's gentle hand"
(134-35). The land itself is subsequently gendered as a
woman who "spoils" her "happy lover" (168). Under the
lover's admiring gaze, the wilderness assumes the guise of a
beautiful "bride-to-be" (nevesta), "fresh with the charm of
spring, full of desire and promise" (187). This maiden is
coupled first with a local admirer, the sun: "The enamored
sun drinks in [nature's] aromatic breath, caresses her with
warmth, kisses her with rays, imprinting new beauty upon
her smiling face with every kiss. Oh my darling! How
enchanting you are now!" The minor poet Aleksei Meisner
had already symbolized Caucasian paysage as a woman pas-
sionately embraced by the sun ("The Sun Parting from
Elbrus," 1833).20 But Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's projection of
erotic love onto the land has an extravagant, primordial qual-
ity: it evokes ancient myths of union between a female Earth
and a masculine force of the sky, while conforming to the
poetics of primitive, oriental "heat" exemplified in
"Ammalat-Bek."
In the midst of the travelogue's torrid encounter between
the sun and the land, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky fashions a trope
of Russian rape of the Caucasus. The exclamation, "Oh my
darling! How enchanting you are now!" springs from the mili-
tary traveler's own lips, as he addresses the land to declare
rivalry with the sun:
With all due respect for somebody else's property, I am ready to
fling myself from the saddle onto your breast, to embrace you and
cover you with kisses. Yes! The electric flame of springtime in the
Orient pours a boiling stream of youth into the chest and casts
treacherous sparks of whimsy into the tinder box of imagination. In
the air one hears a voice, the rustle of a satiny dress, and troubled
breath, sweetly wafting (187-88).
This amusing purple passage conveys a man's yearning to
take erotic possession of the beautiful foreign maiden, rather
than worship her or embrace her with brotherly affection. A
forthrightly imperialist dynamic operates here as the Russian
outsider challenges a local male for possession of the oriental
"property" (the "bride-to-be") and articulates his desire to
ravish her. The sensuous female's "satiny dress" conjures a
St. Petersburg society belle, but this incongruous detail does
not alter the passage's political thrust: through a symbolic
love triangle centered on feminized terrain, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky eroticizes the Russian drive to gain supremacy over
the Caucasus.
The author's central construct of fierce erotic desire
encompasses economic exploitation in the entry entitled "The
Mountain Road from Dagestan to Shrivan via Kunakenty."
His vision of purportedly inevitable industrial conquest starts
with a typically rapturous evocation of an unpopulated, "vir-
gin" place where "no man has ever been before." Then the
sexual innuendo rings out violently in an apostrophe to nature
addressed by the familiar form of "you" (ty):
the time will come when people will descend on you, and their sweat
will intoxicate you, as the heavenly dew does now. They will settle
into your secret canyons and gorges, cover you with social life's
dusty siftings, pollute you, tread down your very tiptop, drill mines
and stone quarries through your heart, extract your innards, turn
you inside out, pervert you and crop you. They will adorn you with
trinkets of their own paltry being, force you to work to satisfy their
greed, make you a hireling to their fancies (159-60).
While immediately followed by a playful notion of making
ice-cream from the mountains' "virgin snows," this passage
is dominated by an unrelenting symbolism of strenuous sexual
assault - the violation of "secret" places, gigantesque acts of
penetration and brutish manhandling. In this forecast of the
future, the Caucasus is the victim of a gang rape, ultimately
transformed into a whore and compelled to serve her
debauchers.
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky very characteristically displays mixed
feelings toward the rape of the land, and we can begin to
measure the depth of his ambivalence by drawing a contrast
with a much later Russian perception of economic develop-
ment as sexual violation of the Caucasus. The populist and
socialist thinker Gleb Uspensky visited a Black Sea coastal
area in the 1880s, prior to industrialization. Thoughts of
despoliation disgusted him: his recit de voyage imagines "Mr.
Capital" as a "lecher" who "voluptuously smacks his chops
over the fresh tender flesh" of the "naive, virgin" terrain, as
he prepares to trample its hidden places, drive railroads
through it and clutter it with trash. 21 To judge by this rhetoric,
tropes of debauchery and sexual degradation seemed more apt
than ever to an observer of late nineteenth-century industrial
"progress." A witness to real capitalist ventures in Russia,
Uspensky expressed nothing but revulsion for "lecherous"
entrepreneurs, so eager to defile a pristine region.
By contrast to Uspensky in the 1880s, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
in the era of conquest both dreaded and relished the future
industrial rape of the Caucasus. As a romantic writer who
drew much inspiration from wilderness, he fully recognized
that capitalist transformation of virgin nature would spell a
"loss for the poet" (159). Nevertheless, he could not suppress
his sense that the exploitation of Caucasian paradise posed
exciting challenges to human ingenuity and efficiency. In
keeping with his awed vision of the Edenic garden, his trav-
elogue's despoilers are greedy and crass (while still falling
far short of Uspensky's drooling voluptuary). However, in
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's eyes, the figurative sexual assaulters
also epitomized technical know-how, initiative and the "Euro-
pean" work ethic so memorably extolled in "Ammalat-Bek"
as the "alarm clock of the human soul." An admirer of stun-
ning feats of engineering in the Alps like the construction of
tunnels and the enlargement of the Simplon Pass road under-
taken at Napoleon's demand, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky partici-
pated in a Promethean enthusiasm for industrial progress
widely spread in Europe and Russia at the time.22
It is important to note in this connection that Russia's mili-
tary strategy in the Caucasus evinced a Promethean drive to
triumph over nature. The ordeal of combat in the mountains
aroused in tsarist commanders something of the alpinist's
urge to reach an awesome summit just to prove that he can.
From the days of Ermolov to the monumentally disastrous
Dargo campaign led by Viceroy Mikhail Vorontsov in 1845,
Russian regiments marched into the rugged heights of the
Caucasus to attack tribal villages.23 The high command attri-
buted tremendous psychological significance to these
expeditions, even though they rarely brought new territorial
gains. Affronted by Kazbek as an enemy who did not
"respect" him, Ermolov urged his troops to "raise our ban-
ners on the peaks."24 As he himself explained, he undertook
mountain campaigns primarily to show the tribes that Rus-
sians could overcome "obstacles posed by the lay of the land
itself" and get to places where no outsiders had ever been.25
Successive commanders-in-chief voiced the same sentiments
about wilderness as a tribal ally which had to be beaten
appropriately.26 The challenges of fighting mountain guer-
rillas were formidably real, but they were met with something
in addition to rational planning: the drive to plant the Russian
flag on the heights betrayed a streak of irrational Promethean-
ism, not unlike the Nazi mystique of alpine conquest cel-
ebrated in Arnold Fanck's films starring Leni Riefenstahl.
The Promethean urge to experience oneself as master of the
wilderness also dictated despoilment of Caucasian forests. In
a prelude to "pacification," Ermolov began this assault in
1817 when he widened roads and started constructing Russian
forts in Chechnia. But after the Dargo campaign completely
discredited the goal of seizing the mountains, Russia under-
took to clear forests on a massive scale (as exemplified in
young Tolstoy's story "The Wood-felling"). Pursued right to
the end of the war, the tsarist army's program of deforestation
was wanton destruction of nature of the sort encompassed in
today's ecologically conscious notion of "raping the land."
THE ANGEL OF DEATH IN PARADISE
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's scenario of erotic designs and sexual

assault on the Caucasus suggestively symbolized the whole
range of military, political, economic and even Promethean
factors at work in the Russian conquest. But his imagination
was not yet exhausted. In a demonstration of the unlimited
prerogatives of artistic license defended so vigorously in the
recits de voyage, he supplemented the tale of despoilment with
intimations of Russian failure to win a seductive heartbreaker.
As in a contemporaneous recit de voyage by a Russian on cam-
paign in Chechnia, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's Caucasus could be
just "as cheating as a coquette's heart," even though she
beckoned as a "smiling maiden" - "sweet to the eye."27
The final installment of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's travelogue
cycle crazily alternates between soulful daydreams and the
brutal reality of military conquest. Erotic promise once again
suffuses the air when the traveler reaches the frontier of Geor-
gia at the end of his recorded trek. The Alazani river appears
as a "bashful but ardent bride-to-be" who yields to her native
banks, after giving the author the impression she was running
to him (199-200). Once the river has spurned him in this
manner, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky strikes back with aggressive
rhetoric about the inevitability of tsarist domination of the
Caucasus. He likens himself to Adam in paradise but then
focuses upon his Lezgin fellow travelers and mentally recalls
their country's bellicose history (201-2). The "Russian bay-
onet" has now intimidated them, he gloats. In a mounting
frenzy, he approves the "angel of death" and "spirit of war"
as constructive forces: lethal conflict lays a path for the "angel
of peace," "enlightenment" will triumph in the Caucasus,
Russia will win - so hooray for "Nicholas and victory!" (204).
Given its bombastic exaggerations and hysterical pitch, this
long utterance about the conquest's regenerative capacity
cannot be taken at face value. The author's cheer for
imperialism is thrown into a parodic register and gives the
impression of a man desperately attempting to convince him-
self that he is indeed a worthy "lover" of the Caucasus, rather
than a vile aggressor.
A sense of inevitable loss then creeps into his writing. He
flees the specter of war to focusi once again on his Edenic
surroundings. Precisely at this point, though, he strikes the
pose of a man unlucky in love. The peaceful wilderness pro-
vokes a confession of worldly dreams, as presumptuous as his
paradisiac reveries:
But I had earthly dreams too - splendid, fresh and sweet, sprinkled
with the dew of hope, dreams to make the heart leap like a noble
steed at the sound of a battle horn. I had such dreams, but I will
not let the beau monde have them either. They are not for sale nor
free for the taking: they are secret. Oh my beauty, do not ask me
what the cherished secret is! With that fire of betrayal in your eyes
you have grown used to burning the vows made to you by others,
but you will sooner reduce my heart to ashes, than steal its mystery.
(208)
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky does not clearly identify his addressee.
This "beauty" (krasavitsa) may be merely a reprise of the
theme of unrequited love often treated in his stories. But in
invoking such a personage during his soulful encounter with
pristine wilderness, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky lends the Caucasus
itself the character of SL femme fatale likely to injure her admirer.
The figure of the horse aroused by a battle horn suggests a
certain readiness for the war between the sexes, but feminine
victory is a foregone conclusion. This femme fatale who springs
into Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's head annuls his previous incar-
nations of himself as the Caucasus' "happy lover," prospec-
tive bridegroom or debaucher. A formidable actor in the erotic
wars, the "beauty" with "betrayal" in her eyes intimates that
Russian "dreams" to achieve a thoroughly satisfying mastery-
over the enticing territory are going to be frustrated.
The travelogue's final pages strengthen the metaphorical
resonance of lost hopes, while betraying the author's guilt
about serving the "angel of death" who symbolizes the tsarist
conquest. After his revery about the femme fatale, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky is jolted back into the real world — a dirty, mice-
infested posting station where he passes the night. The grubby
place occupies his pen for nearly ten pages, until another
feminine symbolization of Caucasian beauty finally appears
in the account's last scene: rosy dawn in the wilderness
appears as a "goddess" who tiptoes into his quarters, rouses
him with a kiss and frolics ahead of him while he mounts his
horse. As he climbs into the saddle, the author cries, "A horse!
A horse! A kingdom for a horse!" (as translated in his foot-
note, with Shakespeare's "my" displaced). Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky thus identifies himself with Richard III, the
deformed usurper who murders everybody in his path to
power. Most strikingly of all, of course, the Russian military
exile chooses the famous words uttered by the evil king just
before he is dispatched.
The Shakespearean allusion stunningly illuminates
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's self-conception as a soldier in the
imperial army. He is mounted and ready to gallop after the
Caucasian "goddess." But in echoing the defeated Richard,
the author proclaims himself a consummate political villain,
acknowledges the justice of killing bloody usurpers and
bespeaks anxiety about the moral price Russia may pay in
gaining military victory in the Caucasus. The "angel of
death" is here unmasked as a purely usurpatory, murderous
force rather than the cruel means to a glorious political end.
Gruesome Shakespearean tragedy has eclipsed the ethos of
Homeric heroism in "Ammalat-Bek" and the author's corre-
spondence from the Caucasian front.
By identifying himself with Richard III, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky exposes the nagging doubt about imperialism alle-
gorized in the travelogue's erotic symbolism: How can bloody
acts of dispossession possibly make Russia the happy sover-
eign of the Edenic territory? In featuring the Caucasus by
turns as an enticing virgin, a bride-to-be, a subjugated whore,
a femme fatale and a teasing goddess, the author inscribes his
suffering over the contradiction between experiencing pastoral
attraction to Caucasian "paradise" and attacking it as a sol-
dier in Nicholas' army. No matter which way he contrives the
figurative tale of relations between imperial Russian man and
the feminized territory, he cannot escape presentiments of loss
and frustration. In the scenario of rape and debauchery, the
male despoils what he found beautiful and becomes a pimp;
the femme fatale may prove conquerable but promises to devas-
tate the military traveler, while the goddess speeds forever
beyond his reach. All these cases demonstrate Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's incapacity to conceive a mutually happy union
between the Russian Adam and the Caucasian Garden. The
rape story overtly admits Russian violation of the pastoral
ideal; the goddess is simply not to be had; and the perceptions
of wilderness as a flirtatious victimizer project knowledge of
tsarist despoilment back onto the victim (perhaps with the
implication that the "cheat" deserves to be "paid back").
To no surprise, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's tormented inscrip-
tion of Russian aggression proved incompatible with a vision
of the Caucasus as Mother Nature. On the one occasion when
he maternalized the territory, she was utterly inaccessible to
human children: in "Ammalat-Bek" the metaphor of nature
as a "charmer" was conjoined with a perception of Asia's sky
as the "unembraceable breast" of a "loving mother." This
notion of the great mother who promises to comfort but
remains unreachable anticipated the lost paradise of
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's wartime cycle ofrecits de voyage. Unable
to drive the "angel of death" and the "land of work" entirely
from his mind, the military traveler could not invent himself
as an innocent child passively cuddled in the bosom of nature:
he took Adam as his emblem but incriminated himself in the
multifaceted Russian rape of the territory. At some level his
imagination told him it was best to stick to nubile "beauties"
and exclude "mother," lest he commit figurative incest.
The "loving mother's" problematic character for Bes-
tuzhev-Marlinsky can be underlined by comparison with
erotic tensions in Liukan Yakubovich's "Cliffs" (1837), a
short lyric set in unnamed mountain country.28 In the
embrace of "Mother Nature" the poet experiences a sense of
spiritual renewal in the highlands. Rendered fresh and pris-
tine as his surroundings, he perceives all life as a "virgin, full
of the force of love." While developing a standard theme of
moral uplift in the mountains, Yakubovich's combination of
metaphors illogically characterizes nature as both maternal
and sexually inexperienced. Moreover, he uses the word for
a male virgin (devstvennik), even though "life" in Russian is
feminine. An expression of the pastoral yearning to be at one
with nature, this rhetorical transsexuality tears down the
grammatical categories of gender to effect a merger between
the male self and the beloved wilderness.
But at the same time the definition of the male persona
as a "virgin" introduces incestuous import by implying the
potential of sexual awakening and the loss of a tender, filial
relation to Mother Nature. The final lines signal the instabil-
ity of prelapsarian innocence by employing Biblical diction
for primal "dust" (perst'), a "creature" (tvarf) and a "serpent"
viewed as an "emblem of eternity." In coexistence with the
serpent, a "wide-winged eagle" crosses the sky "free as the
play of thought." With these two symbols from the animal
kingdom the conclusion of "Cliffs" suggests contradictory
human potential - either to ascend toward the ethereal heav-
ens associated with the mind, or else heed the serpent and sink
to the dust. In parallel to Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's Caucasian
writings, Yakubovich thus implies the untenability of prelaps-
arian relation to the Edenic wilderness: by introducing the
"eternal" capacity for sin symbolized traditionally by the ser-
pent, his "virgin" who is both the self and the world threatens
the putative child's idyll with Mother Nature.
FEMININE ALTERITY
Without negating the old aesthetic of the sublime, Bestuzhev-

Marlinsky gave expression to an ideologically significant bat-
tery of erotic desires by imposing femininity on Caucasian
priroda. He never had a plethora of little feminizers in his
wake. Under his impact several amateur authors of Caucasian
travelogues perpetuated cliches of the sentimental journey
and indulged the quasi-religious gout de la montagne without
ever symbolizing the territory as a woman. But if having a
much more limited sway in Russian letters than the topoi of
mountain gloom and glory, the feminization of the embattled
Caucasus is noteworthy material to add to the comparative
study of imperialism's cultural manifestations.
With the exception of Count Sollogub's Georgian "sister,"
the male authors' rhetorical figures all established a sexual
boundary between Russia and the Caucasus. In a realization
of the era's preoccupation with "virgin" land, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky read the territory primarily as a tantalizing maiden
ready for the taking; but he also symbolized places in Azerbai-
jan, Georgia and Dagestan as a fiancee, afemmefatale, a god-
dess and an infinitely distanced mother. Other travelers of
the time proposed tropes of a purely spiritual woman or the
cheating coquette disguised as a sweet maiden, while Alex-
ander Odoevsky presented Georgia as tsardom's happy bride
(in the mainline of imaginative literature we are about to
explore now). This diversified range of symbols attested to
irreconcilable psychological conflicts in Russian efforts to
define a self-satisfying attitude toward the pristine Caucasus
earmarked for colonial exploitation. In every case, however,
the evocations of women exhibited imperialist discourse's fun-
damental tendency to marginalize and to augment the alterity
of the desired colony or the subject nation of an empire. Ros-
topchina and Shevchenko turned feminization to anti-tsarist
ends in poetry about Poland and Ukraine, but nobody made
a similar effort in writing about the Caucasus. 29
There was, all the same, significant torment in Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's contradictory metaphorical scenarios of raping
and debauching the Caucasus, or else falling victim to her
coquetry and rejection. At a time when the jihad was raging
in Chechnia and Dagestan, and Georgian noblemen had
recently planned an aborted revolt against Russian power in
their homeland, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky in military exile trans-
lated the pursuit of empire into mutually spiteful sexual
relations. He could not repress war and the abuses of imperial
rule via myths of perpetual Eden, a blissful marriage, support-
ive sisterhood or passive worship of a wild priestess or god-
dess. Full of erotic tensions, his interrelated feminizations of
the Caucasus radiated a self-implicating knowledge of mascu-
line imperialist aggression which would resurface in late Ler-
montov's writing about lands of the Muslim tribes under
attack by Russia.
CHAPTER II
Georgia as an oriental woman
Many suitors paid you court,

You selected a colossus.
Alexander Odoevsky
The Russian urge to feminize the Caucasus found most
remarkable literary expression in the symbolization of Geor-
gia as an oriental woman. This body of writing provides a
fascinating counterpoint to the intensely ambivalent treat-
ment of Circassians, Dagestanis and Chechens in works of
Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov. The three
principal producers of the romantic Caucasus invented
Muslim tribesmen as shadow selves endowed with heroic
machismo, a love of liberty, instinctual authenticity, sim-
plicity and an aura of Homeric song. These literary creations
channeled authorial rebelliousness against the tsarist state
and gave sustenance to a cultural ideal of semi-Asian Russia
as an enviably youthful, ascendant nation rather than a hap-
less laggard seeking identity by tagging after Europe.
But while romantic appropriation of the tribesmen thus
inscribed Russia's superiority complex toward western
enlightenment, Georgia bore the brunt of the coexistent inferi-
ority complex which led Russians to protest how European
they already were. Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Ler-
montov contributed unequally to the invention of Georgia as
an oriental other. Lermontov was by far the most important,
followed by Pushkin, while Bestuzhev-Marlinsky left only the
brief but significant symbolization of the Alazani valley as a
nubile bride-to-be. In each case, however, the three promi-
nent members of the nineteenth-century canon contributed to
192
Georgia as an oriental woman 193
a rigidly dichotomous cultural mythology. Concentrated in
the period from 1820 to 1850, this subdivision of the literary
Caucasus has three striking features. First of all, despite Geor-
gia's long participation in Christendom, authors insisted on
the country's Asian, quasi-Islamic character. The second
peculiarity is the exclusion of native heroes. By stark contrast
to the literary Caucasus' gallery of memorable tribesmen such
as Pushkin's Circassians, Ammalat-Bek, Izmail-Bey, Kaz-
bich, Hadji Murat and Shamil, Georgian male protagonists
are very scarce in Russian works. Moreover, when they do
appear, they are usually denigrated. The third major feature
of literary Georgia throws gender relations into high relief. As
in much European writing about the orient and other exotic
regions of the world, the male producers of these Russian texts
foreground the Georgian woman, the native whose alterity is
at once national and sexual.1
The literature about Georgia is distinguished further by the
systematic advancement of a metaphorical proposition about
the land as a woman who must be protected and dominated
by men stronger than those of her own country. The prop-
osition relies to a great extent upon a dualistic construct of
woman as an intensely good figure (the innocent virgin, the
devoted mother) liable to metamorphose into a fiend (the
murderess, the sorceress, the temptress). This view strongly
implies the necessity of keeping such treacherous creatures
under control, and the issue of authority turns primarily upon
nationality, while taking male supremacy for granted. Thus,
within the context of the orient and in the absence of the
Georgian hero, Russian writers created an erotically charged
cultural mythology about themselves as the powerful and
rational European agents, uniquely capable of both protecting
Georgia and keeping her wickedness in check.
Literature's interplay between sexual and imperial domi-
nation laid bare a central tension in the Russian ideology of
the civilizing mission. Tsarist officials moralized the annex-
ation of Georgia as a measure to defend Christianity and
European cultural values against the barbarism of Islam in
Persia, Turkey and Dagestan. Threatened by imminent
aggression from the Persians, Georgia may well have per-
ished, had it not been incorporated into the tsarist empire
under Alexander I. A heavy price was paid for survival, how-
ever.2 The first two decades following the take-over of eastern
and then western Georgia brought little but strife and turmoil
in relations between the subject people and the new overlords.
From the time when Russian military men started marching
through the Darial Pass, recurrent revolts took place, involv-
ing every class of Georgian society at one time or another.
Corruption was rife among tsarist officials, no respect was
paid to local laws and traditions, native women were raped
by Russian functionaries and soldiers, and in 1820 Cossacks
killed a Georgian archbishop who was making the church a
rallying point for nationalist sentiment. A big gap thus opened
between the annexation's religious rationale and the brutality
of empire-building in action.
Russian literature's orientalization and feminization of
Georgia shed interesting light on this discrepancy. Imperialist
ideology made pious protests of Christian kinship with Geor-
gia even as the land was being thrashed into submission. But
in a hunger for exoticism, Russian men of letters virtually
filtered Christianity out of the imaginative field and asserted
instead the primacy of Islam and savage paganism.3 By rele-
gating Georgia to the orient in this manner, the writers dis-
closed precisely the kinds of convictions about alien "Asians"
which underlay Russia's cruel exercise of power over the
former protectorate.
GEORGIA AS THE ORIENT
A stormy religious and cultural history made Georgia's rel-

egation to the orient particularly problematic. The land had
an ancient Christian culture, whereas Kievan Rus was Chris-
tianized only in 988. Proselytized by Syrians in the third cen-
tury, Georgia adopted Christianity as the state religion
around 330 under King Mirian of Kartli-Iberia. 4 However,
the land subsequently suffered many assaults from Islam. The
Arabs dominated the Caucasus for approximately two hun-
dred years from around 640, and their rule left indelible cul-
tural traces upon Georgia without eradicating Christianity.
In a second major onslaught of militant forces of Islam, Geor-
gia from the mid-sixteenth to mid-eighteenth century became
a fragmented battleground where the Turks and Persians
recurrently fought to expand their spheres of influence.
During this period some Georgian nobles suffered for refusing
to renounce their Christian faith, but for the most part the
princes became at least nominal converts to Islam and ruled
at the discretion of their Muslim overlords. In Tiflis in eastern
Georgia the interaction with Persia was particularly extensive,
and by the mid-seventeenth century a blend of Christian and
Muslim elements came to characterize cultural and political
life there.5 A picturesque admixture of the European and
Asian persisted in the capital city into the early nineteenth
century, when significant numbers of Russians started going
to Georgia.
Despite the cultural heterogeneity, Georgia's Christian
heritage had naturally been accentuated in Russian political
ideology since the time of Catherine II. But in the romantic
era with its mania for visting the East, persons desiring exotic
experience clearly found it much more satisfying to orientalize
Georgia rather than to contemplate its similarity to Orthodox
Russia or its antagonism to Islam. This outlook was exem-
plified by the secondary poet and civil servant Vasily Grigo-
riev who was sent to Tiflis in the late 1820s to gather statistics.
Upon learning of his new assignment he expressed great plea-
sure at the opportunity to leave his dull routine in St. Peters-
burg and fulfill a "cherished desire to travel." 6 But most inter-
estingly, his anticipation about Georgia was couched in terms
appropriate to Persia or any number of other places: "A new
realm of professional activity, a new land has begun opening
before me. The Orient - land of everything wondrous, where
I have already flown so often in imagination, the land which
I shall now see in all the poetic charm of its natural setting
and the moeurs of its inhabitants." To no great surprise, once
he arrived in Georgia, Grigoriev imposed oriental categories
upon realia. The sight of women in colorful skirts dancing on
a flat roof on a starry night in Tiflis struck him as "a scene
straight out of The Thousand and One Nights." Duly inspired,
he then wrote "The Georgian Woman," a verse about an
enticing local maiden who dances with great abandon but is
destined to become the unhappy slave of her husband. 7 Georg-
ia's status as a Christian country obviously made no appeal
to Grigoriev's imagination. It was totally eclipsed by
obsession with the orient as a refuge from Russia's boredom.
Grigoriev's responses typify a Russian tendency to perceive
Georgia as a Muslim rather than age-old Christian culture.
In the literature produced by such visitors, a standard figure
was the beauty in a chadra, the long veil customarily worn in
public by the women of Tiflis.8 This recurrent motif illustrates
how Russian writers spun an atmosphere of exoticism around
Georgia by picking out its most indisputably Islamic features.
Another means of orientalization was to remove the Georgian
woman from her contemporary social context and place her
in the Islamic past or in a harem in another land. The most
famous example is Zarema, the concubine of Khan Girei in
Pushkin's Crimean poem "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai."
Lermontov's short poem "A Georgian Song" (1829) shows a
Georgian love slave kept by a repulsive old Armenian, and
the heroine of Kamensky's harem drama in old Abkhazia
("Kelish-Bey") is a Georgian abducted in childhood by
Lezgin slave traders.
THE VICTIM TURNED MURDERESS
The impulse to tell stories about harems sprang from early

nineteenth-century Russians' morbid interest in the Ottoman
slave trade, an activity through which some Georgian women
were in fact transported to seraglios in Turkey. Kamensky's
"Kelish-Bey" painted this commerce in females in the most
lurid colors and left the suicidal Georgian concubine an
unavenged casualty of oriental bestiality. In Lermontov's "A
Georgian Song" as well, the captive heroine is summarily
eliminated - executed this time by her master when he learns
that she has a lover.
But in addition to such plots about utterly powerless,
abused heroines, Russian literature offered the much more
interesting, dualistic image of the Georgian woman as a victim
with the capacity to kill. Pushkin's Zarema possesses this
double identity. "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai" turns upon
Zarema's jealousy provoked by Girei's infatuation with his
new captive, the Polish Catholic princess Maria. Pushkin's
two heroines call into service a standard opposition between
the Asian libertine and the erotically restrained, more spirit-
ually developed European Christian.9 Dark and sensual, the
Muslim convert Zarema appears as a thriving concubine
determined to preserve her place of preeminence in the serag-
lio. By contrast, the blonde Maria is represented as a virginal
figure who feels nothing but haughty indifference toward Girei
and induces him to allow her to sleep unmolested in a private
chamber with a cross at her bedside.
Although Pushkin builds an opposition between the Geor-
gian libertine and the virginal European, he also stresses the
fact that the fiery queen of the seraglio was a victim of slave
traders. Zarema recalls her childhood in a long monologue
addressed to Maria. She was abducted as a girl, at a time
when her mother had begun instructing her in the Christian
religion. As she herself recognizes, this brief exposure to
Christianity during her childhood constitutes a point of simi-
larity between herself and Maria. Indeed, these two women
turn out to have much in common so that a more general
blurring of cultural boundaries occurs in the poem.10 In cer-
tain ways, confinement in an Asian harem resembles the
restricted life Maria led in her father's household in patriar-
chal Poland. Similarly, the European princess' present situ-
ation as a terrified "innocent virgin," far from home, replays
the events of Zarema's girlhood. The Georgian converges on
Maria as an inculpable Christian victim swept into the world
of the seraglio, albeit at a different time of her life.
But if once a helpless abducted female, Zarema also has
the much more gripping role of the murderess. In a denoue-
ment not actually represented, the Georgian kills Maria (and
then is executed by drowning). After creating intriguing lines
of affinity between the two heroines, "The Fountain of Bakh-
chisarai" in its resolution of plot suggests that a ferocious
jealousy, to the point of murder, is distinctively Asian. In
threatening to kill Maria, Zarema says, "I can wield a knife,
I was born near the Caucasus," meaning in Georgia, adjacent
to the rugged mountain range. Zarema's violent proclivities
are presented as innate and due to her very birth in a non-
European part of the world, wilder than Maria's Catholic
Poland. Maria and Zarema share violent death at the end
of Pushkin's poem, but they clash in an important respect.
Throughout "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai" the European
appears strictly as a figure of passive innocence. She has been
controlled and constrained by her father, her Crimean captors
and Girei, and she is finally eliminated by enraged Zarema,
apparently with no contest. By contrast, the Georgian woman
assumes important functions in Pushkin's poem as both
victim and killer.
Another heroine with a dual role features in Griboedov's
"Georgian Night," a tragedy in verse known in manuscript
to some of the author's contemporaries in the 1820s, but
extant today only as a fragment.11 Rather than creating a
violated maiden, the play presents a devoted mother and
introduces pagan rather than Muslim motifs. But despite
these obvious differences between Griboedov's tragedy and
"The Fountain of Bakhchisarai," both works show the Geor-
gian woman as a victim transfigured into a murderess.
Griboedov's play centers on the conflict between a Geor-
gian prince (identified only by the initial "K.") and a servant
("T.") who was his wet nurse and then his daughter's nanny.
In order to ransom a favorite horse rustled by a neighbor, the
prince sells one of his serfs, T.'s adolescent son. The woman
pleads with him to bring back her son. The prince calls her
a "Fury" and begrudgingly promises to ransom the serf but
then fails to keep his word. Oblivious to the power of maternal
bonds, he forgets his own filial relation to T. and feels no real
concern with the woman's love for her son. In the denouement
of the play, now lost, the all-nurturing mother turns hellhag
to take revenge with the aid of the ali, malicious female spirits
of Georgian paganism. Bewitched by the ali, the prince's
daughter falls in love with a Russian officer and runs away
with him. The outraged prince tracks the lovers to a mountain
summit and tries to shoot the Russian, but the evil spirits
have the daughter killed instead. T. then shoots her own son
(whose presence in the scene is not explained in the available
material). Fatally stunned by this irrational act, the prince
finally comprehends how horribly he himself violated the
sacred tie between parent and child. Thus in Griboedov's play
the Georgian heroine's vindictiveness is so extreme that she
destroys her child, killing what she loves most in the world
in order to drive the prince to death.
Just as "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai" grounds Zarema's
aggression in her national origins, "Georgian Night" also
insinuates that T.'s crazed thirst for vengeance springs from
something quintessentially Asian. With typical disregard for
Georgia's status as a Christian land, Griboedov gravitates
toward the exoticism of local pagan belief. The victimized
mother T. might have been a pious Christian, taking conso-
lation in prayer. Instead, she emerges as a heathen priestess
who casts wicked spells and grossly offends the envisioned
audience's standards of civilized behavior.
In localizing Asian danger and ferocity specifically in
women, Griboedov's tragedy broaches the legend of Medea.
"Colchis" was an ancient name of a western part of Georgia,
and eighteenth-century Russian poetry had exhibited a fasci-
nation with this fabled domain of Medea, Jason and the
Golden Fleece.12 In continuity with this traditional interest,
Griboedov endows T. with the awesome vengefulness of Greek
mythology's most famous Asian sorceress and murderess of
children. Like Medea, the heroine of "Georgian Night" is
conversant with black magic and murders her offspring in
order to devastate a man by whom she feels brutally betrayed.
Of course, the parallel with the story of Medea and Jason is
far from perfect because Griboedov's T. stands in maternal
relation to the prince, instead of being his wife. Quite interest-
ingly though, in "Georgian Night" the absence of the erotic
in the history of the relations between the two main protagonists
finds some compensation in the ali. In Georgian demonology,
these spirits of the wilderness were generally conceived as
beautiful females, crafty and cruel. According to one major
tradition, they appeared naked before men to lure them to
doom and reported their conquests to a hideously ugly, long-
fanged Mother of Vice at an annual bacchanalia on a moun-
tain peak.13 By provoking the old "Fury" T. to forge an
alliance with the treacherously gorgeous ali, Griboedov's
Georgian prince is undone by a full battalion of female Asian
sorcery, just as Jason in the course of his lifetime had to con-
tend with the dangerous magic of Medea in all her guises,
young and middle-aged.
LERMONTOV AND GEORGIA'S PASTORAL ALLURE
Of all the Russian writers who wrote about Georgia, Gribo-

edov was probably most knowledgeable about the culture and
history of the country, and he forged especially close personal
ties with it by marrying a Georgian woman, Nina Chavcha-
vadze. However, it was Lermontov who left the greatest
number of enduring literary works about this territory, which
he visited in 1837. His corpus of writings stands in continuity
with Pushkin and Griboedov by sustaining the Georgian
woman's dualism. However, Lermontov placed a new accent
on the native maiden's attractive purity and the interrelated
pristine beauty of her homeland.
Both of Lermontov's most famous Georgian heroines are
named "Tamara," and one incarnates her country's pastoral
allure, while the other personifies Asian danger. The latter
character is the beautiful sorceress-queen depicted in the
twelve-stanza poem "Tamara" (1841). She lives in a tower
by Darial and exemplifies the site's dreadfulness. "Treacher-
ous and mean as a demon," Tamara is a siren who lures
men with her sweet voice, seduces them and then has them
murdered. Lermontov presents this combination of
debauchery and violence as a definitively oriental blend.
Tamara is a "peri" with chambers like a seraglio, guarded by a
eunuch and furnished with a "downy soft bed" and luxurious
fabrics. Very much like Pushkin's Cleopatra, who in the frag-
ment "Egyptian Nights" allows a man to sleep with her at
the price of his life, Lermontov's Tamara holds noisy orgies
at night and has the decapitated bodies of her lovers thrown
into the Terek in the morning. With her total dedication to
fornication and killing, the ravishing Georgian queen of Ler-
montov's imagination transmitted a typically Eurocentric
nightmare of Asian licentiousness and violence.
No simple fabrication on the part of a foreigner, Lermon-
tov's "Tamara" tapped a vein of Georgian legend. During its
most glorious era in the twelfth century, Georgia was ruled
by Queen Tamar, and two diametrically opposed bodies of
lore came to be associated with her name. The stronger tra-
dition, belonging to a pagan cult which survived into the nine-
teenth century, took Tamar as a miraculous healer, the
queen-physician, onto whom attributes of the Christian
Virgin were sometimes projected.14 However, "Tamar" also
was one of the names featured in traditional stories about
a sexually depraved, man-killing sorceress who lived by the
Terek.15 The recit de voyage of the French consul in Tiflis,
Jacques-Frangois Gamba, had definitely acquainted Lermon-
tov with such a story in which the woman was called "Daria."
Perhaps the poet even knew the tradition naming the wicked
temptress "Tamar." 16
However versed in Georgian legend, Lermontov displayed
a personal conviction about woman's treacherous dualism by
inventing a second Tamara, the fallen virgin of "The
Demon." This Tamara cuts the figure of the good alter ego of
the wicked temptress who lurks at the Darial Pass. Again, the
poet probably took some inspiration from Georgian lore.17
However, none of the relevant material, concerning the love
of a mountain god for a beautiful mortal, anticipated Lermon-
tov's story about the erotic conquest of a helpless maiden.
While charged with tragic import as a mighty rebel from
God, the Demon indubitably behaves as an incubus bent on
sexual possession.18 Lermontov's supernatural hero is a daunt-
ing winged figure who can view the whole world as he cruises
the skies.19 He activates the plot, haunts Tamara's bedroom
at will and displays a dazzling eloquence when he openly
confronts her. On the other hand, the heroine is dominated
in a patriarchal world - a "sad slave" whose father intends
to marry her to a rich man. In a process of silencing, Lermon-
tov largely deprives Tamara of a voice in the seduction scene.
Her Christian defenses are steadily eroded by the Demon's
bewitchment until she is reduced to quivering vulnerability,
ready to be ravished. Lermontov euphemistically attributes
Tamara's death to the "fatal poison" of the Demon's kiss.
But an incubus' more ambitious erotic designs are etched in
a rhetoric of phallic assault: "Alas! the evil spirit tri-
umphed!" in action "irresistible as a knife."
Tamara's sexual awakening tarnishes her, but she never
completely loses her aura of moral purity. Even before the
seduction scene, she becomes a "sinner" by hearing the
Demon's voice and experiencing erotic desire. Likewise, Ler-
montov twice attributes a "sinner's soul" to the dead woman.
This introduces a shade of moral dissolution; and yet in the
end, a guardian angel triumphs over the Demon and flies
away with Tamara's soul, absolved of sin and accepted in the
realm of the blessed. The emissary from God asserts that the
heroine was not evil: she loved, he says, and "Heaven has
opened for love!"
Lermontov correlates Tamara's dominant quality of good-
ness to her homeland's compelling beauty. Beginning with
Griboedov's verse celebrating the Alazani valley with its "gift
of purple grapes," Russian lyric poets represented Georgia as
a warm, fruitful country and often associated it with sensuous
local maids.20 In a culmination of this pastoral tradition, the
Georgian maidens of Lermontov's "The Demon" and "Mtsy-
ri" became emblems of their land in lines of verse memorized
by generations of Russian readers.21 The Earth is "God's
world" in "The Demon," and Tamara is its crowning glory.
She is conjoined with grassy valleys', sparkling brooks, flowers,
ivy and almond trees. The union between the land and the
woman is emphasized by the exclusion of male characters
from the poem's Arcadian spaces. Similarly, in "Mtsyri" a
young Georgian woman "svelte as a poplar" is observed alone
in a lush landscape, as though she is the most definitive
human inhabitant of the place. This latter text takes a step
toward gendering the land through a reference to the Aragva
and Kura rivers as "two sisters."22 If not so emphatic as
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's symbol of the Alazani river as a bride-
to-be, this detail none the less illustrates how the pristine
Georgian countryside tends to assumes a feminine character
by mirroring local maidens in Lermontov's poetry.
The pastoral urge to invent Georgia as an erotically entic-
ing female was exemplified most elaborately in one of the
era's least artful pieces of literature, Alexander Shishkov's
Ketevana.23 This unfinished novel deals with events in Ka-
khetia in 1812 when local peasants spontaneously revolted
against the imperial regime and annihilated some detach-
ments of tsarist soldiers. In conformity with the general norm
of literature about Georgia, Shishkov focuses upon a native
maiden, the gorgeous and clever Ketevana, who falls in love
at first sight with the hero Lonskoy, a Russian military man
of unblemished honor. The foils to these two major protago-
nists are upper-class Georgian men - an assortment of emas-
culated fools and contemptible conspirators, intent upon man-
ipulating the hot-headed peasantry for their own selfish ends
and conjoined to Persia in their resistance to Russian rule.
In an autobiographical digression in the novel Shishkov
recalled his first trip to Georgia. When he saw the sunny,
verdant country for the first time, the place assumed in his
eyes the delightful form of a "beautiful woman, lying luxuri-
antly on a multicolored carpet, her head resting on the snowy
Caucasus as on a white pillow, while the fragrant roses of
Gilan bloom at her feet!"24 Used in Russian travel literature
as well, this metaphor endows the land with gender as an
amply contoured odalisque, reclining before the admiring eye
of the foreign male observer.25 Shishkov's hero Lonskoy like-
wise perceives Georgia in an enticing womanly guise: upon
his arrival, after an arduous journey on horseback over the
mountains, he finds the salubrious air "sweet as the kiss of a
bride-to-be for her fiance, home from a campaign" (432).
These rhetorical figures of a passive odalisque and a passionate
fiancee are paralleled in the plot by the bosomy, sultry
Ketevana (and to a lesser extent, by a secondary Georgian
character, Nina, a more subdued lovely woman who is mar-
ried to a decrepit local prince). Ketevana is fiercely attracted
to Lonskoy as a man from a more refined, advanced civili-
zation, and she refuses to wed the Georgian suitor her father
has selected for her. However, "Asian" excesses put the cool-
headed Russian hero on guard: the heroine's "black eyes were
too fiery: a flame burned in them but did not warm the heart"
(445)-
Shishkov's novel clearly constructs an elaborate pattern of
meaning about Georgia as a smoldering oriental woman,
unpossessed by local men and voluptuously languishing. In
various incarnations (Ketevana, Nina, the country itself) the
feminine entity waits to be taken by Russia, represented
exclusively as male (Lonskoy, the author as traveler, and the
apparatus of tsarist functionaries, including a man who
abducts Nina). The metaphor of erotic promise functions as
an invitation to exert imperial domination over the territory:
in this novel about revolt from the tsarist administration the
sexual dynamics are harnessed to a belief in Russia's right to
subjugate all elements of the Georgian population, from the
deposed royal family to the mutinous peasantry. At the same
time, Shishkov's rhetoric about the country as a generously
endowed, unravished beauty points to the economic goals of
Russian imperialism in the "virgin" Caucasus.
THE ABSENT GEORGIAN BRIDEGROOM
With its depiction of a heroine who rejects a local man in

