The plot of The Queen of Spades was based on a curious incident known to Pushkin. Young Prince Golitsyn told him how once he had lost a lot at cards. I had to go to bow to my grandmother - princess Natalia Petrovna Golitsyna , an arrogant and domineering person, distinguished by intelligence and a sharp temper, and ask her for money. She didn't give me any money. But favorably conveyed as if magical secret of three winning cards, which she was informed by the famous Count Saint-Germain in his time. The grandson bet on these cards and recouped.
"Queen of Spades" is one of the best short stories throughout world literature.
Queen of Spades"- a philosophical story on its own problems.
In The Queen of Spades, Pushkin addressed a wide range of philosophical problems :
man, freedom, freedom of moral choice, fate, random and natural, game, "villainy"- are just some of the philosophical questions comprehended by the author in this story, deep in content.
The hero enters into a duel with fate, believing that a sober calculation will allow him to achieve his desired goal.
The Queen of Spades becomes more than just a card in the game Hermann with fate, but the revenge of fate, i.e. the hero himself turns out to be a card in a larger game, and his "bit card".
The plot of the story is based on game of chance, necessity and regularity. In this regard, each hero is associated with a specific topic.
with theme social dissatisfaction - Hermann;
with theme fate - Countess Anna Fedotovna;
with theme social humility - Lizaveta Ivanovna;
with theme undeserved happiness - Tomsky.
Some heroes, such as Tomsky, are chosen by fate, others, like Hermann, seek to catch their luck. Luck is destiny Tomsk and failure is fate Hermann.
"Queen of Spades" - the pinnacle of Pushkin's reflections on the role of fate in human life .
The secular story of Pushkin reveals the tragic fate of a young man named Hermann . He has extraordinary mental abilities, is well brought up and has an attractive appearance. And his prudence was passed down from his ancestors, who are from the German lands. But Herman has dream is to become rich , and get everything without much effort.
The plot of the story plays with Pushkin's favorite theme of unpredictable fate, fortune, fate. The young German military engineer Hermann leads a modest life and accumulates a fortune, he does not even pick up cards and is limited only to watching the game. His friend Tomsky tells the story of how his grandmother, the countess, while in Paris, lost a large sum in cards. She tried to borrow from the Count of Saint-Germain, but instead of money, he revealed to her the secret of the three winning cards. The countess, thanks to the secret, fully recouped.
Hermann, having seduced her pupil, Lisa, enters the countess's bedroom, pleas and threats trying to find out the cherished secret. Seeing Hermann armed with a pistol (which, as it turned out later, turned out to be unloaded), the countess dies of a heart attack. At the funeral, Hermann imagines that the late countess opens her eyes and casts a glance at him. In the evening, her ghost appears to Hermann and says that three cards (“three, seven, ace”) will bring him a win, but he should not bet more than one card per day. Three cards become an obsession for Hermann:
... Seeing a young girl, he said: "How slim she is! .. A real red three." They asked him: what time is it, he answered: - five minutes to seven. - Every pot-bellied man reminded him of an ace. Three, seven, ace - haunted him in a dream, taking everything possible types: the three bloomed in front of him in the form of a magnificent grandiflora, the seven seemed to be a Gothic gate, the ace a huge spider. All his thoughts merged into one - to take advantage of the secret, which cost him dearly ...
The famous gambler millionaire Chekalinsky arrives in St. Petersburg. Hermann bets all his capital on a triple, wins and doubles it. The next day, he bets all his money on the seven, wins and doubles the capital again. On the third day, Hermann bets money (already about two hundred thousand) on an ace. An ace comes up. Hermann thinks he has won, but Chekalinsky says that Lady Hermann has lost. In some incredible way, Hermann "turned around" - he put money instead of an ace on a lady. Hermann sees on the map a grinning and winking Queen of Spades, who reminds him of a countess. Ruined Hermann ends up in a hospital for the mentally ill, where he does not react to anything and every minute “mumbles unusually quickly: - Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, lady! .. "
The protagonist got into an unpleasant situation, but his personal guilt is the root cause of all events. Pushkin tells the story of an unfortunate man who was captivated by gambling vices. Is it possible to judge such a character? After all, such addictions are found at every step and in modern world. Most likely, it is necessary to draw certain conclusions and stay away from such dubious means of acquiring wealth.
(Hermann's behavior is completely opposite to his state of mind. He fastened his feelings and emotions with strict frames of correct, in his opinion, behavior. Hermann's outer shell will not be able to restrain those raging internal forces that he is trying to pacify for a long time. Without giving vent to emotions, Hermann brings tragedy closer inconsistencies that will inevitably erupt.)
The protagonist of the "Queen of Spades" - the character of the story - is a thrifty, prudent person, but does not have any moral, spiritual values.
the countess played a key role in the story. She appeared to Herman as the queen of spades, because he did not fulfill the countess's condition - he did not marry Elizaveta Petrovna.
So the old woman's secret still did not help Herman, because it was revealed against her will.
The protagonist of the story - Hermann. It differs from other heroes in 2 features:
1. Serves as a military engineer, which means the hero's low social status;
2. The son of a Russified German, i.e. a man of a rationalistic mindset, a man of calculation, of firm self-restraint.
And indeed, at the beginning, the hero's life is subject to reason. Being a poor and humble person, he dreams of "strengthening his independence", but he rejects all risky ways, adventures, does not drink, does not gamble, relies on prudence and thrift. But calculation is only the outer shell of Hermann's personality, his essence character was completely different: "he had strong passions and a fiery imagination." The contradiction between Hermann's passionate nature and his rationalistic mindset.