favor of a tsarist officer, Ketevana is but one illustration of
Russian literature's tendency to make the Georgian male
strictly a non-contender in the erotic realm. Men from Russia
score the greatest success with Georgian women ("Georgian
Night," Lermontov's "Rendez-vous," 1841), although an
occasional Armenian (Kamensky's "Maiko") or even a "Ta-
tar" rival is allowed into the picture ("Rendez-vous").26Some-
times the Russian male writer presumed to create the voice
of the foreign female, pining for a lover of his nationality. 27
This rhetorical move is particularly striking, for example, in
Yakov Polonsky's "Nina Griboedova," a poem which fashions
the young Georgian widow into a veritable icon of undying
fidelity to the memory of her Russian husband. With respect
to the exercise of erotic power, "The Demon," of course, has
a special stature, since it deals with a hero not of this world.
But it is highly relevant that Lermontov did not discourage
his contemporaries from taking the mighty "spirit of evil" as
his alter ego.28 In Russian literature, no Georgian man ever
wins a woman's heart, and Lermontov's poem conforms to
the rule with its forceful hero who ravishes Tamara, after
easily defeating her fiance in a duel on a cliff.
The pattern of cross-cultural erotic alliance reached its
apotheosis in Alexander Odoevsky's "The Marriage of Geor-
gia and the Russian Kingdom" (quoted in this chapter's
epigraph). The allegory personifies Georgia as a fiery dark
"maiden," while Russia is a bold, light brown-haired giant
who guides the axis of the world with an iron hand. Afire
with passion for her bridegroom, the woman has refused all
"other suitors." By referring to defeated rivals who failed to
win Georgia, Odoevsky no doubt alluded primarily, if not
exclusively, to Persia and Turkey. However, this poem's
bridegroom clearly has bettered the woman's local suitors, in
addition to the two Muslim contenders. The allegory does not
depict Georgia's male population, but the implicit lack of a
good match at home lies behind the feminized territory's sur-
render to the Russian colossus.
The absent Georgian bridegroom is the most telling index
of the generally wretched status which men of the native realm
are allotted in Russian literature. Not a single work by a
Russian writer has a Georgian hero, although Caucasian
Muslim tribesmen won this honor, as witnessed most saliently
by Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's "Ammalat-Bek," Lermontov's
"Izmail-Bey" and Tolstoy's Hadji Murat. Instead of central,
heroic roles for native men, the general norm in writing about
Georgia is the unappealing bit part. The drunkard, the rash
fool, the coward, the evil bandit, the incarnation of impo-
tence - these are the major roles in which the Georgian man
briefly struts across the stage.
Russians' standard idea of Georgia as a place full of vine-
yards naturally produced many heavy drinkers in the litera-
ture. Lermontov's catalogue of orientals in the poem "An
Argument," typifies the Georgian man as an imbiber of sweet
wine, indolently sprawled under a shady tree. A jollier
enthusiasm for the grape as part of the good, easy life is attri-
buted to the upper classes in Polonsky's verse "To a Kakhe-
tian." In a more sensational key, Kamensky's "Maiko" pre-
sents a picnic near Gori as the occasion for "one of those
Georgian drinking bouts, next to which all the orgies of the
ancient and modern worlds seem child's play."29 Likewise, in
another piece of pulp, entitled "A Feast in the Caucasus,"
local Georgian men run to "Asian" excesses and become
wildly drunk at a picnic, while the visiting Russian narrator
styles himself a "European" who takes part in the festivities
with relative restraint.30
Along with the drunkard, Lermontov also shaped images
of the Georgian as a rash, timorous, thievish or impotent man.
Tamara's fiance in "The Demon" represents the first type.
When the Demon starts blinking his unearthly lights at night
on a dangerous stretch of the mountain road, the imprudent
fiance charges with his sword and is lured over a precipice to
his death. In this dramatic scene Lermontov calls the fiance's
entourage a band of "timid Georgians," scurrying away in
terror. To turn from cowardice to thievery, a few lines in "The
Demon" scornfully characterize one of Tamara's paternal
ancestors as a robber of travelers and pillager of villages - an
"evil man," in short, who in his old age had a chapel con-
structed high in the mountains as an act of repentance.
Finally, in Tamara's gray-haired father Gudal we have a
figure of impotence who fails to protect his daughter from
sexual aggression and death.
Although Gudal receives little attention in "The Demon,"
his ineffectuality at protecting the virgin makes him a literary
cousin of the Georgian man as presented in "The Imeretian,"
a frank apology for imperialism written by Polonsky during
his service in the governor general's office in Tiflis. The poem
unfolds as a Georgian's expression of gratitude for the benefits
of Russian domination over his homeland. Before a "people
of the same faith" came to the rescue, Georgia was at war
constantly but ineffectually. After reviewing this history of
increasing desolation, the Georgian speaker condemns himself
for failing to safeguard his country's beautiful women from
the degradation of the Ottoman slave trade. In this charac-
terization, the Imeretian men suffer from an impotence which
is at once political, military and erotic, all summed up in the
loss of local women to barbarous Muslims. By contrast, the
mighty Russian saviors are credited not only with halting the
shameful traffic in love slaves but also with initiating Geor-
gia's economic development.31
INVENTIONS IN THE SERVICE OF EMPIRE
As in all cases of cultural myth-making, Russian literature

about Georgia involved interesting repressions and distor-
tions. Why the adamant refusal to grant heroic attributes to
Georgian men? It is as though the early nineteenth-century
Russian writers identified Georgian manhood exclusively with
the last king of Kartli-Kakheti, Giorgi XII (d. 1800), who
did indeed cut an impotent figure. He was an overweight
gourmand of long standing, known for eating and drinking
instead of military exploits; and in the end he was bed-ridden,
dying of gout and begging the tsar to protect his country. But
no matter how large this ailing monarch might have loomed
in Russian minds, what makes literature's exclusion of the
heroic Georgian male especially striking is that history pre-
sented so many other possibilities to the imagination. For
instance, Russian writers might have drawn inspiration from
Georgia's chivalric tradition of the Middle Ages, exemplified
by Shota Rustaveli's The Man in the Panther Skin (and indeed
Russians were struck by such material, but they transferred
it onto Caucasian tribal heroes, like Ammalat-Bek). 32
Aside from such fabulous feats as wrestling with wild
beasts and donning their pelts, contemporary reality provided
abundant evidence of Georgian courage and military prowess.
After the annexation, many men of this nation served as offi-
cers in the tsarist army. They participated in the Napoleonic
wars and fought alongside Russians in combat against
Turkey, Persia and the Caucasian Muslim tribes. Finally,
without broaching warfare, the literature might at the very
least have reflected the wide range of mutually rewarding
professional and personal relationships which developed
between Russian and Georgian men beginning in the late
1820s. Along with the contacts made in the army or the
imperial administration, the homes of Prince Grigol Orbeliani
and Griboedov's father-in-law Prince Alexander Chavcha-
vadze left many a Russian sojourner in Georgia with memor-
ies of warm hospitality and evenings of stimulating talk, often
focused on literature. 33 Yet with the small exception of the
Russified Pavel Tsitsianov, cited as an effective military com-
mander in the epilogue of Pushkin's "The Prisoner of the
Caucasus," none of this varied experience - on the battlefield,
in the office and in the salon - yielded any positive images of
Georgians in Russian literature.
The consistent denial of power, courage, vigor, intellectual
gifts and erotic appeal to Georgian men required active
repression on the part of Russian writers, a fact that did not
go entirely unobserved in the nineteenth century. In response
to the dismissive characterization of the fiance's entourage in
"The Demon," a relative of Lermontov protested that the
poet's service as an officer in the Caucasian army had undeni-
ably shown him that "Georgians are not timid." 34 So why,
asked the memoirist, did Lermontov cast them in this mold?
The question could be extended to the pervasive disparage-
ment of Georgian men in Russian literature; and the answer
seems to be that depreciating Georgian manhood afforded
Russian males a gratifying self-image as members of the vast,
empire-building nation which they thought destined to
assume "European" suzerainty over a somnolent little terri-
tory in Asia. Although in various writings Lermontov
expressed profound doubt about the rectitude of Russia's war
against the rebellious Muslim mountaineers, in the introduc-
tory section of "Mtsyri" he called tsarist domination of Geor-
gia a providential occurrence - an act of "divine grace" which
allowed the small country to prosper in peace, behind a "bar-
rier of its friend's bayonets."
While romantic Russian writings about the Muslim tribes
included plenty of oriental love slaves, literary Georgia inter-
laced sexual and national subjugation in a peculiar fashion.
In the treatment of the Georgian male, Russian literature
underwrote the imperialist designs of the tsarist state by
inventing a quintessentially impotent Asian other (whose his-
torical prototype was Giorgi XII). Authors sometimes impli-
cated Georgian men in wild behavior (drunken carousing,
contemptible banditry, connivance with the barbarous
Persians), but enervation was the primary sign of their mem-
bership in a primitive, stagnant orient of the imagination. The
Georgian never figured in the literature as a valiant comrade
in arms of Russians, combatting forces of Islam for the sake
of Christian civilization. He seemed to have a permanent
hangover, and this definitive lack of energy conspicuously
entailed sexual impotence (by stark contrast to erotically
strenuous Muslim tribesmen such as Ammalat-Bek and
Izmail-Bey).
Although the invention of the impotent native male served
a crucial role in the cultural mythology, the quest for a
satisfying European identity vis-a-vis Georgia relied primarily
upon the topos of the land as a double-sided oriental woman.
In the corpus of writings created exclusively by male Russian
authors, the alterity of the Caucasian country was rendered
mainly as sexual difference. Women held center stage as the
major representatives and the incarnations of Georgia; tales
of love abounded in which they succumbed to passion for
Russian men (or else that relentlessly forceful and therefore
"non-Asian" seducer, the Demon); and happy marital union
became the ruling metaphor for imperial domination. This
mythology of elective erotic affinities repressed all of history's
conflicts and found a vital point of historical reference in Gri-
boedov's marriage to Nina Chavchavadze.
However, no doubt precisely because they knew that the
annexation entailed strife and aggression, Russian writers
needed to invent Georgia not merely as an enticing, passive
21 o Russian literature and empire
creature but also as a violent woman who could provide justi-
fication for the brutalities of empire-building. For this role
too history supplied a prototype, the deposed and humiliated
Georgian queen Miriam who killed the tsarist general I. P.
Lazarev with a dagger when he came to her quarters with
orders to deport her in 1803.35 Almost entirely repressed by
Russian writers, the death-dealing queen nevertheless had her
revenge: she haunted the literary imagination to produce mur-
derous daughters (Pushkin's Zarema, Griboedov's surrogate
Medea and Lermontov's hellish Tamara). 36 But the plot of a
Georgian woman's hostility to a Russian man was strictly
taboo in literature. To the contrary, writers insisted on cross-
cultural erotic alliance and thus could have Georgia both
ways — loving Russia but needing to be tamed.
The psychosexual dynamics of Russia's embattled protec-
toral relations with Georgia evidently did much to foster this
imperial mythology's relentless Eurocentrism. During an era
when the French in particular repeatedly berated them as a
nation of barbarians, Russian writers used the literary Cau-
casus to resolve a complex cultural anxiety about being insuf-
ficiently European. But while little orientalizers like Kamen-
sky consistently assumed a Eurocentric posture toward all the
Caucasian peoples, Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Ler-
montov inscribed Russia's entire gamut of mixed feelings
about difference from the West. They achieved a gratifying
reconciliation between the Russian self and the orient by
fashioning macho Muslim heroes as their Asians of choice.
Georgia, on the other hand, was thoroughly marginalized and
excluded from this strategy of compensation for Russia's
undeniable distance from Europe. To all appearances, the
psychology of sexual domination assumed an enormous role
in Russian literary imagination. Giorgi XII acquired mythic
stature as the impotent king, in a real sense outmanned by
the equally unforgettable Miriam, the queen who wielded a
phallic weapon to strike a blow for her nation's honor. Con-
tempt for the helpless Georgian man and a will to break the
resistance of the potentially dangerous Georgian woman per-
vaded this subdivision of the literary Caucasus. Set outside
the privileged circle of a manly, tribal Asia packed with auth-
orial surrogates, Georgia was emasculated and feminized as
the orient which declared Russian empire-builders equal to
the British in India.
CHAPTER 12
The anguished poet in uniform
Two hours in the flowing water

The battle raged. In vicious slaughter,
Not speaking, face-to-face like beasts,
Men killed, and bodies dammed the river.
Lermontov
Unlike his writings inspired by Georgia, late Lermontov's

works dealing with the Muslim tribes conveyed a suspicion
that the conquest was a spiritually losing proposition for
Russia. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's vision of the "angel of death"
in Eden hinted as much about the war. It was Lermontov,
however, who most memorably illuminated the Caucasus'
contradictory character as a redemptive space and a killing
field. The autobiographical foundation was compelling.
During his relatively brief exile in 1837 Lermontov did not
see action. But after a duel with the son of the French
ambassador in St. Petersburg in 1840, he was sent to a peril-
ous area of the front by express orders from Nicholas I.1 A
commissioned officer, the poet participated in combat and
twice won recommendations for awards for bravery, which
the government refused to approve, however, so that he could
not demand a discharge for distinguished service. During his
first exile Lermontov had decided to request retirement from
the army in order to devote himself exclusively to writing.
The wish to remain a civilian poet was already symptomatic
of tensions inscribed in late works.
Lermontov's letters often struck notes of heroic adventure in
the Caucasus. On the eve of his first exile, for example, the
writer mused about his prospects with a self-mocking reference
212
The anguished poet in uniform 213
to Napoleon's claim: "Les grands noms se font a 1'Orient."2
While heavily ironic, the comment none the less indicated the
author's real interest in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign as an
imperial venture with avowed scientific, as well as military
objectives.3 The preeminent empire-builder of modern times,
Napoleon would remain in Lermontov's eyes an unforgettable
incarnation of the self-willed individual ascendant over the
common herd (as seen in the poem "The Last Housewarming,"
1841). War's enhancement as courageous action was a vital
part of Napoleon's aura. To judge by the letter Lermontov
wrote to Aleksei Lopukhin two months after a gory battle at the
Valerik river in Chechnia in July 1840, he was by no means
immune to this martial contagion: he claimed that he had
"developed a taste for war" as an addictive form of gambling
next to which society's pleasures seemed sham.4
However, despite the Napoleon connection and the avowed
relish for war as a deadly game of chance, both A Hero of Our
Time and "Valerik" disclosed Lermontov's anguish about com-
mitting aggression against the Caucasus, while valuing it as a
redemptive, Parnassian retreat. For all his heroic posturing,
Lermontov never renounced his view of Russia as a brutal
"Roman" state bent on subjugating a primitive world of har-
monious relation to nature ("Izmail-Bey"). Quite strikingly,
his empathy with the orphaned tribal hero of the late poem
"Mtsyri" sustained his early fixation on expansionist Russia's
destruction of families and entire communities in the Caucasus.
Lermontov had imagined war in "Izmail-Bey" and other tales
of adolescence, but during military service the carnage of battle,
the "punitive" ruination of crop lands and destruction of live-
stock became stark realities of the conquest in which he was
taking part. He consequently had to contend with his culpa-
bility as a member of the rapacious imperial army in the Edenic
Caucasus.
GOING " N A T I V E "
Lermontov's confused identity as a campaigner in the orient

reverberates in Pechorin in A Hero of Our Time. As critics have
repeatedly observed, the relationship between the author and
his hero is particularly complex.5 Through the novel's multi-
voiced narration, the disruption of chronology and the
accumulation of a variety of incidents, Pechorin acquires an
enigmatic, contradictory character. He is indubitably
endowed with some of the author's own attitudes, beliefs and
ideas about Asia and wilderness alike. However, Pechorin
remains something of the Byronic poseur without ever fully
recognizing this about himself. Lermontov stands furthest
from him in that regard and manipulates him to parodic ends.
In regard to Asian culture, the author and hero are tightly
bonded by a preoccupation with kismet. As noted earlier,
Lermontov near the end of his life averred to Andrei Kraevsky
that Russia should draw upon the East's "cache of riches"
instead of continually "trying to match Europe and the
French." Pechorin's meditations on personal destiny reflect
the author's own engagement with Islam's philosophical treas-
ures.6 This theme reaches a culmination in the novel's con-
cluding episode, "The Fatalist," a tale set in a Cossack stanitsa
along the Terek where Pechorin goes for two weeks on a mis-
sion. Is fate stamped on one's forehead and the hour of death
foreordained, as the the idea of "Mohameddan predesti-
nation" maintains? Or do free will and the power of reason
play a decisive role in controlling the course of one's life?
Pechorin repeatedly changes his mind about this philosophi-
cal matter. As far as the action of the novel is concerned, the
scale tips in favor of free will, malevolent as it may be. Pecho-
rin's scheming behavior proclaims his confidence in being
master of his destiny, and some of his references to "fate"
simply shield him from facing his own responsibility for
demolishing people.7 Pechorin shows no awareness of self-
deception on this matter, however, and Lermontov leaves the
thorny issue of determinism unresolved.
Although Lermontov may have been groping toward a new
formulation about Russia's distinctive third path somewhere
between eastern and western cultures, A Hero of Our Time
achieves no positive synthesis. To the contrary, Pechorin pre-
cipitates violent strife in Chechnia (and Russian society too,
as represented at Piatigorsk in the episode "Princess Mary").
In arranging the abduction of the Circassian Bela in the nov-
el's opening story, Pechorin brings ruin to all the principal
tribal protagonists.8 Bela is hopelessly degraded by the stan-
dards of her native culture and finally murdered by Kazbich
as revenge for the horse Pechorin stole to use as the illicit
brideprice. The heroine's family falls apart when her brother
delivers her to Pechorin and absconds with the prized horse.
Her father is then killed by Kazbich, inconsolable over the
loss of his splendid steed. While never perceived by Pechorin
as an analogue of imperialist conquest, his careless destruc-
tiveness parallels the tsarist state's onslaught against the
tribes. His lethal domination of Bela in particular certainly
seems to predicate a Eurocentric view of the Caucasus as an
inferior realm destined to come under Russian rule.9
But while the story has political undercurrents, the degree
of Lermontov's complicity in Pechorin's behavior is devilishly
hard to define. The master of "wicked irony," the author
maintains throughout the novel varying degrees of distance
from his protagonists.10 Commentators have shed much light
on Lermontov's ironic stances in various parts of A Hero of
Our Time, but "Bela" has a special parodic thrust all its own.
The work extensively reproduces a genre of violent oriental
tale often featured in the Library for Reading at the time. First
issued separately in 1839, "Bela" mounts an attack against
one particular case, the semi-anonymous "The Bedouin
Woman" published the previous year.11 A tale of a cross-
cultural love affair during the French conquest of Algeria,
"The Bedouin Woman" hypocritical offers readers the vicari-
ous pleasure of illicit sex in wild Asia. Concubinage with
native women is rampant in this story's Foreign Legion, and
soldiers are prone to gang rape during their raids on Bedouin
villages. However, the high-minded German hero (Franz)
preserves the heroine (Ambra) from such a fate, hides her in
his tent, moralistically declines her invitations to sex and tries
to marry her after military authorities have forced her to go
home to her father, a powerful sheik. After constructing the
Bedouin woman as an erotically unbridled, self-styled "slave"
of love, the author reports her brutal death on the story's last
page: following Franz's death in combat, a comrade reads his
diary, to learn that the sheik and his sons knifed Ambra to
punish her for loving a giaour.
As these remarks make evident, "The Bedouin Woman"
offered a two-sided pleasure to the historical audience, newly
aware of the Caucasus as "Russia's Algeria." On the one
hand, consumers of this oriental tale could relish illicit sex
and violence by running with the dissolute pack of secondary
male characters (including the French commander-in-chief).
But at the same time, the reader could recover moral high
ground by identifying with atypical Franz - the protective,
virtuous hero with marriage on his mind.
"Bela" parodically reproduces much of the oriental genre's
discourse, only to deny readers a hero who towers as a pillar
of European refinement in barbarous Asia. Although a sensi-
tive man with an exceptional mind, Pechorin is depicted as a
degenerate who goes "native" in the orient. Given the vicious-
ness of intrigues at the Russian spa in Piatigorsk, A Hero of Our
Time extensively blurs boundaries between "civilized" and
"uncivilized" behavior at the societal level.12 But Pechorin,
of course, is the primary case of the Russian who acts like a
Caucasian bandit. He no doubt transmits some of Lermon-
tov's own emulation of oriental machismo. However, when
viewed alongside pulp like "The Bedouin Woman" and the
literary Caucasus' related tradition of cross-cultural love sto-
ries, "Bela" reads as a parody of plots about chivalrous Chris-
tian soldiers intent on delivering Muslim women from barbar-
ism. Like literature's little orientalizers, Russian journalists
too asserted the religious commitment of tsarist campaigners
in the Caucasus.13 "Bela" thoroughly travesties this sancti-
monious fiction of gallant Orthodox designs on the Muslim
beauty. In fact, the tale turns the Eurocentric cultural my-
thology completely on its head: with no aspiration to induct
the tribeswoman into Christian civilization via marriage,
Pechorin yields to predatory urges which engineer her
extermination.
Lermontov never expressed a concept of layered person-
ality, comparable to Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's notion of the
"genteel coat" of civilization covering the wild beast within.
Nevertheless, a pattern of degeneration into savagery is etched
in A Hero of Our Time in the chronological rather than narra-
tive sequence of Pechorin's adventures with women. The
novel covers a period of approximately seven years in episodes
arranged in the following order: "Bela," "Maksim Maksi-
mych," "Taman," "Princess Mary" and "The Fatalist." But
the flashback structure forces the reader to unscramble the
thread of events to arrive at a conventionally ordered biog-
raphy of Pechorin, who has already died returning from a
trip to Persia when the novel starts. "Taman" begins the
chronological sequence and is followed around two years later
by "Princess Mary." Next come "The Fatalist" and "Bela"
within a few months of one another (although it is debatable
which of the two occurs first).14 The chronological conclusion
is "Maksim Maksimych" when Pechorin is encountered
briefly on his way to Persia, a few years after the events of
"Bela."
The three episodes featuring women chart a spatial pro-
gression which is at once the evolution of Pechorin's psycho-
sexual character as he goes deeper into the Caucasus. In
"Taman" on the Black Sea he is a greenhorn outwitted and
fleeced by a ring of smugglers, including a young woman who
nearly drowns him. Two years later (perhaps after experienc-
ing combat), he operates with cynical self-assurance among
the French-speaking Russians of the spa in "Princess
Mary." 15 Now a daunting intriguer, he teases the proud young
princess into falling in love with him, ruins her reputation,
provokes a duel with her rejected admirer Grushnitsky and
kills him. Finally, in the wilds of Chechnia, Pechorin assumes
the guise of a local bandit. The furthest reaches of Asia
depicted in the novel, Chechnia is a world where violence and
commerce in women are the norms, and Pechorin conforms
to them just as readily as he wears tribal garb, learns to ride
like a dzhigit and drops the French so inappropriate to the
frontier milieu.
By readily adhering to savage standards, Pechorin degener-
ates to release the "Asia" within him, that realm of depravity
which Belinsky's essay on Polezhaev would proclaim a mon-
strous part of everybody. The violent denouement of "Bela"
most overtly underscores the hero's interchangeability with
an oriental. As recollected by Maksim Maksimych, the sight
of Kazbich galloping away with Bela thrown across his saddle
provoked Pechorin to let out a "yell no worse than any
Chechen's." 16 During the story Maksim Maksimych voices
unambiguous convictions about the tribes' cultural inferiority;
and if we could press him on the point, we could well imagine
his saying that he never meant to equate Pechorin to a
Chechen. But the unsophisticated old campaigner is not Ler-
montov. Totally ignorant of the Byronic literature in which
Pechorin is steeped, Maksim Maksimych is an obviously
limited interpreter of his demonical young comrade from St.
Petersburg. The comparison with a Chechen might be a slip
of the tongue which he would like to qualify. It is unlikely,
however, that Lermontov's pen slipped. The novel's pattern
of degeneration makes Pechorin converge on Caucasian sav-
agery in a far-reaching manner, and the phrase "no worse
than any Chechen" is but a pithy summation of the whole
experience of going "native."
Pechorin's degeneracy torpedoed the fiction of oriental oth-
erness at the heart of tsarist ideology about the Caucasus.
Although possibly sensed earlier, the demolition was openly
remarked in Russia only in the 1850s. Soon after the publi-
cation of Lermontov's novel, confirmed believers in the civiliz-
ing mission closed their eyes to Pechorin's simulation of orien-
tal banditry. As remarked earlier in connection with
"Izmail-Bey," Belinsky found much to deplore in Pechorin
but never questioned his cultural superiority over the tribes-
men or Bela - that wild "daughter of the canyons," just too
limited for a St. Petersburg aristocrat with a solid education.
However, as we have seen, Belinsky's essay on Polezhaev
expressed an acute anxiety about "European" man's back-
sliding into "Asia." It appears telling that Belinsky penned
this assessment of the orient's corruptive power shortly after
reading A Hero of Our Time: he seems to have registered the
subversive pattern of going "native" in "Bela" but repressed
it with protestations of Pechorin's firmly civilized status.
Without the interesting shade of doubt detectable in Belin-
sky's utterances about "Asia," Stepan Shevyrev expressed
moral outrage at Pechorin but none the less saw in A Hero of
Our Time an irrefutable demonstration that the savage Cau-
casus was "completely different" from "our" world.17 These
men of Lermontov's immediate time denied the dynamic of
going "native," perhaps because the war against the tribes
was far from won, and they had to maintain their faith in its
rectitude. In 1858, however, the critic A. Galakhov would
open a very different perspective. After proclaiming Pecho-
rin's escapades "bestial," Galakhov declared that Lermontov
had made it impossible to distinguish the "civilized bar-
barians" from the "uncivilized" ones.18 As this deft formu-
lation made clear, A Hero of Our Time dismantled the thera-
peutic fiction of oriental alterity (although not so openly as
to frustrate Belinsky's and Shevyrev's wish to keep Pechorin
securely inside enlightenment's camp).
WILDERNESS AS A WOMAN
Pechorin's capacity to play the Chechen wild man in no way

interferes with his romantic cult of the Caucasus' natural
beauty, the second indisputable bond between him and the
author. One of the novel's most remarkable stylistic achieve-
ments, the depiction of scenery has multiple functions. In the
travelogue frame of "Bela," for example, the master narrator's
evocations of nature build suspense by retarding Maksim
Maksimych's story of Pechorin and his Circassian concubine.
On the other hand, the passages of landscape description in
Pechorin's private journal ("Taman" and "Princess Mary")
contribute enormously to his characterization, as we shall see.
But while turned to different uses, the natural setting is con-
sistently rendered in a precise, pictorial language antithetical
to Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's famous, extravagant rhetoric.19
Mature Lermontov's dislike of grandiloquence ran counter
to tendencies of his adolescent verse. As we saw in chapter 8,
the budding poet associated the Caucasus with both rugged
men and his lost mother. In the feminine sphere, nubile
mountain maids nudged aside the maternal presence in two
other lyrics of the same period. A pastoral promise of spiritual
renewal and redemption surrounds the heroine of "The Cir-
cassian Woman53 (1829). Equally enraptured by the "glories
of savage nature" and the local "maiden," the poet likens
love at first sight to the flight of a repentant spirit aroused by
"sounds from paradise" and determined to gaze upon heaven
itself. Here the Circassian beauty appears as the natural
woman who can lead the adoring traveler into the earthly
"paradise" of the pristine wilderness. Lermontov's "Morning
in the Caucasus" (1830) accentuates erotic rather than spirit-
ual appeal. After describing the gradual spread of rosy light
across the mountains at sunrise, the poem ends by comparing
the scene to "girls blushing all over" when they catch sight
of a man watching them bathe in a shady pool.20 An ambigu-
ous figure, the tribal Peeping Tom is described as an attrac-
tive admirer whom the women resist with difficulty. The
voyeurism makes the tribesman the vehicle of the male poet's
own eroticized yearning to derive instinctual gratification
from virgin wilderness.
While disdaining such tropes so reminiscent of nature as
the sun-kissed "beauty" ogled in Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's trav-
elogues, A Hero of Our Time retains significant vestiges of ado-
lescent Lermontov's pastoral associations between the terri-
tory and a mother or maiden. The notion of the land as a
surrogate mistress figures in Pechorin's journal in "Princess
Mary." A coquettish quality is projected onto the cherry trees
which "look into" his open window at Piatigorsk, spread their
perfume around the room and strew blossoms across his desk
as he writes (62). These sensory details suggest the gestures
of a flirtatious belle, coaxing him to come outside. Likewise,
when Pechorin recollects riding to the duel with Grushnitsky,
he says that the beauty of the morning made him feel "in love
with nature more than ever" (120). The verb (liubil) could
arguably be rendered simply as "loved," but the passage
conveys an emotional vibrancy and heightened feeling which
justifies "in love" (as Vladimir Nabokov has it in his
translation). In a third pertinent passage, Pechorin indirectly
eroticizes nature while trying to deny and repress the very
impulse: "There, is no woman's gaze that I would not forget
at the sight of mountains covered with curly vegetation and
illumined by the southern sky, at the sight of the blue sky, or
at the sound of a torrent falling from crag to crag" (81). This
defiant assertion puts untamed nature and erotically compel-
ling women on the same plane. Pechorin imposes a system of
rivalry between them and in so doing, suggests that he seeks
the same sort of instinctual gratification from both. Chrono-
logically anterior to his adventure with Bela, these musings
about wilderness communicate his subsequently expressed
hope that a beautiful Circassian "angel" might revive his
jaded spirit and bring him into harmony with the natural life.
The undercurrent of erotic longing coexists with the novel's
more prominent motif of childlike relation to nature. In this
mode Pechorin denies the surrogate mistress and projects wil-
derness as a consoling maternal presence. Most strikingly, he
characterizes the pure air as a caressive force, the "kiss of
a child" which in turn renders him "childlike," purified of
"passions, desires, regrets" (62). The master narrator in
"Bela" expresses an identical notion of recovering a state of
childlike innocence under the impact of the pristine Caucasian
environment (27). A Hero of Our Time thus imbues nature with
maternity by attributing filial love to the observer (even though
wilderness itself is the source of the childlike kiss).
This rhetorical interchange is most evident in an episode
immediately after the duel with Grushnitsky. In a moment of
despair, Pechorin falls to the ground and weeps "like a child"
(only to coolly analyze his overwrought state a short while
later, 130). He flings himself onto the earth, as though seeking
comfort. The force of the action is such that critics generally
detect a hidden metaphor of filial relation to the land. A
classic statement of 1914 concluded that Pechorin's love for
the magnificent Caucasian environment was a love for
"Mother Nature who gathers her prodigal sons into a com-
passionate embrace." 21 Later readers expressed similar opin-
ions about nature's consoling power, without invoking the
figure of the great mother.22 One should not forget that
Pechorin sometimes perceives a decidely unmaternal, omin-
ous quality in the wilderness, as when he likens clouds to
snakes coiled around a mountain peak. But even a recent
commentator who acknowledges such complexities in Ler-
montov's treatment of landscape insists that the hero is funda-
mentally a "child of nature" who shares "her" (the metaphor-
ical parent's) inconsistencies and amorality. 23 In this reading,
Mother Nature prevails, ready to console Pechorin but mad-
deningly indifferent to human values.
THE SADO-MASOCHISM OF WAR
Pechorin's incapacity to retrieve a lost state of innocent har-

mony with nature expressed Lermontov's sense of a human
proclivity to evil which may take its toll on the perpetrator
as well as the victim. A Hero of Our Time often presents the
Caucasus through Pechorin's eyes as an unsullied space with
the restorative properties of a garden, but the serpentine
clouds have a sinister ring. The figurative snakes give nature
itself a multiple character. More importantly, however, the
trope evokes original sin to suggest that humanity is a fallen
race incapable of recovering the prelapsarian condition of the
wondrous garden which is nature at its best. This intimation
of evil seeds in the human soul enriched Lermontov's recur-
rent theme of human disharmony with beauteous nature, as in
"Three Palms" (1839), a verse about a desert oasis wantonly
destroyed by an Arab caravan.
The violation of nature's pastoral promise assumes self-
inculpatory shape in "Valerik," Lermontov's definitive poem
of war in the Caucasus. Based on personal experience, the
work deploys a rhetoric of confession which uncovers psychic
division in the poet in uniform. "Valerik" is framed as a letter
to a woman of the Russian beau monde, and the opening words
signal a mode of "interior dialogization" defined in Bakhtin's
work on Dostoevsky.24 Lermonov starts with the phrase, "I
am writing to you randomly." The pronouns announce a
first-person narrative addressed to a chosen party. But a curi-
ous note is struck by the adverb "randomly" (sluchaino, which
might also be translated "by chance" or "accidentally"). This
beginning establishes a contradictory, combative relation to
the addressee: the writer feels compelled to send a confessional
word to the woman; but by declaring the act a random occur-
rence, he seeks to deny her significance as the interlocutor
and declares himself indifferent to her reaction to his reve-
lations. Wary of the silent addressee's anticipated responses,
he is on guard against her from the outset.
Impelled to confess and yet on the defensive, the poet
assumes a sado-masochistic stance toward the woman. He
first stresses his injury as the loser in their love affair of years
ago: he is the adoring admirer who was rejected but never
forgot the beloved. However, a lexicon of quasi-religious guilt
quickly complicates this simple picture of a victim and his
victimizer. As recalled by the writer, "days of bliss" were
"paid for" in years of "fruitless repentance." The failed affair
is the "cross" he bears, the "punishment" he still endures.
Ironic as it may be, the rhetoric of sin and retribution conveys
guilt about the break-up and gives the impression that the
narrator may have provoked the woman to leave him by
taking his turns as the victimizer.
The letter's overall thrust communicates the full extent of
the writer's sado-masochistic sentiments toward his
addressee. The frame starts with elegiac recollection of lost
bliss, but then the poem's narrative section confronts the
society belle with military massacre. The letter from the Cau-
casian front thus operates simultaneously as an officer's con-
fession of private anguish and a rejected lover's act of revenge:
instead of gallantly sheltering a lady from the horrors of war,
the poet divulges his active participation in a blood bath and
rubs her face in gore.
Signaled in the opening lines, the sado-masochism bespeaks
a double-sided identity confirmed by subsequent features of
the frame. When describing his daily routine at the front, the
poet slips into addressing himself as "you" (familiar ty, as
opposed to the formal vy for her): "you slumber in thick grass /
In the broad shade of a plane tree or bunches of grapes." The
departure from first-person narration articulates a colloquy
within a divided psyche. Rhetorically outside his own skin,
the writer visualizes himself in a somnolent state, while know-
ing full well that he will soon be propelled into violent action.
Two selves coexist in his consciousness - the drowser peace-
fully nestled in the lap of nature, and the blood-shedding
warrior.
Like the switch from " I " to "you" for the self, a trope of
war as theater reveals a bipartite mind both repelled by war
and aroused by its Napoleonic challenge. Just before launch-
ing into the account of the battle at the Valerik, the poet
concludes the frame by recalling an earlier skirmish he
watched from afar with other officers. He characterizes
combat as a "tragic ballet," a metaphor which vividly con-
jures a psyche split in two.25 Situated in the figurative audi-
ence but about to depict himself in the thick of combat, the
writer accentuates his dualism. He features himself as a spec-
tator passively witnessing battle. At the same moment,
though, he is poised to assume the role of the actor, the poet
in uniform who mounted the figurative stage to make war by
the Valerik.
These various signals of double identity and psychic dis-
tress may seem contradicted by the writer's apparently suc-
cessful integration into the army. Removed from his
addressee's beau monde, he is aswim in the rugged, masculine
world of the Caucasian front. In the recollection of a battle
in the frame, he conveys an electric excitement when the
shooting starts. He also advertises his comradeship with the
army's allied tribesmen (rendered as pleasingly distinct
people with "tawny skin," "dark furtive eyes" and guttural
language). A valiant Cossack also wins the poet's admiration.
Given these expressions of camaraderie, some commentators
have argued that Lermontov's persona achieves a satisfying
identity in the military milieu and even grows wiser through
combat: warfare supposedly matures him by putting him in
touch with tragedy and exposing the utter vapidness of his
addressee, the society belle.26
But such readings do not contend with the element of fierce
self-condemnation in Lermontov's confessional epistle. Rather
than attesting to the poet's mental health as a tsarist officer,
the principal narrative sequence of "Valerik" confirms the
sado-masochism evinced in the frame. The military persona's
dual status as the punished and the punisher vis-a-vis his
female addressee is paralleled by recognition of himself as a
self-destructive murderer. In an account which corresponds
to actual records about Lermontov's participation in the
engagement, the poet in "Valerik" leads his troops into the
fray. In the ensuing battle men methodically slaughter each
other at close range for two solid hours "like beasts." The
poet leaves the field in an agonized state of shell shock. While
others mourn dead comrades, he can find neither "pity nor
grief" in his heart. He impassively notes the piles of corpses,
the pervasive smell of blood and red rivulets on the stony
ground. Then he articulates his "anguish," his "deep and
secret sorrow" rooted in the disjunction he perceives between
slaughter and the serene beauty of the mountains against the
sunny sky. Before making a detailed analysis of the poet's
projection of nature, let us pause on the implications of the
secrecy of his feelings. He confesses his anguish solely to this
feminine addressee, even though he might have presumably
revealed his depression to his Chechen kunak or another army
comrade without calling his manhood into question. The
ethos of war in "Valerik" definitely accommodates lapses
from machismo, as shown by men crying over the death of a
young captain shortly after the battle ends.
But the big difference is that these soldiers cry about a
victim of the tribesmen, while the narrator is tormented by
an isolating sense of his own criminality. In a demonstration
of the way all great writers create their predecessors,
"Valerik" transmits a Dostoevskian state of drastic alienation
produced by killing: Lermontov's lyric persona comprehends
war as murder rather than invigorating machismo only when
he has blood on his hands; and as a result of combat, he
becomes disconnected from his own comrades. In killing the
enemy, he kills emotional capacities which bonded him to the
men on his side.
To compound his self-inflicted psychic injury, the poet's
slaughter of his fellow men entails aggression against nature.
Although "Valerik" contains very few metaphors, Lermon-
tov's pictorially exact representation of combat in the shallow
stream acquires much symbolic power. The poem summons
water's traditional associations with purification and resto-
ration, only to show these properties destroyed by war. In the
early description of army life, a Muslim tribesman performs
his ablutions at a stream. Water serves a religious ritual here
and calls to mind the Christian rites of baptism and purifi-
cation (sometimes actually practiced in rivers). Along with
spiritual cleansing, "Valerik" stresses the water's physically
restorative property. During the battle the fatigued narrator
wants to slake his thirst, but the water runs red and tepid
with blood. As translated by the narrator's Chechen kunak
near the end of the poem, "Valerik" means "stream of death."
Although its origin is not explained, the name becomes a
reality through the carnage in which the poet participates:
both a literal blood bath and a figurative baptism of blood,
combat perverts and annuls water's purative, restorative uses.
While "Valerik" never genders the land, the soldiers'
despoliation of restorative nature conjures the maltreatment
of a primal maternal being of the sort evoked in A Hero of Our
Time. The poem of war presents wilderness as a microcosm
of the Earth, ample and bountiful enough for humanity to
live together in peace. As the narrator says in his anguished
state: "the sky is clear, / And beneath the sky there is room
for all." These lines convey an unstated notion of a human
family united in relation to the planet as a figurative mother.
The poet very notably accents the land's fertility, as in the
image of himself dozing in thick grass shaded by grapevines.
In addition to lush vegetation, the centrality of water in
"Valerik" contributes to the intimation of Earth as a great
mother violated by human children. Besides its associations
with purification, restoration and rebirth, water is tradition-
ally linked with the beginnings of life itself, in the form of
amniotic fluids. Although "Valerik" has no symbols of
giving birth, Lermontov's "Gifts from the Terek" draws a
pertinent link between maternity and life-giving water. This
anthropomorphic verse depicts the Caucasian river as a
male child "born" on a mountain peak and "suckled at
the breast of clouds." The Terek itself is masculine but has
his source and sustenance in a watery maternal element,
the rain which feeds the mountain streams. An elaborate
extended metaphor, "Gifts from the Terek" conjoins mother
and son in a liquid flow reminiscent of nursing and birth
itself.27 "Valerik" retains a subliminal trace of the symbol-
ism of water as a great mother, giving and sustaining life.
Like the land's fertility, the river in its natural state concret-
izes the abstract notion of Earth as mankind's plentiful
home. The ravages of war thus acquire symbolic overtones
of matricide or incestuous rape.
The intimations of heinous crime against Mother Nature
reveal the full force of the poem's dialogism. Burdened by a
deeply "secret" sense of violating maternal Earth, the officer's
thoughts range back to Russia's erotic combat zone - back to
a woman already familiar with his capacity for transgression,
repentance and punishment. The confessional epistle indeed
maps the comprehensive sado-masochism of a man who lacer-
ates himself in a syndrome of crime and punishment in every
sphere of his existence. Both the victim and tormenter of his
addressee, he has no gratifying erotic life. By degenerating
into the animality of combat, he kills his inner spark of empa-
thy and loses communion with his comrades. As a leading,
acutely self-conscious actor in the massacre, he also snaps his
restorative tie to the natural world. Face to face with himself
as a vicious "beast" in the Caucasian garden, the military
persona of "Valerik" is a stunning embodiment of what
Joseph Brodsky called Lermontov's "thoroughly corrosive,
bilious self-knowledge."28
As an epistle never meant to be sent, "Valerik" is a
self-directed confession which inscribes violent conflict about
committing murder in the Caucasus in the service of the
tsarist state. Engaged from the start in an intense interior
polemic and a process of self-discovery, the confessor appro-
priately ends by spitefully writing off his addressee. In
reasserting the frame, he apologizes for "boring" the woman
and derides her as a social butterfly untroubled by death.
"I will be happy," he says, if this "artless story" amuses
you; but if it does not, simply take it as an eccentric
"prank" and forget it. With these derogatory, self-mocking
words, the poet slips through a well-prepared escape hatch
to avoid the censure of his chosen listener. He had emotion-
ally overwhelming reasons for selecting his addressee, he
has shown his vulnerability and inculpated himself in
beastly carnage. But he was never ready to hear her affirm
the worst about him. With this conclusion the sado-
masochistic despoiler is left with only himself to talk to.
The intense solipsism of interior dialogization in
"Valerik" was a prophecy of the poem's failure to find
sensitive interlocutors upon publication in 1843. A jump
ahead of his readers, Lermontov strikingly predicted the
absence of proper listeners in a letter written to Aleksei
Lopukhin from Fort Grozny in October 1840. Quite possibly
working on "Valerik" at the time, the poet imagined himself
orally recounting his wartime experiences to Russian friends
in the future. As the Caucasian campaigner tells his tale,
his audience disappears: the lady of the house falls asleep,
while her husband is called aside on domestic business.
The poet's one remaining hearer is a baby (who "does a
pooh" on his knee).29 Containing a typically Lermontovian
touch of self-derision, this anxiety about a non-existent
audience was borne out in the reception of "Valerik."
Nineteenth-century readers with faith in the tsarist civilizing
mission were completely tone-deaf to Lermontov's song of
self-destructive Russian bestiality in the Edenic Caucasus.
Belinsky, for example, simply praised "Valerik" as artful
embellishment of grim realities of war.30 More tellingly,
Russian veterans of the conquest admired the pictorial
exactitude of Lermontov's depiction of combat, while extol-
ling the pleasures of his poetic language. 31 Like the van-
ishing audience envisioned in the poet's letter from Fort
Grozny, these real readers left the anguished narrator of
"Valerik" isolated by not listening to everything he had to
say. Young Tolstoy, however, caught more of Lermontov's
tragic timbre and would copy it in "The Raid" (1853), a
story also misread in the era of empire-building as a trans-
mission of the "poetry of warfare."32
DEATH IN THE SANCTUARY
But if "Valerik" fell on largely deaf ears in the nineteenth

century, Lermontov's fate none the less raised its own voice to
inject an unforgettable romantic agony into Russia's cultural
mythology of the Caucasus. Prior to the writer's duel in Piati-
gorsk, other Russian men of letters had died as an outcome
of their contact with the "southern Siberia." 33 However, Ler-
montov's death struck the imagination more profoundly for
several reasons. Only twenty-six, he evidently had not exhaus-
ted his creative potential. Belinsky, for example, once
remarked that if Lermontov had lived, he would have sur-
passed Pushkin. Lermontov's reckless streak intensified the
poignancy of the premature annihilation of artistic genius. He
had a career as a duelist, which finally proved his undoing.
Furthermore, a sense of imminent death pervades one of his
most famous Caucasian lyrics, "A Dream." As the poem's
speaker lies alone dying of a bullet wound in Dagestan, he
imagines a woman back in Russia engrossed in a vision of his
final agony the moment he expires. Written just a few months
before Martynov shot Lermontov, the poem gives the eerie
impression of predicting the author's death.
But besides the poignancy of a poet's dying young, the elan
of a duel in the Caucasus and the haunting premonition of
death in "A Dream," there was another aspect of Lermontov's
career which probably affected nineteenth-century Russians
subconsciously, even though they lacked the historical per-
spective to recognize it. Lermontov's life and death as the
poet in uniform replicated the contradictions of Russia's own
relation to the Caucasus. Beginning with Pushkin, the terri-
tory acquired a dualistic image as a Parnassian sanctuary and
a bloody battlefield. When Bestuzhev-Marlinsky wrote of the
"angel of death" in paradise, he pinpointed the incoherence
of the cultural mythology's two strains and suggested that a
Russian national tragedy was underway. He seemed to be
asking: "Can we murder our way into the restorative garden?
Can we secure Eden by exterminating the natives?"
To a greater extent than any other Russian writer, Lermon-
tov went to the heart of this paradox of genocidal warfare
as the route to terrestrial paradise. The Caucasus was his
Parnassian refuge from the contemptible beau monde and the
whole repressive realm of "unwashed Russia" with its omni-
present police and slavish masses.34 Fully alive to the wilder-
ness' restorative, inspirational power, he told a Russian friend
in 1838 that a trip to the territory would make him forget
political economy and turn him into a poet too.35 Lermontov
saw his forays into the Caucasus not as permanent escape
from his native land but rather as a time of communion with
the Muse, a period to conceive and produce works through
which to make a name for himself among his compatriots.
Thus his lyric "Hastening northward from afar" confesses to
Kazbek the fear that he may have been forgotten at home
during his exile. But while Lermontov's poetry associated the
Caucasus with creativity, spiritual renewal and celebrity
through literature, it also conveyed the degeneracy of war,
forebodings of death and a dread of oblivion.
The affective power of Lermontov's invention of the Cau-
casus as both a redemptive space and a killing field was ampli-
fied by Russian interpretations of his fate. Belinsky's major
review of A Hero of Our Time set this dynamic into play in
1840. The article identified the territory as Lermontov's artis-
tic birthplace: "The Caucasus was the cradle of his poetry,
just as it was the cradle of Pushkin's." 36 The metaphor of the
"cradle" very strikingly presented the Caucasus as a strictly
beneficent, nurturing environment for creators of Russian lit-
erature. Belinsky knew about war and exile but denied them
with the symbol of a happy nursery.
It is interesting to compare Belinsky's formulation with two
contemporaneous observations, only one of which directly
concerned Lermontov. The first appeared in Edmund Spen-
cer's Travels in Circassia (1837). With no comments about Rus-
sian literature, Spencer viewed the Caucasus exclusively as a
battleground where the tsarist state was wasting the blood of
its subjects with a "wanton prodigality" inconceivable in the
conduct of "any other Christian power."37 Moreover, the
casualties of combat were augmented annually by thousands
of deaths from malnutrition, typhus and other diseases. The
ghastly toll prompted Spencer to term the Caucasus Russia's
"grave," an arresting antipode of Belinsky's "cradle."
These two figures of speech which distilled Russia's inco-
herent relation to the Caucasus were both implicit in Nikolai
Grech's assessment of Lermontov. True to his character as a
political toady who collaborated in journalistic ventures with
Bulgarin and Senkovsky, Grech wrote an indignant pamphlet
in response to Custine's La Russie en i8jg. In briefly treating
Lermontov, Grech asserted that the Russian government
should be absolved of charges of cruelty toward the writer
because military exile made his poetry flower: "Only in the
Caucasus did [his talent] unfurl to its full extent."38 This
interpretation merged the Belinskian "cradle" with the poet's
grave. Grech confronted Lermontov's exile and death in the
Caucasus; but as an apologist for the tsarist regime, he justi-
fied the state's persecution of the poet. Lermontov's punish-
ment became his salvation. Extermination became his route
to poetic immortality.
Without noticing it, Grech displaced onto Lermontov the
fundamental paradox of Russia's pursuing the Caucasian
"civilizing mission" through genocidal warfare. Tsarist blood-
shed took its ideological justification as a step toward
enlightening the orient, so that killing the natives became in
a sense the way of saving them (at least the "redeemable"
survivors). In Russian national experience a similar contra-
diction between redemption and annihilation rebounded back
against the conquerors themselves. Under the impact of
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov, Russian men enlisted
in the Caucasian army in quest of sublime, restorative wilder-
ness. As Tolstoy would write in his story "The Wood-felling,"
the Caucasus in the romantic era was perceived as a "prom-
ised land" where an upper-class Russian might escape his
meaningless existence and find spiritual renewal.39 In the
Tolstoy story the Russian enlistee's anticipations about
redemptive nature merely dissipate in a dull routine of cutting
down a pristine forest. But more dramatically in the life of
the nation, the quest for salvation and spiritual revitalization
in the Caucasus ended in bloodshed. Instead of winning
redemption, the Russian campaigner degenerated into besti-
ality during combat and desecrated the "promised land" with
carnage (as Arnold Zisserman painfully acknowledged in his
memoirs). These were fundamental paradoxes of imperial
Russia's war in the Caucasus which Lermontov acted out as
the poet in uniform. In monumentalizing his tragic fate, his
nineteenth-century Russian admirers appear to have had sub-
liminal intimations of his status as a microcosm of the nation
itself at war in Edenic Asia.
CHAPTER 13
Tolstoy's revolt against romanticism
Olenin was about to speak to him, to ask what aul he

came from, but the Chechen spat contemptuously and
turned away after scarcely looking at him.
Tolstoy
When Tolstoy first began writing in the early 1850s while
with the Russian army in a Cossack stanitsa along the Terek,
he faced the tremendous challenge of finding a new word to
say about the Caucasus. The works of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky
and Lermontov were a big thorn in his side. As Tolstoy
recalled in the unfinished essay "Notes on the Caucasus. A
Trip to Mamakai-Yurt," he had embraced these two writers
as his principal sources of knowledge about the territory
during his adolescence.1 By the time he reached his twenties,
however, he rebelled from Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermon-
tov in a quest for greater realism. Up in arms against the
literary heritage, young Tolstoy felt convinced that people did
not swoon over mountains, nor have tumultuous love affairs
with savages, nor conduct war, nor even die in combat in the
ways previously depicted.2 His first stories about the Caucasus
accordingly sought to replace romantic modes with a more
hardheaded, fact-oriented outlook. This same general objec-
tive governed his short novel The Cossacks, which was tenta-
tively begun in verse in 1852, written mainly in the latter part
of the decade and published in 1863.
As an adversary of romantic inventions, Tolstoy certainly
had his work cut out for him. By the 1850s, studies of Cauca-
sian geography, ethnography and history had proliferated
massively in Russia. The readership could now consult an
233
enormous body of non-fiction (not all of which met the most
rigorous intellectual standards, of course). 3 Moreover, a major
new dispenser of information about the territory had appeared
on the scene - the Caucasus (Kavkaz), a newspaper founded
by the Viceroy Mikhail Vorontsov in Tim's in 1846.4 But
despite the steady accumulation of non-fictional material, the
Russian readership remained captivated by romantic literary
mythology. The low success of writers bent upon edification
was tellingly attested in Arnold Zisserman's memoirs. When
Zisserman went to St. Petersburg on mission from the Cau-
casus in 1848, he encountered a civilian population complace-
ntly ignorant about the territory. One man was astonished
that Zisserman had never come across his brother, another
officer in the Caucasian army. "But you're all stationed
together down there, aren't you?" asked the Petersburger. 5
In commenting on the conversation Zisserman sarcastically
observed that like so many other members of Russia's "so-
called educated class," this gentleman "imagined the Cau-
casus as virtually one big fortress surrounded by Circassians
with whom our troops exchanged fire day after day."
Although Zisserman did not say so, romantic Russian litera-
ture was glaringly implicated in the muddled outlook of the
"so-called educated class." Only minds steeped in the exciting
poetics of space could conjure and sustain the utterly
irrational but affectively engaging notion of the Caucasus as
a "big fortress" located somewhere beyond a southern cordon
line and besieged by ubiquitous "Circassians."
Zisserman's experience suggests that even litterateurs who
incorporated solid data into their entertaining writings had
failed to achieve didactic goals. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky in par-
ticular packed a lot of creditable ethnography into "Ammalat-
Bek." But how many readers simply skipped it in haste to
enjoy the plot of passion and murder (as students today so
frequently neglect the essays on history in War and Peace, in
order to see how Tolstoy's fictional characters are faring)?
Quite interestingly, mature Lermontov's continuing avoid-
ance of the semi-fictional mode reflected a belief that the edu-
cative effort was futile. At the outset of "Maksim Maksimych"
Tolstoy's revolt against romanticism 235
in A Hero of Our Time the master narrator announces that he
intends to spare the audience "statistical remarks" about the
Caucasus, being convinced that "nobody would read them
anyway." Belinsky too provided complementary testimony to
the readership's low toleration for the strictly utile. He was
bored by factual but prosaic travelogues about Russia's pe-
riphery and yearned instead for novels which would divulge
the exotic regions' "secret life of nature" in the fashion of
James Fenimore Cooper.6 As though to illustrate what he
meant by nature's "secret life," Belinsky in another essay
declared Lermontov's extravagantly anthropomorphic "Gifts
from the Terek" the "apotheosis of the Caucasus." 7 Devoid of
critical content, this phrase stemmed from an overwhelmingly
emotional transaction with the text: Belinsky's formulation
was simply the cheer of a reader enthralled by the poet's
vigorously musical invention of the wild Asian frontier where
a savage river delivers tributes to the imperious Caspian -
the corpses of a Cossack woman shot in the breast and a
Kabardinian warrior in arm plates engraved with verses from
the Koran.
Young Tolstoy was not alone in resisting the readership's
well entrenched taste for the literary Caucasus' irrational, aes-
thetic pleasures. In 1850 the leading Russian journal, the Con-
temporary, lauded Yakov Kostenetsky's military memoirs, Notes
on the Avarian Expedition in the Caucasus, 1837.8 The reviewer
welcomed the book for providing a "wealth of facts" instead
of "flowers of eloquence" and discommended literature for
dealing "more with fantasy than with the Caucasus in actu-
ality." In this attack on the textual Caucasus fathered by
Pushkin, the journalist admitted that the campaign notes were
not stylistically accomplished. But instead of faulting the
book on those grounds, he claimed that Kostenetsky's
"goodhearted directness" and "lack of artifice" were better
than literature for people who truly wanted to study the Cau-
casus. Tolstoy regularly read the Contemporary at the stanitsa
Starogladkovskaya and seems to have consciously adopted its
editorial bias against literary "fantasy" in "The Raid," a
story published by the journal in 1853.9
But while compatible with the outlook of the Contemporary,
Tolstoy's rejection of romantic tradition evinced a consider-
ably more complicated search for authorial identity. His early
stories and The Cossacks display the impulse to educate read-
ers by using footnotes. Moreover, the novel contains an entire
chapter in the form of an ethnographic essay about the Gre-
bensk community. At the same time, however, Tolstoy was
bent upon finding his own brand of literary power, different
from the romantics' and capable of supplanting them. In open
combat with Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov, young
Tolstoy definitely seems to have suffered from what Harold
Bloom effectively labeled the "anxiety of influence," a literary
novice's embattled revolt from a powerful precursor who
threatens to leave him overshadowed.10 Tolstoy's combative
search for an imposing voice of his own made parody a favor-
ite weapon in his arsenal and often led him to assert himself
in largely negative terms - as not-Marlinsky, not-Lermontov.
All the same, The Cossacks not only dismantled the old poetics
of Caucasian space through parody but also opened an
entirely new perspective on the question of Russian relation
to the oriental. The Grebensk Cossacks naturally dominate
this novel, but the little Tolstoy had to say about the Muslim
tribesmen marked an interesting break with romantic modes
of inscribing the self in the savage.
While seeking his own literary voice, Tolstoy was also grop-
ing for self-definition in the political sphere. Unlike the exiled
romantics, Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov,
the young count had no particular bones of contention with
the state. Fed up with his dissolute life in Moscow, Tolstoy
impulsively went to the Caucasus in the spring of 1851, where
his brother Nikolai was serving in the army. As a junker (a
volunteer of noble birth with a private's rank), Tolstoy had
relatively comfortable quarters and plenty of time for hunting,
reading and writing. Less than a month after his arrival at
Starogladkovskaya, he joined a military operation as an
onlooker (as depicted in "The Raid.") The thrills of the cam-
paigner's life and a yen for military prestige led him to seek
a commission.11 However, after participating in a little fight-
ing, he wrote in his diary in January 1853 ^ a ^ w a r w a s " s o
ugly and unjust that anybody who wages it has to stifle the
voice of his conscience."12 With the contradiction between
prestigious machismo and hideous injustice unresolved, Tol-
stoy received his officer's commission in 1854 and asked for
a transfer to join the war against Turkey, first in Wallachia
and then the Crimea. A veteran of the siege of Sevastopol, he
retired from the army in 1856.
As his military career would indicate, young Tolstoy
reserved judgment about the rectitude of the Russian con-
quest of the Caucasus. In a letter to his brother Sergei and
sister-in-law Maria in December 1851, he made this promise
as he anticipated having a hand in a raid on a tribal
village: "I'll be doing my best with the help of a cannon to
facilitate the extermination of treacherous predators and recalcitrant
Asians."13 Tolstoy's diction and underlining poked fun at
official rhetoric about preserving Holy Russia from Muslim
savages. However, a draft for "The Raid" conveyed authorial
sympathy with the empire's objectives: "Who can doubt that
in Russia's war against the tribesmen, justice stands on our
side, stemming from a desire for self-preservation? If it were
not for the war, what would protect the diversified, rich,
enlightened lands of Russia from pillage, murder and raids
by savage, bellicose peoples?"14 By contrast, a different draft
of Tolstoy's story granted the possibility that the tribes were
also motivated by the instinct for self-preservation and a just
desire to safeguard their homeland. Neither of these two con-
tradictory evaluations was retained in the final version of
"The Raid," as though the newcomer to both war and litera-
ture could not make up his mind. Even The Cossacks remained
non-committal about the morality of the conquest, while none
the less acknowledging tsarist atrocities of the sort young Tol-
stoy may have had in mind when he pronounced war so "ugly
and unjust."
THE ASSAULT ON CAUCASIAN POETRY
More concerned with aesthetics than political ethics, "The

Raid" blamed Lermontov and Bestuzhev-Marlinsky for incit-
ing Russian military men to imitate romantic literature. The
story pinpoints this phenomenon in the person of Lt. Rosen-
krantz, characterized as "one of our young officers styled
into dashing dzhigity after the works of Marlinsky and Lermon-
tov. These people regard the Caucasus exclusively through
the prism of the heroes of our time, the Mulla-Nurs and so
forth; and they take these images as a guide for all their
actions, rather than following their own inclinations." 15A
draft for "The Raid" more reproachfully opposed the literary
"prism" to "reality." 16 There Tolstoy also listed Ammalat-
Bek and Bela alongside Mulla-Nur and capitalized "Heroes
of Our Time." An emulator of Pechorin, Rosenkrantz in the
final version of "The Raid" is used to deflate Lermontov's
famous plot of going "native" in "Bela." Tolstoy's character
installs his Circassian mistress at the Russian fort but is a
simple-hearted man in a prosaic domestic arrangement. Bent
upon imitating a story, Rosenkrantz comically fails to live up
to the demonic model of Pechorin in the wilds of the orient.
In elaborating the theme of life refracted through literature,
Tolstoy's handsome young ensign Alanin serves as Rosen-
krantz's tragic counterpoint. "The Raid" depicts the stalwart,
unpretentious old campaigner Captain Khlopov as an embodi-
ment of a "Russian form of courage." As articulated by Pecho-
rin in A Hero of Our Time, this phrase defined the antithesis of
Grushnitsky's foolhardy bravado shortly before the duel. With
parodic thrust, Tolstoy borrows Lermontov's words only to
turn them against him. Near the end of "The Raid" Alanin
charges into battle in a vainglorious manner typified by the nar-
rator as an "outmoded French sort of chivalry." A crusty old
soldier of the Russian folk also pronounces Alanin's action
stupid. By plotting Alanin's fate as an antipode of prudent,
unassuming Russian courage, Tolstoy carries forward the cri-
tique of the Grushnitsky type advanced in A Hero of Our Time.
But the narrative pattern of "The Raid" contends that Lermon-
tov's own novel has now assumed an invidious role in promot-
ing romanticism among the readership: bedazzled by litera-
ture's distortive "prism," young military travelers like Alanin
have developed a bookish derring-do and are foolishly offering
themselves up for slaughter.
Tolstoy's "The Wood-felling" continued to attack the liter-
ary Caucasus as the obfuscator of reality. Recounted from the
same autobiographical standpoint as "The Raid," the story
features a conversation between the narrator and Bolkhov,
a thoroughly disillusioned officer. Bolkhov speaks of civilian
Russia's "bizarre legend" of the Caucasian "promised land,"
where a wastrel or unhappy lover might renew his life amidst
the "eternal virgin snows and stormy torrents." 17 When they
actually embark on military service, the dreamers discover
they have made "terrible miscalculations." Among other
things, they learn that the Caucasus is divided into ordinary
administrative units, the gubemii. Focused upon prosaic fact,
this knowledge clashes mightily against the old traditions of
alpine imaginative geography. In resisting the romantic
poetics of space, Tolstoy insists on the superiority of actuality.
Bolkhov wishes that the Caucasus had lived up to his roman-
tic expectations, but the narrator vigorously argues that the
real place is better, albeit "in a different way" than literature
had led him to expect.
In this context "The Wood-felling" likens dreamy, arm-
chair travels to the mental state induced by "verse in a lan-
guage which one does not know very well." The essay "Notes
on the Caucasus" had explicated this notion fully when Tol-
stoy recollected his boyhood and adolescent enthusiasm for
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov:
it happened so long ago that all I remember is the poetic feeling
which I experienced while reading, and the evocation of poetic
images of bellicose Circassians, sloe-eyed Circassian women, moun-
tains, cliffs, snows, rapid streams, the plane tree . . . The burka,
dagger and sword also held a far from peripheral place in my mind.
These images took shape in my imagination in an extraordinarily
poetic way, being embellished upon each recollection. I had already
forgotten the poems of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov long
before, but each time my mind returned to the images, new poems
came into being, each one a thousand times more alluring than the
last. I did not even try to convey them in words because I knew it
was impossible, but I took secret pleasure in them. Have you ever
read verse in a half-mastered language, especially poems you knew
were good? Without catching the meaning of every phrase, you
continue to read, and from those words which you understand there
springs into your head some totally different meaning, not at all
clear, to be sure - some foggy meaning that cannot be expressed in
words but is all the more beautiful and poetic for that reason. For
a long time the Caucasus for me was that poem in an unknown
language; and when I delved into its actual significance, I regretted
the loss of the invented poem in many respects, while in many other
ways I became convinced that reality was better than what I had
imagined.18
Unconcerned here with either genre or literary mode, Tolstoy
allowed "poems" to cover Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's semi-fiction
and A Hero of Our Time, as well as Lermontov's verse. The
term expanded even further to designate the reader's own
fantasies stimulated by the literary text. With this latter for-
mulation "poetry" was reduced to daydreams which provide
an infantile sort of pleasure at a level where language does
not even function ("impossible" to "convey them in words").
In sum, this revealing passage of young Tolstoy's essay sourly
employed "poetic" to mean literature which enthralls and fills
the reader with ineffable sentiment but makes little sense.
Conceptualized as a thick fog of dubious meaning, the
inherited textual Caucasus in this assessment became a gigan-
tic "poem" set in opposition to "reality" apprehended by
intellect through empirical observation.
PARODY IN THE COS&ACKS
The Cossacks was Tolstoy's most concerted effort to dissipate

"poetry" understood in the comprehensive sense outlined in
"Notes on the Caucasus." Although told primarily from the
standpoint of the Russian aristocrat Olenin, the novel has an
authorial voice often put to documentary uses. Tolstoy plies
the reader with linguistic, cultural and historical information
in annotations and a lengthy ethnographic sketch of the stan-
itsa (chapter four) interpolated before Olenin arrives. But
while the writer thus makes a bid for extra-literary authority,
parody in fiction is the main instrument he wields to demystify
Russian experience in the territory. Chapter two lines up three
literary targets from the past in the revery of Olenin en route
to the Caucasus from Moscow. The tradition of sublime land-
scape is signaled by the anticipation of "mountains, preci-
pices, fearful torrents." 19 The hero also forms mental "images
of Ammalat-Beks." Finally and in much greater detail comes
Olenin's "most precious" fantasy - the acquisition of a savage
concubine.
In the war on romanticism The Cossacks hits the first target
dead center by deflating sentimental travel literature (as
Pushkin's Journey to Arzrum and Lermontov's A Hero of Our
Time had already done, of course). Young Tolstoy had covered
a leg of his journey to the Caucasus by boat on the Volga,
but in fictionalizing the experience he parodically recapitu-
lated the topoi of strictly overland transport established in
Radozhitsky's seminal recit de voyage of the 1820s, "The Road
from the Don River to Georgievsk." Like Radozhitsky, Olenin
embarks on a literary pilgrimage and impatiently awaits the
sight of the snow-capped mountains "about which he had
heard so much" (158). As in the travelogue of the 1820s,
heavy clouds initially obscure the mountains in The Cossacks.
Then in conformity to Radozhitsky's old formula, clear
weather finally affords Olenin a spectacular view of the Cau-
casian range.
But after drawing the reader along this familiar path, Tol-
stoy quashes the cliches of awestruck subjectivity and literary
citation still practiced in Russian travelogues of the time.
Olenin is not seized by quasi-religious ecstasy at the sight of
the snow-capped peaks but rather finds his head swimming,
when he begins to comprehend mass in relation to distance.
Not a literary echo appears as the mountains penetrate his
consciousness to announce an unfamiliar world.20 Evoked as
an elemental but thoroughly secular presence, the range puts
all his experience in a different light. Just as the mountains
dramatically proclaim a new space, so also do they mark a
temporal break between "then" and "now": "All [Olenin's]
recollections of Moscow, his bouts of shame and repentance,
all the tawdry daydreams of the Caucasus - everything van-
ished, to return no more" (159).
If the treatment of landscape in The Cossacks demonstrates
true originality, the romantic theme of erotic conquest in Asia
proves trickier. During the journey Olenin daydreams about
Circassians rather than Cossack women. He conjures the
wish-fulfilling ideal of an abjectly devoted female:
And there she appeared in imagination amidst the mountains - a
svelte Circassian slave with a long braid and deep, submissive eyes.
He imagined an isolated hut in the mountains with her waiting at
the door when he came home tired and dusty, straight from the
blood and glory of war, to marvel at her kisses, her shoulders, her
sweet voice and submissiveness (156).
With an obsessive return to the promise of sexual domination
over an utterly "submissive" primitive, Tolstoy attributes to
Olenin a fantasy of romantic literature's quintessentially
oriental woman - the Circassian love slave who began taking
shape in Pushkin's "mountain maid" and found definitive
expression in Lermontov's Bela.
Olenin's anticipatory daydream of the Caucasus' exotic
sexual opportunities is countered by Tolstoy's anti-romantic
plot. Once Olenin reaches the Novomlinskaya stanitsa, reality
starts piercing his oriental fantasy. No Circassians or other
tribeswomen make an appearance in the novel. The erotic
yearnings consequently are transferred onto Mariana, the
Cossack heroine who is relatively "uncivilized" in the Euro-
peanized Russian's eyes. But if engagingly free of the vices of
scientific culture and the beau monde, the Cossack women are
also completely unmarked by oriental submissiveness. Tol-
stoy's ethnographic chapter four conveys Rousseauist admi-
ration for them as vigorous, intelligent organizers of domestic
and agricultural life - the antithesis of the affected social but-
terflies the hero left back home.21 In conformity with such a
view, Mariana defies literature's wild slaves of love who fling
themselves into self-destructive liaisons with Russians. At
best, she shows a bemused interest in Olenin's infatuation,
but the cultural gap between them cannot be bridged. A crisis
divests the Russian hero of any lingering illusions on that
score. When Mariana's local admirer Luka is seriously
wounded in a skirmish with Chechens near the novel's end,
she rudely rejects Olenin as a superfluous outsider from an
alien world.
Distinctive worries about sexual morality creep into Tol-
stoy's rebellion against the romantic daydream of an
uncivilized mistress. Some semblance of the erotically un-
leashed Caucasus endures in The Cossacks. The ethnographic
chapter four notes that Cossack women display a "remarkable
freedom in their relations with men," and the story bears this
out in liaisons between minor female characters and suave
Russian aristocrats like Beletsky. The situation is quite ordi-
nary, so that the old Cossack Eroshka proposes to procure
Mariana or another local woman for Olenin. As contritely
recorded in his diary, Tolstoy himself had bouts of wenching,
gambling and drinking while stationed at Starogladkov-
skaya.22 But unlike Beletsky, Olenin was not allowed to act
out the author's dissipation.
Driven both by parodic purpose and a tormented awareness
of his own recurrently losing battles with lust, Tolstoy brought
into the literary Caucasus a newly moralistic preoccupation
with civilization's role in controlling eros. A prig by compari-
son to the erotically venturesome Russians in the Caucasus of
Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov, Olenin places
high value on the Christian code of sexual morality. Founded
by Old Believers in the seventeenth century, the Grebensk
Cossack community belonged formally to Orthodoxy. How-
ever, Tolstoy's principal Cossack men embody pagan hedon-
ism and experience none of the moral conflicts which beset
Olenin. Repelled by the falsity of the beau monde and the aridity
of scientific culture, the Europeanized hero is drawn to the
instinctual life. And yet he finds the Cossacks' lack of Chris-
tian ethics (about killing as well as sex) a shortcoming by
comparison to the Russian realm of enlightenment.23 More
pure than Tolstoy knew himself to be, Olenin implicitly cen-
sures romantic literature's erotic adventurers in the Caucasus.
But for all its rebellion against the old plot of sexual con-
quest, The Cossacks replicates an important feature of the past
by reifying nature in the person of a nubile mountain maid.
In an unmailed epistolary manifesto to Russian aristocrats,
Olenin extols Mariana as the natural woman at one with
her envigorating, uplifting environment. She personifies the
"beauty of the mountains and the sky" (266), the "whole sum
of beautiful nature" (269). While never gendering the land,
The Cossacks thus exhibits the conventional, pastoral impulse
to project the Caucasian maiden as the embodiment of the
wilderness with which the civilized man ambivalently yearns
to merge.
THE INSCRUTABLE SAVAGE
To turn now to the third romantic target which chapter two

sets up alongside sublime nature and an oriental mistress,
Olenin en route to the Caucasus imagines having contact with
"Ammalat-Beks," just as he daydreams about a submissive
Circassian instead of a Cossack woman. The novel's central
cultural clash between Europeanized Russia and the Gre-
bensk stanitsa leaves the local Chechens on a secondary plane.
However, to the extent that Tolstoy deals with tribesmen, he
charts an original course by deflating romanticism's pro-
duction of surrogate Asian selves.
Romantic fusion with the orient has seduced Olenin.
During the journey from Moscow he features the Muslim
guerrilla as both the self and the other. First, he imagines
"killing and subduing an untold multitude of tribesmen," and
then swiftly transfigures himself into a native dzhigit at war
with tsarist armies (156). Full of parodic force, this passage
deftly indicates how romantic literature encouraged readers
to identify with dashing Caucasian wild men. Tolstoy cites
only Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's surrogate, Ammalat-Bek. How-
ever, Olenin's momentary urge to slip into the skin of a
Muslim tribesman also contains buried allusions to Lermon-
tov's alter ego, Izmail-Bey, and to Pechorin, the Europeanized
Russian who so readily activates the "Asia" within. A draft
of The Cossacks extends Olenin's fantasy of going native: he
penetrates the mountains, wins the tribe's acceptance and
marries a local beauty who loves him passionately, the "way
oriental women love."24
By introducing Olenin as a reader in the grips of romantic
self-identification with Muslim warriors, Tolstoy lays the
ground for another colossal disillusionment. The thrilling
machismo of Ammalat-Bek proves to exist in the Caucasus,
especially in the person of Luka.25 However, if able to have
a modicum of meaningful exchanges with the Cossacks, the
Europeanized hero finds totally impenetrable barriers
between himself and the tribesmen. Olenin's knowledge of
Chechen life comes almost exclusively through the Cossack
braves, reliably cast in the role of cultural mediators. Situated
across the Terek from Chechen country, the Grebensk
Cossacks shared the tribesmen's ethos of war, could fend in
their language, borrowed the term dzhigit for themselves and
wore similar clothing (the tall sheepskin hat and the cherkeska,
the c'Circassian coat" with cartridge pockets across the chest).
Intermarriages between Cossacks and Caucasian tribes also
occurred, as stressed by a nineteenth-century Russian traveler
who perceived many faces "more than a little Asiatic" in
a stanitsa.26 Besides stating such information outright in the
expository chapter four, The Cossacks artistically succeeds
throughout in depicting Novomlinskaya as a culturally mixed
zone intersecting both Orthodox Russia and Muslim
Chechnia.
The nexus between Cossacks and Chechens is tightened
in a politically subversive passage about infanticide. Notably
featured in "Izmail-Bey," the killing of tribal children seems
to have taken root in Tolstoy's consciousness as an iconic
atrocity of war. It figured already in "The Raid" but only as
a false alarm (the soldiers' victim turns out to be a squealing
goat).27 Tsarist infanticide returns as an achieved, if unde-
picted act in The Cossacks. In conversation with Olenin,
Eroshka recalls seeing a cradle floating down the Terek during
a hunting trek (202). The sight led him to imagine a raid in
which "some of your damn soldiers" stormed through houses,
terrorized women and smashed a baby's head against a wall.
In saying "your" soldiers, Eroshka disclaims tsarist cam-
paigns as sadistic assault which unjustly rebounds against the
stanitsy. Through the relatively "uncivilized" Cossack's words,
the Russian military man emerges here as the novel's sole
incarnation of horrific bloodlust. Olenin makes no rejoinder
about Russia's purportedly humane, Christian values (even
though the Cossacks' lack of guilt about killing tribal raiders
disturbs him at other points in the novel). By letting Eroshka's
characterization of "your damn soldiers" go unchallenged,
Tolstoy attributes to the Cossacks and Chechens an honorable
code of warfare and a high-spirited bravery not consistent
with brutalizing a baby. The Cossacks thus takes issue with
imperialism's therapeutic fiction of violence as a "savage,"
alien proclivity to be suppressed by European Russia.
While Tolstoy masterfully constitutes the culturally mixed
character of the semi-Asian Cossacks among whom he lived,
he displays a notable reticence about the Chechens. Interest-
ingly enough, he had envisioned featuring the tribal milieu
extensively. An early draft of the novel was entitled "The
Runaway," or "The Fugitive Cossack," and the author con-
tinued working on it as late as i860.28 In the fugitive's story
the hero Luka (or alternatively "Kirka") flees and makes
common cause with the Muslim tribesmen after killing a Rus-
sian soldier for flirting with his wife. According to an alternate
plan, the Cossack fled without murdering the Russian, who
was to participate in the search party that penetrates the aul,
captures the turncoat and brings him back to the stanitsa.
For all his interest in the fascinating subject of desertion to
Shamil's side, Tolstoy never managed to finish the story, quite
probably because literary ghosts of the past kept haunting
him. When still attempting to write the Cossack defector's
tale, the author noted in his diary in April 1858 that he was
continually "blocked at the escape into the mountains." 29
While in the Caucasus, Tolstoy had contact with allied tribes-
men in the army, representatives of whom appear in conver-
sation with the narrator in "The Raid." In addition, he visited
tribal villages near Starogladkovskaya and had a Chechen
kunak, Sado Miserbiev. And yet despite these contacts with
tribesmen in their native realm, Tolstoy experienced a loss of
confidence and artistic inspiration in writing about the sub-
ject. Fully aware of the tribal milieux of Pushkin, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky and Lermontov, Tolstoy failed at this point to find
his own way of depicting the Muslim dzhigit on home ground.
To put the matter in a more positive light, Tolstoy's writer's
block was surely produced, in part, by awareness of an
anthropological dilemma barely recognized in the romantic
literary Caucasus. Just how was a Russian to penetrate the
wild man's culture and mind, in order to write about him
reliably? Emboldened by "active imagination," Pushkin had
invented Circassians in their aul, sight unseen. Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky had displayed ethnographic expertise in his Cauca-
sian oeuvre but, like Lermontov, had unproblematically
inscribed his own psychology in tribesmen. Tolstoy thus
found himself confronting the same kind of challenge vis-a-vis
the Chechens as he faced with respect to spectacular moun-
tain landscape. How could a Russian writer in the 1850s avoid
the entrancing modes of his predecessors and fashion a new,
fact-oriented representation of the Muslim dzhigit?
The Cossacks reflects these anthropological issues by letting
Olenin's restricted powers of observation guide treatment of
the Chechens. In reaction to the fiery tribal surrogates of
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov, Tolstoy sticks to
strictly external description. The Cossacks announces the
deflationary strategy as strongly as possible by first presenting
the tribesman as a corpse, a figure with no more inner being
to probe. In an episode not including Olenin, Luka shoots
the Chechen raider Akhmed-Khan as he tries to cross the
Terek (chapter nine). After the killing Tolstoy describes the
"svelte, handsome" body, as studied in silence by a group of
Cossacks. The narrative voice makes autopsical observations
("The muscular arms lay stiffly next to the ribs. The freshly
shaved, bluish round head was thrown back, its wound on
the side caked with blood"). Still engaged in his battle with
the "poetry" of Caucasian warfare and the dzhigit, Tolstoy
virtually reduced romanticism's hot-blooded tribesman to a
cadaver on a dissecting table.
When Akhmed-Khan's brother comes to claim the body
(chapter twenty-one), the author again declines to invent a
tribesman's psyche. Olenin exhibits an imperious Russian
insensitivity in this episode. First of all, he strides over to take
a good look at the corpse. The brother shoots a withering
glance at him and speaks abruptly in his native language to
a member of his entourage who hastens to cover the dead
man's face. Unperturbed, Olenin next decides to strike up a
chat with the regal-looking brother. When the Chechen spits
contemptuously and ignores him, Olenin attributes his
behavior to stupidity or mere incomprehension of Russian.
The author clearly distances himself from the blundering eth-
nocentric hero who judges the tribesman an inscrutable alien.
Irony pervades the depiction, and yet the point of view is
restricted in part because Tolstoy himself lacked conviction
about his personal knowledge of the Chechen's mental life.
The tribesman's mind remains terra incognita for the author,
as well as the dramatis personae of The Cossacks. In this
respect, the strategy of concerted restriction to the outside
conforms to the anatomical depiction of Akhmed-Khan in
chapter nine.
Both a rebellion against romanticism and a humble recog-
nition of his limitations as a foreigner, Tolstoy's approach to
the tribesmen showed an entirely new concern with difficulties
of cross-cultural communication. All previous inventors of the
literary Caucasus had glossed over the existence of foreign
languages by equipping their speaking tribal protagonists
with correct Russian. As recollected by Maksim Maksimych,
the first words of Lermontov's Bela are slightly distorted; but
her Russian becomes standard thereafter. By contrast to the
general tendency, Tolstoy's "The Raid" and The Cossacks add
an authentic touch by couching the speech of tribesmen in
pidgin Russian (just as the novel so successfuly creates indi-
vidualized voices for the Cossacks themselves). In addition
to this linguistic deformation, the very presence of a tribal
interpreter in The Cossacks further foregrounds language as a
barrier between "us" and "them." After Akhmed-Khan's
body is ransomed, the ever curious Olenin follows the tribal
entourage to the river bank and eagerly asks the interpreter
to explain what the dead man's brother has just uttered with
a malevolent stare at Luka. As indicated by evasive eyes and
vague words, the interpreter obviously misrepresents the
statement and laughingly takes his leave.
This exchange between the Russian hero and the
interpreter who refuses to say what he knows illustrates Tol-
stoy's great preoccupation with non-verbal messages and
unspoken cultural codes in The Cossacks.30 Olenin completely
misreads the Chechen's contempt and lack of interest in him,
a tsarist soldier, no less! More generally, however, the Russian
is the odd man out. Ignorant of the Chechen language and
alien to the local ethos of warfare, he can merely gaze upon
the interaction between Cossack and Muslim braves. He is a
useless onlooker who lacks all capacity to initiate a cross-
cultural dialogue with the tribal other. The exploration of
such states of mutual incomprehension and the inquiry into
the very possibility of communication between the would-be
Russian civilizers and the Muslim tribesmen would make
Hadji Murat Tolstoy's most original, enduring contribution to
the literary Caucasus.
ACCUSED OF " P O E T R Y "
With mixed success, The Cossacks pursued the attack on

beguiling literary tradition which Tolstoy first mounted in
"The Raid." However, when published in 1863, the novel
was widely dismissed as an imitation of past writing, and
"poetic" writing, at that. Preoccupied with modernizing the
life of the newly emancipated peasantry, the Russian intelli-
gentsia of the time largely frowned on Tolstoy's ambivalent
celebration of Cossacks as noble savages untouched by Euro-
pean civilization. In this domestic political context, even
somebody with a positive word for The Cossacks felt compelled
to fault its disharmony with the burning socioeconomic issues
of the day. Yakov Polonsky, for example, praised Tolstoy's
marvelously "true" presentation of pristine landscape and
granted that he was not simply recycling the "romantic Cau-
casus with romantic heroes." 31 But none the less, Polonsky
accused Tolstoy of escaping into delusions of happiness out-
side civilization, instead of usefully broaching the Russian
peasantry's need for enlightenment.
For Tolstoy, surely one of the most exasperating things
about responses to The Cossacks must have been the recurring
references to him as a "poet" or producer of a "poetic" text.
The terms appeared as accolades in Pavel Annenkov's review:
"Poetry forms the very foundation of his whole picture of
Cossack life," wrote the critic, while adding that "dozens of
ethnographic articles" could not have captured the stanitsa
more reliably.32 However, unlike Annenkov's appreciation of
The Cossacks as a text both dulce and utile, radical utilitarians
deplored Tolstoy's "poetic" qualities. Now in the hands of
Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Dobroliubov, the Contem-
porary derided The Cossacks as a throwback to the "old school
of artists" and a descent into "poetry's abyssmal nadir." 33
Much more extreme than young Tolstoy's own definition of
"poetry" as dreamy obfuscation, this vociferous denial of aes-
thetic values contributed greatly to the aristocratic writer's
visceral antipathy for the plebian editors of the journal where
he had made his literary debut with Childhood in 1852.
The recriminations about "poetic" tendencies seem to have
left Tolstoy determined to keep defining his discontinuity with
the romantic Caucasus. None of the misreadings of The Cossacks
elicited any replies from him at the time. However, in the next
decade he went back to the source of the 1820s' Caucasian epi-
demic to deflate Pushkin. Tolstoy now produced his own "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus" (1872), a story written in an
extremely simple style meant for children but also suitable for
freshly literate adults. Although National Annals had published
excerpts from adolescent Lermontov's identically titled tale in
verse in 1859, Tolstoy primarily alluded to Pushkin's seminal
poem.34 In this little narrative Tolstoy confidently declared
himself different from the poets but in no way inferior to them:
he summoned his predecessors' old plot of love and death in the
wilderness and presumed to lay it to rest with his new tale of a
resourceful Russian prisoner befriended and freed by a clever
little "Tatar" girl of the mountains. 35
The production of a new Caucasian prisoner's story was
an important act of liberation from the anxiety of influence
Tolstoy had suffered in his youth. While never settled into a
comfortable groove (as his religious crisis of the late 1870s
would dramatically affirm), he was now a writer with an inter-
national reputation, rather than a novice pursued by shades
of Ammalat-Bek, Izmail-Bey, Pechorin and the rest of the
romantic Caucasian crew. Tolstoy had laid all three big
ghosts to rest - Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermon-
tov. Only in this maturely confident position was he capable
of writing Hadji Murat, his Caucasian novel which is very
frankly "poetic" in its own way.
CHAPTER 14
Post-war appropriation of romanticism
"Well, my dear boy! First I'm going to be your

godfather and then, I promise, I'll be your
matchmaker."
Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko
The extent of young Tolstoy's failure to displace the inherited
literary Caucasus became increasingly apparent in the post-
war decades. Far from supplanting his predecessors, Tolstoy
was overshadowed by them in this field. Following Shamil's
defeat, The Cossacks, "The Raid" and "The Wood-felling"
died away with virtually no echo. The works inspired no liter-
ary imitators and failed to win acceptance as corroborative
material in histories of the conquest.1 In diametrical contrast,
hapless versifiers and popular novelists such as Vasily Nemi-
rovich-Danchenko (1844 or 1845-1936) emulated the roman-
tic elan of Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov after
Shamil was vanquished.2 But even more significantly, "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus," "Ammalat-Bek," "Izmail-Bey"
and other romantic works were upheld as insightful illumi-
nations of the past and selectively appropriated to constitute
the history of the conquest as a civilizing mission.
Epigone belles-lettres and popular history violated roman-
tic discourse by using it to apotheosize the imperialist ideology
it had disrupted in its heyday. Young Pushkin, Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky and Lermontov had appropriated the Caucasus for
their own uses, to be sure. But their writings inscribed pas-
sions for revolt and left unresolved a panoply of ideologically
unsettling questions about semi-Europeanized Russia's cul-
tural and psychological relations to wild Asia. In the era of
252
Post-war appropriation of romanticism 253
conquest history was still open for these writers and their
contemporary readerships, uncertain about just how the
battle against the tribes would turn out. The epigones who
appropriated romanticism after Shamil's surrender had to-
tally different political, cultural and psychological horizons.
With the Asian "bandits" beaten at last, Russia was preening
its European feathers and formulating economic agendas for
the newly acclaimed ''paradise" now in its possession.3 In
this self-congratulatory climate, the noble Caucasian savage
rebounded but was patronized as never before in his history.
The full complexity of this situation was certainly not lost on
old Tolstoy: in tackling the Caucasian theme anew at the
turn of the century, his Hadji Murat blasted Russia's reigning
cultural mythology of the civilizing mission, while recuperat-
ing violated truths of romantic discourse.
NOSTALGIA FOR THE ROMANTIC CAUCASUS
Russian awareness of the Caucasus in the post-war period