And although at first Hermann took the story of 3 cards as a fairy tale, it had a strong effect on his imagination, the whole night this story did not leave his head. Pushkin shows an internal dialogue that reveals fight 2 started in the soul of Hermann:
1 start makes Hermann believe in the mystery of 3 cards, i.e. believe in the existence of the irrational in life. It pushes you to take risks, makes you reveal the secret of 3 cards. In his head, he even makes plans, thinks about whether he should become the lover of the 87-year-old countess. Those. he's ready for anything. Here the complete immorality of the hero is already shown. 2 start returns to common sense and says that the main thing in life is peace and independence. The plot shows that the struggle of 2 beginnings does not last long and ends victory of passions over consciousness, rationalism.
Hermann commits 3 crimes:1. Outrage over the feelings of a poor girl; 2. The murder of the old countess; 3. Hermann is ready to lay his soul to the devil and thereby commit 3 crimes,
Tomsky says about Hermann: "he has the profile of Napoleon, and the soul of Mephistopheles." These words are literally confirmed by the author of the story: when Hermann tells Lisa that he does not love her and that he used her to get to the countess, that he is to blame for the death of the countess, the author writes: “She wiped her tear-stained eyes and raised them to Hermann: he sat at the window with folded arms and a menacing frown. In this position, he surprisingly resembled a portrait of Napoleon. This similarity struck even Lizaveta Ivanovna. So the story goes Napoleonic theme(the most important theme of Russian and European literature of the 19th century). This Napoleonic motif in the image in Hermann can be understood in two ways:
1. Some literary scholars emphasize Hermann's individualism and immorality. Indeed, the basis of Hermann's soul is selfishness. For the sake of achieving goals, Hermann is able to step over everything (the death of the countess, the feelings of the girl). It is no coincidence that he is compared with Napoleon, Napoleon was ready to shed rivers of blood and shed them for the sake of his self-affirmation. 2. But one cannot consider the Napoleonic motive only in the socio-psychological aspect (i.e., focus on the individualism and immorality of the hero), such an approach ignores the fact that The Queen of Spades is not only a socio-psychological, but also a philosophical story. That is why Pushkin is interested in Napoleon as a person who claimed power over fate, as a person who is sure that everything is subject to the human will. It should be noted that for Pushkin Napoleon was the personification of greatness and, at the same time, the powerlessness of man in the face of fate, in front of fate.
And then, introducing the Napoleonic theme into the story, Pushkin not only characterizes Hermann, but also characterizes his future destiny like Napoleon, he too has his ups and downs. This fate is carried out in 5-6 chapters in the story. In them Hermann repeats in miniature the path of Napoleon. The mystery of 3 cards (three, seven, ace) becomes a reality. Three, seven and ace do win, as Hermann was told by the Countess's ghost. The appearance of the ghost of the countess is, in a way, a message from otherworldly forces, fate, fate. This feeling is reinforced by the words of the Countess herself: “I came to you against my will. But I am commanded to fulfill your request." therefore Hermann disaster(2pm he wins by calling these three cards, and on 3pm instead of an ace - a queen of spades) doesn't seem like a pure coincidence, it looks like an inevitability. The idea of the triumph of fate, fate over human will is important in the story.
Pushkin did not accidentally take card game for the basis of the plot of the story, because play is a poetic metaphor for life with its ups and downs, with its losses and gains, with its successes and failures. Therefore, The Queen of Spades is a multifaceted work: it combines social, psychological and philosophical motives. Pushkin believed all his life in fate, in the role of chance in human life. Personal and historical experience convinced Pushkin that it was naive and unjustified to hope for the triumph of reason, rationalism.
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For the first time he appears on the pages of the story in an episode with Narumov, a horse guard, but, sitting up to 5 in the morning in the company of players, he never plays - "I am not able to sacrifice what is necessary, in the hope of acquiring what is superfluous." Ambition, strong passions, fiery imagination are suppressed in him by firmness of will. After listening to Tomsky's story about three cards, the secret of which was revealed 60 years ago to his grandmother Countess Anna Fedotovna by the legendary visionary Saint Germain, he exclaims: not "A chance", but "A fairy tale!" - because it excludes the possibility of irrational success.
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Further, the reader sees Herman standing in front of the windows of the poor pupil of the old countess, Liza; his appearance is romantic: a beaver collar covers his face, his black eyes sparkle, a quick blush flares up on his pale cheeks. However, G. is not a gallant character in the old French novel that the countess reads, not the fatal hero of the Gothic novel (which the countess denounces), not the protagonist of the boringly peaceful Russian novel (brought to her by Tomsky), not even the “literary relative” of Erast from Karamzin’s story " Poor Lisa". (The connection with this story is indicated not only by the name of the poor pupil, but also by the “foreign” vowel of the name of her “seducer”.) G. is rather the hero of a German petty-bourgeois novel, from which he borrows word and word his first letter to Lisa; this is the hero of the novel by calculation. He needs Lisa only as an obedient tool for the implementation of a well-thought-out plan - to master the secret of the three cards.
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There is no contradiction here with Narumov's scene; a man of the bourgeois era, G. did not change, did not recognize the omnipotence of fate and the triumph of chance (on which any game of chance is built - especially the pharaoh, which the countess played 60 years ago). Simply, after listening to the continuation of the story (about the deceased Chaplitsky, to whom Anna Fedotovna revealed the secret), G. was convinced of the effectiveness of the secret. This is logical; a one-time success can be random; the repetition of chance indicates the possibility of its transformation into a regularity; and regularity can be "calculated", rationalized, used. Until now, his three trump cards were - calculation, moderation and accuracy; from now on, mystery and adventurism paradoxically combined with the same calculation, with the same bourgeois thirst for money.