was sharply split between a group of experts and the reading
public at large. From the 1860s onward, the volume of pub-
lished documents, history, ethnography and statistics about
the dominion grew by quantum leaps. The authors who pro-
duced these works occasionally lambasted the literary Cau-
casus. The historian Nikolai Dubrovin, for example, declared
that belles-lettres held Russians in thrall to pure fiction about
the territory and its tribes.4 Somewhat unfairly (as certain
twentieth-century specialists would insist), Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky was Dubrovin's great bete noire, as he was for the
ethnographer E. Kozubinsky and the linguist Pyotr Uslar. 5
When Uslar attacked the romantic Caucasus in 1868, he
brought into focus the main tension between the intellectual
elite and the general population: his major complaint was that
"Ammalat-Bek, Seltaneta and all the rest" refused to budge
from most Russians' minds.6 Inattentive to the experts' charge
that the romantic Caucasus was mere invention, the average
reader simply would not surrender the colorful tribes of Push-
kin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov.
The split between ordinary readers and Caucasian regional
specialists became even more pronounced with the rise of lit-
eracy in Russia. After the Emancipation of the serfs in 1861
the Russian readership steadily grew to encompass more
lower-class townspeople and peasants. Often only semi-
educated, these readers predictably displayed a great appetite
for simple, exciting chapbook literature.7 Gradually dissemi-
nated to the broadened strata of readers, selected parts of the
romantic Caucasus came to enjoy wider sway than ever.
Popular nostalgia for the romance of noble primitivity
erupted in Russia immediately after victory over Shamil. One
fascinating expression of this mood was adulation of the
defeated imam himself. The former leader of the jihad
received respectful treatment from Alexander II and Alex-
ander Bariatinsky, the tsarist commander-in-chief who had
captured him. Even more interestingly, however, Shamil
attracted a great deal of friendly attention from the public at
large.8 People gathered along the route by which he was taken
from Dagestan to St. Petersburg, and his hotel in the capital
drew a steady stream of curious visitors, including some intent
on writing his biography. When Shamil left to take up resi-
dence in Kaluga, a festive crowd of Russian men and women
gathered in Znamensky Square to bid him farewell. They
threw kisses, called out, "We love you!" and invited him to
come back to St. Petersburg. To be sure, it was easy for
officials to fete the vanquished imam, as though he were an
exotic pet. But the unrehearsed public readiness to embrace
Shamil was a less patronizing phenomenon. While no doubt
attesting to much idle curiosity, the popular acclaim appears
to have borne witness to the lingering power of the romantic
Caucasus as an Asia happily accommodated in the semi-
Europeanized Russian self. Those well-wishers in Znamensky
Square were seeking a semblance of the dashing primitives of
Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov (rather than
a sullen brute like Zotov's "last of the Kheaks").
Of course, the romantic nostalgia was not completely
unanimous, as notably illustrated by Rostislav Fadeev's popu-
lar history Sixty Years of War in the Caucasus (1860) .9 A conserva-
tive nationalist and industrious journalist, Fadeev constructed
a chauvinistic account of Holy Russia's triumph over Muslim
"filth." His history and newspaper articles featured the tribes
as "rapacious beasts" to be combated for the good of Chris-
tian civilization. Without seeing any contradiction, however,
Fadeev none the less considered the savages redeemable pre-
cisely because they were "Caucasian" in every sense: for all
his backwardness, the tribesman "never sank to the level of
the Guinea Negro." The Caucasian wild man belonged to
"our" superior "Japhetic race" and was basically a "child"
who required colonial supervision.
But for all Fadeev's prominence, his pivotal idea of bestial
savagery was challenged by other commentators of the era.
F. Yukhotnikov's "Letters from the Caucasus," for example,
vented Rousseauist doubts about the civilizing mission.10
Yukhotnikov called the tribesmen "unspoiled" in their natu-
ral state, extolled their artistic oral tradition and maintained
that Russia had merely brought them vodka, gambling and
venereal disease. A contemporaneous, anonymous article
titled "The Subjugation of the Caucasus" stated outright that
many Russians regretted the end of the war because now the
territory's "poetry was dead." 11 The author certainly stood in
these ranks, as seen in his praise of the tribesman's lively
intelligence, "humane soul" and regal bearing in even the
shabbiest garb. Young Pushkin was acclaimed here for recog-
nizing the tribes' verve and "feeling for poetry," even though
he had merely "caught a glimpse of the Caucasus." As the
allusion to Pushkin underscored, the "poetic" Caucasus for
which these post-war Russian readers yearned was quite
simply a textual realm of intriguingly shifting boundaries
between "us" and "them." Enclosed in print and available
for repeated consumption, the romantics' ambivalent Cau-
casus of conquest was cherished afresh in the much less soul-
stirring era of colonial exploitation.
LITERATURE AUTHENTICATED AS HISTORY
In this nostalgic climate, the romantic Caucasus enjoyed a

new surge of extra-literary authority in popular imagination.
The German writer and translator Friedrich Bodenstedt
exhibited the receptivity when he posed the following chal-
lenge in an article published in the early 1860s: "Just try to
name a single book out of that vast number of thick geo-
graphies, histories and other sorts of works about the Cauc-
asus through which a reader can become acquainted with the
characteristic nature of those mountains and their inhabitants
as vividly and truly as in one of Lermontov's poems." 12 The
old urge to take poetry as artful fact thus declared itself alive
and well. In the very same period when Tolstoy's The Cossacks
sought to deflate Lermontov and Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Bod-
enstedt recommended poetry as both dulce and utile, while
dismissing the massive corpus of non-fiction as an unmemor-
able, artless accumulation of words. This yearning for the text
which purveys knowledge in a pleasurable form was seconded
in the same period by the reviewer of a new Russian history
of Chechnia. In words reminiscent of the criticism leveled at
Bronevsky in the 1820s, the commentator complained that
a "complete absence of literary polish" marred the whole
burgeoning field of Caucasian studies. 13 The lack of stylistic
felicity in the "thick books" of ethnography, history and
geography still provoked dissatisfaction and stirred desires to
make literary works serve multiple purposes.
First evinced in the popularity of "The Prisoner of the Cau-
casus" in the 1820s, the resistance to pedestrian non-fiction
and the consequent gravitation toward poetry bespoke a time-
less aesthetic predilection. Verse arrests its audience not
simply by images or the expression of ideas but by its "unver-
balizable pulse," its "non-word language" which cannot be
paraphrased or deracinated by reason.14 As the musical mas-
ters of the romantic literary Caucasus, young Pushkin and
Lermontov displayed much greater staying-power than the
long-winded Bestuzhev-Marlinsky. To be sure the creator of
Ammalat-Bek was far from eclipsed in popular imagination
in post-war Russia, as Uslar had underlined so unhappily.
Despite the intellectual elite's protests, some Russians in the
second half of the nineteenth century were even prepared to
take Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's sexually uninhibited "mountain
goddesses" as authentic Caucasian personages. 15 None the
less, at the level of language rather than cultural myth,
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky was not nearly so memorable and
amenable to citation or recitation as Pushkin and Lermontov
were. Not by chance, many educated Russians today never
read Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, whereas Pushkin's and Lermon-
tov's Caucasian verse is widely known.
Musically powerful Russian poetry was appropriated for
mass dissemination of the ideology of the civilizing mission in
the second half of the nineteenth century. No elaborate edu-
cation is required for the implantation of verse to take place,
and indeed an exclusive orientation toward print weakens the
memorizing reflex.16 This general susceptibility to poetry's
unverbalizable pulse recommended Pushkin and Lermontov
to Russian authors keen on inculcating national pride in the
empire. As one striking example, the Circassian heroine's pro-
fession of love to the captive in Pushkin's "The Prisoner of the
Caucasus" was interpolated into a late edition of Zriakhov's
perennial tale The Russians' Battle with the Kabardinians)1 With
fond eyes on her future Cossack husband, Zriakhov's "beauti-
ful Mohammedan" delivered Pushkin's unacknowledged
verse as an "old Kabardinian song." Young Pushkin's tale
about a woman fatally rebuffed by a Byronic Russian was
thus plundered to embellish a story of cross-cultural marriage
repeatedly issued in the late nineteenth century to endorse the
Caucasian conquest as the benevolent march of civilization.
Even more remarkably, Pushkin and Lermontov were
requisitioned for little pedagogic manuals. P. Nadezhdin's so-
called "study guide" Nature and People in the Caucasus (1869)
was a pastiche of disparate materials, all treated as equally
reliable.18 Selections from Pushkin's poetry ("The Prisoner of
the Caucasus," "The Caucasus") were interwoven with A
Hero of Our Time, semi-fictional travelogues, natural science
and ethnography (including an extract from "Ammalat-
Bek"). Imbued with faith in the civilizing mission, Nature and
People in the Caucasus pieced together a glorious tale about
Russian subjugation of wild Asia. E. Voskresensky's school-
book The Caucasus through the Works of Pushkin and Lermontov
(1887) followed a similar procedure. 19 Restricted to poetry,
this compilation envisioned an audience of pupils (and per-
haps semi-educated adults) who even needed a footnote locat-
ing the Caucasus. Voskresensky began by explicating the civi-
lizing mission in simple prose and then provided commentary
on assembled excerpts from Pushkin and Lermontov. As an
illustration of the method, the Circassian in full battle gear
was lifted from "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" and juxta-
posed to the Russian attack on the tribal village in "Izmail-
Bey." Voskresensky's commentary argued that the hostile
"savage" accurately captured by Pushkin demanded the ruth-
less military tactics shown by Lermontov.
In a spirit which violated his sources, Voskresensky quite
literally constructed the history of the conquest as one big
poem. He might, of course, have profited from the epilogue
to "The Prisoner of the Caucasus." Instead, he borrowed
the young poet's Circassian brave but deprived him of his
ambivalent aura of martial heroism, engagingly simple social
relations and native songs. Voskresensky's misappropriation
of Lermontov was even more egregious: the excerpt from
"Izmail-Bey" naturally omitted the poet's denunciation of
Russia as a sinister "new Rome" and his depiction of tsarist
soldiers as bloody-handed molesters of tribeswomen.
OLD TOLSTOY AND POPULAR FICTION
During the great age of the novel dominated by Dostoevsky,

Tolstoy and Turgenev, the war against Shamil dropped out of
sight in Russian literature. The turn of the century, however,
brought a new flurry of Caucasian tales and novels by authors
now largely, if not completely forgotten.20 The patriotic spirit
of this epigone literature reflected a more pervasive mentality
of the time: the centennial of the annexation of Georgia was
drawing near, and Russian historians took the occasion to
glorify the Caucasian conquest.21 In tune with the jubilant
mood, the era's popular literature rid the romantic Caucasus
of restive ambivalence and made it docilely haul the ideology
of the civilizing mission.
Two contributions by the immensely popular and prolific
historical novelists, Daniel Mordovtsev (1830-1905) and
Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko, merit comment for their
interplay with Hadji Murat, produced largely in this same
period.22 Although once acclaimed "our Walter Scott," Mor-
dovtsev drew his big following from provincial readers and
was generally disdained by sophisticates. His work most perti-
nent to old Tolstoy was "The Caucasian Hero (A True
Story)," a semi-fictional novella about Hadji Murat. 23 As sig-
naled by the parenthetical subtitle, Mordovtsev emulated
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's aspiration to make literature edu-
cational as well as fun. To bolster his claim to historical truth,
Mordovtsev carefully documented his sources (some of the
same Tolstoy used for Hadji Murat). But while he had access
to a transcription of the autobiography Hadji Murat dictated
to a tsarist officer in 1851, Mordovtsev could do no better
than invent his "Caucasian hero" as a sorry little vestige of
Ammalat-Bek. A handsome, curly-haired fellow given to
flowery "oriental" rhetoric, Mordovtsev's Hadji Murat is an
inscrutable savage who dies a meaningless death. Why did
Hadji Murat defect from Shamil? Why did he try to flee back
home, provoking the Russians to pursue and kill him? Mor-
dovtsev could only suggest that a wild man lives by instinct
and is inseparable from his native habitat. The Naturmensch
was, of course, a staple of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermon-
tov, but Mordovtsev hitched the concept to an absolute faith
in the rectitude of the tsarist conquest. A limp incarnation
of Asian alterity, this Hadji Murat simply could not fathom
Russia's superior civilization and was doomed to die an
uncomprehended death.
While Mordovtsev allowed Hadji Murat's Russian killers
to vent much hostility toward him ("disgusting savage,"
"beast," "dog," etc.), Nemirovich-Danchenko's contempo-
raneous contribution to the Caucasian theme takes the grand
prize for patronizing the tribesman as noble savage. Initially
famous as a war correspondent during the Russo-Turkish
War of 1877-78, Nemirovich-Danchenko increased his
celebrity with adventure stories, travelogues, ethnography,
memoirs and other genres, to the total of some 250 volumes.
His historical novel The Forgotten Fort (1897) tells a cross-
cultural love story against the background of war against
Shamil.24 At a fort on the Samur river, the local Russian
commander's daughter Nina becomes the object of the affec-
tions of Amed, a handsome tribesman fighting on the tsarist
side. Religious difference naturally poses an obstacle to their
union, but Nina's explication of the Gospels sways Amed from
Islam. After heroic performance in a decisive battle, Amed is
taken to St. Petersburg to have an audience with Nicholas I
in the Winter Palace. Friendly as can be, the tsar puts the
befuddled tribesman at ease and commends his valor. Nich-
olas even vows to help the "dear boy" realize his great dream
of marrying Nina: once assured that Amed means to convert
to Orthodoxy, the tsar promises to be his godfather and
matchmaker.
This episode epitomizes the patronizing novel's commit-
ment to a fiction of the empire as a family. Nicholas is
ready to gather all the tribesmen into his fatherly embrace,
if only they will stop resisting him. He praises them as
valiant "knights of the Middle Ages" and wishes they would
stop annihilating themselves in the jihad. How much better
if they would convert to Orthodoxy and serve the Russian
tsar! While Amed exemplifies the "good" tribesman, ready
to be assimilated into the empire, Shamil himself is drawn
into the scheme. As depicted in the novel's bygone era of
warfare, Shamil is a handsome, charismatic leader driven
by genuine religious fervor. First glimpsed as a legendary,
regal figure on a "golden steed," he dazzles a band of
Russian soldiers who crowd their fort's ramparts to see
him. The perspective of these admiratory soldiers is Nemiro-
vich-Danchenko's own. An authorial digression near the
novel's end proclaims Shamil a towering historical person-
age, a "giant" and "military genius" with magnificently
"savage power." But in the view of The Forgotten Fort, even
the grandest Asian had to bow to European civilization in
the shape of Russia.
Nemirovich-Danchenko's tribute to noble savagery stroked
the imperial ego of late nineteenth-century Russians. By
patronizing the tribes conquered several decades earlier, the
historical novel permitted the "European" victors to fancy
themselves a nation of benevolent godfathers and godmothers
to culturally inferior Asians. A paean to Nicholas and all
"our" other ancestors who effected the purportedly un-
stoppable march of European enlightenment, The Forgotten
Fort extolled the conquest as a purely magnanimous force in
which Russians should take pride.
As this rapid survey of late nineteenth-century writings has
attempted to show, old Tolstoy in Hadji Murat tackled a
textual enterprise about the civilizing mission which was
much vaster than the big romantic "poem" he had spurned
in his youth. By the end of the century in Russia, a complete
interpenetration of popular history and literature had taken
place to form a gigantic imperial epic of European "triumph
over obstinate barbarism" in the Caucasus.25 During the clos-
ing decades of the nineteenth century, members of the intellec-
tual elite, such as Adolf Berzhe, kept asserting that the Cau-
casus was scarcely known to most Russians because they
lacked the ability or willingness to perform the "patient labor
of specialized researchers."26 The relevant material was there
to be sifted by experts and incorporated into their "thick
books." As usual, though, even many of Russia's best edu-
cated readers preferred more entertaining, aesthetically enjoy-
able options. The manuals of Nadezhdin and Voskresensky
aimed at the least sophisticated audiences (including school
children), but even popular history written strictly for adults
footnoted poetry as readily as non-fiction.27 In the meantime,
widely read novelists like Nemirovich-Danchenko and Mor-
dovtsev purported to provide accurate reconstitutions of the
past. The biggest of all narratives of conquest had installed
itself in old Tolstoy's time: there was no clear-cut division
between the historical and literary Caucasus in popular con-
sciousness in the post-war decades of the nineteenth century.
In this context Tolstoy returned to the Caucasian theme in
Hadji Murat with a more conciliatory attitude toward vintage
romanticism than he had held in his youth. Like Berzhe's
circle of "specialized researchers," Tolstoy possessed the
talent and patience to gather data for his assault on the cul-
tural mythology of the Caucasian war. However, he had lost
his notion of "poetry" as the opposite of "fact." No longer
plagued by his youthful anxiety of influence, he transposed
important features of the romantic Caucasus in his production
of Hadji Murat as a noble primitve pitted against the rep-
rehensible Russian elite. Tolstoy thus disappropriated the
post-war appropriators of Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and
Lermontov. This act restored to romantic discourse its vio-
lated capacity to challenge Eurocentric Russian convictions
of superiority over the orient.
CHAPTER 15
Tolstoy's confessional indictment
When I got closer, I saw that the little bush was a

"Tatar" like the one whose flower I had picked to no
purpose and thrown away.
Tolstoy
Unlike the politically non-committal Caucasian ceuvre of
Tolstoy's earlier days, Hadji Murat unequivocally con-
demned the war against the Muslim tribes. Written between
1896 and 1904, the semi-fictional novel belongs to the era
of the Boer War (1899-1902), an outbreak of hostilities
which inaugurated the twentieth century's long wave of
revolts against colonialism. A glaring demonstration of the
brutality and hypocrisy of "civilizing missions," this current
event surely intensified anti-imperialist sentiment in Hadji
Murat.1 But besides having a new historical perspective on
empire-building, Tolstoy also had evolved his religious and
social thought focused on relations between the peasantry
and lords of Russia. Solidarity with the peasant as the
victim of an unjust sociopolitical system blended in Hadji
Murat with sympathy for the Caucasian tribes as a foreign
population senselessly decimated by Russia. The tsarist
state's exercise of abusive power is the story's major con-
cern, condensed in the framing metaphor of the blooming
thistle crushed by a cartwheel. 2 Known as the "Tatar" in
the region of Tolstoy's estate outside Moscow, the colorful
wild plant bears a common Russian misnomer for the
Caucasian tribes and operates as a symbol for the Avar
hero, Hadji Murat.
While Tolstoy's earlier Caucasian ceuvre pursued anti-
263
romantic strategies, Hadji Murat sought instead to dislodge
an officially constituted view of history and force the Rus-
sian elite into uncomfortable reassessment of the war. The
work approached the tribesman as a culturally muzzled
figure who needed a mediator to bring him into authentic
dialogue with the Russian readership. Like Tolstoy's very
presumption that he could grant the Caucasian a voice, his
discursive stance in Hadji Murat was quite imperious. But
of course, the novel's good political intentions are clear as
can be. Tolstoy's minimal depiction of Chechens in The
Cossacks had conveyed wariness of authorial ventriloquism in
writing about another's culture. Hadji Murat now confidently
imagined the "other" side of history, while illuminating
how previous Russian writers of literature and history had
denied the tribes a voice.
In excoriating the Russian elite, Count Tolstoy did not
completely spare himself. He assumed a self-reproachful
posture in the novel's frame by despoiling one of the sym-
bolic "Tatar" plants. However, his inclusion in elite culture
was more subtly inscribed in the novel's preoccupation with
language's embedment in the structure of imperial power.
Hadji Murat upgraded the orality of the tribes and the
Russian peasantry, while devaluing the written word as a
tool of dehumanizing state structures. This clash between
Europeanized Russia's culture of literacy and the tribal
and peasant cultures of speech reached beyond the tale to
complicate Tolstoy's own act of writing for readers. More
confessional than self-righteous, Hadji Murat was a product
of book culture turned against itself for therapeutic
purposes.
PSEUDO-EPIC REMEMBRANCE
The anti-imperialism of Hadji Murat obviously would have

had greatest immediacy for Russians at the turn of the
century, when Tolstoy laid the work aside. Descendants of
actual personages depicted in the novel comprised an
especially notable group of potential readers. Roughly a
Tolstoy's confessional indictment 265
generation younger than the author, these sons and daugh-
ters of the dramatis personae had not participated in mili-
tary or government service during the conquest. Neverthe-
less, they formed a living link to the past constituted by
Tolstoy with so few good words for "our" side. As part of
the elite still running the empire at the time of the Boer
War and the tsarist expansion into the Far East which led
to the Russo-Japanese conflict, how would the Stolypins,
Vorontsovs and Bariatinskys have reacted to the depiction
of their ancestors' role in the system of power rendered
reprehensible in Hadji Murat?
This line of speculation points to the novel's envisaged
audience of beneficiaries of empire. The elite of old Tolstoy's
day never had to fully confront the deeds of its fathers as
presented in Hadji Murat because an entirely uncensored
version of the text did not become available in Russia until
the Soviet era.3 The work simply never reached its historical
audience. But Hadji Murat anticipates this lost, hypothetical
group of addressees as its "ideal readership," a concept
which Tolstoy himself had strikingly formulated in his diary
in 1852.4 In the case of Hadji Murat, "ideal" primarily
entails an acceptance of officially constituted history of the
conquest. The novel extrapolates from the immediate
period, however, and forces every beneficiary of imperialism
into the position of the elite historical audience.
In the frame Tolstoy holds both his confessional and
homiletic cards tight to his chest. He assumes an
intriguingly ambiguous stance toward the readership by
refusing to define the work's genre. After recounting a walk
through plowed fields, he lets the crushed thistle stimulate
his tale, without yet even mentioning Hadji Murat: "And
I was reminded of a story of the Caucasus of long ago, part
of which I saw, part of which I heard from eyewitnesses and
part of which I imagined. Here is that story as it took shape
in my memory and imagination." The cagey avoidance of
generic definition is perfectly signaled by an element of the
Russian lost in English translation. Tolstoy announces the
account as istoriia, a word which follows its French model
histoire to mean both "history" and "story." The English
"a story" (odna istoriia) should thus be understood to overlap
with "an episode of history." This nuance in the Russian
leaves doubt about whether the narrative is largely a literary
fabrication ("just" a story) or rather the recounting of the
actual past. Offered as two things at once, Hadji Murat has
a typically Tolstoyan double-coded character. 5
The overlapping codes conform to Bakhtin's definition of
the novel and the epic.6 In accord with novelistic discourse,
the frame of Hadji Murat links the (hi) story to the present
and puts Tolstoy on the same temporal plane as his audi-
ence. The author situates himself in the field of represen-
tation, depicts an actual event in his life and offers an
unexplained symbol which will require interpretation about
what the distant era means for "now." The image of the
crushed thistle gives a warning that the writer will re-
evaluate the past. However, Tolstoy activates a different
code by simultaneously striking a pose of epic recollection
at the frame's conclusion: he summons the Caucasian con-
quest as an event of "long ago," a time immediately pin-
pointed in the tale's first sentence as the "end of 1851." A
rather large temporal gap thus opens to suggest that per-
haps the distant epoch is finished, has a fixed meaning and
is not really going to intrude into the present.
Once the narrative is launched, Tolstoy sustains the epic
pose by simulating the flow of memory rather than advertis-
ing his extensive research. During his military service in
the 1850s he visited Tiflis and became acquainted with
Viceroy Vorontsov, Bariatinsky and other people depicted
in Hadji Murat. The news of Hadji Murat's defection nat-
urally reached Tolstoy at the time. He took little interest
in the matter, though, and even judged it an act of treason
against Shamil. While Tolstoy undoubtedly had pertinent
recollections about the bygone era, Hadji Murat was based
primarily on the study of published works and archives,
correspondence with historians and the collection of per-
sonal testimonies about military service in the Caucasus
and civilian life in St. Petersburg under Nicholas I. And
yet with the exception of the frame's reference to "eyewit-
nesses," Tolstoy concealed this process of amassing data.
Most strikingly, he avoided footnotes (which he had found
indispensable in his anti-romantic quest for new truths in
his early Caucasian stories and The Cossacks). Although
Hadji Murat sometimes translates foreign words into Russian
parenthetically, it has no authorial commentary in its mar-
gins. We cannot exclude the possibility that Tolstoy might
have added a scholarly apparatus if the novel had gone to
press in his lifetime. But this appears highly unlikely in
view of the author's concerted substitution of "memory"
for scholarly investigation.
By avoiding the footnoter's pedagogic posture, Tolstoy
sustains a siren song of epic remembrance sounded to
readers in the frame. In an epic mask, the author seems
to say, "Let us return to the shared national past together."
This implied attitude coaxes the audience to gather round
the (hi)story-teller, not to receive instruction but to hear a
tale about the "long ago" whose relation to "now" is left
so vague as to pose no threat to contemporary Russia's
values. After luring readers with an apparently inviting
proposition, Tolstoy will spring his trap and inculpate them,
as Hadji Murat reverses the thrust of epic genre to condemn
rather than revere the forefathers.
ENTERING HADJI MURAT S WORLD
The effort to force the Russian readership into a new

relation to the tribes commences in chapter one with a
deflation of the elemental mountain man invented in roman-
tic literature and incorporated into official history. In reac-
tion to a reductionist logic of environmental determinism,
Tolstoy insists on Hadji Murat's distinctive cultural iden-
tity. Devoted to the hero's nocturnal flight to a Chechen
village, the first chapter details characteristic architecture
and the furnishings of a house, particular types of utensils
and foods, the native dress of men and women, and Islam
as a respected creed. By avoiding references to landscape,
this introduction thwarts a reader prepared to view savage
terrain as the mirror of Caucasian Naturmenschen. Tolstoy
persistently constitutes the cultural rather than "mountain"
milieu throughout the novel. Outstanding examples are
Hadji Murat's account of his military career (chapters
eleven and thirteen), the Chechen Sado's village destroyed
in a raid (chapter seventeen), Shamil at Vedeno (chapter
nineteen) and Hadji Murat's recollections of his childhood
in Dagestan (chapter twenty-three).
Never a mere backdrop of local color, the abundant
ethnographic detail is enlivened by the special quality of
human relations in the tribal world. From the outset Hadji
Murat possesses impressive charismatic authority. In flight
from Shamil, he commands loyalty and admiration from
his Murid Eldar, Sado and his family, and Bata, the tribes-
man who agrees to conduct the hero's scouts into Russian
territory. Like Sado, proud to risk his life by sheltering
Hadji Murat, Bata acts out of devotion and refuses money
for his services.
While Hadji Murat will not prove thoroughly immune
to dreams of self-aggrandizement through political power,
he exists throughout the story as the charismatic fugitive
threatened by despotic systems of bureaucratic and proto-
bureaucratic authority. In conversation, Tolstoy once called
these state structures "two poles of imperious absolutism,
the Asian and the European."7 The despotic governments
converge through motifs shared by Nicholas I and Shamil
(written edicts, megalomania, political showmanship and
religious hypocrisy). In this design Shamil appears in the
process of imposing a corrupt, self-serving statecraft onto
the social cosmos of direct, authentic human relations in
which Hadji Murat is situated in chapter one. On beyond
Shamil, Russian tsardom exhibits full-blown bureaucratic
authority, most alien to the charismatic hero.
Grounded in the culturally specific, relatively primitive
milieu of tribal society, Hadji Murat's personal magnetism
is elaborated in encounters with Russians who find him
unexpectedly engaging and "childlike." By epitomizing the
tribesman's uncorrupted character, "childlike" in Tolstoy's
text undercuts Eurocentric notions of Asia's cultural
infancy. More decidedly, though, the metaphor of childhood
helps repress the hero's erotic force. Hadji Murat is not
utterly deprived of virile attractiveness, as demonstrated in
the initially unsettling effect he has on Maria Dmitrievna,
the mistress of the Russian fort commander at Nukha
(chapter eighteen). Nevertheless, Tolstoy's hero is radically
distanced from Russian literature's ranks of tribal lady-
killers, including Mordovtsev's recent invention of Hadji
Murat himself as an oriental swain ("A Caucasian Hero").
Tolstoy casts Hadji Murat in an altogether different mold
by accentuating his moral integrity and attachment to his
family. Irreproachable in his relations with women, the
childlike, charismatic hero is pitted against the polygamist
Shamil, sexually promiscuous Nicholas I and other Russian
committers of adultery.
THE PEASANT'S WORLD
The envisioned Russian reader is initially plunged into

Hadji Murat's cultural realm without being given a point
of self-reference. Chapter two then shifts to a group of
tsarist soldiers manning a night patrol several kilometers
from fort Vozdvizhensk. The Russian peasant enters here
as a herald of possible dialogue with the tribesmen. When
Hadji Murat's scouts arrive and ask to be conducted to
Vorontsov fils at the fort, the invented character Avdeev is
chosen as one of the escorts. As he starts the mission, he
jokingly tells his comrades he will bayonet the tribesmen,
if they make a false move. But upon his return he heartily
announces that the scouts were "fine fellows" with whom
he has had a "nice talk." Avdeev's account makes it clear
that the "talk" was comprised of a few words, gestures,
tone of voice and a sense of understanding which passes
through eye contact. The Russian peasant has managed to
surmount the language barrier and learn something about
the Chechens' personal lives. A sense of humankind's
uniformity strikes him, leading him to conclude, "Really,
they're just like Russians." The soldier Nikitin sourly inter-
jects that the tribesmen are treacherous killers, but the
remark does not annul Avdeev's experience of cross-cultural
communion.
At the same time, however, Avdeev's socially marked
idiom implies that Russians are not all alike. The peasant's
slightly substandard speech divides him from the antici-
pated audience — the Russian elite who know how to wield
the native tongue correctly in every respect. Tolstoy soon
deepens this sociolinguistic dimension of Avdeev's character
by specifying that he cannot write and must dictate a letter
to his family from his deathbed in the military infirmary
(chapter seven).
As Hadji Murat proceeds, the gap widens between the
peasantry and the envisioned elite audience. The peasant
theme resurfaces in chapter eight when Avdeev's family
sets to work on a freezing winter morning in their village.
Tolstoy's technique conforms to the ethnographic sketch.
He lavishes attention on the peasants' clothing, incorporates
folkish turns of speech and gives a literally blow-by-blow
account of threshing done by a man and two women.
Unlike the mowing performed in Anna Karenina by the
aristocratic hero Levin as a spiritually uplifting "Arbeits-
kure," the strenuous manual labor in Hadji Murat is observed
by the narrator exclusively from outside. The account of a
typical morning in the life of the mid-nineteenth-century
Russian peasantry is pointedly aimed at people of both
sexes who may have never looked closely at a threshing-floor
and certainly never thought of swinging a flail themselves.8
The complex style of Hadji Murat is the more pervasive
indication of the elite character of the envisioned reader.
Sophisticated vocabulary, complicated syntax and untrans-
lated French in conversation between aristocratic characters
create a verbal texture which is opaque by comparison to
the simple form of writing achieved in Tolstoy's "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus" and Stories for the People, a series
including "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1885).
Set in Russian villages and free of bookish language, these
tales target an audience of newly literate peasants and
lower-class townspeople. By contrast, Hadji Murat stylis-
tically resembles The Death of Ivan Ilych, as well as War and
Peace and Anna Karenina, the two major novels which Tol-
stoy's What Is Art? categorized as "immoral" because of the
class exclusiveness of their language, depicted social milieux
and anticipated elite readership. As often noted, writing
Hadji Murat induced guilt in the author because his admi-
ration for the tribal ethos of war ran contrary to his philos-
ophy of non-resistance to evil and Christian resignation
toward death. Likewise, Tolstoy's reversion to his old novel-
istic idiom apparently struck him as backsliding away from
his ideal of moral, universally accessible literature
expounded in What is Art?
In terms of the envisaged audience Hadji Murat did indeed
abandon the newly literate whose opportunities as readers
Tolstoy had sought to expand through Stories for the People.
However, as we shall see now in further detail, the aesthetic
"sin" of returning to complex artistry in Hadji Murat was
virtually expiated in its commission since the author had
to squarely address upper-class readers in order to implicate
them in crimes of the imperial Russian state.
THE READER'S BEAU MONDE
Unlike all previous contributions to the literary Caucasus,

Hadji Murat shows Russia divided into two cultures - the
peasants and the elite. Avdeev is the first Russian character
to feature prominently, but the anticipated audience could
not identify with him. This initial focus on the peasant
looks calculated to induce envisioned readers to latch onto
home ground once it appears. The Russian elite enters in
chapter three in an episode at fort Vozdvizhensk, where
Vorontsov fils and his wife Maria strive to match their St.
Petersburg style of life. At this early point in the novel
no opprobrium darkens the little pocket of Russian high
society in the Caucasus. Interrupted when the host receives
confidential notification of Hadji Murat's defection, the eve-
ning of cards is passed in an atmosphere of lighthearted
amusement - some trivial gambling among urbane friends,
a harmless flirtation between the officer Poltoratsky and
Maria Vorontsov, champagne to end the social occasion
and banter in French between husband and wife after the
guests have gone. The whole strategy invites the sophisti-
cated Russian reader to embrace the milieu culturally rooted
in St. Petersburg. After the fugitive Hadji Murat in a
Chechen village and the Russian peasant soldiers in the
Caucasian wilderness, the home of the Vorontsovs beckons
as the envisioned audience's familiar sphere of Europeanized
civilization.
But as Hadji Murat develops, the audience becomes
enmeshed in the mendacity and inhumanity uncovered in
upper-class Russia. Instead of being true to the apparently
epic proposition of drawing unchastised readers into memory,
Tolstoy tips his hand as the judge of the assembled listeners.
The (hi) story turns out to be one of the author's character-
istic "reader-implicating narratives" which represents the
anticipated audience in order to condemn it and push it
into self-condemnation.9 In a narrative design of theme and
variations, Tolstoy repeatedly features the soiree as a typical
expression of the Russian elite's inauthenticity and moral
bankruptcy.10 A theme of masking and role-playing is par-
ticularly pronounced in two instances. Set in Tiflis, chapter
ten links the Italian opera with a reception at the palatial
home of the Viceroy, Vorontsov pere. The combined motifs
spin a reprehensible air of theatricality around the Russian
elite by rendering their values, behavior and attitudes
"strange" in the eyes of the Caucasian hero.11 Bored by
the artifice of the actual theater, Hadji Murat is bewildered
by the social code of Vorontsov who refuses to discuss
"business" at his party and walks away from the hero,
"pretending not to hear him" when he raises the subject
of negotiating for the rescue of his family held hostage by
Shamil. The theme of the theatrical facade which hides a
rotten interior reaches its culmination in the presentation
of Nicholas I (chapter fifteen). In one episode the tsar
actually appears at a masked ball at the Winter Palace in
St. Petersburg where he seduces a young woman. But on
beyond the lecherous antics of His Highness at the grand
soiree, Tolstoy makes the masquerade a comprehensive
metaphor for a statecraft which hides murderous tyranny
and cruelty behind the exterior of imperial grandeur.
To drive home the point, the long treatment of Nicholas
is followed by two short chapters devoted to a raid insti-
gated by the tsar's order to step up warfare in Chechnia.
Conducted in a festive spirit of song and camaraderie, the
attack razes the village where Hadji Murat found refuge at
the (hi)story's beginning. Sado's family suffers the greatest
abomination - a small son bayoneted in the back. Still
haunted by infanticide as an iconic atrocity of the conquest,
old Tolstoy revived this motif from "The Raid" and The
Cossacks.
After steadily vilifying the Europeanized elite for page
after page, Hadji Murat slips a noose right around the
reader's neck in the second paragraph of chapter twenty-
two. Tolstoy now announces that like Viceroy Vorontsov
and officials in Petersburg, the "majority of the Russian
people" who knew about Hadji Murat's defection con-
sidered it a fortunate turn of events in the war or merely
found it an interesting fait divers, whereas the tribesman
himself was experiencing a "dreadful turning-point in his
life." This contrastive formulation throws the audience into
the killers' camp headed by odious Nicholas. At this stage,
readers invited to identify with the beau monde have been
maneuvered into increasingly damning complicity with the
structure of imperial Russian power. Am I not a descendant
of these forefathers? Would I not have stood in that
"majority," indifferent to Hadji Murat's human problems?
Would I not have subscribed to the principle "war is war,"
as a child-murderer must do (and as the officer Butler will
do in the story after seeing the hero's severed head)? These
implicit questions would have had an especially urgent ring
for the novel's lost historical audience. However, Tolstoy's
fierce moral indictment forces all readers to examine their
relation to that "majority" of Russians posited as the typi-
cally complacent citizenry of an expansionist Eurocentric
state.
ORALITY VERSUS PRINT
Hadji Murat tightens the rope around the reader's neck by

extending moral opprobrium to the very act of consuming
the written word. Tolstoy's Stories for the People had allowed
peasants and lower-class town dwellers to participate more
fully in society's consumption of print. In a transvaluation
of this practice Hadji Murat makes exclusion from the culture
of literacy a point of pride.12 While having a class compo-
nent, the negative connotations attached to writing and
reading extend beyond the clash of elite and peasant culture
within Russia. It is not merely the ability to read French
and handle complex syntax which implicates the audience's
beau monde. Instead, Tolstoy offers the more far-reaching,
Rousseauist proposition that the illiterate are morally
superior, while writers are dehumanizers and liars prone to
a kind of falsification notably manifested in historiography.
The written word is devalued as false mediation, while
speech is upheld as the conduit of greater truth. This
dynamic compromises the envisioned readers of Hadji Murat
more than ever since they live by the culture of literacy
and find themselves with a book in hand.
Hadji Murat puts literacy to shame by commending the
peasant and tribal reliance upon speech, as initially signaled
by the talk-prone Avdeev's interaction with the Chechen
scouts. Writing intrudes into the life of the Russian peasan-
try as alien power incommensurate to an individual's felt
experience. When Avdeev's mother dictates her last letter to
her son, writing emerges as the village deacon's professional
expertise, pitted against the speaking woman's affectionate,
tearful voice. Similarly, Avdeev's own dictated deathbed
letter to his family cannot be read by the addressees,
who hear it from a local postal clerk. To underline the
dehumanizing force of the written word in the peasant's
milieu of directly expressed sentiment, the relatives receive
an official notification of Avdeev's death in the service of
"the tsar, the fatherland and the Orthodox faith." The
standard military rhetoric rings especially hollow for the
reader, who knows that Avdeev was a random, unnecessary
casualty in the conduct of war as theater: eager to seize
what looked like an easy opportunity to win distinction for
himself and a friend recently demoted to the ranks, the
officer Poltoratsky commanded his picket-line into the
exchange of fire which left the peasant soldier mortally
wounded.
In a related impugnation of the official written word,
Avdeev's death is distorted in an army communique illustra-
tive of the falsification of history (chapter seven). Not even
mentioned by name in the lacpnic document, the soldier
presented as such an amiable fellow by Tolstoy has passed
anonymously into statistics ("two of the infantry were
wounded, and one killed"). But besides obliterating Avdeev,
the communique reports a "bayonet attack" not shown in
the depiction of the skirmish (chapter five). Was such an
attack simply excluded from the narration? Or was it a
fabrication, to make the written report more impressive for
the military records in Tiflis? Chapter five prepares the
audience to take the "bayonet attack" as a lie by pro-
pounding a truth in that all-knowing authorial voice which
often resounds in Tolstoy's literary works as "absolute lan-
guage" from outside the novelistic world.13 The author
intervenes to inform readers that hand-to-hand fighting did
not occur in the Caucasus in the 1850s and, in any case,
never had a valiant character. In a word, Tolstoy dismisses
thrilling tales of clashing blades as a widespread, cherished
"fiction" of the tsarist military. To expand the censurious
notion of "fiction," the rest of the official communique
reveals a more insidious form of falsification. In a gross
exaggeration, the document reckons tribal casualties "about
a hundred," although Tolstoy numbered the Chechens
around twenty in chapter four. The discrepancy points to
the tsarist army's inflation of the body-count of tribesmen
killed in action, a prevalent practice which led one Russian
veteran to scoff that the sum of dead savages compiled in
military statistics would equal the entire tribal population
of the Caucasus many times over.14 The communique thus
stands as a miniature of the larger, manifold falsification of
the Caucasian war which Hadji Murat insists has occurred.
To further his depreciation of literacy, Tolstoy depicts
both Nicholas I and Shamil as writers instead of talkers.
The tsar authors various directives which spell death, while
the imam, too, signs a promulgation exhorting the tribesmen
to keep resisting the Russians - and, by definition, continue
dying for the jihad. Divorced from the dialogic spoken
word, each despot has only a few lines of direct discourse.
Nicholas even conducts a running inner monologue about
his greatness and mutters an aimless string of phonemes.
Shamil, too, is largely locked into thoughts about his politi-
cal image. Furthermore, when he does speak during the
audience he grants to Hadji Murat's captive son, four of
his seven utterances are about writing: "Do you know how
to write?" and then the command "write," used repeatedly
to outline the menacing letter the boy must send to his
father. Beyond Nicholas and Shamil stretch the ranks of
secondary characters who produce texts: the imam's adviser
Dzhemal-Edin on the Asian side, and in the European
sphere, the Minister of War Chernyshev, Vorontsov, Gen-
eral Klugenau and army clerks.
As the provenance of the written word, despotism sets a
cultural space which excludes the Caucasian hero as well
as the Russian peasantry. Like peasant illiteracy, Hadji
Murat's isolation from the official Russian word is
accredited as a superior, more authentically human con-
dition. Of course, the division is profoundly deepened since
the Caucasian hero has practically no Russian. On this
basis Tolstoy elaborates the concern with non-verbal com-
munication first manifested in Hadji Murat in Avdeev's
"talk" with the Chechen scouts. Hadji Murat is handi-
capped linguistically but nevertheless grasps the gist of
situations through contextual features like tone of voice and
gestures. The principle is illustrated in the hero's initial
interview with Viceroy Vorontsov, who speaks pious plati-
tudes but radiates mistrust and hostility. Although a speak-
er's words may sometimes misrepresent what he feels (as
in the case of Vorontsov, telling the truth only with his
eyes), Tolstoy generally features speech as the most honest
medium of communication, unable to lie so readily as a
text.
The foremost illiterate in the Russian milieu, Hadji Murat
is also the story's chief talker. His orality is asserted at
greatest length in a sequence of chapters which juxtapose
his dictated autobiography to a letter from the Viceroy to
Chernyshev. Chapters eleven and thirteen are comprised
almost entirely of direct discourse, as the Caucasian hero
gives fluent responses to brief, intermittent questions posed
by his interviewer, the interpreter Loris-Melikov. Obviously
attaching great importance to this extensive forum for Hadji
Murat's voice, Tolstoy reworked the language repeatedly
and achieved a vivacity lacking in the pertinent historical
document Loris-Melikov prepared in Tiflis.15 In the novel
the simple syntax and colloquial diction convey Hadji Mu-
rat's directness and honesty, while well-dramatized incidents
from the past and little snatches of quoted speech from
other participants in the autobiography make the hero an
interesting story-teller. By contrast, Vorontsov's letter
(chapter fourteen) confronts the reader with officialdom's
chilly formality. With a keen concern for his own prestige,
the Viceroy assesses Hadji Murat as a pawn to be used to
best advantage for the Russian side. Originally written in
French, Vorontsov's actual letter spoke so well for itself
that Tolstoy simply incorporated a Russian translation of
this document in toto.
THE COUNT S CONFESSION
But if Hadji Murat upgrades talk as the more reliable, fully