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And here G. miscalculates in a terrible way. As soon as he set out to master the law of chance, to subordinate the mystery to his own goals, the mystery itself immediately took possession of him. This dependence, the "bondage" of the actions and thoughts of the hero (which he himself almost does not notice) begins to manifest itself immediately - and in everything. Upon returning from Narumov, he has a dream about a game in which gold and banknotes are, as it were, demonized; then, already in reality, an unknown force brings him to the house of the old countess. The life and consciousness of G. instantly and completely obey mysterious game numbers, the meaning of which the reader does not understand for the time being. Pondering how to take possession of the secret, G. is ready to become the lover of the eighty-year-old countess - for she will die in a week (i.e., after 7 days) or in 2 days (i.e., on the 3rd); the gain may triple, sevenfold his capital; after 2 days (i.e., again on the 3rd) he appears for the first time under Lisa's windows; after 7 days, she smiles at him for the first time - and so on. Even the surname G. now sounds like a strange, German echo of the French name Saint-Germain, from which the countess received the secret of the three cards.
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But, barely hinting at the mysterious circumstances that his hero becomes a slave to, the author again focuses the reader's attention on the reasonableness, prudence, and planning of G.; he thinks through everything - right down to Lizaveta Ivanovna's reaction to his love letters. Having obtained from her consent to a date (and therefore - having received detailed plan at home and advice on how to get into it), G. sneaks into the countess's office, waits for her to return from the ball - and, frightening half to death, tries to find out the coveted secret. The arguments that he brings in his favor are extremely diverse; from the proposal "to make up the happiness of my life" to reasoning about the benefits of thrift; from the readiness to take the Countess's sin upon one's soul, even if it is connected "with the ruin of eternal bliss, with the devil's pact" to the promise to honor Anna Fedotovna "as a shrine" and from generation to generation. (This is a paraphrase of the liturgical prayer “The Lord shall reign forever, your God, Zion, generation and generation.”) G. agrees to everything, because he does not believe in anything: neither in the “destruction of eternal bliss”, nor in the shrine; these are only incantatory formulas, "sacred-legal" conditions of a possible contract. Even "something resembling remorse" that echoed in his heart when he heard the steps of Liza, deceived by him, is no longer able to awaken in him; he became petrified, like a dead statue.
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Realizing that the Countess is dead, G. sneaks into Lizaveta Ivanovna's room - not in order to repent before her, but in order to dot the "and"; to untie the knot of a love plot, which is no longer needed, “... all this was not love! Money - that's what his soul yearned for! A harsh soul, - Pushkin clarifies. Why, then, twice in the course of one chapter (IV) does the author lead the reader to compare the cold G. with Napoleon, who for people is the first half of XIX in. embodied the idea of romantic fearlessness in a game with fate? First, Lisa recalls a conversation with Tomsky (G. has a “truly romantic face” - “the profile of Napoleon, and the soul of Mephistopheles”), then follows a description of G., sitting on the window with folded arms and surprisingly resembling a portrait of Napoleon ...
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First of all, Pushkin (as later on Gogol) depicts a new, bourgeois world that has been reduced to pieces. Although all the passions, the symbols of which are the cards in the story, remained the same, but evil lost its “heroic” appearance, changed its scale. Napoleon longed for glory - and boldly went to fight with the whole universe; the modern "Napoleon", G. craves money - and wants to book his fate. The "former" Mephistopheles threw the whole world at the feet of Faust; The "current" Me-fisto is only capable of frightening the old countess to death with an unloaded pistol (and the modern Faust from Pushkin's ♦ Scenes from Faust, 1826, with which the Queen of Spades is associated, is mortally bored). From here it is a stone's throw to the "Napoleonism" of Rodion Raskolnikov, united with the image of G. by ties of literary kinship ("Crime and Punishment" by F. M. Dostoevsky); Raskolnikov, for the sake of an idea, will sacrifice an old pawnbroker (the same personification of fate as an old countess) and her innocent sister Lizaveta Ivanovna (the name of a poor pupil). However, the opposite is also true: the evil was reduced, but remained the same evil; The “Napoleonic” posture of G., the posture of the master of fate, who suffered a defeat, but did not reconcile with him - crossed arms - indicates a proud contempt for the world, which is emphasized by the “parallel” with Lisa, sitting opposite and humbly folding her arms in a cross.
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However, the voice of conscience will speak again in G. - three days after the fateful night, during the funeral service for the old woman he unwittingly killed. He decides to ask her for forgiveness - but even here he will act for reasons of moral gain, and not for moral reasons proper. The deceased may have a harmful influence on his life - and it is better to mentally repent before her in order to get rid of this influence. And then the author who consistently changes the literary registration of his hero (in the first chapter he is a potential character in an adventure novel; in the second - the hero of a fantasy story in the spirit of E.-T.-A. Hoffmann, in the third - the protagonist of the social and everyday story, the plot of which gradually returns to its adventurous origins), again sharply “switches” the tone of the narration. The rhetorical clichés from the memorial sermon of the young bishop (“the angel of death found her awake in good thoughts and in anticipation of the midnight bridegroom”) are superimposed on the events terrible night. In G., this “angel of death” and “midnight groom”, parodic features suddenly appear; his image continues to shrink, to decline; it seems to melt before the eyes of the reader. And even the “revenge” of the dead old woman, which makes the hero faint, can make the reader smile: she “mockingly looked at him, narrowing her eyes with one eye.” and ambiguity, so that neither the hero nor the reader is able to make out: is the dead old woman, shuffling in her slippers, all in white, really coming to G. that night? Or is it a consequence of a nervous paroxysm and drunk wine? What are the three cards she called - “three, seven, ace” - the otherworldly secret of numbers to which G. is subject from the moment he decided to take possession of the secret of the cards, or a simple progression that G. long ago brought out for himself ( “I will triple, I will triple the capital ..,”; that is, I will become an ace)? And what explains the promise of the dead countess to forgive her unwitting murderer if he marries a poor pupil, whom she did not care about during her lifetime? Is it because the old woman was forced to “be kinder” by an unknown force that sent her to G., or because in his sick mind all the same echoes of conscience sound that once woke up in him at the sound of Liza’s steps? There are no and cannot be answers to these questions; Without noticing it himself, G. found himself in an “intermediate” space, where the laws of reason no longer operate, and the power of the irrational principle is not yet omnipotent; he is on his way to insanity.
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The idea of three cards finally takes possession of him; he compares a slender girl with a red troika; when asked about time, he answers “5 minutes to seven”. A pot-bellied man seems to him an ace, and an ace is a spider in a dream - this image of a dubious eternity in the form of a spider weaving its web will also be picked up by Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment (Svidrigailov). G., who so valued precisely independence, even material, for the sake of it and entered into a game with fate, completely loses independence. He is ready to completely repeat the "Parisian" episode of the life of the old countess and go to play in Paris. But here the famous player Chekalinsky appears from the "irrational" Moscow and starts a real "irregular" game in the "regular" capital. The very case, which G. intended to exclude from his regular, planned life, saves him from "troubles" and decides his fate.
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In the scenes of the “duel” with Chekalinsky (whose last name rhymes in assonance with the last name of Chaplitsky), the reader is presented with the former G. - cold and all the more prudent, the less predictable the game of pharaoh is. (The player puts a card, the punter who holds the bank, throws the deck to the right and left; the card may coincide with the one chosen by the player at the beginning of the game and not match; it is obviously impossible to predict winning or losing; any maneuvers of the player that do not depend on his mind and will are excluded.) G. does not seem to notice that in the image of Chekalinsky, in full fresh face who is played by an eternal icy smile, he is opposed by fate itself; G. is calm, because he is sure that he has mastered the law of chance. And he, oddly enough, is right: the old woman did not deceive; all three cards win night after night. It's just that G. himself accidentally turned around, that is, instead of an ace, he put the queen of spades. The regularity of the mystery is fully confirmed, but the omnipotence of chance is confirmed in the same way. G.'s tripled, seven-fold capital (94,000) goes to the "ace" - Chekalinsky; G. gets the Queen of Spades, who, of course, immediately repeats the "gesture" of the dead old woman - she "squinted her eyes and grinned."
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"The Queen of Spades" was created, obviously, the second Boldin autumn, in parallel with the "Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish" and the "Petersburg story" "The Bronze Horseman". Naturally, the image of G. comes into contact with their central characters. Like the old countess, he wants to put fate at his service - and, in the end, he also suffers a crushing defeat. Like poor Eugene, he rebels against the "natural" order of social life - and also goes crazy. (That is, he loses Reason - that “tool” with which he was going to master the Law of Fate.) From the Conclusion to the story, the reader learns that the failed conqueror of the other world, the bourgeois Napoleon, who reduced Mephistopheles, is sitting in the 17th number (ace + seven) Obukhov hospital and very quickly mutters: “Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, lady!
One of the most legendary houses, inseparable from literary characters, is the house of the Queen of Spades, or the house of Princess Golitsyna on Malaya Morskaya, 10. Saying “Queen of Spades”, we immediately recall the secret of three cards: three, seven and ace; Herman's desperation after losing, room 17 of the Obukhov hospital, where Herman, who went mad, ended his life.
The scenery with a humpbacked bridge over the Winter Canal comes to mind… but these are already impressions from Tchaikovsky's opera of the same name The Queen of Spades. By the way, the house where P.I. Tchaikovsky, is located opposite the house of Princess Golitsyna. Such strange rapprochements happen in history ...
The maid of honor and lady of state at the court of five Russian emperors, cavalry princess Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna personified the continuity and inviolability of royal power. Both the cadet and the important general appeared to her, as to important authorities. Before the girl was brought out into the world, she was shown to Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna. In the princess's house on Malaya Morskaya, members of the royal family. The son of Natalya Petrovna - the Moscow Governor-General Prince Dmitry Golitsyn - stretched out before the formidable mother, as before the sovereign.
Golitsyna inherited her stern disposition from her grandfather Ushakov, head of the secret detective office under Anna Ioannovna, a well-known executioner. The father of the princess was a prominent diplomat, Count Pyotr Grigoryevich Chernyshev.
Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna was not particularly beautiful even in her youth. In her old age, she became very unattractive. Behind her eyes, she was called the "mustachioed princess." In the literature, we do not find evidence of A. Pushkin's personal acquaintance with Golitsyna, but who in St. Petersburg did not know the princess and her house on Malaya Morskaya?
Of course, the appearance of a literary hero most often reflects the character traits and biographies of not one, but several real people. The character of the book, as a rule, is a collective image. A close friend of Pushkin, Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin, noted that the image of the old countess from the story "The Queen of Spades" embodied the traits of another high society lady, the maid of honor and a distant relative of Pushkin's wife Natalya Kirillovna Zagryazhskaya. By the time the story was written, she was already 87 years old, like the old countess. Pushkin liked to talk for a long time with Natalya Kirillovna, learning many curious details from the era of Catherine I and Paul I.