human mode of communication, what then is the author's
own condition as a wielder of the pen committing a (hi) story
to paper? Notably fond of reading aloud from works-in-
progress for family members and friends at his estate,
Tolstoy in Hadji Murat conveys a certain regret about not
actually communicating face-to-face with his audience. This
sentiment comes across most strongly in the treatment of
the tribes' oral tradition as a form of art which bonds a
national community and has vital meaning for the individ-
ual.16 Among the Russians, Hadji Murat gains insight from
a tribal folktale about a falcon rejected and killed by his
fellows when he tried to return to the fold, wearing jesses
he acquired among humans. Tribal songs about heroic
death in battle are similarly incorporated as foreshadowings
of Hadji Murat's destiny. These samples of authentic Cau-
casian folklore are complemented by an invented song attri-
buted to Hadji Murat's mother and recollected by the
hero as he reviews his past and decides to escape Russian
surveillance in order to combat Shamil by himself.17 In this
case, Tolstoy insists upon the naturalness of song-making
as part of the tribes' world, while underscoring culturally
distinct experiences of childhood.
Although the theme of primitive song was one of the
literary Caucasus' oldest traditions, it was newly deployed
in Hadji Murat against the culture of literacy. As depicted
in the novel, orally transmitted poetry belongs to the very
fabric of social and personal life. Contemporary Russia's
divorce from this ideal is not explicitly deplored by Tolstoy,
but the theme of tribal art leaps out of the novel to proclaim
what the reading and writing of Hadji Murat are not. Crea-
tures of a commercialized environment, the novel's envi-
sioned readers buy books by authors who typically remain
unseen and unheard. As a rule, this public approaches the
literary work as aesthetic experience and entertainment to
enjoy in the seclusion of one's home and then lay aside as
"just a story." On the other side of the exchange, many
modern authors of fiction write largely to make money.
After his religious crisis, Tolstoy sought to divorce himself
as much as possible from the commercial aspects of author-
ship. He was fully aware of the financial power of his pen,
however, as strikingly illustrated by his determination to
finish Resurrection and publish it profitably to fund the per-
secuted Dukhobors' emigration to Canada. In Hadji Murat
there is no overt self-chastisement about the cash nexus
between a contemporary novelist and his public, but Tol-
stoy's tormented awareness of literature as a business of
print-production operates implicitly in the treatment of art's
function in the tribes' simpler, more humanly authentic
world. The author's professed guilt about writing literature
once again in Hadji Murat thus seems to have been com-
pounded by torment over the historical, cultural necessity
of writing, period - instead of speaking directly to listeners.
Along with the basic paradox of using literature to pro-
claim orality's humanly superior character, a larger impli-
cation of writing the (hi) story Hadji Murat gave Tolstoy
pause. Doubts concerning his own reliability as the creator
of a text about the past were revealed in a remark about
Nicholas. He once wondered in conversation whether he had
not "introduced too much subjectivity into the description of
the monarch he hated, to the detriment of calm impar-
tiality."18 Although directed only toward the presentation
of the tsar, the question of "impartiality" was equally
applicable to the biased treatment of Shamil and Hadji
Murat as well. An impossible goal, the concern with "objec-
tivity" expressed Tolstoy's recognition that Hadji Murat in
its own right was an artful manipulation of language. He
knew that his own text was not a "calm" reflection of the
past, even as he condemned writers in his narrative for
using words to hide the truth.
But if Tolstoy could see his own writing as purposeful
misrepresentation, his novel inscribes a moral justification
for both him and his readers. The answer to the disin-
genuous question of "impartiality" lies in the epic ideal of
art which assumes a permeating importance in an individ-
ual's life. Alienated from the modern norm of literature as
entertainment for readers and lucrative business for writers,
Tolstoy strives to make Hadji Murat mark the consumer
indelibly. Didactic purpose removes him from the company
of the novel's reprehensibly mendacious writers and turns
him into the master misrepresenter who artfully slants his
material in the name of moral truth.19 Of equal importance,
however, a confessional dynamic in the attack on the Rus-
sian elite affords the author a catharsis.
Tolstoy's dual stance as the judge and the confesser
enormously complicates his relation to Hadji Murat. To a
large extent, the tribesman is an authorial surrogate
endowed with a tenacious attachment to life which old
Tolstoy himself felt even "at the edge of the grave," as he
put it.20 But a significant gap between the hero and the
author opens through the exercise of an imperious monolo-
gism so typical of Tolstoy's art.21 Hadji Murat deprives
characters of hegemony by keeping connections between
them purely external and orchestrated by the privileged
author. Perhaps most noticeably, the Caucasian hero and
the Russian peasant Avdeev have no contact or any con-
sciousness of each other. They are aligned strictly in that
authoritative field of vision which is Tolstoy's alone. Simi-
larly, the writer likes to lay down the law about characters
and events, as illustrated by the passage dismissing hand-to-
hand combat as a "fiction." Such purported truths are not
reached by the dramatis personae but are imposed from
outside by Tolstoy.
Monologic authorial power grows particularly heavy in
the narration of Hadji Murat's final days. After dictating
his autobiography (chapters eleven and thirteen), the hero
has practically nothing else to say and thoroughly retreats
into himself in the last three chapters (twenty-three to
twenty-five). Sustained to the bitter end, this lapse into
silence is rarely broken by a word between Hadji Murat
and his Murids during their flight and prolonged battle
against Russian forces. The hero's inward turn removes him
from dialogue with all the other characters and maximizes
Tolstoy's privilege as the omniscient creator who articulates
things which he alone knows. This movement culminates
in one of the author's most famous attempts to represent
death from the inside. After relaying Hadji Murat's final
sensation of a big dagger striking his head, Tolstoy describes
how the killers stab, trample and decapitate the body.
Represented from both inside and outside, this minutely
imagined violent death epitomizes the imperious, godlike
stance of an author for whom no place is terra incognita.
However, Tolstoy's monologic tendencies have a special
twist in this historical novel about thwarted cross-cultural
communication. Hadji Murat proves unable to make his
voice penetrate the tsarist power structure, and his lapse
into proud solitude attests to this fact. The terrible futility
and loneliness of his position becomes the representative
condition of the whole textual world where dialogue fails.
Very few direct connections are made within the vast cast
of dramatis personae. Foreign languages and cultural codes
erect barriers to unmediated communication. Interpreters
are required, and words are wielded regularly in officialdom
to distort reality. In this realm of impeded communication
the Caucasian hero finds no Russian other able to under-
stand him properly and complement his self. Nobody is
there but Tolstoy to orchestrate the story of the elaborately
failed cross-cultural dialogue which in its closing episode
degenerates into an exchange of bullets.
The hero's death then becomes the ground of a dialogue,
as the frame is reasserted in the novel's last sentence ("And
that was the death recalled to me by the crushed thistle
in the middle of the plowed field"). This shift out of the
novel's time compels the audience to contemplate the hith-
erto unclarified relationship between Tolstoy's experience
in the plowed field of the present and Hadji Murat's ordeal
of "long ago." The reader is thus asked to assume the job
of a survivor who receives Hadji Murat's death as his last
act of self-expression, his last word which needs to connect
with an interlocutor in order to find its significance.
The reassertion of the frame widens the issues of responsi-
bility and guilt in Hadji Murat. Two "Tatars" are destroyed
in the (hi)story's opening pages, one by an agricultural
laborer and the other by the author. However, both acts of
despoilment acquire identical meaning. The hero's primary
emblem is the thistle crushed by the unidentified driver of
a cart. The plant is described in insistently anthropo-
morphic terms: it has an "eye gouged out," "it had been
eviscerated," its "arm had been cut off." The ostensible
stimulator of Tolstoy's flow of "memory" about the Cauca-
sian war, this mangled wild flower is recalled at the narra-
tive's end when Hadji Murat falls like a "thistle, mowed
down." As indicated by this closing metaphor of killing as
mowing, the whole construct of the tribesman as a plant
rests on a jarring notion of agriculture as murder. Before
Tolstoy spots the crushed thistle in the frame, he grows
oppressed by the vast expanse of the freshly plowed earth
and avidly looks for "something living in the dead black
field." In this state of mind, he formulates the paradoxical
notion of agriculture as the death-dealing pursuit of plow-
men who violate the natural state and kill everything in
their path. Cast as the wanton plunderer of wild fields,
agriculture becomes the analogue of Russia's war against
the Caucasian tribes.
But before introducing the thistle ruined by an agricul-
tural laborer, Tolstoy inculpates himself in the symbolic
crime against nature. As he recounts gathering the bouquet
of wild flowers, he details his own lethal battle with a
"Tatar." An entire paragraph is devoted to the effort to
pick the resistant plant which is shredded in the act and
looks much less "fresh and pretty" when finally plucked.
Full of regret about uselessly ravaging a flower so deter-
mined to live and "so fine in its proper place," Tolstoy
tosses it aside. He thus joins the killers of "Tatars" (even
though the agricultural laborers - the cart driver and the
mower - are thrust forward in the treatment of Hadji
Murat). In fact, by comparison to the evident, if unadmit-
ted, justification of agriculture as a life-sustaining activity
which compensates for the destruction of wild plants, the
author may well seem the worst despoiler of all because
his actions are motivated strictly by the whimsical, aesthetic
impulse to add the gaudy thistle to his bouquet of daintier
flowers.
Authorial self-projection in relation to the "Tatar" was
amplified by Count Tolstoy's eccentric habit of working the
fields. Common knowledge in the era when Hadji Murat
was written, this aspect of his public persona was captured
notably in Ilya Repin's "The Plowman." The painting was
done during one of the artist's visits to Tolstoy's estate in
August 1887 and first exhibited publicly the following year.
Dressed in a peasant shirt and cap, the subject guides a
horse-drawn plow through a foreground of black and dark
brown earth, while another plowman emerges over the crest
of a hill in the distant background. The fields seem to
stretch endlessly in every direction beyond the frame, and
the somber coloration is relieved only by white for the
horses and Tolstoy's cap. The composition and the restric-
ted palette produce an impression remarkably similar to
the verbal picture of the enormous "dead black field" in
the frame of Hadji Murat. An image widely disseminated in
Russia in periodicals and inexpensive prints, "The Plow-
man" redoubled Tolstoy's inculpation of himself as an
accomplice of the agricultural "murderer" in his Caucasian
(hi)story.22
As the self-styled killer of one of the symbolic thistles,
Tolstoy takes upon himself a burden of guilt about his
nation's failure to connect properly and find a modus vivendi
with the Muslim tribes. The author no doubt remembered
how he himself dismissed Hadji Murat back in the 1850s
as a scoundrel for betraying Shamil's trust. Old Tolstoy,
in other words, must have admitted to himself that he had
belonged then to that "majority of the Russian people"
who felt idle curiosity about Hadji Murat but had no
conception of him as a person deserving sympathy. Tolstoy
also no doubt recalled his (grantedly unstable) outlook as
a young soldier who thought that war against the tribes
might be the only way to safeguard the "civilized lands"
of Russia. Such memories do not intrude openly into Hadji
Murat. To the contrary, Tolstoy assumes a condemnatory
stance toward his anticipated readers. However, as framed
by the two thistles destroyed in the domain of the Russian
aristocracy, the literary biography of Hadji Murat admon-
ishes the audience to assume upper-class Russian guilt with
the author as a collective burden. Tolstoy shows himself
capriciously annihilating a "Tatar." But of equal import-
ance, he also recognizes the wantonness of his deed and
repents on the spot with the words, "I was sorry that I
had destroyed to no purpose a flower which had been so
fine in its proper place." None of the dramatis personae
repents or evolves to achieve self-condemning insight into
the killing of Hadji Murat. This leaves Tolstoy as the
text's only model of the repentant violator of nature. The
confessional import of the work is established precisely by
the author's holding his own speech apart from and in
dialogue with the novelistic world.
The author's despoilment, followed by atonement, is a con-
fessional action which puts him in the position of the reformed
sinner who has won the right to preach to others in the hope
of prodding them into a similar experience of guilt and moral
conversion. The forefathers are denounced in Hadji Murat as
the perpetrators of atrocities which pass under the name of the
march of civilization; but by situating himself in the domain of
the wealthy landed gentry in the (hi)story's frame, Count Tol-
stoy announces that those people are his ancestors, too. The
confession about unjustified destruction urges readers to "do
as I do" - face your past and present condition as plundering
beneficiaries of empire, recognize the conquest of the Caucasian
tribes as one of civilization's crimes, and let history not repeat
itself.
The self-representation in the frame conveyed Tolstoy's
guilt about sharing in the advantages of imperialism which
he believed had the same ugly aspect everywhere. As he
expressed it in a passage of all-knowing authorial language in
a draft of the novel, what occurred in the Caucasus was
what always happens when a state, having large-scale military
strength, enters into relations with primitive, small peoples, living
their own independent life. Under the pretext of self-defense (even
though attacks are always provoked by the powerful neighbor), or
the pretext of civilizing the ways of a savage people (even though
that savage people is living a life incomparably better and more
peaceable than the civilizers'), or else under some other pretext, the
servants of large military states commit all sorts of villainy against
small peoples, while maintaining that one cannot deal with them
otherwise.
That was the situation in the Caucasus. . .when Russian military
commanders, seeking to win distinction for themselves and appro-
priate the spoils of war, invaded peaceful lands, ravaged villages,
killed hundreds of people, raped women, rustled thousands of cattle
and then blamed the tribesmen for their attacks on Russian pos-
sessions [ellipsis mine].23
This righteous sense of universality permeates Hadji Murat.
The moral outlook is totalizing and ultimately ahistorical, so
that the novel expands from the specificity of late nineteenth-
century Russia to encompass the pursuit of empire in every
audience's present.
RECONCILIATION WITH ROMANTICISM
Hadji Murat demonstrated how far Tolstoy had evolved from

his former attitude toward romanticism. His symbolization of
the Avar hero as a hardy flower was precisely the sort of
metaphorical device he had castigated in the 1850s when stag-
ing his rebellion against Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermon-
tov. With equal daring, old Tolstoy reactivated his prede-
cessors' major motif of Caucasian tribal song. He put the
conception of primitive poetry to a new use, but its very pres-
ence in Hadji Murat established a significant link with writing
of the romantic era. The lengthy, authentic song about dying
courageously in the jihad most resembled the superbly versi-
fied battle songs of "Ammalat-Bek." Such material was very
likely just what Tolstoy had in mind when he told an
acquaintance in 1898 that Bestuzhev-Marlinsky was well
worth reading, an admission he could not make in his
embattled youth.24 More allusively, Hadji Murat acknowledged
the "worthiness" of Lermontov, too, by reinforcing the poet's
searing insight into war as murder, as seen in "Izmail-Bey,"
as well as "Valerik."
This selective reconciliation with the romantic heritage
evinced old Tolstoy's liberation from his early, rigidly dichot-
omous thinking about the poetic text as the enemy of fact-
oriented truth. In her essay "Pushkin and Pugachev," Marina
Tsvetaeva remarked that the poet's novel The Captain's
Daughter had made a "retort to the archive" by elevating the
"high" truth of art over a "low" truth of historical research. 25
The point applies to Hadji Murat as well. While still compiling
data of possible use for the novel, Tolstoy said that he liked
"to be accurate down to the last detail," when dealing with
bygone eras.26 However, Hadji Murat fell far short of standards
of scholarly investigation. Tolstoy's entire process of
researching and ferreting out accurate details was a search
for data to corroborate his moral convictions. He disregarded
testimony which would have undermined his conceptions of
character (on Shamil's religious faith, for instance), while
mining his sources for congenial material (the Vorontsovs'
little boy hopping onto Hadji Murat's lap, Shamil's antics
with his young wife Aminet, Nicholas strutting about at the
masquerade). Most tellingly, none of Tolstoy's sources gave
him the Hadji Murat he needed. In memoirs published in the
1870s Poltoratsky, for example, claimed that Hadji Murat
had died as a "beast in all his ferocity" without ever revealing
the "secret" of his temporary rapprochement with the Rus-
sians.27 Tolstoy drew extensively on Poltoratsky's memoirs,
but he had to annul this version of Hadji Murat as a wild
animal whose mind remained terra incognita. To paraphrase
Tsvetaeva, Tolstoy was sentenced to inventing a more ideal
Hadji Murat to serve his anti-imperialist designs, just as The
Captain's Daughter transformed Pugachev into a subversively
attractive outlaw who countered the vicious cutthroat of Push-
kin's own well-researched History of Pugachev.
In an extremely important respect Tolstoy thus disavowed
his youthful resistance to "poetry" and outgrew his related
concept of "facts" as objective data which somehow comprise
the truth apart from the text in which they appear. He did a
massive amount of research to write Hadji Murat > but the final
product challenged historiography itself as a self-serving
manipulation of language within a given structure of political
power. Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, the frank subjec-
tivity and metaphorical enhancements of Hadji Murat shed
more convincing light on the conquest of the Caucasus than
any of Tolstoy's youthful exercises in disparaging "poetry"
ever did. Hadji Murat took artistic license with its material in
order to exemplify what the author took for universal truths
about language's debasement by political mythologizers, the
atrocity of war and the evil of megalomania. Not exactly com-
parable to any of the fiction and semi-fiction which Pushkin,
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky or Lermontov produced about the
Caucasus, Hadji Murat nevertheless marked an end to Tol-
stoy's binary thinking about "poetry" as the opposite of
"real" knowledge and brought him more into line with Rus-
sia's tradition of taking literature as the vehicle of insight
superior to what can be found in the non-fictional text.
CHAPTER l6
Concluding observations
My study has stressed the cultural and psychological func-

tions the literary Caucasus assumed as a clarifier of the semi-
Europeanized Russian self during the romantic era. The
coexistent complexes of inferiority and superiority to the West
produced a bifurcation in the works of canonized writers. On
the one side, Muslim tribal lands were glorified as citadels of
free-spirited, Homeric machismo (naturally complemented by
a staple supply of pliant wild maidens in the literary
population). On the other side, Georgia was marginalized as
a touchy oriental woman. The literary Caucasus was largely
the project of Russian men, whose psychological needs it so
evidently served. However, both sexes within the romantic
era's elite readership could enhance their national esteem by
contemplating their internally diversified orient. Effeminate
Georgia fed the conceit of Russia's European stature and
superiority over Asia. But knowledge of Russia's own Asian
roots defied permanent repression, especially when a French
consul in Tiflis or a visting marquis in St. Petersburg was ever
ready to castigate the tsars' "rude and barbarous kingdom."
Under these conditions, Russians converted the Caucasian
tribes into gratifying meanings about their own undeniable
cultural and intellectual retardation vis-a-vis the West.
This quest for a happy accommodation of Asia was not
an aberrant offshoot of the romantic era's exposure to the
"wondrous" orient of la renaissance orientale. To the contrary,
it represented a recurrent dilemma in Russian culture. Rami-
fications of admirable Caucasian primitivity can be seen, for
example, in Scythianism, the pro-Asian conception of Russian
288
Concluding observations 289
identity articulated by various writers in the early twentieth
century. Based on the assumption that Russia's national
character was split in two, Alexander Blok's definitive verse
"Scythians" celebrated precisely the elemental, non-western
component, traced back to ancient nomadic hordes of the
steppes. With their ineradicable Scythian heritage, Blok's
chaotic, slant-eyed Russians pose a potential menace to
refined, effete Europe: the native realm is a sphinx with an
"Asian snout" turned westward in comingled love and hate.
Of course, Blok's outlook on the eve of the 1917 revolution did
not merely replicate the romantic era's production of noble
Caucasian mountaineers. And yet a similar battle of mixed
cultural allegiances was being fought. To paraphrase Bakhtin
on discursive rebirths, the poetic word of Scythianism did not
forget where it had been.
As nineteenth-century Russian literature's major ac-
creditors of an Asia at one with the national self, noble
Caucasian primitives were disrupters, as well as enablers of
tsarist imperialism. The romanticized tribes of Pushkin,
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov undeniably underwrote
certain notions vital to the ideology of the civilizing mission.
To recall just one example, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's "Amma-
lat-Bek" set a hegemonic perspective on the tribesman as an
intellectual child, asleep until European enlightenment woke
him up. The metaphors of Asia's cultural infancy and somno-
lence recur in nineteenth-century Russian glorifications of the
conquest as a victory for Christian civilization, as illustrated
in Fadeev's chauvinistic history Sixty Years of War in the
Caucasus.
However, unlike singleminded extollers of the tribes' subju-
gation, both Bestuzhev-Marlinsky and Lermontov adum-
brated old Tolstoy's declaration that the "glorious triumph
over barbarism" was in fact genocidal despoilment, morally
and spiritually injurious to its Russian perpetrators. In their
engagement with heroic primitivity, the writings of the two
military exiles gradually unmasked the self as an insti-
tutionalized murderer in tsarist uniform. Intimations of vio-
lence as a core of savagery in "us" actually began when Push-
2go Russian literature and empire
kin's "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" juxtaposed Russia's
dueling ground to Circassia's "bloody amusements." But with
his trope of the "new Parnassus" and his romantic construc-
tion of Russian friendship with sublime nature, young Push-
kin laid the foundation of the Caucasian Alps - the big discur-
sive wall which secondary poets of the 1820s and sentimental
travelers throughout the conquest erected in an effort to shut
out imperialism's brutality.
The alpine wall was the site where the soldiers Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky and Lermontov inscribed anguished graffiti about
transforming Eden into a killing field. "Ammalat-Bek" and
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's recits de voyage registered anxiety about
the self conscripted by the "angel of death" to usurp paradise.
Lermontov's Izmail-Bey has Homeric stature, but the same
poem features the tsarist soldier as a "predatory beast" - the
routine killer of babies and old people, the sadistic molester of
tribeswomen. Military exile then gave Lermontov tragic know-
ledge of himself as one of the death-dealing Russian "beasts,"
the very metaphor he employed in depicting battle in
"Valerik." These writings all stood in continuity with old Tol-
stoy's depiction of the Caucasian war as genocidal aggression
heavy on the moral conscience of the Russian nation. Not by
chance, the three writers who most glaringly exposed the cul-
tural mythology's tension between the alpine sanctuary and the
battleground served in the army. One can only wonder whether
young Pushkin would have still celebrated war's "black con-
tagion" at the foot of the "new Parnassus" if he had suffered
exile in the "southern Siberia's" army.
Of course, no matter how great its resistance to the ideology
of the civilizing mission, all the literature stimulated by the
Caucasian conquest remained in some sense Russian appro-
priation. Unrelenting as it is in excoriating "our" side, Hadji
Murat, too, is a book by a Russian, addressed to Russians.
Old Tolstoy produced a culturally distinct voice for the tribes-
man, but largely in order to administer moral shock-therapy
to an envisioned audience of beneficiaries of empire. The basic
fact of Russian literary production was enough to make cer-
tain representatives of dispossessed Caucasian tribes deny
even old Tolstoy their full approval, as we shall see now.
The past holds clues about the various ways the Caucasus'
decolonized peoples may respond to nineteenth-century Rus-
sian appropriation. To a concerned observer of the late 1860s,
the literary Caucasus appeared a strictly monologic cultural
enterprise which illiterate tribesmen could not hope to chal-
lenge: in lamenting the reading public's refusal to forget
"Ammalat-Bek, Seltaneta and all the rest," Pyotr Uslar
asserted that writers had been left to "fantasize to their hearts'
content" because "tribesmen do not read Russian books and
write refutations of them." 1 An investigator of Caucasian tribal
languages, Uslar was seeking to open the monologue into dia-
logue by amassing factual knowledge. Like other experts of the
era, he was perhaps too ready to overlook Bestuzhev-
Marlinsky's ethnographic competence. None the less, Uslar
legitimately called attention to the near non-existence of the
authentic tribal word in Russian literature prior to Hadji Murat.
Uslar's assertion about tribal silence was overturned
already in 1873 when an Ossetian tentatively sought to refute
some Russian books. A Russified poet and essayist who was
an officer in the tsarist army, Inal Kanukov (1851-99) wrote
Russian verse about Caucasian paysage which was thoroughly
reliant on the old aesthetics of the sublime.2 Without noticing
his own dependence on this literary tradition, however, he
raised indignant objections to Russia's cultural mythology of
the territory. This occurred in the draft of an article finally
published without the following passage:
Former convictions which should be consigned to oblivion leave
their traces yet today, thanks to the confidence which the public
placed in those fantasy-mongering poets of the 1830s and 1820s,
Marlinsky, Lermontov and Pushkin who created bogeys for the Rus-
sian readership in the personages of Ammalat-Bek, Kazbich, Mulla-
Nur, Izmail-Bey, Hadji Abrek and other monsters. Gullible and
accustomed to accepting the authority of these poets who rep-
resented life in the Caucasus while knowing scarcely anything about
it, the readership took the heroes as actual types.3
Quick to spot literature's inadequacies as ethnography,
Kanukov took offense at the romantics' volcanic, violent wild
men without recognizing how they had been ennobled to
accredit Asia for the semi-Europeanized Russian elite.
In the USSR in the 1930s men of Caucasian tribal origins
voiced an equally adamant refusal to make any concessions
to nineteenth-century Russian writers. The protest raged in
the periodical Revolution and the Mountaineer during the so-
called "proletarian episode" of Soviet literature.4 In the inter-
est of creating a culture fully appropriate to the workers'
society supposedly taking shape in the USSR, the Russian
Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) launched attacks
on literary classics toward the end of the 1920s. What rel-
evance could Pushkin, for instance, possibly have for the new
Soviet man? The challenge was readily taken up by the Cau-
casus' communists with an extra, ethno-cultural interest in
purging the classical pantheon. No major contributor to the
literary Caucasus escaped the ensuing accusations of misrep-
resentation. In the words of the Kabardinian author and
critic, Dzh. Naloev, even Tolstoy was "not entirely admissible
for us." 5 After all, had Hadji Murat not failed to divulge the
struggle between "feudalism" and "socialism" in the Cauca-
sian war? To correct Tolstoy (while raiding his text), a Soviet
Russian playwright transformed Hadji Murat into a radical
atheist and proto-Bolshevik in 1934.6
The call to formulate "proletarian" tribal discourse about
the conquest illustrated how well the Soviet state succeeded
in coopting elites of its ethnically diverse republics. But a
tribal response to the Russian literary heritage was also
articulated in emigration, as typified in the Caucasian Moun-
taineer, a periodical published in Prague in the 1920s. Like
their ethnic counterparts who found a modus vivendi with the
Soviet state, the emigres were preoccupied with their lack of
written national literatures. As just quoted, Naloev main-
tained that budding authors from the Caucasus should ignore
the Russian literary heritage as a matter of principle. But
where could they find models for writing their own histories
and literatures? Grigory Aiollo's article "Somebody Else's
Dish Poorly Warmed Over" was a major contribution to this
debate in the emigre press. Despite the title's rather belliger-
ent air, Aiollo distinguished Russian "nationalism" from Rus-
sian "national spirit" {narodnost') and located literary giants
such as Pushkin and Tolstoy in the latter sphere. Most inter-
estingly, Aiollo advised his compatriots to profit from valuable
aspects of the nineteenth-century literary Caucasus, even
though Russian culture could not provide them any "absolute
values": "We are not afraid of these foreign forces, we use
them, we are assimilating them." 7 Ready to take sustenance
from another's "cuisine," Aiollo foresaw the possibility of a
decolonized people's self-actualizing deployment of writings
produced in the culture of the imperial overlord (who now
called himself "socialist" instead of "tsarist"). 8
Instances of this type of cross-cultural interplay actually
occurred in Soviet Russia in later periods. Lermontov's
enriching impact on the Kabardinian poet Ali Shogentsukov
has been studied, for example.9 But as one might expect, Hadji
Murat eventually won the highest possible accolades from the
people whose imperialist subjugation it depicted. In memoirs
published in 1970 the Lenin-Prize-winning poet of Dagestan,
Rasul Hamzatov, remembered how his father had made him
read Hadji Murat as a boy, translating from Russian into Avar.
Filtered through the mother tongue, Tolstoy's castigation of
the conquest was fully accepted as the colonized nation's own:
according to Hamzatov, the old men of his Dagestan village
maintained that only the "Lord Himself" could have auth-
ored such a "truthful book."10
This quick survey of tribal attitudes toward Russia's liter-
ary Caucasus suggests a range of possibilities for the future.
Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, writers and intellec-
tuals of the Caucasus' newly independent states will seek to
reappropriate their national histories. The production of
counter-history is well underway in Dagestan, for instance,
where Shamil is reassuming stature as a national hero after
suffering a deep decline into "feudal despotism" in Russian
ideology in Stalin's time.11 Like the Dagestani retrieval of
Shamil, other decolonized peoples of the Caucasus will "write
back" to tsarist imperialism, through literature as well as non-
fiction.12 Nineteenth-century Russian authors notably
deprived Georgia of strong, brave men. But how will Russian
culture's heroic Muslim mountaineers fare in the post-colonial
era? The past shows options ranging from accepting a Russian
writer as the "Lord Himself" to rejecting him because of his
nationality. Most of the pertinent counter-histories and coun-
ter-literatures will take shape between these two extremes and
conceivably may deploy selected features of the nineteenth-
century Russian literary heritage. First articulated by young
Pushkin and variously transposed by Bestuzhev-Marlinsky,
Lermontov and old Tolstoy, the resilient Russian expression
of affiliation to the Caucasian mountaineers might very well
find concordant interlocutors on the "other," decolonized side
of history.
Notes
I INTRODUCTION
1. Quoted in G. Semin, Sevastopol': Istoricheskii ocherk (Moscow:

Voennoe izdatel'stvo, 1955), p. 24.
2. Vano Shaduri, Dekabristskaia literatura i gruzinskaia obshchestven-
nost' (Tbilisi: Zaria Vostoka, 1958), p. 22.
3. S. Vel'tman, Vostok v khudozhestvennoi literature (Moscow-
Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1928), p. 9; Lidiia
Ginzburg, Tvorcheskii put' Lermontova (Leningrad: Khu-
dozhestvennaia literatura, 1940), p. 122; and Agn" Gadzhiev,
Kavkaz v russkoi literature pervoi poloviny XIX veka (Baku: Novaia
knizhnaia tipografiia, 1982), pp. 9-10.
4. The standard survey of the nineteenth-century conquest in
English remains John F. Baddeley, The Russian Conquest of the
Caucasus (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1908). Consult
also Paul B. Henze, "Fire and Sword in the Caucasus: The
19th-century Resistance of the North Caucasian Mountain-
eers," Central Asian Survey 2 (July 1983), 5-44.
5. A. P. Berzhe, "Prisoedinenie Gruzii k Rossii, 1799-1831," Rus-
skaia starina 28 (May 1880), 2-3. For pertinent perspectives on
empire, see Charles Reynolds, Modes of Imperialism (Oxford:
Martin Robertson, 1981); Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness.
British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914 (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity, 1988), pp. 7-8; and Edward W. Said, Culture and
Imperialism (London: Chatto and Windus, 1993), pp. 8-9. As
Said's discussion points out, imperialism (unlike colonialism)
does not always entail implanting settlements on distant
territory.
6. Marc Raeff, Imperial Russia, 1682-1825. The Coming of Age of
Modern Russia (New York, 1971), pp. 50-60.
7. Marc Raeff, " I n the Imperial Manner" in Catherine the Great. A
Profile, ed. Marc Raeff (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), pp.
197-200.
295
296 Notes to pages 5-8
8. Michael T . Florinsky, Russia. A History and an Interpretation, 2
vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1965), vol. 1, p. 541.
9. Konstantin F. Shteppa, "The 'Lesser Evil' Formula," Rewriting
Russian History, ed. C. E. Black (New York: Praeger, 1956), 107-
10. On Shamil's varied career in Soviet Russian historiography, see

Paul B. Henze, "Un-rewriting History - The Shamil Problem,"
Caucasian Review 6 (1958), 7-29; and Lowell R. Tillett, "Soviet
Second Thoughts on Tsarist Colonialism," Foreign Affairs 42
(January 1964), 309-19.
11. N. S. Kiniapina, M. M. Bliev and V. V. Degoev, Kavkaz i
Srednaia Aziia vo vneshnei politike Rossii. Vtoraia polovina XVIII-80-e
gody XIX v. (Moscow: MGU, 1984), pp. 9-12.
12. N. Svirin, "Russkaia kolonial'naia literatura," Literaturnyi kritik
(1934), no. 9, 76-79.
13. Vel'tman,FojtoA; v khudozhestvennoi literature, p. 9. In endorsing
Lenin's call to use cinema for propaganda, Vel'tman declared
that Asians "think in images" instead of reasoning: pp. 178—
80.
14. Split into a Northern Society and Southern Society, the Decem-
brists were noblemen, army officers and intellectuals who
wanted to replace the autocracy. Their proposed strategies and
objectives differed, as some favored a constitutional monarchy,
while others leaned toward a republic. After the insurrection in
St. Petersburg in December 1825, fiye principal conspirators
were hanged and many others exiled to Siberia or transferred
to the Caucasus.
15. Pushkin v vospominaniiakh i rasskazakh sovremennikov, ed. S. l a .
Gessen (Leningrad: GIKhL, 1936), pp. 611-12, n. 238.
16. L. P. Semenov, A. S. Pushkin 0 Kavkaze (Piatigorsk: Severo-
kavkazskoe kraevoe izdatel'stvo, 1937), pp. 14-24.
17. Russkie pisateli v nashem krae. Sbornik statei (Groznyi, 1958); and
B. S. Vinogradov, Russkie pisateli v Checheno-Ingushetii (Groznyi,
1958). For a more recent contribution to the genre, see L. A.
Chereiskii, Pushkin i Severnyi Kavkaz (Stavropol': Stavropol'skoe
izdatel'stvo, 1986).
18. V. G. Bazanov, Ocherki dekabristskoi literatury. Publitsistika. Proza.
Kritika (Moscow: GIKhL, 1953); and Shaduri, Dekabristskaia
literatura.
19. Gadzhiev, Kavkaz v russkoi literature, p p . 18-20. See similar
dichotomies in R. F. Iusufov, Dagestan i russkaia literatura kontsa
XVIII i pervoi poloviny XIX v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1964), p p . 8 3 -
84; and B. S. Vinogradov, Kavkaz v russkoi literature 30-kh godov
Notes to pages g-12 297
XIX veka. (Ocherki) (Groznyi: Checheno-Ingushskoe knizhnoe
izdatel'stvo, 1966), p. 98.
20. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979),
pp. 14-15, 23-24.
21. Jonathan Arac, "Introduction" in Macropolitics of Nineteenth-
Century Literature: Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism, ed. Jonathan
Arac and Harriet Ritvo (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-
vania, 1991), p. 1. See also Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters.
Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1 ygy (London and New
York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 2-12.
22. The quoted phrase comes from the anonymous "Poezdka v Gru-
ziiu," Moskovskii telegraf (August 1833), no. 15, 327.
23. Hayden White, "The Noble Savage Theme as Fetish," Tropics of
Discourse. Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University, 1978), pp. 183-96.
24. Jonah Ruskin,The Mythology of Imperialism (New York: Random
House, 1971), pp. i57~58-
25. For a study of this ideological conviction, see Richard Slotkin,
Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier,
1600-1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1973).
26. See Gary Saul Morson, "Introduction: Literary History and the
Russian Experience" in Literature and History. Theoretical Problems
and Russian Case Studies, ed. Gary Saul Morson (Stanford: Stan-
ford University, 1986), pp. 1—14; and M. M. Bakhtin, Estetika
slovesnogo tvorchestva (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979), translated as
Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee, ed.
Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, TX: University
of Texas, 1986): see "Response to a Question from the Novy Mir
Editorial Staff," pp. 1-9; and "From Notes Made in 1970-71,"
pp. 139-46.
27. Even in 1844, only 4 percent of the (male) population of a
certain Russian province could read: see William Mills Todd
III, Fiction and Society in the Age of Pushkin. Ideology, Institutions
and Narrative (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University,
1986), p. 100. On the rise of literacy, consult Jeffrey Brooks,
When Russia Learned to Read. Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-
1917 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University, 1985).
28. For views of ethnography itself as the construction of narratives,
see James Clifford and George Marcus (eds.), Writing Culture
(Berkeley: University of California, 1987).
29. Bakhtin, "Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial
Staff," pp. 6-7.
30. See treatment of the issue in Elizabeth Freund, The Return of the
Reader. Reader-Response Criticism (London and New York:
Methuen, 1987), pp. 90-133.
31. Dmitrii Sergeyevich Likhachev, The National Nature of Russian
History (New York: Harriman Institute, Columbia University,
1990), p. 18.
2 THE POET AND TERRA INCOGNITA

Epigraph, V. G. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 13 vols.
(Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1953-59), vol. vn, p. 372.
1. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. vm, pp. 376-77. Belinsky
tellingly perceived "howling contradictions between a European
exterior and an Asian essence" in his own1 native realm (376).
2. See the discussion of the West in Said, Culture and Imperialism,
p. 96. Such aspects of Russian writing are stressed in Katya
Hokanson, "Literary Imperialism, Narodnost' and Pushkin's
Invention of the Caucasus," Russian Review, forthcoming.
3. For seminal analysis of these impulses and discursive practices,
consult Said, Orientalism, pp. 31-49. See also Christopher L.
Miller, Blank Darkness. Africanist Discourse in French (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1985), pp. 6-14; Brantlinger, Rule of
Darkness, pp. 3-16; and Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel
Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 6-7.
4. Compare Osip Mandelshtam's view that "instruction is the
nerve of prose," in Modern Russian Poets on Poetry, ed. Carl R.
Proffer, selected and introduced by Joseph Brodsky (Ann Arbor,
MI: Ardis, 1984), p. 57.
5. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh (Moscow: GIKhL,
1959-62), vol. ix, p. 39.
6. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 17 vols. (Leningrad: Akade-
miia nauk, 1937-59), vol. xn, p. 371.
7. A. Slonimskii, Masterstvo Pushkina (Moscow: GIKhL, 1959), p.
217.
8. V. M. Zhirmunskii, Bairon i Pushkin (1924; rpt. Leningrad:
Nauka, 1978), pp. 28-29, 43"48> 292-331.
9. Paul Debreczeny, "The Reception of Pushkin's Poetic Works
in the 1820s: A Study in the Critic's Role," Slavic Review 28
(September 1969), 397-98.
10. L. N. Nazarova, "Russkii roman pervogo cherverti X I X veka.
Ot sentimental'noi povesti k romanu," Istoriia russkogo romana,
2 vols. (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1962), vol. 1, p.
Notes to pages 18-21 299
11. See I. Z. Serman, "Zarozhdenie romana v russkoi literature
XVIII veka" in ibid., vol. 1, pp. 47-48; and Iu. M. Lotman,
Roman A. S. Pushkina "Evgenii Onegin.}} Kommentarii. Posobie dlia
uchitelia, 2nd edn. (Leningrad: Prosveshchenie, 1983), p. 215.
12. Todd, Fiction and Society, pp. 34-36.
13. B. V. Tomashevskii, Pushkin, 2 vols. (Moscow-Leningrad: Aka-
demiia nauk, 1956), vol. 1, p. 405; and Iu. N. Tynianov, "Push-
kin," Arkhaisty i novatory (Leningrad: Priboe, 1929), pp. 253-55.
14. M. M. Bakhtin, "Epic and Novel," The Dialogic Imagination. Four
Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl
Emerson and Holquist (Austin, TX: University of Texas, 1981),
pp. 5-8. See also analysis in Katerina Clark and Michael
Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, MA and London:
Harvard University, 1984), pp. 275-77.
15. I. N . Berezin, Puteshestvie po Dagestanu i Zakavkaz'iu. S kartami,
planami i vidami zamechateVnykh mestakh, 2nd edn., 2 vols. (Kazan:
Universitetskaia tipograflia, 1850-52), vol. 11, pp. 51-52.
16. D. S. Mirsky, Pushkin (New York: Dutton, 1963), pp. 65-66.
17. M. P. Alekseev, Etiudy 0 Marlinskom (Irkutsk: Universitet Irkut-
ska 1928), p. 144.
18. I. Bessonov, "Zametki dlia budushchikh izdatelei Pushkina,"
Otechestvennye zapiski 45 (April 1846), otd.n, 113.
19. Frangois-Rene Chateaubriand, Atala. Rene (Paris: Garnier-
Flammarion, 1964), p. 58.
20. Paul Austin has argued that Pushkin was "merely providing a
poetic variation and paraphrase" of eighteenth-century
"empirical accounts" about the Caucasus: see his "The Exotic
Prisoner in Russian Romanticism," Russian Literature 16-18
(October 1984), 239-41. To all indications, however, those non-
fictional writings were hardly read in Russia.
21. Compare Leonard J. Davis, "A Social History of Fact and Fic-
tion: Authorial Disavowal in the Early English Novel" in Litera-
ture and Society, ed. Edward W. Said (Baltimore and London:
Johns Hopkins University, 1980), pp. 125-30.
22. In their introduction to Karamzin's Pis'ma russkogo puteshestven-
nika (Leningrad: Nauka, 1984) Yuri Lotman and Boris Uspen-
sky argue that a fundamentally literary work was pretending to
"non-literariness" (neliteraturnost'), pp. 534-40, 567-69. See also
John Tallmadge, "Voyaging and the Literary Imagination,"
Exploration 7 (1979), 1-16; Percy G. Adams, Travel Literature and
the Evolution of the Novel (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky,
1983), pp. 109-47; John Mersereau, Jr., Russian Romantic Fiction
(Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1983), p. 42; and Germaine Bree,
"Ambiguous Voyage: Mode or Genre," Genre 1 (April 1968),
87-96.
23. Adams,Travel Literature, p. 45; and Reuel K. Wilson, The Literary
Travelogue. A Comparative Study with Special Relevance to Russian
Literature from Fonvizin to Pushkin (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
i973)» P- I 2 -
24. Lotman and Uspenskii, introduction to Pis'ma russkogo pute-
shestvennika, pp. 561-64; and Wladimir Berelowitch, "Preface"
to Nicholai' Karamzine, Lettres d'un voyageur russe, ed. Berelowitch
(Paris: Quai Voltaire, 1991), pp. 16-17.
25. Lotman and Uspenskii, introduction to Pis'ma russkogo pute-
shestvennika, p. 531. On the kind of information sought by Ka-
ramzin's readers, see also Roger B. Anderson, "Karamzin's Let-
ters of a Russian Traveller: An Education in Western
Sentimentalism" in Essays on Karamzin, Russian Man of Letters,
Political Thinker, Historian, 1766-1826, ed. J. L. Black (The
Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 22-23.
26. Wilson, Literary Travelogue, pp. 56-62.
27. T. Roboli, "Literatura puteshestvii" in Russkaia proza. Sbornik
statei, ed. B. M. Eikhenbaum and Iu. N. Tynianov (Leningrad:
Academia, 1926), p. 46.
28. Michel Butor, "Traveling and Writing," trans. John Powers
and K. Lisker, Mosaic 8 (Fall 1974), 1-3.
29. Quoted in Ocherki po russkoi zhurnalistiki i kritike, 2 vols.
(Leningrad: LGU, 1950), vol. 1, pp. 142-43.
30. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. ix, p. 18.
31. la. I. Saburov, "Poezdka v Saratov, Astrakhan i na Kavkaz,"
Moskovskii nabliudateV (May 1835), kn. 2, ch. 11, 176-77.
32. Mirsky, Pushkin, p. 61; and Mersereau, Russian Romantic Fiction,
P- 34-
33. Berezin, Puteshestvie po Dagestanu, vol. 11, p. 2.
34. George Watson, "The Accuracy of Lord Byron," Critical Quarterly
7 (Summer 1975), 137-39; a n d Keith Walker, Byron's Readers. A
Study of Attitudes toward Byron, 1812-1832 (Salzburg: Institut fur Angli-
stik und Amerikanistik, Universitat Salzburg, 1979), pp. 4-9.
35. Lord Byron,The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome McGann, 6
vols. (Oxford: Oxford University, the Clarendon Press, 1980-
91), vol. 11, p. 3.
36. Walker, Byron's Readers, p. 14.
37. N. P., "Puteshestvie v Berezov i Obdorsk," Moskovskii telegraf
(1833), ^ i3> 76-8i.
38. Petr Ivanovich Bartenev, "Pushkin v iuzhnoi Rossii, 1820-23,"
Russkii arkhiv (1866), nos. 8-9, 1102-3, I I X I -
Notes to pages 26-2g 301
39. Russkaia kriticheskaia literatura 0 proizvedeniiakh A. S. Pushkina.
Khronologicheskii sbornik kritiko-bibliograjicheskikh statei, cornp. V.
Zelinskii, 7 vols. (Moscow: E. Lissner and Iu. Roman, 1887),
vol. 1, p. 102. See also other reviews: pp. 87, 91-92.
40. Frederika von Freygang, "Pis'ma o Kavkaze," Syn otechestva
(1816), no. 46, ch. 34, 271-77; and I. Eikhfel'd, "Kavkazskaia
doroga," Otechestvennye zapiski (1821), ch. 6 (253/6), 270-94.
"Pis'ma o Kavkaze" was a translated excerpt from Wilhelm
and Frederika von Freygang, Lettres sur le Caucase et la Georgie,
suivies d'une relation d3un voyage en Perse en 1812, trans. Struve
(Hamburg: Perthes and Besser, 1816).
41. K. Dondua, "Pushkin v gruzinskoi literature" in Pushkin v miro-
voi literature. Sbornik statei (Leningrad: LGU, 1926), p. 199. The
same account of confused Caucasian cartography (dated 1768
rather than 1769) appears in Florinsky, Russia, vol. 1, p. 521,
n. 1.
42. For an annotated bibliography including works by the eight-
eenth-century Caucasian explorers, consult M. A. Polievktov,
Evropeiskie puteshestvenniki XVI-XVIII vv. po Kavkazu (Tiflis: Sa-
khelgami, 1935).
43. See P. S. Pallas, Puteshestvie po raznym mestam rossiiskago gosu-
darstva po poveleniiu Sanktpeterburgskoi imperatorskoi akademii nauk,
trans. Fedor Tomanskii, ch. 3 (St. Petersburg, 1788). Without
indicating whether he read Pallas in German, Osip Mandelsh-
tam said the writer seemed to be whistling Mozart as he trav-
eled: see Mandel'shtam, "Zapisnye knizhki. Zametki," Voprosy
literatury (1968), no. 4, 192.
44. Semen Bronevskii, Noveishie geograficheskie i istoricheskie izvestiia 0
Kavkaze, 2nd. aug. edn., 2 vols. (Moscow: S. Selivanovskii,
1823), v °l- h PP- ix-x. Iusufov states that a first edition of this
book appeared in 1821 but gives no citation: see Dagestan i rus-
skaia literatura, p. 44. Only the second edition is cited in M.
Miansarov, Bibliographia Caucasica et Transcaucasica (St. Peters-
burg: O. I. Bakst, Gogenfel'den and Co., 1874-76), p. 54.
46. For a thorough survey of the possibilities, consult A. I. Nekra-
sov, "K voprosu o literaturnykh istochnikakh 'Kavkazskogo
plennika' Pushkina" in Sbornik statei k sorokoletiiu uchenoi deiatel'no-
sti akademika A. S. Orlova (Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1934),
PP- J 53-63-
48. On the general issue, see Shari Benstock, "At the Margin of
Discourse: Footnotes in the Fictional Text," PMLA 98 (January
302 Notes to pages 2g-j6
1983), 204-6, 209; and Lawrence Lipking, "The Marginal
Gloss," Critical Inquiry 3 (Summer 1977), 609-55.
49. On Karamzin's History of the Russian State as a "double text"
(literary and scholarly), consult Caryl Emerson, Boris Godunov.
Transpositions of a Russian Theme (Bloomington, IN: Indiana Uni-
versity, 1986), pp. 31-41.
50. On a similar mode of authentication, see Stephanie Sandier,
"The Poetics of Authority in Pushkin's 'Andre Chenier,'" Slavic
Review 42 (Summer 1983), 195.
51. Bronevskii, Noveishie izvestiia 0 Kavkaze, vol. 1, pp. vii—viii.
52. A. [Bestuzhev-JMarlinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 3rd edn., 12
vols. (St. Petersburg: HI Otdelenie, 1838-39), vol. x, p. 170.
53. Syn otechestva (1824), c n - 9? kn. 2? 71-
54. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. vn, p. 373.
55. On General Ermolov's mental library of Latin poetry, see Aleksei
Petrovich Ermolov. Materialy dlia ego biografii, comp. M. N. Pogodin
(Moscow: Katkov and Co., 1863), p. 10. During his military
exile Bestuzhev-Marlinsky reported reciting to himself Push-
kin, Byron, Dante, Ariosto, Goethe and Walter Scott: see
[Bestuzhev-JMarlinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. x, pp. 279-
80.
56. P. R. Khanzhonokov, "Rasskaz kavkazskogo veterana o Push-
kine," appended in I. K. Enikolopov, Pushkin na Kavkaze
(Tbilisi: Zaria Vostoka, 1938), pp. 160-66.
57. N. B. Potokskii, "Vstrechi s Aleksandrom Sergeevichem Pushki-
nym v 1829 g o c m ," appended in Enikolopov, ibid, pp. 144-45.
58. P. A. Viazemskii, Staraia zapisnaia knizhka (Leningrad: Izda-
tel'stvo pisatelei, 1929), p. 161.
59. See Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, p. 180; and Andrew Ruther-
ford, "News and the Muse: Press Sources for some of Kipling's
Early Verse," English Literature in Transition, 1880-1g20, 29 (1986,
no. 1), 7-16.
60. Quoted by Enikolopov, Pushkin na Kavkaze, pp. 79-80.
61. Bulgarin is quoted in Shaduri, Dekabristskaia literatura, p. 395.
62. Ivan P. Borozdna, Poeticheskie ocherki Ukrainy, Odessy i Kryma.
Pis'ma v stikhakh k grafu V. P. Z-u (Moscow: S. Selivanovskii,
1837)-
3 IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHY
Epigraph, Pushkin, "Kavkazskii plennik," Sobranie sochinenii,