But back to Malaya Morskaya, 10. Under Golitsyn, the house was less elegant than it is now. There was no balcony above the entrance; the pattern of windows in the center of the facade was different. But basically, both the external and internal appearance of the house has been preserved quite well. On the pediment of the house you can see the remains of the coat of arms molding. Upon entering the house, we immediately find ourselves in a spacious lobby. The main staircase leads, as before, to the fireplace on the platform, above which there is a high semicircular mirror and in it a small round clock. Faded Roman numerals on the dial. Below the inscription: "Leroy Paris". It is curious that Hermann, when he walked through the house of the Queen of Spades, came across a table clock made by the “glorious Leroy”.
Liza's note served Herman as a guide: “Go straight to the stairs ... From the front, go to the left, go all the way to the countess's bedroom. In the bedroom behind the screens you will see two small doors: on the right into the study, where the countess never enters, on the left into the corridor, and right there a narrow winding staircase: it leads to my room.
Following the indicated route, even today, upon entering the house of Princess Golitsyna, we will see the front marble staircase, with a fireplace and an old Leroy clock on the site. On the second floor, just above the lobby, there is a reception hall, where today one of the city's polyclinics is located. Previously, this hall was connected with other enfilade that went along Malaya Morskaya. From the reception hall it was possible to follow Herman to the preserved corner room. Today, due to the redevelopment of the inner chambers of the Golitsyna house, it is impossible to pass through like that. Today, you can enter the former bedchamber of the princess through a narrow corridor, bypassing spiral staircase. Two windows of the bedchamber overlook Gorokhovaya, three - on Malaya Morskaya Street. Preserved fireplace from white marble at outer wall. An alcove, deep and wide, on the inner wall of the room, suggests the location of the princess's bed. On either side of the alcove are two small doors. The one to the right leads to a small room that previously served as the Countess's office.
The door to the left of the alcove connects the princess's bedroom with narrow corridor, through which today you can get into the bedroom of the Countess.
The amazing similarity of the interiors, down to the smallest details, with the one described by A.S. Pushkin! Undoubtedly, A.S. Pushkin visited Golitsyna's house. How the poet could be familiar with the peculiarities of the location and furnishing of the Countess's bedroom, where only servants or close relatives could be admitted, one can only guess ...
Six months before the creation of the "Queen of Spades" A.S. Pushkin, a block away from the house of the old countess, rented an apartment in the house of Zhadimirovsky, on the corner of Bolshaya Morskaya and Gorokhovaya streets. Bolshaya and Malaya sea streets were located in the center of aristocratic Petersburg. Of course, the poet often passed by the princess's house and that police box that stood at the corner of Malaya Morskaya and Gorokhovaya. Here is how the house of Princess A.S. Pushkin:
“... he found himself in one of the main streets of St. Petersburg, in front of the house of ancient architecture. The street was crowded with carriages, the carriage one after another was heated to the illuminated entrance. From the carriages, the slender leg of a young beauty constantly stretched out, then a rattling jackboot, then a striped stocking and a diplomatic shoe. Fur coats and raincoats flashed past the stately porter. Hermann stopped.
- Whose is this house? he asked the corner guard.
“Countess ***,” answered the watchman.
The story with three cards is taken from life. Golitsyn's grandson Sergei Grigoryevich Golitsyn, who had the nickname Firs in high society, was a friend of Pushkin. Firs was no stranger to poetry, music, tried his hand at writing in these areas. But Firs' greatest passion was cards. Once, after a big loss, he came to ask his rich grandmother for money. The stingy Natalya Petrovna, instead of money, gave her grandson advice to bet on three cards and thus win back. Which cards were named by Golitsyna is unknown. But one thing is certain: Firs, having bet on the named cards, not only recouped, but also increased his jackpot!
This story, an anecdote, as they were called in the 19th century, became known to A. Pushkin and was used by him in his story The Queen of Spades.
For Pushkin scholars, the fact that N.P. Golitsyna with the famous adventurer Saint-Germain, from whom she could learn the secret of three cards ...
Why exactly these cards? Troika. Seven. Ace?
The three is associated in our view with the three commandments of Herman. All his life he put on three true cards: calculation, moderation, diligence.
If you follow Herman's bets during the game, it is easy to find the three and seven hidden in them. They are laid down by the rules of the game of the bank (shtos, pharaoh).
A.S. Pushkin in the epigraph of the story we read:
"And on rainy days
They were going
Often;
Bent - God forgive them! -
From fifty
One hundred…”
The rules of the game in the bank were beneficial to the banker and pushed his opponent-punter, if he lost, to double the bet (“from fifty to one hundred.”) Sometimes it came to a sixteen-fold increase in the initial bet. It was called the "password game".
Herman's initial rate was 47,000 rubles. The first win brings him another 47 thousand. On the second day of the game, Herman bets already 94 thousand. Winning on a seven gives him another 94,000. Ahead is the last, third bet. She promises Herman a doubling of the 188,000 rubles delivered; 376 thousand!
In all these calculations, a three and a seven are found. As a result of the second win, Herman receives a triple initial capital, and after the third he had to increase it seven times relative to the original bet. On the margins of the story "The Queen of Spades" the author did all these calculations. They were of fundamental importance for Pushkin.
On the third evening of the game, when Herman instead of Ace discovers the Queen of Spades, he is struck by the extraordinary resemblance of the latter to the old countess. “At that moment it seemed to him that the Queen of Spades narrowed her eyes and grinned,” we read from A.S. Pushkin.
Hermann realizes that his lady has been killed. He traded Lisa for cards. He was not going to fulfill the condition set by the old woman: to marry her poor pupil. Herman put everything on the line. And did not become an Ace.
Three and seven are favorite numbers in Russian folk tales. And in the works of Pushkin, based on Russian folklore, we also remember three girls under the window, seven heroes in the “Tale of dead princess", and immortal 33 heroes in the "Tale of Tsar Saltan".
In the story of A.S. Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades" fancifully intertwined the poet's fantasy and reality. The poet knew the world of Moscow and St. Petersburg gamblers very well, which helped him to reflect it so realistically and vividly in his story.
Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna lived a surprisingly long life by today's standards. She died at the age of 98 and was buried in the family tomb of the Golitsyn princes in the Donskoy Monastery. The house of the Queen of Spades on Malaya Morskaya was donated by Nicholas I to the Minister of War Chernyshev as a gift for perpetual and hereditary possession. At the same time, in the middle of the 19th century, it was partially rebuilt, the coat of arms of the princes Chernyshevs and a balcony with an openwork lattice on the facade overlooking Malaya Morskaya Street appeared on the pediment. During the reconstruction, the bedchamber of the old countess and the rooms adjacent to it remained in their original form.
This makes it possible, of course, to create a museum corner in this part of the house, if the current tenants, the city polyclinic, would so desire. Currently, in the interior of the bedchamber there is an ordinator's room.
Another memorable address of the story "The Queen of Spades" is the Obukhov hospital. It is here that Hermann appears in the 17th issue.
The old Obukhov hospital near the Obukhov bridge on the embankment of the Fontanka River was publicly accessible. She was sometimes called common people. The hospital, which opened in 1780, was originally housed in several wooden buildings and was designed for 60 beds. A little later, an extensive building designed by D. Quarenghi was built on the same site.
The building of the Obukhov hospital, decorated with a powerful white-columned portico, is still used as a medical facility and serves as an ornament to the embankment of the Fontanka River.
By the way, in the same hospital he finished his life path and another literary character - Lefty, the hero of N.S. Leskov.
How does Herman expect to achieve happiness? To introduce himself to the countess, to win her favor, - perhaps, to become her lover. "The rules of calculation are frankly immoral - what is this readiness to become the lover of an eighty-seven-year-old woman for selfish purposes. In these reflections, not only sincerity itself is terrible, but the calm, businesslike tone in which they speak these plans and these intentions...
Case - I saw in the window of the Countess's house "fresh face" unknown girl- "decided his fate", he embarked on the path of adventure. An immoral plan instantly matured: to penetrate the countess's house with the help of a "fresh face", make an unknown person an accomplice to villainy and force the countess to reveal to him the secret of the three cards at any cost, begging her or threatening to kill her.
After the story with Lizaveta Ivanovna, the meeting with the countess is the culmination of Herman's game-scam. Appearing before an old woman in her bedroom after midnight, Herman carries out his previously planned plan - "to introduce himself to her, to win her favor." Seeing unknown man, the countess was not afraid - her "eyes perked up." The young officer "introduces himself": "I have no intention of harming you; I have come to beg you for one favor." Let's pay attention to the reaction of the countess. Pushkin emphasizes one motive - the silence of the old woman. After Herman's first phrase, Pushkin reports: "The old woman silently looked at him and seemed not to hear him. Herman imagined that she was deaf, and, bending over her very ear, repeated the same thing to her. The old woman remained silent as before."
Continuing to "tune into her mercy," Herman begins to beg to give him the secret of the three cards. To this speech, for the first and last time, Countess Tomskaya reacts vividly and rejects the tale of three true cards: "It was a joke," she said at last, "I swear to you! It was a joke!"
This is the only testimony of a living witness of ancient events, who in Tomsky's story appeared as a character in the legend.<#"justify">Pushkin's narrative system is in harmony with the depicted world and is focused on those forms of ideology that are embedded in its structure. The images of the characters in their content are determined by those cultural and social and characterological categories to which real life giving material to a literary work. There is a synthesis of „history and „poetry in the process of creating the style of „symbolic realism”. Symbols, characters and styles of literature are complicated and transformed by the forms of reproducible reality. The subject of the narration itself, “the image of the author, fits into the sphere of this depicted reality. It is a form of complex and contradictory relationships between the author's intention, between the fantasized personality of the writer and the faces of the characters. Understanding all the shades of this multi-valued and many-sided structure of the author's image is the key to the composition of the whole, to the unity of Pushkin's artistic and narrative system.