vol. in, p. 87. (Subsequent citations appear parenthetically in
the text.) Pushkin's dedication uses the metrically apt variant
"Beshtu," but the poem's first footnote states that the name
is "more accurately Beshtau" (which Russians wrote in this
non-hyphenated form).
1. A. A. Shishkov, "N. T. A(ksakov)u" in Poety 1820-1830-kh go dov,
ed. L. la. Ginzburg, 2nd edn. (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel',
1972), vol. i, p. 401. (Cited hereafter as Poety.)
2. A similar tendency in British writing about Africa is analyzed
in Pratt, Imperial Eyes, pp. 51-61.
3. Ibid., p. 100.
4. One of Pushkin's drafts cast the hero as an exile: see Tomashev-
skii, Pushkin, vol. 1, pp. 392-93.
5. I. T. Radozhitskii, "Doroga ot reki Dona do Georgievska na
prostranstve 500 verst," Otechestvennye zapiski (August 1823), n o -
40, 343. Cited in several subsequent notes, this monthly journal
was published in 1818-19 and 1820-30, primarily under Pavel
Svinin's editorship. The better known journal of the same name
was founded by Andrei Kraevsky in 1839 and existed until 1884.
6. Alexandre Benningsen, "Muslim Conservative Opposition to
the Soviet Regime: The Sufi Brotherhoods in the North Cauca-
sus," in Soviet Nationality Policies and Practices, ed. Jeremy R.
Azrael (New York: Praeger, 1978), pp. 337-39.
7. Relevant modern studies are Gadzhiev, Kavkaz v russkoi literature,
pp. 15-19, 118-22; and Iusufov, Dagestan i russkaia literatura, pp.
72-75, 144-45-
8. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. ix, p. 298. B. S. Vinogra-
dov argued that Derzhavin reliably depicted snakes engaged in
battle or mass copulation: see "Nachalo kavkazskoi temy v rus-
skoi literature," in Russkaia literatura i Kavkaz, ed. V. M.
Tamakhin (Stavropol', 1974), pp. 20, 25, n. 78.
9. Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory.
The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite, (Ithaca: Cornell
University, 1959), pp. 4-38, 59-67.
10. N. Karamzin, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Leningrad: Khu-
dozhestvennaia literatura, 1984), vol. 1, p. 209.
11. G. R. Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniia, 2nd edn. (Leningrad: Sovetskii
pisatel', 1957), pp. 255-59.
12. V. A. Zhukovskii, Izbrannoe (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia li-
teratura, 1973), p. 70.
14. Victor Brombert, The Romantic Prison. The French Tradition
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1978), pp. 3-13. See also
Monika Frenkel Greenleaf, "Pushkin's 'Journey to Arzrum':
The Poet at the Border," Slavic Review 50 (Winter 1991), 940-
41.
16. In my effort to retain Pushkin's meter and rhyme scheme, I
have sacrificed "two-headed." This mode of translation requires
some paraphrasing, of course, but none the less gives a valid
demonstration of rhetoric shared by Zhukovsky and Pushkin.
17. See British cases in Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Glory, pp. 38,
122, 350.
18. For a particularly dense recapitulation of sublime motifs, see
L. A. Iakubovich, "Kavkaz" in Poety, vol. 11, p. 272. See also
A. A. Shishkov, "Lonskoi," Opyty 1828 goda (Moscow, 1828),
pp. 6-8 ^
19. Dmitrij Cizevskij, On Romanticism in Slavic Literature (The Hague:
Mouton, 1957), 29-35.
20. See, respectively, S. D. Nechaev, "K G. A. R.-K." in Poety, vol.
1, p. 101; E. P. Zaitsevskii, "Abaziia" [sic] in Poety, vol. 1, p.
515; and A. A. Shishkov, "Dagestanskaia uznitsa" in Dagestan
v russkoi literature. Dorevoliutsionnyi period, ed. Uzdiat Dalgat and
Boris Kirdan (Makhachkala: Dagestanskoe knizhnoe izdatel'-
stvo, i960), pp. 56, 67.
21. S. D. Nechaev, "Vospominaniia" in Poety, vol. 1, p. i n , n. 3.
22. K. F. Ryleev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 2nd edn. (Leningrad: So-
vetskii pisatel', 1971), pp. 91-93.
23. E. P. Rostopchina, "El'brus i ia," Stikhotvoreniia, 2nd edn., 4
vols. (St. Petersburg: A. Smirdin, 1857-60), vol. 1, pp. 173-75.
See other Caucasian poems, pp. 263-65, 269-70.
24. Zaitsevskii, "Abaziia," p. 515.
25. V. I. Grigor'ev, "Beshtau" in Poety, vol. 1 pp. 387; and V. G.
Tepliakov, "Kavkaz" in Poety, vol. 1, pp. 605-7.
26. A. I. Meisner, Stikhotvoreniia (Moscow: A. Semen, 1836), pp.
66-68.
27. [Bestuzhev-JMarlinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. x, p. 261.
28. V. I. Grigor'ev, "Vecher na Kavkaze" in Poety, vol. 1, p. 385.
29. M. Iu. Lermontov, Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh (Moscow:
Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1983-84), vol. 1, pp. 30-31.
30. Reprinted in Russkie pisateli 0 Gruzii, ed. Vano Shaduri, 2 vols.
(Tbilisi: Zaria Vostoka, 1948), vol. 1, pp. 417-18; vol. 1, pp.
419-20, 422-23. On the date of Oznobishin's poem, see Gad-
zhiev, Kavkaz v russkoi literature, pp. 40-41.
31. Lermontov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, pp. 76-79.
32. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 11, p. 266. In a quatrain which
was possibly a self-censored conclusion to "The Caucasus,"
Pushkin correlated the "caged" river and the tribes: "So turbu-
lent freedom is strictured by law, / So government torments a
wild people's spirit, / So now does the Caucasus rankle in si-
lence, / So alien power oppresses the land" (ibid., p. 713).
33. A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, "Ammalat-Bek" in Povesti i rasskazy
(Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1976), pp. 181-82; and V. K.
Kiukhel'beker, Izbrannye proizvedeniia v dvykh tomakh, 2nd edn.
(Moscow-Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1967), vol. 1, pp. 527-
28.
34. Lermontov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, pp. 43—44. See I. I. Dmi-
tri ev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 2nd edn. (Leningrad: Sovetskii
pisatel', 1967), vol. 1, pp. 87-89; and V. I. Grigor'ev's trans-
lation of Shtolberg in Poety, vol. 1, pp. 370-72.
35. Gaston Bachelard, Lapoetique de Vespace (Paris: PUF, 1957), pp.
15-21, 191-207. As an example of topographical distortion, the
observer in Pushkin's "The Caucasus" performs the humanly
impossible feat of seeing the Aragva and Kura rivers simul-
taneously: cited in D. S. Blagoi, Tvorcheskii put' Pushkina (1826-
1830), (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel', 1967), pp. 366-67.
36. P. Mukhanov, "Krasnyi most. Vospominanie o Gil'denshtedt
[sic] (Pis'mo k R.)," Moskovskii telegraf (November 1825), c n - 6,
no. 21, otd. 11, 61-62.
4 SENTIMENTAL PILGRIMS
Epigraph, Radozhitskii, "Doroga ot reki Dona," 361.

1. Ibid., 343-44-
2. "Rukovodstvo dlia proezhaiushchikh Kavkazskiia gory," Ote-
chestvennye zapiski (1822), ch. 12, 212-22.
3. Saburov, "Poezdka v Saratov," 176.
4. Pushkin, Puteshestvie v Arzrum in Sobranie sochinenii, vol. v, pp.
417-18. On Piatigorsk's gradual transformation, see Laurence
Kelly, Lermontov. Tragedy in the Caucasus (London: Constable,
1977), P. 69.
5. P. S. [Petr Sumarokov], "Pis'ma s Kavkaza," Moskovskii telegraf
(May 1830), ch. 33, 183. (The author is identified in Mersereau,
Russian Romantic Fiction, p. 328, n. 1.)
6. Sumarokov, "Pis'ma s Kavkaza," (June 1830), 320-22.
7. S. D. Nechaev, "Otryvki iz putevykh zapisok o iugo-vostochnoi
Rossii," Moskovskii telegraf (1826), ch. 7, otd. 1, 32.
8. A. Neliubin, "Kratkoe istoricheskoe izvestie o Kavkazskikh mi-
neral 'nykh vodakh v Piatigorii [MV]," Otechestvennye zapiski
(February 1825), c n - 2I> 188-89.
9. "Kavkazskiia vody. Pis'mo P. P. Svin'ina k redaktoru, izo Stav-
ropolia," Otechestvennye zapiski (July 1825), c n - 23, 250-51.
10. Nechaev, "K G. A. R.-K." in Poety, vol. 1, p. 101.
11. For two late examples, consult A. Andreev, Ot Vladikavkaza do
Tiflisa (St. Petersburg: Novosti, 1891), pp. 16, 27, 44-49; and
Evgenii Markov, Ocherki Kavkaza. Kartiny kavkazskoi zhizni, pri-
rody i istorii, 2nd edn. (St. Petersburg: M. O. Vol'f, 1904), pp.
54, 419-21, 588-89.
12. See Sumarokov, "Pis'ma s Kavkaza," (June 1830), 320.
13. Pushkin, Puteshestvie v Arzrum, pp. 422-23. Pushkin may have
invented the incident to parody Chateaubriand's allusion to
Atala in Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem: see V. L. Komarovich, "K
voprosu o zhanre 'Puteshestviia v Arzrum,"' Vremennik Pushkin-
skoi kommissii 3 (1937), 336.
14. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. vn, pp. 713-14.
15. Few Russian women published Caucasian travelogues.
16. Radozhitskii, "Doroga ot reki Dona," 362.
17. Ibid., 371-72. Famous for his oriental subjects, the dancer and
choreographer Charles Didelot (1762-1836) worked for
extended periods in St. Petersburg.
18. Nechaev, "Otryvki iz putevykh zapisok," 28.
19. Ibid., 29.
20. Karl Gustav Reingardt, "Izvlechenie iz opisaniia puteshestviia
v Gruziiu," Aziatskii vestnik (May 1825), 339-
21. G. Gerakov, "Puteshestvie k kavkazskim vodam, po Kubanskoi
linii i v Taman' (Otryvok iz putevykh zapisok po mnogim Ros-
siskim guberniiam)," Severnyi arkhiv (1823), n o - *? 67.
22. Anon., "Vospominanie o Kavkaze. (Otryvok iz zapisok odnogo
puteshestvennika)," Aziatskii vestnik (April 1826), 258.
23. For an admonitory reminder that the Caucasus was not bucolic
Switzerland, see Eikhfel'd, "Kavkazskaia doroga," 276.
24. "Pis'ma Kh. Sh. k F. Bulgarinu, ili poezdka na Kavkaz," Sever-
nyi arkhiv (August 1828), 239.
25. Iu. N. Tynianov, "O 'Puteshestvii v Arzrum,' " Vremennik Push-
kinskoi kommissii 2 (1936), 57-73; Komarovich, "K voprosu o
zhanre 'Puteshestviia v Arzrum,'" 326-38; V. Shklovskii,
Zametki 0 proze russkikh klassikov, 2nd edn. (Moscow: Sovetskii
pisatel', 1955), pp. 35-40; Gadzhiev, Kavkaz v russkoi literature
pervoipoloviny XIXveka, pp. 122—27; an<^ ^a- L. Levkovich, "Kav-
kazskii dnevnik Pushkina," Pushkin. Issledovaniia i materialy 11
26. See Greenleaf, "Pushkin's 'Journey to Arzrum'," 943.

27. Krystyna Pomorska, "Structural Peculiarities in 'Putesestvie v
Arzrum' " in Alexander Puskin : A Symposium of the 173th Anniversary
of His Birth, ed. Andrej Kodjak and Kiril Taranovsky (New
York: New York University, 1976), 119-20.
28. Pushkin, Puteshestvie v Arzrum, p. 424. (Subsequent citations
appear parenthetically in the text.)
29. P. A. Katenin, "Kavkazskie gory," Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 2nd
edn. (Moscow-Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1965), p. 228.
30. I. M. Iazykov, "A. D. Khripkovu" in Russkie pisateli 0 Gruzii,
pp. 299—301; V. Zubov, "Iuzhnaia vesna," Moskovskii nabliuda-
tel' (July 1835), kn. 2, 245-46; and I. S. Nikitin, "lug i sever,"
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 2nd edn. (Moscow-Leningrad: Sovetskii
pisatel', 1965), p. 81.
31. V. Murav'ev, "Stikhi i zhizn' Aleksandra Polezhaeva" in A. I.
Polezhaev, Stikhotvoreniia. Poemy (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii,
1981), pp. 4, 9-23. The natural son of a rich landowner,
Polezhaev was born in 1804 or 1805.
32. Polezhaev, Stikhotvoreniia, pp. 136-40. For analysis of this poem's
treatment of war, see my chapter 9.
33. Sumarokov, "Pis'ma s Kavkaza," (May 1830), 170.
34. Ibid., (June 1830), 320-22.
35. Grigor'ev, "Pereezd cherez kavkazskiia gory," Nevskii al'manakh
na 1830 god (St. Petersburg, 1829), 2 58~6i; Baron F. Korf,
"Proezd cherez zakavkazskii krai," Biblioteka dlia chteniia 29
(1838), ch.i, otd. 1, 19-20; and Prince N. B. Golitsyn, "Pereezd
cherez Kavkazskiia Gory," Biblioteka dlia chteniia 23 (1837), c n -
7, 19-20.
36. Khersonets [sic], "Vzgliad na Gori," Moskovskii telegraf (August
1833), 495~96-
37. N. Sk. L. N., "i-e maia 1828 goda. Pereezd iz kreposti Tsalki
v gorod Gori, cherez khrebet Erdzhava," Syn otechestva 8 (1839),
119-20.
38. [Bestuzhev-JMarlinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. x, pp. 190-
92.
39. S. Beliaev, "Dnevnik russkago soldata, byvshago desiat'mesia-
tsev v plenu u chechentsov," Biblioteka dlia chteniia (July 1848),
ch. 1, otd. in, 21-48; and Lev Ekel'n, "Iz zapisok russkogo,
byvshego v plenu u cherkessov," 19 Otechestvennye zapiski (1841),
otd. VII, 91-94.
40. E. A. Verderevskii and N. Dunkel'-Veiling, ShamiV v Parizhe i
Shamil'poblizhe (Tiflis: Kantseliariia namestnika Kavkazskago,
1855); and E. Verderevskii , preface to Plen u Shamilia (St.
Petersburg: Korolev, 1856), pp. 1-2.
41. E. A. Verderevskii, Ot Zaural'ia do Zakavkaz'ia. Iumoristicheskie,
308 Notes to pages
sentimental'nye i prakticheskie pis'ma s dorogi (Moscow: V. Gautier,
1857), pp. I l 6 , 122, 136, 191-97, 227-28.
42. Ibid., pp. 116-17.
43. A. A. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow:
GIKhL, 1958), vol. 1, p. 298.
44. Khersonets, "Vzgliad na Gori," 495; and M. Selezhev, Ruko-
vodstvo k poznaniiu Kavkaza (St. Petersburg: Morskoi kadetskii
korpus, 1847), pp. 16-19.
45. Vospominaniia graf. A. A. Tolstoi i perepiska L. N. Tolstogo s graf. A.
A. Tolstoi, 1857-1903 (St. Petersburg: Tolstovskii muzei, 1911),
p. 4.
46. For attributions of oriental indolence to Georgians and Armeni-
ans, see Grigor'ev, "Pereezd cherez kavkazskiia gory," 261; and
Korf, "Proezd cherez zakavkazskii krai," 45.
5 THE NATIONAL STAKE IN ASIA
Epigraph, Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Sochineniia, vol. 11, p. 599.

Vinogradov, "Nachalo kavkazskoi temy v russkoi literature,"
p. 23, n. 33. For analysis of ideological ramifications, see Mark
Bassin, "Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological
Construction of Geographical Space," Slavic Review 50 (Spring
2. Reingardt, "Izvlechenie iz opisaniia puteshestviia," 335; and

Freygang, Lettres sur le Caucase, p. 30.
3. Said, Orientalism, pp. 54-55.
4. See Mark Bassin, "Inventing Siberia: Visions of the Russian
East in the Early Nineteenth Century," The American Historical
Review 96 (June 1991), 763-84.
5. V. G. Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind. European Attitudes
towards the Outside World in the Imperial Age (1969; rpt. New York:
Columbia University, 1986), p. 131; and Raymond Schwab, La
Renaissance orientale (Paris: Payot, 1950), pp. 13—14, 30.
6. N. M. Lobikova, Pushkin i Vostok (Moscow: Nauka, 1974), p.
18.
7. G. S. "Tysiacha i odna noch'," Aziatskii vestnik (April 1827),
209.
8. V. Eberman, "Araby i persy v russkoi poezii," Vostok (1928),
no. 3, i n .
9. Lobikova, Pushkin i Vostok, p. 14.
10. Nicholas Riasanovsky, "Asia through Russian Eyes" in Russia
and Asia. Essays on the Influence of Russia on the Asian Peoples, ed.
Wayne S. Vucinich (Stanford: Hoover Institution of Stanford
University, 1972), pp. 8-17; and Seymour Becker, "Russia
between East and West: The Intelligentsia, Russian National
Identity, and the Asian Borderlands," paper presented at the
IV World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Har-
rogate, England, July 1990, pp. 15-24.
11. "O mogushchestve Anglii v vostochnoi Indii," Vestnik Evropy
97 (1818), no. 1, 120-23; "O vladychestve Anglii v velikikh
Indiakh," Severnyi arkhiv (1822), no. 9, 187-98; and "Por-
tial'skii almaznyi rudnik," Aziatskii vestnik (February 1826),
118-23.
12. See Svirin, "Russkaia kolonial'naia literatura," 55.
13. "Proekt uchrezhdeniia Rossiiskoi-Zakavkazskoi kompanii,"
appended in I. Enikolopov, Griboedov v Gruzii (Tbilisi: Zaria
Vostoka, 1954), pp. 102-9. For official attitudes toward the pro-
ject, consult S. V. Shastakovich, Diplomaticheskaia deiatel'nost' A.
S. Griboedova (Moscow, i960), pp. 193-97.
14. See quotation from the Tiflis Gazette in N. la. Eidel'man, Byt'
mozhet za khrebtom Kavkaza (Moscow: Nauka, 1990), p. 150.
15. B. Nikitine, introduction in V. V. Barthold, La Decouverte de
VAsie, trans. B. Nikitine (Paris: Payot, 1947), p. 12.
16. Compare Emerson, Boris Godunov, p. 245, n. 20: "Both culturally
and politically Russia had genuine roots in (and boundaries
with) Asia, which made the Orient both self and other." See
also Charles J. Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde. The Mongol
Impact on Medieval Russian History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana Uni-
versity, 1985), pp. 1-20; and Serge Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism and
Islam in Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, i960), pp.
13-14.
17. Said, Orientalism, pp. 113-15.
18. V. V. Bartol'd, "Vostok na russkoi nauke," Sochineniia
(Moscow: Izdatel'stvo vostochnoi literatury and Nauka, 1963-
77), vol. ix, pp. 536-38.
19. Bartol'd, "Istoriia izucheniia Vostoka v Evrope i Rossii," Sochi-
neniia, vol. ix, p. 417. This essay points out that Kazan and
Astrakhan had provided the tsarist state with Tatar-speaking
interpreters for diplomatic missions to Persia since the seven-
teenth century: see pp. 372-74.
20. Ibid., p. 418.
21. Bartol'd, "Obzor deiaternosti fakul'teta vostochnykh iazykov,"
Sochineniia, vol. ix, p. 52. For further details on oriental studies
in Kazan, see pp. 43, 80-84.
22. A. Baziiants, N. Kuznetsova and L. Klulagina, Aziatiskii muzei-
31 o Notes to pages y6-8o
Institut vostokovedeniia AN SSSR, i8i8-ig68 (Moscow: Nauka,
1969), pp. 16-20; and Bartol'd, "Obzor," pp. 54-57.
23. On the history, consult Schwab, La Renaissance orientate, pp. 16-
18; and Said, Orientalism, pp. 75-77.
24. S. S. Uvarov, "Mysl' o zavedenii v Rossii Akademii Aziatskoi,"
Vestnik Evropy (1811), no. 1, ch. 55, 32-33.
25. Oriental literature and philology were regularly featured in
Russian periodicals of general interest such as the Herald of
Europe. During 1823—27 the Herald of Asia also published a
wealth of relevant material, including travelogues.
26. Annual reports of the Societe asiatique began appearing in the
Moscow Telegraph in the 1820s. For examples and a survey of
this practice, see "Uspekhi v izsledovanii vostochnoi literat-
ury," Moskovskii telegraf'44 (1832), no. 6, 268-89 and no. 7, 419-
41. See also Aziatskii vestnik 1825 (February), 149-50; (June),
427-28; (September), 205-10 and 377-84; (December), 406-7.
27. Osip Senkovskii, "Ob izuchenii arabskago iazyka," Sobranie
sochinenii (St. Petersburg: Akademiia nauk, 1858), vol. vn, p. 150.
For biographical information, see P. Savelev, "O zhizn' i tru-
dakh Senkovskago" in this edition, vol. 1, pp. xix-xxx.
28. Said, Orientalism, pp. 42-43, 80-89; s e e a ^ s o Leonid Grossman,
"Lermontov i kultury vostoka," Literaturnoe nasledstvo, 43/44 (1),
(1941), 674, 704-5.
29. A. Richter, "O sostoianii vostochnoi slovesnosti v Rossii," Azi-
atskii vestnik (1825), n o - 8, 82-83.
30. On Khudobashev, see Bartol'd, "Obzor," p. 58.
31. "O trudakh Londonskoi kommissii dlia perevodov vostochnykh
iazykakh," Moskovskii telegraf 48 (1832), no. 24, 510-11.
32. Bartol'd, "Obzor," p. 58.
33. Consult Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in the Accounts of Six-
teenth-Century English Voyagers, ed. Lloyd Eason Berry and Robert
O. Crummey, (Madison, wi and London: University of Wiscon-
sin, 1968); and Une infinie brutalite. Ulmage de la Russie dans la
France des XVIe et XVIIe siecles, ed. Michel Mervaud and Jean-
Claude Robert (Paris: Institut d'etudes slaves, 1991).
34. Jacques-Frangois G a m b a , Voyage dans la Russie meridionale, et par-
ticulierement dans les provinces situes au-dela du Caucase, fait depuis
1820 jusqu'en 1824, 2 vols. (Paris: C. J. Trouve, 1826), vol. 1, pp.
vii-ix.
35. Marquis de Custine, La Russie en i8jg, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris:
Gallimard, 1975), pp. 120, 176-79, 223. On the political con-
text, see Michel Cadot, La Russie dans la vie intellectuelle francaise
(i8jg-i8j6), (Paris: Fayard, 1967).
36. "O literature Arabov," Vestnik Evropy (November 1818), ch. 102,
Notes to pages 8o-8y 311
no. 21, 213-15; on oriental poetry, see 178-79, 197-98, 200-3.
37. Lauren Leighton, Russian Romanticism: Two Essays (The Hague:
Mouton, 1975), p. 61. My subsequent discussion also draws on
Leighton's treatment of Pushkin's and Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's
responses to Sismondi, pp. 74, 88-94.
38. Leighton, Russian Romanticism, pp. 76-77.
39. Hans Rogger, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, i960), pp. 6-67; on Fon-
vizin, see also pp. 77-84.
40. Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers (New York: Penguin, 1979), P- I ^ 1 -
41. On the great importance of German idealism in Russia at this
time, see Berlin, ibid., pp. 136-49; and Neil Cornwell, The Life,
Times and Milieu of V. F. Odoyevsky, i8o4~i86g (London: Athlone
Press, 1986), pp. 77-80, 91-95.
42. Schwab, La Renaissance orientale, p. 198.
43. Ibid., pp. 225-27, 292.
44. Lobikova, Pushkin i Vostok, pp. 9—10. Boldyrev was the censor
fired for passing Pyotr Chaadaev's "Philosophical Letter."
45. "Moallaka Lebidova," trans. I. Batianov, Aziatskii vestnik
(1827), no. 1, 32-33.
46. Teleskop (1833), c h - l8> n o - 23> 395-
47. Mosvitianin (October 1855), kn. 1, 154, 162.
48. Orest Somov, Selected Prose in Russian, ed. John Mersereau, Jr.
and George Harjan (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan,
J
974)-
49. V. K. Kiukherbeker, Sochineniia (Leningrad: Khudozhestven-
naia literatura, 1989), pp. 441-42.
50. Quoted in D. I. Belkin, "Pushkinskie stroki o Persii" in Pushkin
v stranakh zarubezhnogo Vostoka. Sbornik statei (Moscow: Nauka,
J
979)? p. r77-
51. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Sochineniia, 11, pp. 573-79, 583-97.
52. This paragraph closely follows Malcolm Hamrick Brown,
"Native Song and National Consciousness in Nineteenth-
Century Russian Music" in Art and Culture in Nineteenth-Century
Russia, ed. Theofanis George Stavrou (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University, 1983), pp. 67—70. On the song for "Izmail-Bey,"
see Lermontovskaia entsiklopediia, ed. V. A. Manuilov (Moscow:
Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1981), p. 189.
53. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. vi, pp. 264-65.
54. Ibid., vol. ix, p. 148.
55. Ibid., vol. ix, p. 95.
56. Abram Tertz (pseud. Andrei Siniavskii), Progulki s Pushkinym
(London: Collins and Overseas Publications Interchange,
X
975), PP. 130-32.
312 Notes to pages 8y-g2
57. Marina Tsvetaeva, "Pushkin and Pugachev," A Captive Spirit:
Selected Prose, ed. and trans. J . Marin King (London: Virago,
!983)> P- 386.
58. For a similar conclusion about "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai"
(but adamantly not "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"), see Ste-
phanie Sandier, Distant Pleasures. Alexander Pushkin and the Writing
of Exile (Stanford: Stanford University, 1989), pp. 179-80.
6 THE PUSHKINIAN MOUNTAINEER
Epigraph, Pushkin, "Kavkazskii plennik," Sobranie sochinenii,

vol. in, p. 99.
1. Marc Raeff, Comprendre Vancien regime russe: Etat et societe en Russie
imperiale (Paris: Seuil, 1982), pp. 143-46.
2. A. S. Griboedov, "Zagorodnaia poezdka. (Otryvok pis'ma iuzh-
nogo zhitelia)," Sochineniia (Moscow: GIKhL, 1956), p. 413. On
the elite's peculiar cultural predicament, see Iu. M. Lotman,
"The Poetics of Everyday Behavior in Eighteenth-Century Rus-
sian Culture," trans. Andrea Beesing, in The Semiotics of Russian
Culture, ed. Alexander D. Nakhimovsky and Alice Stone Nakhi-
movsky (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University, 1985), pp.
69-72.
3. Sidney Monas, "'Self and 'Other' in Russian Literature," in
The Search for Self-Definition in Russian Literature, ed. Ewa M.
Thompson (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1991), pp. 80-83, 91-
4. On Rousseau's reception in Russia with special attention to
Pushkin, consult Iu. M. Lotman, "Russo i russkaia kul'tura
XVIII-nachala XIX veka" in Rousseau's Traktaty, ed. V. S.
Alekseev-Popov et al. (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), pp. 593-99; and
Iu. Lotman and Z. Mints, " 'Chelovek prirody' v russkoi litera-
ture XIX veka i 'tsyganskaia tema' u Bloka," Blokovskii sbornik,
ed. Lotman (Tartu: Tartu University, 1964), 101-7.
5. The passage was designated an "ethnographic essay in verse"
in Bazanov, Ocherki dekabristskoi literatury, p. 454. See similar
arguments in Gadzhiev, Kavkaz v russkoi literature, pp. 15-19;
and Iusufov, Dagestan i russkaia literatura, pp. 72-75, 144-45.
6. Sandier, Distant Pleasures, pp. 146-56.
7. Zhirmunskii, Bairon i Pushkin, p. 87.
8. Iu. V. Mann, Poetika russkogo romantizma (Moscow: Nauka,
!976), p. 53-
9. The song's inauthenticity is underlined in G. A. Gukovskii,
Pushkin i russkie romantiki (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia litera-
Notes to pages gj-gg 313
tura, 1965), p. 286; and S. D. Selivanova, Nadpushkinskimi ruko-
pisiami (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), p. 92.
10. On reception of la theorie des climats in Russia, see Iusufov, Dage-
stan i russkaia literatura, pp. 47—54.
11. Bronevskii, Noveishie izvestiia 0 Kavkaze, vol. 1, pp. 36-37.
12. Zhukovsky's errors were first noted by E. G. Veidenbaum, Kav-
kazskie etiudy in Kavkazovedenie (Tiflis: Tsentral'naia knizhnaia
torgovlia, 1901), p. 279. One of Zhukovsky's imaginary tribes
(the "Bakh") prolonged its textual life in Ryleev, "Pustyn',"
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, p. 77.
13. S. G. Bocharov, "'Svoboda' i 'schast'ia' v poezii Pushkina,"
Poetika Pushkina. Ocherki (Moscow: Nauka, 1974), pp. 3-5; and
Mann, Poetika russkogo romantizma, pp. 46—50.
14. N. V. Gogol', "Neskol'ko slov o Pushkine," Sobranie sochinenii v
semi tomakh (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1986), vol.
vi, p. 59-
15. On dueling as "a way of winning public esteem" and the pos-
sibility that Pushkin had already dueled, see Mirsky, Pushkin,
p. 29.
16. Tomashevskii, Pushkin, vol. 1, pp. 408-10; and Gukovskii, Push-
kin i russkie romantiki, pp. 207—20.
17. Pushkin, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. ix, p. 50. In commenting on
changes the censor did make, Pushkin wrote that "they served
my purpose."
18. Less frequently, women too could identify with the heroic ideal.
The celebrated Nadezhda Durova even participated in the
Napoleonic wars disguised as a man: consult her book The Cav-
alry Maid: Journals of a Russian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars., trans,
and annotated by Mary F. Zirin (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University, 1989).
19. Lauren G. Leighton, Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky (Boston, MA:
Twayne, 1975), pp. 19-28. On the Decembrists' prevailing
assumption that they would have to resort to violence, see N.
A. Guliaev, "O prirode Dekabristskogo romantizma," Russkii
romantizm (Leningrad: Nauka, 1978), pp. 49—51.
20. Bronevskii, Noveisheie izvestiia 0 Kavkaze, vol. 11, p. 130.
21. For the argument that Pushkin produced a subjugated heroine
as a "gift" to Raevsky, see Sandier, Distant Pleasures, pp. 156-
58.
22. Hulme, Colonial Encounters, pp. 249-50; and Pratt, Imperial Eyes,
PP- 96-97.
23. Zelinskii, Russkaia kriticheskaia literatura 0 Pushkine, p. i n .
24. In mystifying the heroine, Viazemsky wrote: "All we know
314 Notes to pages
about her is that she loved, and that is enough for us:" see ibid.,
p. 104.
25. Compare M. Kagan, "O pushkinskikh poemakh," V mire Push-
kina. Sbornik statei, ed. S. Mashinskii (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel',
1974), pp. 102-3; a n d V. V. Sipovskii, Pushkin. Zhizn' i tvorchestvo
(St. Petersburg: Trud, 1907), pp. 477-518.
26. Pushkin rehashed the matter in a letter, Sobranie sochinenii, vol.
ix, pp. 61-62.
27. See Byron quoted in Kiernan, The Lords of Human Kind, pp. 137—
38; and Ochkin [sic], "Plavanie na korable s Lordom Bai-
ronom," Biblioteka dlia chteniia 3 (1834), kn. 1, otd. 11, 19.
28. On the "triumvirate" of "poetry, love and freedom" in young
Pushkin's imagination, see Tertz, Progulki s Pushkinym, p. 27.
29. A Russified Georgian, Pavel Tsitsianov was Chief Adminis-
trator of the Caucasus during 1803-11. General Pyotr Kotlia-
revsky participated in war against Persia in 1804-13, after
which severe wounds forced him to retire. Ermolov was Procon-
sul of the Caucasus from 1816 to 1827, when Nicholas I recalled
him under suspicion of collusion with the Decembrists: see
Michael Whittock, "Ermolov, Proconsul of the Caucasus," Rus-
sian Review 18 (January 1959), 53-60.
30. Tomashevskii, Pushkin, vol. 1, pp. 406-8. Tomashevsky includes
an excerpt from Pestel's Russkaiapravda and outlines his dualistic
view of Russia.
31. For a relevant discussion of Tocqueville, see Tzvetan Todorov,
Nous et les autres (Paris: Seuil, 1989), pp. 222-34.
32. A review in Son of the Fatherland reprinted all of the epilogue: see
Zelinskii, Russkaia kriticheskaia literatura 0 Pushkine, pp. 87-88.
33. Tomashevskii, Pushkin, vol. 1, p. 425.
34. Ibid., p. 425; and Le Petit Robert. Dictionnaire universel des noms
propres, ed. Paul Robert (Paris: 1987), p. 523.
35. On the "anthropological tendency" of "The Gypsies," see Iu.
Lotman, "Istoki 'Tolstovskogo napravleniia' v russkoi literature
1830-kh godov," Trudy po russkoi i slavianskoifilologii5 (1962),
vyp. 119, 15-18.
36. Shishkov, Opyty, pp. 4-5.
37. See analysis of this type of discourse in White, "Forms of Wild-
ness," Tropics of Discourse, p. 154.
38. "Pis'ma Kh. Sh. k F. Bulgarinu, ili poezdka na Kavkaz," Sever-
nyi arkhiv (July 1828), 44-49, 70-74.
39. On Ossian and Homer, see Gukovskii, Pushkin i russkie romantiki,
PP. 236-41.
40. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Sochineniia, vol. 1, p. 300.
41. Baron Stal', "Etnograficheskii ocherk cherkesskago naroda,"
Kavkazskii sbornik 21 (1900), otd. 11, 100-1.
42. See "Otryvki o Kavkaze" excerpted in " O literaturnoi deiatel'-
nosti A. la. Iukubovicha," ed. M. K. Azadovskii, Literaturnoe
nasledstvo 60 (kn. 1), (1956), 272-74.
43. "Cherkes. (Razskaz)," Nevskii al'manakh na i82g god, 260-77.
44. P. A. Viazemskii, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow: Khu-
dozhestvennaia literatura, 1982), p. 313.
45. Quoted in M. O. Gershenzon, Istoriia molodoi Rossii (Moscow-
Petrograd: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1923), p. 28.
46. N. I. Lorer, Zapiski dekabrista (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe eko-
nomicheskoe izdatel'stvo, 1931), p. 214.
47. Ibid., pp. 248-49.
7 BESTUZHEV-MARLINSKY S INTERCHANGE WITH THE