The narrator in The Queen of Spades, at first not indicated by either a name or pronouns, enters the circle of players as one of the representatives of secular society. He is immersed in the world of his heroes. The story has already begun: “Once we played cards with the horse guard Narumov. Long winter night passed unnoticed; sat down to supper at five o'clock in the morning - by repeating vaguely personal forms - they played, sat down to supper - creates the illusion of the author's involvement in this society. Such an understanding is also prompted by the order of words, which expresses not the objective detachment of the narrator from the events being reproduced, but his subjective empathy with them, active participation in them. Narrative emphasis on the adverb - imperceptibly, placed behind the verb ("gone imperceptibly - in contrast to the definitions of the night -" long winter); the verb form put forward to the beginning - they played (“one day they played cards; cf. an objective statement of the fact with such an arrangement of words: “one day they played cards at the horse guard Narumov’s place); the absence of an indication of the “person, the subject of action when moving on to a new narrative topic - “sat down to dinner, inspiring the idea of the author’s merging with society (that is, almost giving birth to images - we) - all this is full of subjective interest. The reader is tuned to consider the narrator as a participant in the events. The irony in the description of the dinner, the playful parallelism of the syntagmas: “But the champagne appeared, the conversation became livelier - they only strengthen this understanding of the author's position. This closeness of the narrator to the depicted world, his “immanence of the reproduced reality, easily allows for the dramatization of the action. The narrator then dissolves into society, into its multiple impersonality, and the narration is replaced by a stage depiction of a general conversation. The functions of the narrator - against the background of the dialogue about the cards - are transferred to one of the guests - Tomsky, who thereby approaches the author and discovers a commonality with him in the methods of narration. Thus, the method of dramatization entails a subjective bifurcation of the narrative style: Tomsky becomes one of the narrator's disguises. Tomsky's speech is ambivalent. It contains such colloquial forms that are unusual for the language of the author's presentation. For example: “she lost something very much at the word of the Duke of Orleans ... -“ she completely refused to pay. - "Where! grandfather rebelled. No, and only! “Yes, damn it! - “But here's what my uncle told me ... -“ I lost - I remember, Zorich - about three hundred thousand ... These are echoes of an oral conversation. Tomsky's story is determined by the dramatic situation, that is, it is placed in an already outlined everyday context and is addressed to listeners, who in part have already been named and briefly characterized. Therefore, the image of Tomsky is also reflected from his interlocutors, inner world whom he is related and understandable as a representative of the same social circle (“You heard about Count Saint-Germain ...“ You know that he pretended to be an eternal Jew ... “Here he revealed to her a secret for which each of us would be expensive). Tomsky is much closer to the community of players than the author. After all, Tomsky's anecdote, his story, arises from a dialogue with which he is closely connected. And in this dialogue, Tomsky, as a dramatic character, reveals not his artistic personality as a narrator, but his everyday character of a player and a secular person. So, in the image of Tomsky, the faces of the narrator and the character are organically intertwined. Therefore, in general, Tomsky's speech gravitates towards the methods of the author's image.
In Tomsky's story, those stylistic tendencies are developed and realized that are outlined in the author's introduction and are clearly expressed in the further course of the story. It is possible to indicate at least a peculiar type of connecting syntactic constructions(see below), in which the semantic connection is determined not by the logic of the objective meanings of phrases, but by the subjective discretion of the narrator, ironically combining and comparing actions and events that are far from each other or completely alien in their internal forms. “Grandma slapped him and went to bed alone, as a token of her disgrace... “Richelieu dragged after her, and grandmother assures that he nearly shot himself because of her cruelty. “Arriving home, grandmother, peeling off the flies from her face and untying the fizhma, announced to her grandfather about her loss ...
The technique of ironically figurative naming of actions and objects is also characteristic. For example, “grandmother gave him a slap in the face and went to bed alone, as a token of her disgrace. This action is then defined as "domestic punishment, usually leading to desired results. “The next day, she ordered her husband to be called, hoping that home punishment had an effect on him ... The word“ secrecy defines the impression that Saint-Germain made and because of which they laughed at him as a charlatan, and Casanova claimed that he was a spy . “However, Saint-Germain, despite his mystery, had a very respectable appearance and was a very amiable person in society ... Compare: “The late grandfather, as far as I remember, was the family of my grandmother's butler.
And, finally, what is most curious of all, the same stylistic principle of playing with the collision and intersection of different subjective planes comes through in Tomsky's story. The speeches of the characters are reproduced in the same lexical, and partly syntactic forms that were presented to them themselves, but with an ironically altered expression, with an “accent of the narrator transmitting them. For example: “I thought to reassure him, condescendingly proving that debt is different, and that there is a difference between a prince and a coachman. - Where! grandfather rebelled. “He lost his temper, brought the bills, proved to her that in six months they had spent half a million, that they had neither a village near Moscow nor a Saratov village near Paris.
All these forms of expression, inherent in Tomsky's story, are inseparable from the style of the author himself. Consequently, although the image of Tomsky, as the subject of dramatic action, is removed from the author both by name and plot functions, the style of his anecdote is subject to the laws of the author's prose. In this mixture of subject-narrative spheres, there is a tendency to normalize the forms of narrative prose, to establish norms of literary speech common to the “secular circle”. After all, where the subjective planes of narration intersect in many ways, the structure of prose, in its main core, which is invariably preserved in all subjective variations, acquires the character of social compulsion: a normal language of “good society” is created.
In this regard, such a stylistic detail is interesting: at the end of the first chapter, the author's open descent into the world he depicts takes place. Compositionally, it is expressed in such a transition from dialogic speech to narrative language:
“However, it’s time for bed: it’s already a quarter to six. In fact, it was already dawn: the young people finished their glasses and parted.
Thus, the author's presentation in the forms of time is subject to the experience of his characters. The author merges with his characters and looks at time through their eyes. Meanwhile, the epigraph decisively separates the author from the participants in the game, placing him outside their environment. In the epigraph, the whole situation of the card game is drawn as a picture that is alien to the narrator, ironically colored by him: "So, in rainy days, They were engaged in business."
In accordance with the laws of the dramatic movement of events, in the second chapter the action is suddenly transferred from the apartment of the horse guard Narumov to the dressing room of the old countess. Just as in the dinner scene after the game, the author initially reports only what is immanent in the depicted reality, which directly enters the circle of his contemplation.
But now the position of the narrator is changing: he does not empathize with the actions of the characters, does not participate in them, but only observes them. The main form of time in the narrative at the beginning of the second chapter is the imperfect, through which actions are only placed in different parts of the same time plane, not replacing each other, but coexisting in the neighborhood, forming the unity of the picture.