TRIBESMAN
Epigraph, Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, "Ammalat-Bek" in Povesti i

rasskazy, p. 195. (Subsequent citations appear parenthetically in
the text.)
1. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, p. 83. For all Belinsky's
commentaries, see annotated bibliography in Leighton, Alex-
ander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, p . 151
2. Leighton, Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, p. 106.
3. Mikhail Semevskii, "Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bestuzhev
(Marlinskii), 1798-1837," Otechestvennye zapiski, 130 (May
i860), 122 (ellipsis mine).
4. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Sochineniia, vol. 11, pp. 8-59.
5. Ibid., p. 6.
6. While usually remarked by commentators, the writer's ethno-
graphic expertise is treated most extensively in V. Vasil'ev,
Bestuzhev-Marlinskii na Kavkaze (Krasnodar, 1939), pp. 64-87;
Shaduri, Dekabristskaia literatura, pp. 315-26; and M. O. Kosven,
Etnografiia i istoriia Kavkaza. Issledovaniia i materialy (Moscow:
Akademiia nauk, 1961), pp. 158-68.
7. [Bestuzhev-]Marlinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. x, p. 20. A
subsequent reference appears parenthetically in the text.
8. Leighton, Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, p. 17.
9. The metaphor had appeared in a Crimean poem by Zaitsevsky:
see Poety, vol. 1, pp. 519-21.
10. On distinctions between characters on both the Russian and
Dagestani sides, see William Edward Brown, A History of Russian
Literature of the Romantic Period, 4 vols. (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis,
1986), vol. 11, p. 215.
11. F. V. Bulgarin, "Kartina Turetskoi voiny 1828 godu. (Pis'mo
k drugu za granitsu)," Nevskii al'manakh na i82g god (St. Peters-
burg, 1828), 386-87.
12. [Bestuzhev-]Marlinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. vin, pp.
231-32.
13. Mann, Poetika russkogo romantizma, p. 322.
14. On the type of plot, see Abdul R. JanMohamed, "The Economy
of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in
Colonialist Literature," Critical Inquiry 12 (Autumn 1985), 67;
and Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, p. 192.
15. Quoted by Shaduri, Dekabristskaia literatura, p. 328.
16. See Steven Marcus, The Other Victorians (New York: Basic Books,
J
974)> PP- 205-6.
17. Such a clash between Christianity and Islam is taken as the
tale's basic didactic principle in Mersereau, Russian Romantic
Fiction, p. 124.
18. See Ermolov's denial of the episode in N. Berg, "Vstrecha
moia s A. P. Ermolovym," Russkii arkhiv (1872), 1, columns
989-99. Ermolov nevertheless helped circulate "Ammalat-
Bek" by anonymously translating it into French in 1835: see
the ascription in Antoine-Alexandre Barbier, Dictionnaire des
ouvrages anonymes, 3rd edn., rev. and aug. by Olivier Barbier,
Rene and Paul Billard (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1963),
column 138.
19. "Pis'ma Aleksandra Aleksandrovicha Bestuzheva k N. A. i K.
A. Polevym, pisannyia v 1831-1837 godakh, s predisloviem,"
Russkii vestnik 32 (1861), no. 3, 307.
20. Dominique O. Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of
Colonization, trans. Pamela Powesland (London: Methuen,
^ S ) , P- 21.
21. Lewis Bagby, "Aleksandr Bestuzev-Marlinskij's 'Roman i
Ol'ga': Generation and Degeneration," Slavic and East European
Journal 25 (Winter 1981), 9-12.
22. Lauren Leigh ton, "Bestuzhev-Marlinskii's 'The Frigate Hope':
A Decembrist Puzzle," Canadian Slavonic Papers 22 (June 1980),
174-76, 186.
23. E. P. Rostopchina, "K Serezhe," Sochineniia, 2 vols. (St. Peters-
burg: I. N. Skorokhodov, 1890), vol. 1, pp. 1-2. For biographical
information, see the introduction by Sergei Suchkov, pp. iii-xiv.
24. V. P. Zhelikhova, Kavkazskie razskazy (St. Petersburg: A. F.
Devrien, 1895), pp. 28, 58-60, 81.
25. Veidenbaum, Kavkazskie etiudy, p. 311.
26. Ibid.; and Zhelikhova, Kavkazskie razskazy, p. 22.
27. Elizaveta Gan, "Vospominanie o Zheleznovodske," Polnoe so-
branie sochinenii (St. Petersburg: N. F. Merts, 1905). On the writ-
er's life, see E. S. Nekrasova (comp.), "Elena Andreevna Gan
(Zeneida R-va), 1814-1842. Biograficheskii ocherk," Russkaia
starina 51 (August 1886), 335-56 and (September 1886), 553-
76.
28. A. L. Zisserman, Dvadtsat' piat' let na Kavkaze (1842-1867), 2
vols. (St. Petersburg: A. S. Suvorin, 1879), vol. 11, p. 3; and vol.
1, pp. 1-5, 204-5.
29. I. von der Hoven, "Moe znakomstvo s dekabristami," Drevnaia
i novaia Rossiia (1877), no. 2, 221.
30. K. P. Belevich, Stikhi i razskazy (St. Petersburg: Glazunov,
1895), P- I 7 I 5 a n d V. L. Markov, "Vospominaniia ulanskogo
korneta," Nabliudatel' (1895), no. 10, 165-66 and 229. For the
same "heroic" expectations without literary allusions, see N. E.
Smirnov, Sovremennye tipy (St. Petersburg: A. Kaspari, 1870), p.
63-
31. See Bruno Bettelheim on the Nazi Freikorps in the book review
"Death Producers," Times Literary Supplement, 14-20 April, 1989,
392.
32. Quoted in Alekseev, Etiudy 0 Marlinskom, p. 130, n. 2.
33. Ibid., pp. i32-33> H 0 -
34. Zisserman, Dvadtsat' piat' let na Kavkaze, vol. 1, p. 329.
35. For unsupported contentions to this effect, see Iusufov, Dagestan
i russkaia literatura, pp. 188-89, 222-23.
36. Russian ethnographers of the era considered the Caucasus the
cradle of the "white, Caucasian" race: see M. Maksimovich,
"O cheloveke," Teleskop (September 1831), ch. 5, 8-9.
37. Zisserman, Dvadtsat' piat' let na Kavkaze, vol. 1, p. 58.
38. A typical nineteenth-century verdict of suicide appears in
A. P. Berzhe, "Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bestuzhev v Piati-
gorske v 1835 g.," Russkaia starina 28 (October 1880), 422. It
is possible, however, that the writer was ordered into battle
by a general who then promoted a legend of his suicide: see
Iu. Levin, "Ob obstoiatel'stvakh smerti A. A. Bestuzheva-
Marlinskogo," Russkaia literatura (1962), no. 2, 219-22. A
scandalous event near the end of Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's life
intensified his undeniable despair in exile: after his landlady's
daughter was accidentally killed by a pistol kept under his
pillow, the writer was subjected to an official inquiry but
absolved of criminal responsibility.
8 EARLY LERMONTOV AND ORIENTAL MACHISMO
Epigraph, Lermontov, "Izmail-Bey," Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 11,

p. 247.
1. Grossman, "Lermontov i kultury vostoka," 681-82.
2. Quoted by Grossman, ibid., 736.
3. Iu. M. Lotman, "Problema Vostoka i Zapada v tvorchestve
pozdnego Lermontova" in Lermontovskit sbornik, ed. I. S. Chis-
tova et al. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1985), pp. 5-11, 22.
4. The censored text appeared in Otechestvennye zcipiski 27 (1843),
otd. 1, 1-25. With two small oversights, the deletions are listed
in B. V. Tomashevskii's commentary in Lermontov, Sochineniia
v shesti tomakh (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1954-57),
vol. in, p. 323.
5. The critic enigmatically counted "Izmail-Bey" among the aes-
thetically remarkable "facts of the poet's psychic life" (fakty
dukhovnoi lichnosti poeta): see Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii,
vol. VIII, p. 94.
6. B. M. Eikhenbaum, Stat'i 0 Lermontove (Moscow-Leningrad:
Akademiia nauk, 1961), pp. 9-12; and B. T. Udodov, M. Iu.
Lermontov. Khudozhestvennaia individual'nost' i tvorcheskie protsessy
(Voronezh: Voronezh University, 1973), pp. 53~59, 102-5.
7. A. N. Sokolov, Ocherki po istorii russkoi poemy XVIII i pervoi poloviny
XIX veka (Moscow: MGU, 1955), pp. 593~94- For analysis of
Hugo's impact on Lermontov, see E. Duchesne, Michel Iourievitch
Lermontov. Sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1910), pp.
302-11.
8. S. A. Andreev-Krivich, Lermontov. Voprosy tvorchestva i biografii
(Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1954), pp. 73-76, 87-89; and A. P.
Semenov, Lermontov i JoVklor Kavkaza (Piatigorsk: Ordzhonikid-
zevskoe kraevedcheskoe izdatel'stvo, 1941); and A. P. Semenov,
"Motivy gorskogo fol'klora i byta v poeme Lermontova
'Khadzhi-Abrek' in Mikhail Iurievich Lermontov. Sbornik statei i
materialov, ed. A. M. Dokusov et al. (Stavropol': Stavropol'skoe
khizhnoe izdatel'stvo, i960), pp. 14-25.
9. U. R. Fokht, Lermontov. Logika tvorchestva (Moscow: Nauka,
J975), P- 78.
10. Andreev-Krivich, Lermontov, pp. 12-33; A. V. Popov, Lermontov
Notes to pages 138-4J 319
na Kavkaze (Stavropol': Stavropol'skoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo,
1954), pp. 16-18; and I. L. Andronikov, "Kommentarii" in
Lermontov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 11, p. 522.
11. Tomashevskii, commentary in Lermontov, Sochineniia v shesti
tomakh, vol. m, p. 324. Earlier efforts to relate the song to
Caucasian tribal folklore are summarized in V. A. Manuilov,
Roman M. Iu. Lermontova Geroi nashego vremeni. Kommentarii
(Moscow-Leningrad: Prosveshchenie, 1966), pp. 102-3.
12. The parenthetical numerals refer to the part and stanza of
"Izmail-Bey."
13. The censor's deletion of the curl in 1843 gave Izmail-Bey a
more ruthless air as the seducer of Russian women.
14. On Lermontov and Rousseau, see M. Rozanov, "Baironicheskie
motivy v tvorchestve Lermontova" in Venok Mikhailu Iurievichu
Lermontovu. Iubileinyi sbornik (Moscow-Petrograd: V. V. Dumnov,
1914), pp. 355-75; and Lotman, "Istoki 'Tolstovskogonaprav-
leniia' v russkoi literature 1830-kh godov," pp. 40-45.
15. I. Radozhitskii, "Kyz-Brun. Cherkesskaia povest'," Otechestven-
nye zapiski 32 (1827), 288.
16. The passage's reductive character is noted in Robert Reid,
"Ethnotope in Lermontov's Caucasian Poemy," Russian Litera-
ture 31 (May 1992), 566.
17. M. Liventsov, "Zapiski damy, byvshei v plenu u gortsev," Bibli-
oteka dlia chteniia 149 (May 1858), ch. 1, otd. 1, 38-39.
18. See my chapter 11, p. 202.
19. Lermontov v vospominaniakh sovremennikov, ed. V. E. Vatsuro et al.
(Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1989), pp. 54, 291-
92, 364, 400, 416, 432, 442, 444, 446-47, 455, 479;
20. Akty sobrannye kavkazskoiu arkheograficheskoiu kommissieiu, ed. A. P.
Berzhe et al., 12 vols. (Tim's: Tipografiia glavnago upravleniia
namestnika Kavkaza, 1866—96), vol. ix, p. 346. (Hereafter cited
zsAktyKAK).
21. Dvizhenie gortsev, p . 393-94.
22. Zisserman, Dvadtsat' piat' let na Kavkaze, vol. 1, pp. 48-49.
23. N. A. Dobroliubov, " O znachenii nashikh poslednikh podvigov
na Kavkaze," Sobranie sochinenii v deviati tomakh (Moscow-
Leningrad: GIKhL, 1962-64), vol. v, p. 441.
24. The abduction is dated 1842 in M. la. Orshevskii, "Kavkaz s
1841 po 1866," Russkaia starina 79 (July 1893), 91-92. A later
memoir dated the event 1840: see M. N. Chichagova, ShamiV
na Kavkaze i v Rossii. Biogrqficheskii ocherk (St. Petersburg: S.
Muller and I. Bogel'man, 1889), p. 147.
25. Dvizhenie gortsev, pp. 420-21.
26. Lermontov, Letter to A. A. Lopukhin, June 1840, Sobranie sochi-
nenii, vol. rv, p. 448.
27. On the distinction between "ideal" and historical readerships,
see Peter J. Rabinowitz, "Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination
of Audiences," Critical Inquiry 4 (Autumn 1977), 134-35. See
also Iu. Lotman, "The Text and the Structure of Its Audience,"
trans. Ann Shukman, New Literary History 14 (Autumn 1982),
85-
28. Gan, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, p. 52.
29. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. vn, pp. 648-57, 673.
30. Ibid., pp. 660-61.
31. Berlin, Russian Thinkers, pp. 164-81.
32. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. iv, pp. 204, 214-16.
33. See V. Murav'ev's commentary on Belinsky's essay in Pole-
zhaev, Stikhotvoreniia, p. 279, n. 8.
34. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. vi, 133-38.
35. In Isaiah Berlin's words, Belinsky "married unsuitably, from
sheer misery and loneliness:" see Russian Thinkers, p. 155. Belin-
sky referred to his deprived love life in correspondence: see his
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. xi, p. 559; and vol. xn, p. 67.
36. Friedrich Bodenstedt, Die Vblker des Kaukasus und ihre Freiheits-
k'dmpfe gegen die Russen (Frankfurt am Main: Hermann Johann
Kessler, 1848), pp. 207-10, 411-35.
37. Friedrich Bodenstedt, Les Peuples du Caucase et leur guerre d'inde-
pendance contre la Russie, trans. Prince E. de Salm-Kyrburg, 2nd
edn. (Paris: E. Dentu, 1859), p. 78. This edition was not avail-
able to me in German.
38. P. A. Efremov, "Biograficheskii ocherk" in Lermontov, Sochi-
neniia, 6th edn., 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Glazunov, 1887), vol. 1,
pp. xxxiii—xxxiv.
39. Verderevskii, Plen u Shamilia, ch. 1, p. 1.
40. Chichagova, ShamiV na Kavkaze i v Rossii, pp. 127, 146, 157—
59-
41. N. A. Volkonskii, "Okonchaternoe pokorenie vostochnago
Kavkaza (1859-i god)," Kavkazskii sbornik 4 (1879), 175-76.
42. I. P., "Iz boevykh vospominanii. Raskaz Kurintsa," Kavkazskii
sbornik 4 (1879), 51-52.
9 LITTLE ORIENTALIZERS
Epigraph, D. Minaev, "Uprek Kavkazy," Biblioteka dlia chteniia

42 (1840), ch. 1, 72-74.
1. I borrow the French term from Schwab, La Renaissance orientate,
p. 429.
2. See the quoted phrase in anon., "Tri mesiatsa v plenu u gor-
tsev," Sovremennik 10 (July 1848), otd. iv, 5.
3. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. m, p. 357 and editorial
commentary, p. 639.
4. Petr Kamenskii, Povesti i razskazy (St. Petersburg: in Otdelenie,
1838), ch. pervaia, pp. 1-73.
5. Dvizhenie gortsev, p. 396
6. See review of M. Bogdanovich's Algeriia v noveishee vremia in
Moskvitianin (March 1850), no. 7, kn. 1, otd. iv, 103-5; a n < ^
Cadot, La Russie dans la vie intellectuelle frangaise, pp. 12, 345-46.
7. Dvizhenie gortsev, p. 58.
8. "Poezdka v Gruziiu," 336-38.
9. Shaduri, Dekabristskaia literatura, pp. 328-33.
10. M. Vedeniktov, "Vzgliad na kavkazskikh gortsev," Syn otechestva
(1837), ch. 188,57-59.
11. la. Saburov, "Kavkaz," Moskovskii nabliudateV (September
1835), kn. 1, ch. iv, 42.
12. George Leigh ton Ditson, Circassia, or a Tour to the Caucasus, rev.
edn. (New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1850), p. 275.
13. Iusufov, Dagestan i russkaia literatura, pp. 147-53.
14. Vedeniktov, "Vzgliad na kavkazskikh gortsev," 59; Ilia Ra-
dozhitskii, "Progulka k kavkazskim mineral'nym vodam," Ote-
chestvennye zapiski (February 1824), c n - X7J kn. 46? 209; anon.,
"Vospominaniia o Kavkaze 1837 goda," Biblioteka dlia chteniia
80 (1847), ch.2, o t d- m> 61; and Berezin, Puteshestviepo Dagestanu,
vol. 11, p. 97.
15. Lomonosov's Russian "light of Goodness and Beneficence"
encompasses symbolic sunshine, stars and fire, while the Turks
belong to the "gloom of night," thick smoke, dust and shadow.
16. Polezhaev, Stikhotvoreniia, pp. 133-65.
17. A. S. Griboedov, Sochineniia v stikhakh, 2nd edn. (Leningrad:
Sovetskii pisatel', 1967), pp. 349-52 and commentary, pp. 508-
9. The Chegem is a small tributary of the Malka river, slightly
south of Piatigorsk.
18. L. Iakubovich, "Cherkes," Sovremennik, 9 (1838), otd. vn, 155-
56.
19. Prince D. Kropotkin, "Lezginskaia pesnia," Biblioteka dlia chte-
niia 21 (1837), k n - J> o t d - h 33-34-
20. M. Venediktov [sic ], "Pesnia zakubanskikh gortsev," Biblioteka
dlia chteniia 9 (1835), otd. 1, 122-23.
21. For Lermontov's translation of Mickiewicz's poem, see Lermon-
322 Notes to pages 164-yi
tov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, pp. 33-34.
22. D. Oznobishin, "Kavkazskoe utro," Otechestvennye zapiski 9
(1840), no. 6, otd. in, 151-52.
23. From Sanskrit dev, the Persian div overlaps with the name for
supernatural birds of pagan Slavic mythology which augur ill
for the Russians' battle against the Polovtsians in The Lay of
Igor's Campaign.
24. See a commemorative verse of 1839 in Alekseev, Etiudy 0 Mar-
linskom, p. 137.
25. Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Sochinenii, vol. 11, p. 566.
26. Baron Ekshtein, "O drevnei poezii arabov, do Mugammeda,"
Moskovskii telegrqf 4.1 (1831), no. 19, 352-54.
27. Senkovskii, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. vn, pp. 167-70, 194-96.
28. Mentsov [sic], "Molodaia aravitianka," Syh otechestva 52 (1835),
ch. 173, no. 39, 169-70; V. Zubov, "Devy Vostoka," Moskovskii
nabliudateV (August 1836), ch. 8, kn. 1, 446-50; M. Vedeniktov,
"Vostochnaia krasavitsa," Syn otechestva 187 (1837), otd. 1, 368-
69; K. Aivulat, "Odaliska," Otechestvennye zapiski 61 (May 1841),
otd. in, 92; and Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, Povesti i rasskazy, pp. 268-
76.
29. Aleksandr Shidlovskii, Grebenskii kazak. Povest' (St. Petersburg:
A. Smirdin, 1831).
30. N. I. Gnedich, Stikhotvoreniia, 2nd edn. (Leningrad: Sovetskii
pisatel', 1956), pp. 152-53.
31. P. Markov, Zlomilla i Dobronrava - devy gor, Hi vstrecha s kazakom:
Kavkazskaia povest' v dvukh chastiakh (Moscow: Tipografiia Laza-
revykh Instituta Vostochnykh Iazykov, 1834).
32. Zriakhov was brought to my attention by Brooks, When Russia
Learned to Read, p. 222. See my bibliography for editions of the
tale I consulted.
33. Ibid., p. 222; and Hulme, Colonial Encounters, pp. 257-58.
34. Moskvitianin, (July 1850), ch. 4, no. 13, kn. 1, otd. iv, 28-29.
35. See I. Debu, "O nachal'nom ustanovlenii i rasprostranenii kav-
kazskoi linii," Otechestvennye zapiski 49 (May 1824), 281-89. For
a study of all Cossackdom's mythic stature, consult Judith
Deutsch Kornblatt, The Cossack Hero in Russian Literature. A Study
in Cultural Mythology (Madison, wi: University of Wisconsin,
36. V. Zotov, Poslednii Kheak. Poema (St. Petersburg: Akademii

nauk, 1842).
37. Anon., "Gosudar' Nikolai Pavlovich v avtobiograficheskikh ras-
skazov byvshego kavkazskogo ofitsera," Russkii arkhiv 19 (1881),
kn. 2, 235.
38. Ivan Golovin, The Caucasus (London: Triibner and Co., 1854),
p. 22.
39. Saburov, "Kavkaz," 212-13, 219.
40. For a brief diatribe against Zotov, see Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie
sochinenii, vol. vi, pp. 394—95.
41. Kamenskii, Povesti i razskazy, p. 37. See also Zriakhov's prefatory
verse to the "beautiful Mohammedan" tale, Mosvitianin, (July
1850), ch. 4, no. 13, kn. 1, otd. iv, 31.
42. Gadzhiev, Kavkaz v russkoi literature', p. 30.
10 FEMINIZING THE CAUCASUS
Epigraph, [Bestuzhev-JMarlinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol.

x, p. 187. (Subsequent citations appear parenthetically in the
text.)
1. Hulme, Colonial Encounters, pp. xii, 1; Lisa Lowe, "The Orient
as a Woman in Flaubert's Salammbo and Voyage en Orient" Com-
parative Literature Studies 23 (Spring 1986), 44—45; Todorov, Nous
et les autres, pp. 41-55; and Daphne B. Watson, "The Cross of
St George: The Burden of Contemporary Irish Literature" in
Literature and Imperialism, ed. Robert Giddins (London: Macmil-
lan, 1991), pp. 25-43.
2. For an English translation with analysis, see Louis Pedrotti,
"The Scandal of Countess Rostopcina's Polish-Russian Alle-
gory," Slavic and East European Journal 30 (Summer 1986), 196-
214.
3. George G. Grabowicz, The Poet as Mythmaker: A Study of Symbolic
Meaning in Taras Sevcenko (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University,
1982), pp. 37-38, 45, 58-59, 64-68.
4. A. Odoevskii, "Brak Gruzii s russkim tsartsvom," Polnoe sobranie
sochinenii (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1958), pp. 178—80.
5. Platon P. Zubov, Kartina kavkazskago kraia, prinadlezhashchago Ros-
sii} i sopredel'nykh onomu zemel' v istoricheskom, statisticheskom, etno-
grajicheskom, finansovom i torgovom otnosheniiakh, 2 vols. (St. Peters-
burg: Konrad Vingeber, 1834), pp. 11-25, 41-47, 54~55, 64-
71, 85-86.
6. Biblioteka dlia chteniia 26 (1837), ch. 1, otd. v, 2-6.
7. See voluminous annotated bibliographies in N. F. Dubrovin,
Istoriia voiny i vladychestva russkikh na Kavkaze, 6 vols. (St. Peters-
burg: Departament udelov, 1871-86), vol. 1, kn. 3; and Miansa-
rov, Bibliographia Caucasica, otd. 2.
8. "Poezdka v Gruziiu," 353-55; and Prince N. B. Golitsyn,
"Pereezd cherez Kavkazskiia Gory," Biblioteka dlia chteniia 23
(1837), ch. 7, 25.
9. N. M., "Vospominaniia o Kavkaze 1837 goda," Biblioteka dlia
chteniia 81 (March 1847), c n - 3? otd. m, 21-22.
10. Quoted in Enikolopov, Griboedov v Gruzii, p. 102.
11. "Poezdka v Gruziiu," 366.
12. "Vospominaniia o Kavkaze (Otryvok iz zapisok odnogo
puteshestvennika)," Aziatskii vestnik (April 1826), 258.
13. See Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's related discussions of the Caucasus
as "terrestrial paradise" (204), a land of "Biblical simplicity"
(169) and the "cradle of mankind" (vol. vm, 245-46).
14. Annette Kolodny, The Lay of the Land. Metaphor as Experience and
History in American Life and Letters (Chapel Hill, NG: University
of North Carolina, 1975), pp. 4-7, 10-70.
15. This argument is pursued in my next chapter as well. For a
particularly sly perception of "virgin" nature in Pushkin's "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus," see Berezin, Puteshestvie po Dagestanu,
vol. 11, pp. 51-52. Less symbolically loaded references to a virgin
Caucasus occur in Saburov, "Kavkaz," 197-98; G. Dzhegitov,
"Pir na Kavkaze," Biblioteka dlia chteniia 22 (1837), o t d. x? I24>
Khersonets, "Vzgliad na Gori," 495; Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie
sochinenii, vol. iv, p. 175; and T. [F. Tornau], "Vospominaniia
o Kavkaze i Gruzii," Russkii vestnik (1869), no. 2, 103.
16. Agilr Gadzhiev, Etapy literaturnogo bratstva (Baku: Iazychy,
1986), pp. 31-57; Gadzhiev, Kavkaz v russkoi literature, pp. 72-
77; and Bazanov, Ocherki dekabristskoi literatury, p. 501. By con-
trast, Lewis Bagby has called the travelogues "moving accounts
of a restless soul in search of stability": see "Bestuzev-Marlin-
skij's 'Mulla Nur': A Muddled Myth to Rekindle Romance,"
Russian Literature 11 (January 1982), 127, n. 1.
17. Dubrovin, Istoriia voiny i vladychestva, vol. 1, kn. 3, p. 96.
18. N. M., "Vospominaniia o Kavkaze 1837 goda," 21.
19. Count V. Sollogub, "God voennykh deistvii za Kavkazom,
1853-54," Biblioteka dlia chteniia 142 (March 1857), ch. 3, otd.
11, 4.
20. Meisner, Stikhotvoreniia, pp. 77-80.
21. G. I. Uspenskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 10 vols. (Moscow: Aka-
demiia nauk, 1940-53), vol. x, part 1, pp. 295-97, 300. The
essay was brought to my attention by D. P. Fesenko, "Kritika
kapitalizma v kavkazskikh ocherkakh G. Uspenskogo" in Rus-
skaia literatura i Kavkaz, pp. 56-63.
22. Shaduri, Dekabristskaia literatura, p. 332.
23. The Russian army under Vorontsov's command took the vir-
Notes to pages i8$-g4 325
tually deserted village of Dargo, Shamir s base of operations at
the time. During the return march, however, the Russian troops
were ambushed by tribesmen and suffered massive casualties
in killed and wounded: see Baddeley, Russian Conquest, pp. 388-
410.
24. Ermolov, comp. Pogodin, pp. 279, 282.
25. Ibid., pp. 296-97.
26. See Vorontsov's assessment of the Dargo campaign in Akty
KAK, vol. x, pp. 288-89. See also reports of General I. F. Paske-
vich and others in Dvizhenie gortsev, pp. 168-72, 192, 283-84.
Additional perceptions of Caucasian terrain as Russia's enemy
appear in Sollogub, "God voennoi deistvii za Kavkazom," 12;
Berezin, Puteshestvie po Dagestanu, vol. 11, pp. 92-93; and N. Vol-
konskii, "Lezginskaia ekspeditsiia (v Didoiskoe obshchestvo) v
1857 g°du," Kavkazskiisbornik 2 (1897), 2 I 9 -
27. Nikolai Paul, "Kavkazskie kartiny. Iz zapisok ochevidtsa," Tele-
skop (1833), c h - l6> n o - J5> 34O-41-
28. Poety, vol. 11, p., 272.
29. Shevchenko's long poem "The Caucasus" fiercely protested
against the conquest but did not feminize the territory.
II GEORGIA AS AN ORIENTAL WOMAN
Epigraph, Odoevskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, pp. 178-80.

1. See Todorov's discussion of "exotisme et erotisme" in Nous et
les autres, pp. 41-55. For analysis of woman's duality as the
other in narratives of the tropical journey by Levi-Strauss,
Conrad and Baudelaire, see also Cleo McNelly, "Natives,
Women, and Claude Levi-Strauss," Massachusetts Review, 16
(Winter 1975), 8-10.
2. See David Marshall Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy,
1638-1832 (New York: Columbia University, 1957), pp. 253-70,
283-84; and Ronald Grigor Suny, The Making of the Georgian
Nation (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989), pp. 83-84.
3. Georgia was orientalized in a non-romantic but nevertheless
noteworthy manner in V. Narezhnyi's Chernyi god, Hi gorskie knia-
zia (Moscow, 1829) {The Black Year, or Mountain Princes). Nar-
rated in the first person by an Ossetian prince of Persian
descent, this novel features Muslims, Zoroastrians, Buddhists,
Jews and pagans. It harkens back to traditions of Montesquieu's
Persian Letters and the Eastern tales of Voltaire to engage in light
moral satire of Russian officials: see N. Svirin, "Pervyi russkii
roman o Kavkaze," Znamia 7 (1935), 224-27, 237-40.
326 Notes to pages ig4~20i
4. Suny, Making of the Georgian Nation, pp. 20-21; and, on the
impact of Islam, pp. 24-30 , 46-55. See also W. E. D. Allen, A
History of the Georgian People (London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner and Co., 1932), pp. 73-74, 99, 119, 270-73.
5. Lang, The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, pp. 52-53, 189.
Allen recognized martyrs for the faith among the nobles and
also underlined the steady persistence of Christianity among
the Georgian peasantry and artisan class, but he claimed that
the majority of Georgian princes displayed "cynical indiffer-
ence" toward religion in this era: "They combined Mussulman
polygamy with Christian drunkenness and interested them-
selves in either religion only to the extent of celebrating with
admirable impartiality the feast-days of both," History of the
Georgian People, p . 272.
6. Quoted in Shaduri, Dekabristskaia literatura, p. 347.
7. Poety, vol. 1, pp. 388-89.
8. Lermontov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, pp. 81; vol. 11, pp. 51, 83;
and la. P. Polonskii, Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisa-
tel', 1954), pp. 95, 98. As discussed by Allen, the wearing of
the veil in Tim's reflected the city's long history as a stronghold
of Muslim power. By contrast, in country districts, where Chris-
tian practices prevailed, the veil was not customary: see History
of the Georgian People, pp. 98-99, 356.
9. The opposition is stressed in Lobikova, Pushkin i Vostok, pp. 49-
55-
10. Sandier, Distant Pleasures, pp. 173-82.
11. Griboedov, Sochineniia v stikhakh, pp. 332—38. For a plot sum-
mary published in the Russian press in 1830 by F. Bulgarin
(who considered "Georgian Night" a masterpiece), see Shaduri,
Dekabristskaia literatura, pp. 294-95.
12. Consult poems by Alexander Radishchev in Shaduri, Russkie
pisateli 0 Gruzii, vol. 1, pp. 14-15. On Medea, see also Bronevskii,
Noveishie izvestiia 0 Kavkaze, vol. 1, p. viii.
13. A. Khakhanov, "Meskhi," Etnograficheskoe obozrenie (1891), kn.
10, no. 3: 36—37. According to pagan belief in mountainous
eastern Georgia, the primal demon who revolted from benevo-
lent God was His sister, the creator of the female sex: see G.
Charachidze, Le Systeme religieux de la Georgiepaienne (Paris: Fran-
gois Maspero, 1968), pp. 279-81.
14. Charachidze, Le Systeme religieux, p. 654; and on attributes of the
Virgin, Khakhanov, "Meskhi," 36.
15. Iraklii Andronikov, Lermontov. Issledovaniia i nakhodki (Moscow:
Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1964), pp. 268-70.
Notes to pages 201-y 327
16. In a late nineteenth-century version, Tamar finally is extermi-
nated by a valiant Russian soldier who strikes her with a magic
button of his uniform: see Khakhanov, "Iz gruzinskikh legend,"
Etnograficheskoe obozrenie (1898), kn. 39, no. 4: 140.
17. Andronikov, Lermontov, pp. 252-55.
18. Mann, Poetika russkogo romantizma, p. 227, n. 36.
19. On the Demon's rapacious gaze, see Joe Andrew, Women in
Russian Literature, iy80-1863 (London: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 54-
60.
20. Griboedov, Sochineniia v stikhakh, p. 357; see also Pushkin, Sob-
ranie sochinenii, vol. 11, pp. 246, 266; Polonskii, Stikhotvoreniia, pp.
109-10, 141; and lesser poets anthologized in Shaduri, Russkie
pisateli 0 Gruzii, vol. 1, pp. 302, 417-18, 422-23. The Darial
Pass also figured frequently in literature, as already noted in
"Ammalat-Bek."
21. The poetry's fame is underlined in Andronikov, Lermontov, p.
241. See also G. Filatov, "Poema M. Iu. Lermontova 'Demon'
(k voprosu o znachenii knvkazskoi tematiki)," Literatura i
Kavkaz, ed. V. Dronov (Stavropol', 1972), pp. 67-69.
22. Lermontov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 11, p. 74.
23. A. A. Shishkov, Ketevana, Hi Gruziia v 1812 godu, abridged in
Shaduri, Russkie pisateli 0 Gruzii.
24. Shishkov, Ketevana, p. 426. (Subsequent citations appear paren-
thetically in the text.)
25. Verderevskii, Ot Zaural'ia do Zakavkaz'ia, pp. 170, 206.
26. Although Lermontov's "Rendez-Vous" does not specify the
speaker's nationality, he appears Russian by virtue of first-
person narration and the depiction of a "Tatar" as an exotic
foreigner.
27. L. A. Iakubovich, "Narodnaia gruzinskaia pesnia," in Shaduri,
Russkie pisateli 0 Gruzii, p. 420.
28. It is especially notable that the poem induced some Russian
women to tell Lermontov flirtatiously that they would like to
go flying with his Demon: see Lermontov v vospominaniiakh sovre-
mennikov, pp. 205—6.
29. Kamenskii, Povesti i razskazy, pp. 102-3.
30. Dzhegitov, "Pir na Kavkaze," 126-27.
31. In reality, when Polonsky wrote this poem, Russia had proved
too economically backward itself to realize any major projects
for developing Georgia, as stressed in S. and N. Gougouchvili
et aL, La Georgie, (Paris: PUF, 1983), pp. 116-17. Likewise, as
of the mid-1840s, Russia essentially turned a blind eye to slave
trade in the Caucasus, much to the exasperation of the British
who were trying to abolish it: see Ehud R. Toledano, Ottoman
Slave Trade and Its Suppression, 1840-go (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University, 1982), pp. 42, 115-16, 138-42.
32. Ammalat-Bek kills a panther and puts on its skin, and Lermon-
tov's young tribal hero in "Mtsyri" attacks a snow leopard with
a club.
33. Enikolopov, Griboedov v Gruzii, pp. 15-16; Shaduri, Dekabristskaia
literatura, pp. 347, 489-97, 516-17; and Stephen F.Jones, "Rus-
sian Imperial Administration and the Georgian Nobility: The
Georgian Conspiracy of 1832," Slavonic and East European Review
65 (January 1987), 61-62.
34. Lermontov v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, p . 48. By contrast to
Lermontov, Pushkin in Journey to Arzrum acknowledged the valor
of Georgians, even as he maligned their intellect: "The Georgi-
ans are a nation of warriors. They have proved their bravery
under our banners. Their mental capacities still await develop-
ment" (Sobranie sochinenii, vol. v, p. 431). The continuation of
the passage attributes a jolly disposition to Georgians, marvels
at their great appetite for strong wine and remarks "oriental
senselessness" in their poetic songs.
35. The murder naturally made an impression at the time, as
seen in Russian documents referring to it as a "bestial"
and "barbarous" act, displaying a "vengeance and ferocity
unexpected in the female sex": see Akty KAK, vol. 11, pp.
112, 114-15.
36. Without mentioning any names, the epilogue of Pushkin's "The
Prisoner of the Caucasus" refers to the "destruction of Rus-
sians" by "vindictive Georgian women," using the plural, inter-
estingly enough, as though such violence were endemic. An
old Georgian peasant in Shishkov's Ketevana also mentions the
murder (p. 453).
12 THE ANGUISHED POET IN UNIFORM
Epigraph, Lermontov, "Valerik," Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1,

p. 66.
1. Lermontovskaia entsiklopediia, pp. 87-90.
2. Lermontov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. iv, p. 427.
3. Grossman, "Lermontov i kultury vostoka," 674.
5. E. Mikhalova, Proza Lermontova (Moscow: GIKhL, 1957),
pp. 209-10; B. Eikhenbaum, 0 proze. Sbornik statei (Leningrad:
Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1969), pp. 263-83; and John
Garrard, Lermontov (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1982), pp. 132-42
6. See Lotman, "Problema Vostoka i Zapada v tvorchestve
pozdnego Lermontova," pp. 5-15.
7. Lewis Bagby, "Narrative Double-Voicing in Lermontov's A
Hero of Our Time," Slavic and East European Review 22 (Fall 1979),
273-80; and Todd, Fiction and Society, p. 163.
8. Although "Bela" is set in Chechnia, Lermontov retained the
traditional romantic obsession with "Circassian" beauties. For
pertinent commentary, see S. Durylin, Geroi nashego vremeni
M. Iu. Lermontova (Moscow: Narkompros, 1940), p. 49-54;
and Manuilov, Roman M. Iu. Lermontova, pp. 80-81, 88, 9 1 -
92.
9. Peter Scotto, "Prisoners of the Caucasus: Ideologies of
Imperialism in Lemontov's 'Bela,'" PMLA 107 (March 1992),
246-60; and Barbara Heldt, Terrible Perfection: Women and Russian
Literature (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, 1987), pp.
29-32.
10. For a recent examination, see Andrew Barratt and A. D. P.
Briggs, A Wicked Irony: The Rhetoric of Lermontov's "A Hero of Our
Time33 (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1989).
11. See detailed analysis in Susan Layton, "Lermontov in Combat
with Biblioteka dlia chteniia," Cahiers du monde russe et sovietique,
forthcoming. Consult also V. Vatsuro, "Lermontov i Mar-
linskii" in Tvorchestvo M. Iu. Lermontova. 150 let so dnia rozhdeniia,
1814.-1964, ed. U. R. Fokht (Moscow: Nauka, 1964), pp. 356-
58; and L. S. Dubshan, "O khudozhestvennom reshenii i litera-
turnom istochnike ognogo iz epizodov povesti 'Bela'" in Lermon-
tovskii sbornik (1985), pp. 267-70.
12. Todd, Fiction and Society, pp. 147-49.
13. For examples, see anon, book review, Biblioteka dlia chteniia 17
(1836), otd. v, 11; and "Podvigi Russkikh za Kuban'iu v 1789
godu," Otechestvennye zapiski, 5 (1821), no. 9, 34.
14. Consult Eikhenbaum, Stat'i 0 Lermontove, pp. 243-44; Vladimir
Nabokov, "Translator's Introduction," A Hero of Our Time (New
York: Doubleday, 1958), pp. viii-ix; and Todd, Fiction and
Society, pp. 149-50.
15. See the developmental assessment of Pechorin in Richard
Gregg, "The Cooling of Pechorin: The Skull beneath the Skin,"
Slavic Review 43 (Fall 1984), 387-98.
16. Lermontov, Geroi nashego vremeni in Sobranie sochinenii, vol. iv,
p. 37. (Subsequent citations to the novel appear parenthetically
in the text.) I have modified Nabokov's translation.
17. S. Shevyrev, "Geroi nashego vremeni," Moskvitianin (1841),
ch.i, no. 2, 518, 524 and 533-37.
18. Russkaia kriticheskaia literatura 0 proizvedeniiakh M. Iu. Lermontova,
ed. V. Zelinskii, 2 vols. (Moscow: A. G. Kol'chugin, 1897), vol.
11, pp. 152.
19. Mikhailova, Proza Lermontova, p. 221.
20. Lermontov again used the metaphor of mountains as blushing
girls in his fragment of poetic prose, "Blue mountains of the
Caucasus, I greet you," Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, pp. 254-55.
21. Rozanov, "Baironicheskie motivy v tvorchestve Lermontova,"
361-62. On parodic echoes of Marlinsky in the passage, see
Udodov, Lermontov, pp. 595-60.
22. John Mersereau, Jr., Mikhail Lermontov (Car.bondale, IL: South-
ern Illinois University, 1962), pp. 122-24; a n d J. A. Harvie,
"The Vulture and the Dove," Comparative Literature Studies 18
(March 1981), 27.
23. Cynthia Marsh, "Lermontov and the Romantic Tradition: The
Function of Landscape in A Hero of Our Time" Slavonic and East
European Review 66 (January 1988), 45-46.
24. M. Bakhtin, Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo, 4th edn. (Moscow:
Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1979), p. 265. For an English translation,
see Problems of Dostoevski's Poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1984).
25. See a discussion of British writing in Paul Fussell, The Great
War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University, 1975),
p. 192.
26. E. M. Purkhritudova, " 'Valerik' Lermontova i stanovlenie psi-
khologicheskogo realizma v russkoi literature 30-kh godov XIX
veka" in M. Iu. Lermontov. Sbornik statei i materialov, ed. L. P.
Semenov (Stavropol': Stavropol'skoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo,
i960), pp. 73-79. See also A. V. Popov, Lermontov na Kavkaze
(Stavropol': Stavropol'skoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1954), pp.
142-47.
27. See Erich Neumann, The Great Mother, trans. Ralph Manheim,
2nd edn. (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1963), p. 198.
28. An Age Ago: A Selection of Nineteenth-Century Russian Poetry, trans.
Alan Myers, forward and notes by Joseph Brodsky (London:
Penquin, 1989), p. 162.
30. See Belinsky quoted in Lermontov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1,
P- 347-
31. N. Semenov, Tuzemtsy severo-vostochnago Kavkaza. (Razskazy, ocher-
ki, izsledovaniia, zametki 0 chechentsakh, kumykakh i nogaitsakh i
Notes to pages 22g-j4 331
obraztsy poezii etikh narodtsev) (St. Petersburg: A. Khomskii and
Co., 1895), pp. 73-75. See also V. A. Geiman, "1845. Vospomi-
naniia," Kavkazskii sbornik 3 (1879), 273.
32. Zisserman, Dvadtsat' piat' let na Kavkaze, vol. 11, pp. 240-41, 326-
37. After reading Zisserman, Tolstoy would respond by using
the phrase the "poetry of warfare" {voinstvennaia poeziia) iron-
ically in Hadji Murat.
33. Besides Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's death in combat, Alexander
Odoevsky succumbed to typhus while stationed on the Black
Sea coast; and Polezhaev died of tuberculosis in a military hos-
pital in Moscow, after deserting his regiment.
34. See Mersereau, Mikhail Lermontov, p. 117; and K. N. Grigor'an,
Lermontov i ego roman "Geroi nashego vremeni" (Leningrad: Nauka,
1975), pp. 219-20. For the verse "Farewell, unwashed Russia,"
see Lermontov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, p. 76.
35. Lermontov, Sobranie sochinenii., vol. iv, p. 436.
36. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. iv, p. 175.
37. Edmund Spencer, Travels in- Circassia, Krim, Tartary, etc.
(London: H. Colburn, 1837), vol. 1, p. 327.
38. Quoted in M. P. Alekseev, "Viktor Giugo i ego russkie zna-
komstva. Vstrechi. Pis'ma. Vospominaniia," Literaturnoe na-
sledstvo 31-32 (1937), 804.
39. L. N. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii v dvenadtsati tomakh (Moscow:
Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1972-76), vol. 11, p. 64.
13 TOLSTOY S REVOLT AGAINST ROMANTICISM
Epigraph, Tolstoi, Kazaki in Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 111, p. 225.

Tolstoi, "Zapiski o Kavkaze, Poezdka v Mamakai-Iurt. " Polnoe
sobranie sochinenii, 90 vols. (Moscow: GIKhL, 1928-58), vol. in,
pp. 215-17.
B. M. Eikhenbaum, Lev Tolstoi. Kniga pervaia, jo-6oie gody
(Leningrad: Priboi, 1928), p. 180.
A classic case of ill-informed ethnography full of Great Russian
chauvinism was N. Danilevskii, Kavkaz i ego gorskie zhiteli v ny-
nyshnem polozhenii (Moscow: MGU, 1846). For a scornful
response to the book, see Otechestvennye zapiski 48 (1846), no. 10,
otd. vi, 96-97.
The newspaper circulated little outside Tim's: See V. G. Gad-
zhiev and A. M. Pikman, Velikie russkie revoliutsionnye demokraty 0
bor'be gortsev Dagestana i Chechni (Makhachkala, 1972), p. 51.
Zisserman, Dvadtsat' piat' let na Kavkaze, vol. 1, pp. 328-29.
6. Belinskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, pp. 135-36.
7. Ibid., vol. iv, p. 174.
8. Sovremennik, 26 (1851), otd. v, 68-71.
9. Eikhenbaum, Lev Tolstoi, vol. 1, pp. 130—38. Eikhenbaum
includes an excerpt from Kostenetsky on p. 134.
10. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence. A Theory of Poetry (Oxford:
Oxford University, 1973). Tolstoy's embattled stance goes
unnoticed in B. Eikhenbaum, "L. Tolstoi na Kavkaze (1851-
1853)," Russkaia literatura (1962), 52, 56.
11. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. XLVI, pp. 91, 158-59.
12. Ibid., p. 155.
13. Ibid., vol. LIX, p. 130.
14. Quoted with commentary in N. N. Gusev, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi.
Materialy k biografii s 1828po 1855 god (Moscow: Akademiia nauk,
1954), P- 328.
15. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 11, p. 14.
16. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 111, p. 232.
17. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 11, p. 64.
18. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. m, pp. 215-16. The essay
was written in 1852.
19. Tolstoi, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. m, p. 156. (Subsequent citations
are given parenthetically in the text.)
20. B. M. Eikhenbaum, Molodoi Tolstoi (Peterburg: Z. I. Grzhebin,
1922), pp. 111-15.
21. On the Rousseau connection, see Isaiah Berlin, "Tolstoy and
Enlightenment" in Tolstoy: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed.
Ralph E. Matlaw (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967),
PP- 30. 37-45-
22. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. XLVI, pp. 64, 66, 87, 93-
94, 162.
23. John Hagen, "Ambivalence in Tolstoy's The Cossacks," Novel 3
(1969), 44-46; and Robert L.Jackson, "The Archetypal Jour-
ney. Aesthetics and Ethical Imperatives in the Art of Tolstoj -
The Cossacks," Russian Literature 11 (May 1982), 389-92.
24. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. vi, p. 253.
25. Lewis Bagby and Pavel Sigalov, "The Semiotics of Names and
Naming in Tolstoj's 'The Cossacks,'" Slavic and East European
Journal 31 (Winter 1987), 480.
26. M. Ja. Ol'shevskii, "Kavkaz s 1841 po 1866," Russkaia starina
78 (June 1893), 592.
27. The soldiers are Don Cossacks, whose officer announces sheep-
ishly to the narrator, "I thought that was a baby they were
about to kill."
28. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. vi, pp. 157-89, 259.
29. Ibid., vol. XLVII, p. 280.
30. See Krystyna Pomorska, "Tolstoy - Contra Semiosis," Inter-
national Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, nos. 25-26 (1982),
383-9°-
31. Quoted in N. N. Gusev, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi. Materialy k biog-
rafii s 1855 po i86g (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1957), p. 605.
32. Ibid., p. 606.
33. Ibid.
34. V. A. Manuilov, "Kavkazskie rasskazy i povesti L. N. Tolsto-
go" in Tolstoi, Kavkazskie rasskazy i povesti (Voronezh: Tsen-
tral'no-chernozemnoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1978), p. 27.
35. See N. N. Gusev, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi. Materialy k biografii s
i8yo po 1881 (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1963), p. 76; and B. M.
Eikhenbaum, Lev Tolstoi. Semidesiatye gody (Leningrad: Sovetskii
pisater, i960), pp. 182-83.
14 POST-WAR APPROPRIATION OF
ROMANTICISM
Epigraph, V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Zabytaia krepost' (L'vov:

Stavropigiiskii institut, 1897), p. 462.
1. The Cossacks was mentioned in the early twentieth-century trav-
elogue of Markov, Ocherki Kavkaza, p. 583.
2. The dreadful epigone poetry of sublime nature and orientalia
can be sampled in M. Rosengeim, Stikhotvoreniia, 4th edn., 2
vols. (St. Petersburg: M. M. Stasiulevich, 1889), vol. 1, pp. 60-
61, 222-23; v °l- n> PP- 2 O ~ 2 3 J 171—73; M. I. Lavrov, Sochineniia
(Moscow: I. N. Kushnerev and Co., 1889), pp. 105; M. I.
Lavrov, Stikhotvoreniia (Moscow: A. I. Snegirevoi, 1898), ch. 2,
pp. 43, 47-48, 246; and V. L. Velichko, Arabeski. Novyia stikhotvo-
reniia (St. Petersburg: P. P. Soikin, 1904), pp. 1, 32-36, 51-58,
72-80.
3. "Pokorenie vostochnogo Kavkaza," Otechestvennye zapiski (i860),
101-3; and S. Ryzhov, "Ocherki zapadnogo Zakavkaz'ia," Ote-
chestvennye zapiski 128 (January i860), otd. vi, 12-13; and 129
(March i860), otd. vi, 8-9. See also the view of the conquest
as a civilizing mission in Dobroliubov, " O znachenii nashikh
poslednikh podvigov na Kavkaze," pp. 446-47.
4. Dubrovin, Istoriia voiny i vladychestva, vol. 1, kn.i, p. xiii.
Bestuzhev-Marlinsky had posthumous revenge when Dubrovin
perceived ethnographic reliability in the author's "Story of a
Russian Officer Held Prisoner by Mountain Tribesmen," as
334 Notes to pages
anonymously published in the Tiflis Gazette in 1831: see Istoriia
voiny i vladychestva, vol. 1, kn. 3, p. 108.
5. E. I. Kozubinskii (comp.), Opyt bibliogrqfti dagestanskoi oblasti
(Temir-Khan Shura: V. M. Sorokin, 1895), p. 38. For the coun-
tertendency, see Kosven, Etnografiia i istoriia Kavkaza, pp. 158-
68.
6. P. K. Uslar, Etnografiia Kavkaza. Iazykoznanie, vol. n: Chechenskii
iazyk (Tiflis: Upravlenie Kavkazskago Uchebnago Okruga,
1888), third appendix, pp. 77-78.
7. For a thorough investigation, consult Brooks, When Russia
Learned to Read.
8. Thomas M. Barrett, "The Remaking of the Lion of Dagestan:
Shamil in Captivity," paper delivered at the 20th National Con-
vention of the American Association for the Advancement of
Slavic Studies, Honolulu, 1988, pp. 12-17. Barrett calls roman-
tic Russian literature an important "preparation" for Shamil's
lionization in defeat.
9. R. A. Fadeev Shest'desiat let kavkazskoi voiny (Tiflis: Voenno-
pokhodnaia tipografiia Glavnogo Shtaba Kavkazskoi Armii,
i860), pp. 4-18, 24, 37. See also R. Fadeev, Pis'ma s Kavkaza k
redaktory eMoskovskikh vedomostei3 (St. Petersburg: V. Besobrazov,
1865). Fadeev's popular success was cited in another patriotic
history first delivered as public lectures in St. Petersburg: D. I.
Romanovskii, Kavkaz i kavkazskaia voina. Publichnyia lektsii, chitan-
nyia v zale Passazha v i860 godu (St. Petersburg: Obshchestven-
naia pol'za, i860), p. 227. But for a private judgment of Fadeev
as a writer full of "stupid, shabby adulation and falsehood,"
see General Nikita Alekseev's letter to Lev Tolstoy, quoted in
B. Eikhenbaum, Lev Tolstoi. Kniga vtoraia, 60-ie gody
(Moscow-Leningrad: GIKhL, 1931), p. 142. Fadeev's politics
are treated in Edward C. Thaden, Conservative Nationalism in
Nineteenth-Century Russia (Seattle: University of Washington,
1964), pp. 146-63.
10. F. V. Iukhotnikov, "Pis'ma s Kavkaza," Russkoe slovo (April
1861), otd. in, 9-13.
11. A.V., "Pokorenie Kavkaza," Russkii vestnik 27 (June i860), 348.
12. Lermontov v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, p. 370.
13. Biblioteka dlia chteniia 160 (July i860), ch. 1, "Literaturnaia leto-
pis'," 9-10.
14. Peter Viereck, "Strict Form in Poetry: Would Jacob Wrestle
with a Flabby Angel?" Critical Inquiry 5 (Winter 1978), 203-11.
15. On the "mountain goddesses," see Belevich, Stikhi i razskazy,
p. 15, n. 1.
16. Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word
(London: Methuen, 1982), pp. 34-40, 55.
17. Bitva russkikh c kabardintsami, 2nd edn., rev. by A. V. Morozov
and N. P. Mironov (Moscow: Martynov and Co., 1880), ch. 2,
pp. 77-78.
18. P. P. Nadezhdin (comp.), Priroda i liudi na Kavkaze, po razskazam
puteshestvennikov, poeticheskim proizvedeniiam Pushkina, Lermontova,
Polonskogo i uchebnym issledovaniiam. Uchebnoe posobie (St. Peters-
burg: V. Demakov, 1869), pp. 26-27, 44-46, 58, 76, 144-50. A
subsequent edition was transformed but still included literary
excerpts: P. P. Nadezhdin (comp.), Kavkazskii krai. Priroda i liudi,
2nd edn., rev. and aug. (Tula: E. I. Druzhinina, 1895).
19. E. Voskresenskii (comp.), Kavkaz po sochineniiam Pushkina i Ler-
montova (Moscow: "Nachal'naia shkola" E. N. Tikhomirova,
1887).
20. Zhelikhova, Kavkazskie razskazy ; E. I. Novikova-Zarina, Kavkaz-
skie razskazy (ByV) (St. Petersburg: D. A. Naumov, 1897); D.
Mordovtsev, Zhelezom i kroviu. Roman iz istorii zavoevaniia Kavkaza
pri Ermolove in Sobranie sochinenii, 50 vols. (St. Petersburg: I. F.
Merts, 1901-2), vol. XLVIII; and F. F. Tiutchev, Na gorakh i na
dolinakh Dagestana. Roman iz vremen bor'by s Shamilem za vladychestvo
na Kavkaze (St. Petersburg: V. V. Komarov, 1903).
21. Utverzhdenie russkago vladychestva na Kavkaze, 1801-igoi: k stoletiiu
prisoedineniia Gruzii k Rossii, 6 vols., comp. and ed. N. N. Beliav-
skii and V. A. Potto (Tiflis: Tipografiia shtaba Kavkazskago
voennago okruga, 1901-8).
22. Tolstoy's probable familiarity with these works was signaled by
L. P. Semenov (ed.), Kavkaz i Lev Tolstoi. Sbornik (Vladikavkaz:
SERDALO, 1928), p. 20.
23. Mordovtsev, "Kavkazskii geroi. Istoricheskaia bylV Sobranie
sochinenii, vol. XLVI, pp. 71-119. See detailed analysis in Susan
Layton, "Imagining the Caucasian Hero: Tolstoj vs. Mordov-
cev," Slavic and East European Journal 30 (Spring 1986), 1—17.
24. See further discussion in Susan Layton, "Primitive Despot and
Noble Savage: The Two Faces of Shamil in Russian Litera-
ture," Central Asian Survey 10 (1991), no. 4, 31-45.
25. D. I. Romanovskii, "Gen. Fel'dmarshal kniaz' Aleksandr
Ivanovich Bariatinskii i kavkazskaia voina, 1815-1879," Rus-
skaia starina 30 (1881), 260-61.
26. Berzhe, "Prisoedinenie Gruzii k Rossii," 1. For other references
to public ignorance about the Caucasus, see N. V. Desnitskii,
Rukovodstvo dlia otpravliaiushchikhsia na kavkazskie mineral'nyia vody
(St. Petersburg: Izdanie khizhnago magazina N. N. Tsylova,
336 Notes to pages 261-yy
1882), first unnumbered page; and Nadezhdin, Kavkazskii krai,
first unnumbered page of preface.
27. See the treatment of Lermontov's "Izmail-Bey" in Semenov,
Tuzemtsy severo-vostochnago Kavkaza, p . 73.
15 TOLSTOY S CONFESSIONAL INDICTMENT
Epigraph, Tolstoi, Hadji Murat in Sobranie sochinenii, vol. xn, p.

254. (Subsequent citations appear parenthetically in the text.)
1. V. B. Shklovskii, Lev Tolstoi (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia lite-
ratura, 1974), p. 626.
2. James B. Woodward, "Tolstoy's 'Hadji Murat': The Evolution
of Its Theme and Structure," Modem Language Review 68 (July
i973)? 871-82.
3. An authoritative version based on Tolstoy's manuscripts was
established only in 1950 for the ninety-volume Jubilee edition
of the author's works.
4. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. XLVI, p. 242.
5. See discussion of "Sevastopol Sketches" in Gary Saul Morson,
"The Reader as Voyeur: Tolstoi and the Poetics of Didactic
Fiction," Canadian-American Slavic Studies 12 (Winter 1978), 474-
77-
6. Bakhtin, "Epic and Novel," The Dialogic Imagination, pp. 13-17,
27.
7. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. xxxv, p. 622.
8. On the scene's exactitude, see John Bayley, Tolstoy and the Novel
(New York: Viking, 1966), p. 275.
9. Morson, "The Reader as Voyeur," 479.
10. On the principle of theme and variations, see V. B. Shklovskii,
0 teoriiprozy (Moscow-Leningrad: Krug, 1925), pp. 61-64.
11. P. Palievskii, "Realisticheskii metod pozdnego Tolstogo
(povest' 'Khadzhi-Murat')," in Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi. Sbornik
statei 0 tvorchestve, ed. N. Gudzii (Moscow: MGU, 1959), vol. 11,
P- J79-
12. On the traditional values, see Ong, Orality and Literacy, pp. 171—
75; and Nancy Vogeley, "Defining the 'Colonial Reader': El
Periquillo Sarniento" PMLA 102 (October 1987), 793.
13. Gary Saul Morson, "Tolstoy's Absolute Language" in Bakhtin.
Essays and Dialogues on His Work, ed. Gary Saul Morson (Chicago
and London: University of Chicago, 1986), pp. 128-33.
14. Geiman, "1845 g°d," 368.
15. Consult Loris-Melikov's text in A. Zisserman (comp.), "Khadji
Murat," Russkaia starina 30 (March 1881), 668-77.
Notes to pages 278-gi 337
16. Compare Nancy Dworsky, "Hadji Murat: A Summary and a
Vision," Novel 8 (1975), no. 2, 144-45. Dworsky ventures astray,
in my opinion, by reading Tolstoy's own destruction of a "Ta-
tar" thistle as an admission of art's failure in modern society.
17. U. Dalgat, "Gorskie pesni, predanie i skazka v 'Khadzhi-
Murate' L. N. Tolstogo i ikh khudozhestvennoe znachenie,"
Izvestiia, 2, vyp. 3: Literatura (Groznyi: Checheno-ingushskii
nauchno-issledovaterskii institut, 1951), 6-23.
18. Quoted in Donald Fanger, "Nazarov's Mother: On the Poetics
of Tolstoi's Late Epic," Canadian-American Slavic Studies 12
(Winter 1978), 580.
19. The primacy of moral concern is argued in B. Eikhenbaum,
"O povesti L. Tolstogo 'Khadzhi-Murat,'" in Khadzhi-Murat
(Moscow-Leningrad: Detskaia literatura, 1936), p. 170. But for
insistence upon the text's historical veracity, see V. A. D'iakov,
"Istoricheskie realii 'Khadzhi-Murata,'" Voprosy istoriiz (1973),
no. 5, 135-48.
20. Fanger, "Nazarov's Mother," 577-79.
21. My ensuing analysis draws on the theoretical discussion of
Caryl Emerson, "The Tolstoy Connection in Bakhtin," PMLA
100 (January 1985), 72-77.
22. On dissemination of the prints, see / . E. Repin i L. N. Tolstoi,
comps. S. A. Tolstaia-Esenina and T. V. Rozanova, 4 vols.
(Moscow-Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1948-52), vol. 11, part 2, pp.
38, 117-18.
23. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. xxxv, p . 456.
24. L. N. Tolstoi v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov, 2 vols. (Moscow:
GIKhL, 1955), vol. 1, p. 164.
25. Tsvetaeva, "Pushkin and Pugachev," pp. 394-99.
26. Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. LXIII, p. 353.
27. V. A. Poltoratskii, "Vospominaniia," Istoricheskii vestnik 14 (July
1893), 36-38.
l6 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
Uslar, Etnografiia Kavkaza, p. 77. The essay was first published

in 1868.
Inal Kanukov, Sochineniia (Ordzhonikidze: Severo-Ossetinskoe
knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1963), pp. 235-36, 255-56. I learned of
this writer in V. B. Korzun, "M. Iu. Lermontov i literatury
gorskikh narodov Severnogo Kavkaza," Lermontovskii sbornik, ed.
B. S. Vinogradov et al. (Groznyi: Checheno-ingushskoe knizhnoe
izdatel'stvo, 1964), pp. 104-5.
338 Notes to pages 2gi-gj
3. Kanukov, Sochineniia, p. 329.
4. See Korzun, "Lermontov i literatury gorskikh narodov," pp.
116-17.
5. Dzh. Naloev, "Ot mertvogo k zhivomu," Literaturno-khudozhest-
vennyi sbornik, vyp. 1: Kabardino-Balkariia (Narchik: Kabbalk-
natsizdat, 1933), 81-89.
6. la. Apushkin, Khadzhi-Murat. Geroicheskaia drama v 3 aktakh i 16
kartinakh s interpolatsiiami iz povesti L'va Tolstogo (Moscow: Tsen-
tral'noe biuro po rasprostraneniiu dramaticheskoi produktsii,
1934).
7. Grigorii Aiollo, "Plokho perevarennoe chuzhoe," Kavkazskii
gorets (1925), nos. 2-3, 80-81.
8. See the definition of "transculturation" i a Pratt, Imperial Eyes,
pp. 187-88.
9. Korzun, "Lermontov i literatury gorskikh narodov," p. 116.
10. Rasul Gamzatov, Vernost' talantu (Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia,
l
91°)> P- 7-
11. See various articles in Central Asia Survey 10 (1991), no. 1/2.
12. Taken from a statement by Salman Rushdie, the quoted phrase
alludes to Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, The
Empire Writes Back. Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures
(London: Routledge, 1989).
Select bibliography
The bibliography has three sections. Because of limitations on
space, no section includes all pertinent references contained in
my notes. The listing of twentieth-century secondary works
highlights methodology, as well as imperialism's impingement
on cultural identity.
LITERARY WORKS AND TRAVELOGUES
Berezin, I. N. Puteshestviepo Dagestanu i Zakavkaz' iu. S kartami, planami

i vidami zamechateVnykh mestakh. 2 vols. 2nd edn. Kazan, 1850-52.
Bestuzhev-Marlinskii, A. A. Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh. Moscow:
GIKhL, 1958.
Povesti i rasskazy. Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1976.
[Bestuzhev-]Marlinskii. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. 12 vols. 3rd. edn.
St. Petersburg: in Otdelenie, 1838-39.
Dagestan v russkoi literature. Dorevoliutsionny period. Comp. Uzdiat
Dalgat and Boris Kirdan. Makhachkala, i960.
Derzhavin, G. R. Stikhotvoreniia. 2nd edn. Leningrad: Sovetskii pisa-
tel', 1957-
Gamba, Jacques-Frangois. Voyage dans la Russie meridionale, etparticuli-
erement dans les provinces situes au-dela du Caucase, fait depuis 1820
jusqu'en 1824. 2 vols. Paris: C. J. Trouve, 1826.
Gan, E. A. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. St. Petersburg: N. F. Merts,
Griboedov, A. S. Sochineniia. Moscow: GIKhL, 1956.

Sochineniia v stikhakh. 2nd edn. Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1967.
Kamenskii, P. Povesti i razskazy. Chast' pervaia. St. Petersburg: 111
Otdelenie, 1838.
Karamzin, N. M. Izbrannye sochineniia v dvukh tomakh. Moscow-
Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1964.
Lermontov, M. Iu. Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh. Moscow:
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339
34-O Bibliography
Markov, P. Zlomilla i Dobronrava - devy gor, Hi vstrecha s kazakom.
Moscow: Tipografiia Lazarevykh Instituta Vostochnykh
Iazykov, 1834.
Meisner, A. I. Stikhotvoreniia. Moscow: A. Semen, 1836.
Minaev, D. "Uprek Kavkazu," Biblioteka dlia chteniia 42 (1840), ch.
!> 72-74-
Mordovtsev, D. L. Sobranie sochinenii. 50 vols. St. Petersburg: I. F.
Merts, 1901-02.
Nechaev, S. D. "Otryvki iz putevykh zapisok o Iugo-Vostochnoi
Rossii," Moskovskii telegraf (1826), ch. 7, otd. 1, 26-41.
Nemirovich-Danchenko, V. I. Zabytaia krepost'. L'vov: Stavropiliiskii
institut, 1897.
Novikova-Zarina, E. I. Kavkazskie razskazy. (ByV). St. Petersburg:
D. A. Naumov, 1897.
Odoevskii, A. I. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Leningrad: Sovetskii pisa-
tel', 1958.
Oznobishin, D. "Kavkazskoe utro," Otechestvennye zapiski 9 (1840),
no. 6, otd. in, 151-52.
Paul, Nikolai. "Kavkazskie kartiny. Iz zapisok ochevidsta," Teleskop
1833, c h - l6> n o - T5> 3 2I ~54-
"Pis'ma Kh. Sh. k F. Bulgarinu ili poezdka na Kavkaz," Severnyi
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Poety 1820-1830-kh godov. 2 vols. Ed. L. la. Ginzburg. Leningrad:
Sovetskii pisatel', 1972.
"Poezdka v Gruziiu," Moskovskii telegraf (August 1833), no. 15, 327-
67; and no. 16, 410-473.
Polezhaev, A. I. Stikhotvoreniia. Poemy. Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii,
1981.
Polonskii, la. P. Stikhotvoreniia. 2nd edn. Leningrad: Sovetskii pisa-
tel', 1954.
Pushkin, A. S. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. 17 vols. Leningrad: Akade-
miia nauk, 1937-59-
Sobranie sochinenii v desiati tomakh. Moscow: GIKhL, 1959-62.
Radozhitskii, I. "Doroga ot reki Dona do Georgievska na pro-
stranstve 500 verst," Otechestvennye zapiski (August 1823), no.
4O> 343-75-
Reingardt, Karl Gustav. "Izvlechenie iz opisaniia puteshestviia v
Gruziiu," Aziatskii vestnik (May 1825), 333-44.
Rostopchina, E. P. Stikhotvoreniia. 2nd edn. 4 vols. St. Petersburg:
A. Smirdin, 1857-60.
Sochineniia. 2 vols. St. Petersburg: I. N. Skorokhodov, 1890.
Russkiepisateli 0 Gruzii. Comp. Vano Shaduri. Tbilisi: Zaria Vostoka,
1948.
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Saburov, la. "Kavkaz," Moskovskii nabliudatel' (July 1835), kn. 2,
ch. in, 197-219; and (September 1835), kn. x> c n - IV> 34~59-
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tel' (May 1835), kn. 2, ch. 11, 176-229.
Shidlovskii, A. Grebenskii kazak. Povest'. St. Petersburg: A. Smirdin,
1831.
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P. S. [Petr Sumarokov]. "Pis'ma s Kavkaza," Moskovskii telegraf33
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Tolstoi, L. N. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. 90 vols. Moscow: GIKhL,
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Uspenskii, G. I. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. 10 vols. Moscow: Akade-
miia nauk, 1940-53.
Verderevskii, E. A. Ot Zaural'ia do Zakavkaz'ia: Iumoristicheskie, senti-
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1857-
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Zriakhov, N. Bitva russkikh s kabardints ami, Hi prekrasnaia magometanka
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NINETEENTH-CENTURY SECONDARY WORKS
Belinskii, V. G. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. 13 vols. Moscow: Akademiia

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(Ocherki). Grozny: Checheno-Ingushskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo,
1966.
Zhirmunskii, V. M. Bairon i Pushkin. 1924; rpt. Leningrad: Nauka,
1978.
Index
Abduction from the Seraglio 73 audiences 10-11, 15-16, 30-5, 38, 110-
Abkhazia 47, 48 11
Aiollo, Grigory 292—3 envisioned, 134, 152, 265
Algeria 78, 82, 157, 159, 215-16 gender-divided, 13, i n , 125-30, 135,
Aliabev, Alexander 85 !53-5
Alekseev, Mikhail 20 inculpated, 140-1, 267, 271-4
Alexander I 1, 2, 5, 76, 194 see also Cossacks (Tolstoy), Hadji
Alps 2, 36, 39—40, 42, 45, 46, 177 Murat (Tolstoy), "Prisoner of the
Caucasus as, 13, 47, 52, 56, 69, 163, Caucasus" (Pushkin) and
290 "Valerik" (Lermontov)
"Ammalat-Bek" (Bestuzhev-Marlinsky) Avaria and Avars 235, 263, 293
J
3> I05> T 5 6 , l84> J93> 205 see also Dagestan
Asia in, 114-17, 120-3 Azerbaijan 73, 165, 177, 190
audiences of, i i o - n , 113-14,
125-32, 174 Baedeker 22, 24-5
eros in, 119-22, 182, 209 Bakhtin, Mikhail n - 1 2 , 19, 222, 266,
genre of, 112-13 289
landscape in, 50-1, 114, 119—20, 176, Balakirev, Mili 85
178, 189 Bartold, Vasily 75
songs in, 113, 285 Bazanov, Vasily 8
use in history, 252, 257 Belinsky, Vissarion 15-16, 158, 173
violence in, 122-5, l 8 8 , 290 on Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, n o , 119
Arabs 77, 80, 165-6, 222 on Derzhavin, 38-9
Arac, Jonathan 9 on Gan, 149-51
Armenia and Armenians 70, 78, 204 on Lermontov, 135, 151-2, 217-19,
see also Shuanet 230-1, 235
Asia 2, 37, 38 on Pushkin, 16, 38, 57, 230
backwardness of, 73, 79, 116—17, Berezin, Ilya 19, 25
184, 289 Berzhe, Adolf 3, 261
boundaries with, 2-3, 53, 56, 61, 71, Besh-Tau, Mt. 36, 48, 49, 61, 65
76-7, 92-3, 204, 206, 215 Bessonov, Ivan 20
depravity of, 143-5, I5I> ^ ^ - S , 160, Bestuzhev, Pavel 160
167-8, 169—70, 200-1 Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Alexander 6, 8,
Russia's convergence on, 10, 15-16, 9, 10, 13, 30, 31, 50, 216, 289—90
74, 75, 79-8o, 82-8, 93-8, death of, 129-31, 164-5, 3 : 7, n - 3 8
106-7, 111—12, 115, 122-3, r 74, and Decembrist revolt, 97, n o , 124-
217-19, 244, 254, 288-9, 2 98, n. 1 5
study of, 75-9, 82, 112, 133, as ethnographer, 112, 234, 253, 285
233-4, 253, 261 exile of, i n , 114, 115
348
Index 349
influence of, 69, 246-7, 253, 254, Chernyshevsky, Nikolai 250
256-7, 259, 262, 294 Circassia and Circassians 29, 85
on primitive poetry, 165 in literature, 16, 37, 106, 148-9, 162,
Works: "Frigate Hope" i n , 125; 192, 215, 242, 244,
"Letter to Dr. Erman," 69; "Red in non-fiction, 59, 63-4, 105-6
Veil," 112, 166; "Mulla-Nur," see also "Izmail-Bey" (Lermontov)
127; "Roman and Olga," 29, 96, and "Prisoner of the Caucasus"
119; "Story of an Officer Held (Pushkin)
Prisoner by Mountain Cooper, James Fenimore 94, 153, 235
Tribesmen," 112, 122, 179; Cossacks 3-4, 194, 233
"Test," i n ; travelogues, 68, 117, in literature, 93, 162, 166-70, 235,
175-6, 177, J 78, 179-83, 185-9, 332, n. 27
190-1 Cossacks (Tolstoy) 6, 14, 69, 169, 252,
see also "Ammalat-Bek" 256
Black Sea 4, 28, 48, 73, 177, 184 audiences of, 249—50, 333, n. 1
in Russian writing, 158 Chechens in, 244-9, 2 ^4
Blok, Alexander 289 eros in, 242-4
Boldyrev, A. V. 82, 133 and ethnography, 240, 243, 250
Bodenstedt, Friedrich 152, 255-6 parody in, 240-4
Borozdna, Ivan 34 violence in, 245-6, 273
Brodsky, Joseph 227 Crimea 1, 28, 72, 89, 150
Bronevsky, Semyon 28-9, 30, 31, 34, Custine, Marquis de 79, 231
52, 89, 93, 256
Bulgarin, Faddei 32, 33, 106, 231 Dagestan and Dagestanis 2, 54, 73,
Byron, Lord George 83, 100 147, i93» 2 54
landscape in, 42-3, 62, 114 in literature, 47, 112-13, 114, 176,
and Lermontov, 138-40 178, 190, 192, 229
and Pushkin, 42-6, 95, 99—100 see also Avaria and Lezgins
and travel, 24-6 Dante 48, 181
Works: "Bride of Abydos," 17; Childe Dargo 147, 184-5
Harold's Pilgrimage , 19, 25-6, 29, Darial Pass 50, 51, 120, 194, 200
42, 44, 46, 180; "Corsair," 17; Don Decembrism 32, 103, 296, n. 14, 314,
Juan, 19; "Giaour," 17, 138; n. 29
"Lara," 138; "Prisoner of and literature, 7-8, 47, 96-7,
Chillon," 24 124-5
decolonization 292-4
Caspian Sea 28, 51 Derzhavin, Gavrila 38—9, 40-4, 46
Catherine II 28, 76, 93, 195 Didelot, Charles 58, 73, 103
and expansionism, 1, 2, 4, 42, 72, 73 Dobroliubov, Nikolai 146, 250, 333,
Central Asia 1, 72, 89 n- 3
Chateaubriand, Frangois-Rene 20, 42, Dostoevsky, Fedor 222, 225, 258
306, n. 13
Chavchavadze, Anna 153-4
Chavchavadze, Nina 200, 205, 209 Eden 170-1, 184, 186, 188, 212, 213,
Chechnia and Chechens 2, 32, 54, 73, 232, 290
111, 185, 191 allusions to, 117, 178, 181, 253
in literature, 92, 105, 138, 157, 192, Elbrus, Mt. 36, 44
193, 214, 217-18, 226 in literature, 41, 44, 47, 48, 49, 66,
in travelogues, 159—60, 186 96
see also Cossacks (Tolstoy) and Hadji in travelogues, 59—60, 69
Murat (Tolstoy) Ermolov, Alexei 2, 38, 54, 78, 109, 185,
Chernyshev, Alexander 159, 276 314, n. 29
35° Index
Ermolov, Alexei—cont. Shamil in, 193, 268, 269, 276, 278,
in literature, 49, 101, 117, 123, 128, 286
335, n - 20 symbolism in, 263, 264, 266, 281—5
songs in, 278, 285
Fadeev, Rostislav 254-5, 2&9 violence in, 273, 275, 281
Fanck, Arnold 185 Mikhail Vorontsov in, 272, 276, 277
Florinsky, Michael 5 see also Nicholas I
Fonvizin, Denis 81, 98 Hamzat-Beg 157
Freud, Sigmund 116, 145 Hamzatov, Rasul 293
Hero of Our Time (Lermontov) 134, 139,
Gadzhiev, Agil 8, 173-4 234-5, 240
Gamba, Jacques-Francois 79, 201 Belinsky on, 151, 152
Gan, Elizaveta 99, 126, 148-50, 153 going "native" in, 213—19
Gazi-Mohammed 73, i n , 124, 156 nature in, 219-22
in literature, 161-2 and travelogues, 68, 69, 241
Georgia and Georgians 4, 5, 54, 191, Herder, Johann 81
194-5, 196, 207-8 Hulme, Peter 98
annexation of, 2, 73-4, 79, 193-4, Homer, 128, 143, 156, 166, 188, 192,
258 288, 290
culture of, 85, 207 allusions to, 105, 123, 124, 125, 140
in literature, 9-10, 13, 36, 158, 164, Humboldt, Alexander 29, 52
293, 305, n. 35, 328, n. 36 imperialism 1-2

in travelogues, 10, 67-8, 70, 160, and civilizing mission, 4, 10, 13,
177, 178, 190, 203 58-9, 83, 92, 107-9, 117-20, 127,
Gmelin, Samuel 28 130-2, 133, 141, 158-9, 161, 170-4
Gnedich, Nikolai 17, 96, 167, 169 passim, 193-4, 209, 216, 218-19,
Gogol, Nikolai 95 246, 252-5, 257-61 passim, 263
Golovin, Evgeny 146 definition of, 3-5
Golovin, Ivan 171 economic objectives of, 4-5, 60, 73-4,
X
Goncharov, Ivan 11 o 57, 158, 176-8, 183-4, 204, 207
Grech, Nikolai 231 and jingoism, 142-3, 159-60, 161,
Griboedov, Alexander 74, 178, 200, 209 162
Works: "Georgian Night," 198-200, India 32, 73-4, 78, 211
210; "Trip to the Country," 90: Islam 54, 55, 73, 133-4, !47> J 59, l 6 5 ~
"Predators at the Chegem," 162 6, 171, 172, 193-5, 254-5
Grigoriev, Vasily 46, 48, 49, 195-6 jihad, 2, 38, 53, 73, i n , 145, H6,
Giildenstadt, Johann 28, 52 162, 172, 177, 191
in literature, 36, 72-3, 96, 113,
Hadji Murat (Tolstoy) 5, 9, 14, 193, 114-15, 138-9, 143, 151, 157-9,
205, 249, 253 160-9 passim, I 7 I ~3, r 96, 214, 226,
anti-imperialism of, 263, 273-4, 284- 246, 267, 276
5,289 Ivan IV 3, 72, 79
audiences of, 264-7, 269-74, 279, "Izmail-Bey" (Lermontov) 13, 156,
290, 292-3 169, 193, 205
Chechens in, 267-76 passim audiences of, 13, 85, 133, 134-5,
as confession, 264, 277-84 140-1, 142-3, 146-8, 152-5
context of, 259, 261-2 eros in, 134-5, 138-9, !43~5, 209
eros in, 269 landscape in, 140
genre of, 265-7 song in, 138
peasants in, 263, 269-71, 272, use in history, 252, 258, 336, n. 27
274-5, 276, 280 violence in, 141-3, 145, 153, 213
Index
Jason 29, 199-200 152, 202-3, 208-9, 213; "Prisoner
Journey to Arzrum (Pushkin) 33, 56, of the Caucasus," 250;
62-5, 69, 163 "Rendez-Vous," 204; "Tamara,"
and Polezhaev, 65-6 200-1, 210; "Three Palms," 222
see also Hero of Our Time and
Kabarda and Kabardinians 2, 3, 58, "Valerik"
138, 292, 293 Lezgins 163, 166, 186, 196
in literature, 47, 168-9, 235> 2 57 Likhachev, Dmitri 12
Kamensky, Pyotr 157, 173 literacy 254, 257-8, 270-1
Works: "Kelish-Bey," 158-9, 196; deprecation of, 274-9
"Maiko," 204, 206 Liventsov, M. 145
Karamzin, Nikolai 24, 27, 48, 56, 180 Lomonosov, Mikhail 107, 161, 321,
Works: History of the Russian State, 29; n. 15
Letters of a Russian Traveler, 2 2 - 3 , Lorer, Nikolai 108
40, 58; "Poor Liza," 23, 90, 99 Lotman, Yuri 22
Katenin, Pavel 65
Kazbek, Mt. 44, 63, 185 Mannoni, Dominique O. 124
in literature, 48, 49, 50, 64, 163, 230 Mansur, Sheikh 32
Kiukhelbeker, Vilgelm 50, 83-4, 86 Markov, V. 167-8, 169
Klaproth, Heinrich-Julius 76, 82 Mauss, Marcel 97
Kliuchevsky, Vasily 90 Medea 29, 52, 199-200, 210
Kraevsky, Andrei 157—8, 214 Meisner, Aleksei 48, 182
Mickiewicz, Adam 163
Lay of Igor's Campaign 161, 162 Minaev, Dmitri 156, 164-5, r 7 2
Lazarev institute 76 Mirsky, Dmitri 19
Leigh ton, Lauren 80-1 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat 72,
Lenin, Vladimir 6 93> 325> n - 3
Lermontov, Mikhail 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, Moore, Thomas 72, 83
57, r 92, 294 Mordovtsev, Daniel 259, 261, 269
army career of, 134, 147, 212, 225, Mukhanov, Pyotr 52
228 Murids 38, 147, 166, 268
and Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, 132, 138,
145, 191, 216-17, 219, 247 Napoleon 78-9, 89, 184, 208, 212-13,
death of, 133, 145, 229 224
exile of, 9, 132, 212, 231 Nechaev, Stepan 46
family of, 136-7 Works: "Recollections," 47, 48, 49,
influence of, 69, 246-7, 253, 254, 103, 105; travelogue, 59—60
256, 259, 262, 291, 293, 294 Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vasily 252,
musicality of, 31, 138, 235, 256—7 259-61
Works: "Argument," 50, 206; "Aul Nicholas I 116, 175
Bastundzhi," 135, 136, 137; in literature, 142, 260-1, 268, 269,
"Caucasus," 137; "Circassian 273
Woman," 220; "Death of a Poet," and war in Caucasus, 5, 159, 171,
96, 140; "Demon," 145, 201-3, 174
205-9 possim\ "Dream," 229; and writers, 8, 66, 131, 140, 188, 212
"Farewell, unwashed Russia," 230;
"Georgian Song," 196; "Gifts from Odoevsky, Alexander 175, 191, 192,
the Terek," 51, 226-7, 235; "Hadji 205, 331, n. 33
Abrek," 135, 136; "Hastening orient: see Asia, Islam and romanticism
northward from afar," 49-50, 163— Orlov, Mikhail 108
4, 230; "Kally," 135; "Morning in Ossetians 58, 291, 325, n. 3
the Caucasus," 220; "Mtsyri," Othello (Shakespeare) 121, 122, 130,
352 Index
135, 143, !53, 154 and Africa, 86-7

Orbeliani, Iliko 147 exile of, 9, 26, 37
Orbeliani, Varvara 153-4 musicality of, 19-20, 30-1, 256-7
Oznobishin, Dmitri 50, 164, 172 travels, 24, 36, 54-5, 69, 92
Works: Captain's Daughter, 87, 286;
Pallas, Peter 28 "Caucasus," 50; "Egyptian
Parnassus 36, 37, 48, 49, 64, 165, 213, Nights," 201; Eugene Onegin, 18,
230, 290 24, 86; "Fountain of
Paskevich, Ivan 159 Bakhchisarai," 33, 100, 197-8,
pastoralism 97, 176-9, 200—4, 220, 244 199, 210; "Gypsies," 104;
Paul I 42 "Imitations of the Koran," 86;
peasants 89-90, 99, 238, 269-71, "Monastery on Mt. Kazbek," 49,
274-5 64; "Tazit," 106
and serfdom, 115, 171 see also Journey to Arzrum and
Persia and Persians 32, 117, 193-4, "Prisoner of the Caucasus"
195, 203, 209 Pushkin, Lev 28, 31
literature of, 77, 81, 83, 86, 114
wars with, 73, 78, 208 racism 130, 255
Pestel, Pavel 102 Radishchev, Alexander 90, 326, n. 12
Peter I 117, 131 Radozhitsky, Ilya 54, 58-9, 64,
Piatigorsk 61, 66, 69, 143-4, 241
development of, 54-5 Raeff, Marc 4
and Lermontov, 145, 216, 220 Raevsky, Nikolai 26, 28, 37
and Pushkin, 28, 36 religiosity 161, 181
Pogodin, Mikhail 99 deflation of, 63, 216, 241
Poland 3, 197-8 and mountains, 48, 56, 58, 59—61,
and Russian imperialism, 1, 175, 191 67-8, 180
Polevoy, Nikolai 84, 85, 165 Repin, Ilya 283
Polezhaev, Alexander 157, 307, n. 31, Richard III (Shakespeare) 187-8
33 1 , n. 33 Riefenstahl, Leni 185
Works : "Erpeli," 57, 65-6, 160-2; Rogger, Hans 81
"Harem," 151 romanticism 8, 12
Polonsky, Yakov 205, 206-7, 249-50 development of, 17-20, 27, 41-3, 47,
"Prisoner of the Caucasus" (Pushkin) 52, 80, 89
5, 11, 13, 156, 169 and orient, 1, 25, 36, 81-8, 114, 126,
audiences of, 13, 16-21, 29-35, 163-4
57-8, 87-8, 89—90, 103, 253, 255 reactions against, 56—7, 62-4,
epilogue of, 37, 46, 101-3, 107-8 65-7, n o , 156, 233, 235, 237-40,
eros in, 98-101 242-5, 247, 250-1
hospitality in, 97-8 resilience of, 252-3, 262, 285-7, 2 94
influence of, 46^51, 103-6, 246-7, Robinson Crusoe 130
253, 254 Rostopchina, Evdokiia 48, 125, 126,
landscape in, 36, 41-6, 51 !75, l9l
song in, 100 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 48, 56, 177,
and travel literature, 21-7 180
use in history, 252, 257-8 and civilization, 90, 141, 242, 255,
violence in, 94-7, 101, 290 274
Prometheanism 184-5 Nouvelle Heloi'se, 23, 40, 59
Prometheus 29, 52, 61 Ryleev, Kondraty 47, 96, 313, n. 12
Pugachev, Emelian 3-4, 87, 286
Pushkin, Alexander 7, 10, 192, 210, Said, Edward 8-9, 71
291, 294 Sandier, Stephanie 91
Index 353
Schiller, Friedrich von 94 239-4O> 241, 243, 244, 245, 247,
Schlegel, August and Friedrich 80, 81, 250, 285
84 and Pushkin, 246—7, 250-1
Scott, Sir Walter 138, 259, 302, n. 55 Works: Anna Karenina, 270, 271;
Semevsky, Mikhail n o , 126 Childhood, 250; Death of Ivan Ilych ,
Senkovsky, Osip (Jozef Sekowski) 77-8, 271; "Prisoner of the Caucasus,"
135,165-6, 231 250, 270; "Raid," 228—9, 235, 236,
Shaduri, Vano 8 237-8, 245, 252, 273; Resurrection,
Shamil 2, 34, 157, 252, 258 279; Stories for the People , 270-1,
in literature 259-61, 335, n. 20 274; "Notes on the Caucasus,"
reputation in Russia, 129, 135, 233, 239-40; War and Peace, 234,
146-8, 152-5, 174, 254, 266, 283, 271; What Is Art?, 271;
293, 296, n. 10 "Wood-felling," 185, 231-2, 239,
see also Hadji Murat (Tolstoy) 252
Shevchenko, Taras 175, 191 see also Cossacks and Hadji Murat
Shidlovsky, Alexander 166—7, l^9 Tocqueville, Alexis de 102
Shishkov, Alexander 36, 104, 203-4 Tomashevsky, Boris 19, 102
Shuanet 135, 147-8, 153-4 travelogues 15, 16, 21-3, 25-6, 81
Siniavsky, Andrei 87 about Caucasus, 27, 53, 54-61,
Siberia 89, 179 67-70, 71, 172, 201, 203, 241
Caucasus as "southern," 1, 229, 290 about Russia, 79, 231, 288
Silvestre de Sacy, Antoine Isaac 76, 77 see also Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Journey
Sismondi, J. C. L. Simone de 80-1, 84, to Arzrum (Pushkin) and Nechaev
86 Tsvetaeva, Marina 87, 286
Sollogub, Vladimir 181, 190 Turgenev, Ivan n o , 258
Somov, Orest 82-3, 87-8 Turkey and Turks 5, 6, 54-5, 114, 166,
sublimity 39-46, 47, 55-6, 67-8 193, 195
and mountaineers, 104, 120, 148 and slave trade, 115, 171—2, 196, 207
Sumarokov, Pyotr 55, 67 wars with, 3, 4, 32, 56, 63, 73, 138,
Svirin, Nikolai 7 208, 259-60
Switzerland 23, 56, 59, 69, 179 Tynianov, Yuri 19
Tatars 1, 72, 74 Ukraine and Ukrainians 3, 4, 89, 175,

as misnomer, 113, 250, 263, 281-3 l l
9
Russians viewed as, 79 Ulykhanova, Anna: see Shuanet
Terek river 3 Urals 40, 50, 68-9, 89
in literature 50-1, 66, 92, 119-20, Uslar, Pyotr 253, 291
226-7, 235, 247 Uspensky, Boris 22
in travelogues, 62-3, 71, 92 Uspensky, Gleb 183-4
Thomson, James 40, 44, 46, 48 Uvarov, Sergei 76-7
Tiflis (now Tbilisi) 4, 33, 36, 79, 159, "Valerik" (Lermontov)
160, 178, 201 audiences and, 228-9
in literature, 195-6, 266, 272, 275, nature in, 225-7
277 sado-masochism in, 222-7, 2 9°
Thousand and One Nights 1, 72, 196 tribesmen in, 224, 225, 226
Tolstoy, Lev 5-6, 9, 11, 14, 33, 34, 57 Veltman, S. 7
army career of, 236-7 Veidenbaum, E. G. 126, 313, n. 12
and Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, 14, 233, Verderevsky, Evgeny 68-9, 70, 153-4
238, 239-40, 241, 243, 244-5, 246- Viazemsky, Pyotr 24, 26-7, 31, 38, 86,
7, 251, 285 103, 107-9
as historian, 261, 266-7, 279, 286-7 Vladikavkaz 4, 64
and Lermontov, 14, 233, 238, Voltaire 72, 325, n. 3
354
Vorontsov, Mikhail 185, 234 and Angel," 72; "To Voeikov,"
see also Hadji Murat (Tolstoy) 29, 38, 4.1-4. passim, 58, 93-4
Yakubovich, Alexander 32, 105-6 Zisserman, Arnold 127, 129, 130-1,
Yakubovich, Liukan 50, 162, 189—90 146, 234
Zotov, V. 170-1, 173, 254
Zaitsevsky, Efim 48, 315, n. 9 Zriakhov, N. 168-9, 257, 323, n. 41
Zhirmunsky, Victor 17-18, 19, 36, 91 Zubov, Platon 176—7
Zhukovsky, Vasily 24 Zubov, Valerian 41, 42
Works: "Mountain Road," 49; "Peri
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE
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This is the first book to provide a synthesizing study of Russian

writing about the Caucasus during the nineteenth-century age of

RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND EMPIRE

General editor MALCOLM JONES

Editorial board: ANTHONY CROSS, CARYL EMERSON,

Recent titles in this series include

Nabokov's early fiction

Nietzsche and Soviet Culture

Cambridge University Press

© Cambridge University Press 1994

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

First published 1994

A catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

ISBN-13 978-0-521-44443-9 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-02001-5 paperback

My greatest intellectual debt for Russian Literature and Empire

The Russian empire included realms so diverse as Poland

The poet and terra incognita

Pushkin discovered the Caucasus.

THE PROBLEM OF GENRE

An investigation of the question must start with the problem

PUSHKIN AND THE TRAVELOGUE TRADITION

In the eyes of the readership of the 1820s "The Prisoner of

Firmly rooted in the sentimental era prior to the conquest of

THE POET'S RIVALRY WITH SCIENCE

As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, the very possibility

NO NEWS TO RIVAL THE MUSE

While no doubt intersecting the recit de voyage most extensively

POETRY AS ARTFUL FACT

In opening perspectives on "The Prisoner of the Caucasus"

In gloomy Besh-Tau, the majestic hermit,

THE RISE OF MOUNTAIN GLOOM AND GLORY IN RUSSIA

Pushkin's contemporaries never sufficiently recognized that

As important as Derzhavin and Zhukovsky were as Pushkin's

THE SPREAD OF PUSHKIN S GEOGRAPHY

When viewed strictly within Pushkin's own career, his Cauca-

THE POETICS OF CAUCASIAN SPACE

As we have seen, young Pushkin's imaginative Caucasian

But where was that Caucasus?

THE EMPTY CHURCH

Operative as a poetic bridge between the Alps and the Cau-

ATTACKS ON THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

For all its prevalence, however, exalted communion with the

THE PERSISTENCE OF SENTIMENTALITY

Despite the various efforts to demystify the territory, Russian

The national stake in Asia

A two-faced Janus, ancient Russia simultaneously

JOINING EUROPE'S RENAISSANCE ORIENTALE

Despite manifold contacts with Asians over the centuries,

RUSSIAN PRIDE IN CULTURAL YOUTH

The Russian rush to join la renaissance orientale took place under

RUSSIA S ROMANTIC LINK TO THE ORIENT

Keen to assert national dignity vis-a-vis Europe, the Russian

PUSHKIN THE AMBIVALENT INTERLOCUTOR

Young Pushkin's disclosure of Russia's national stake in Asia

The Pushkinian mountaineer

He loved their simple way of life.

THE MOUNTAIN WARRIOR