“The old countess *** was sitting in her dressing room in front of a mirror. Three girls surrounded her. One was holding a jar of rouge, the other was holding a box of hairpins, the third was a tall cap with fiery-colored ribbons... A young lady, her pupil, was sitting at the window at the embroidery frame... This introduction to a new dramatic picture is alien to that subjective touch that was wrapped around the beginning of the story. The narrator depicts reality no longer from within itself, at the rapid pace of its flow, as a subject immersed in this reality, but as an outside observer, he seeks to understand and describe the internal forms of the depicted world by the method of historical comparison. At the beginning of the story, the young players characterized themselves with their remarks. The narrator only called them by name, as “heroes of his time, as close friends of his: Surin, Narumov, German, Tomsky. But the old woman, combining in her image two planes of reality (the present and life 60 years ago), is not described directly, regardless of the past, but is depicted and comprehended with an orientation to Tomsky's story about her, in relation to the appearance of la Venus moscovite. “The Countess had not the slightest claim to beauty, long faded, but retained all the habits of her youth, strictly followed the fashions of the seventies, and dressed as long, as diligently as sixty years ago.
So the narrator goes beyond the naive contemplation of his artistic world. He describes and comprehends it as a historian who investigates the origins of events and customs, comparing the present with the past. According to the changed point of view of the narrator, the scope of narrative remarks is expanded at the expense of dramatic dialogue. The dialogue breaks up into fragments, which are commented on by the narrator. Dramatic time is destroyed by the fact that whole episodes, only called by the narrator, but not depicted by him, fall out of the stage reproduction: “And the countess told her grandson her anecdote for the hundredth time. The young lady took the book and read a few lines. - "Louder!" said the Countess. Prince Shakhovskoy in his drama was forced to fill in this narrative note, forcing Eliza to read the beginning of Yuri Miloslavsky Zagoskin, and the old countess to critically, from the point of view of an old secular lady, analyze this “nonsense.
However, if dramatic scenes are inserted into the narrative framework, then the narrative itself is slightly inclined towards the consciousness of the characters. A cursory hint of this slips in the story about Lizaveta Ivanovna after Tomsky left: “... she left work and began to look out the window. Soon, on one side of the street, a young officer appeared from behind a coal house. A blush covered her cheeks... Who is this officer? Why isn't he named? Isn't the author looking at him through the eyes of Lizaveta Ivanovna, who knows him only by his engineer's uniform? She had just let slip about her interest in the engineer in a conversation with Tomsky. The reader is already inclined to guess from this hint that we are talking about Hermann.
Hence, it becomes possible to include in the dialogue between the Countess and Tomsky a discourse on French frantic literature, which hides allusions to the literary work of the narrator, to the ironic opposition of The Queen of Spades to French nightmare novels:
“-...send me some new novel, but please, not from the current ones.
How is it, grandmaman?
That is, such a novel, where the hero would not crush either his father or mother, and where there would be no drowned bodies. I'm terribly afraid of drowned people!
Thus, the functions of narration and dramatic reproduction undergo a transformation: dramatic scenes do not move the story, but are themselves already moved by the narrative, in which the importance of the forms of the past tense of the perfect form grows.
Not so in the narrative style of the first chapter of The Queen of Spades. There in the past tense forms owls. verbs denoting a change of remarks are clothed: “the host asked ... “said one of the guests ...“ Herman said ... “the guests shouted ...“ Herman noticed ... and character movements: “Young players doubled the focus. Tomsky lit his pipe, took a puff... This syntactic device determines the dynamics of the dialogue, which is the essence of the dramatic action, and establishes the sequence of changing remarks. All other verb forms imperfect form the narratives fell apart: 1) into actions related to different planes of the past and defining the boundaries between these planes of the past (these are forms of the imperfect); - until four o'clock in the morning: “Once they played cards with the horse guard Narumov ... “Those who won, ate with great appetite; the rest were absent-mindedly sitting in front of empty instruments ... - a quarter to six: “Indeed, it was already dawn ... and 2) to actions that changed within these segments of the past, filling this past with movement (these are forms of the perfect, past tense owl species). “The long winter night passed unnoticed; sat down to supper at five o'clock in the morning. But champagne appeared - the conversation quickened, and everyone took part in it ... The young people finished their glasses and parted.
In this way, the principles of mixing narrative with dramatic performance in the dinner scene after the game are clarified. Here the narration includes only the director's laconic remarks and replaces the striking of the clock. Quite different principles determine the ratio of dialogue and narrative speech in the picture of the Countess. Narration, on the one hand, dissolves the dialogue. The author not only names the movements accompanying the dialogue, but explains their meaning, i.e. reduces the dialogue to the level of a narrative quotation that needs comments: “The young lady raised her head and made a sign young man. He remembered that the death of her peers had been concealed from the old countess, and he bit his lip. But the countess heard the news, new to her, with great indifference. On the other hand, narration not only envelops the dialogue, but is compared with it as the dominant form of plot-compositional movement. It is, as it were, elevated in its semantic level and pulls dialogic segments along with it. Formally, this is expressed in the attachment of narrative parts to replicas through conjunction and with an adjunctive meaning: the dialogue thus becomes a syntactic link in the narrative. For example: "I'm dead! - she said ... - Together we were granted maids of honor, and when we introduced ourselves, the empress ... - And the countess told her grandson her anecdote for the hundredth time (see Chapter XV).
The narrator, like a film technician, quickly moves the scenes of the old woman's whims. This technique of quickly shifting dramatic passages allows the narrator to symbolically, through the image of an old woman, show the life of Lizaveta Ivanovna and thereby once again transfer the narration to the subjective plane of the heroine.
Thus, the image of the narrator is immersed in the atmosphere of the depicted life, as the image of the observer and exposer involved in the characters. Earlier, at the end of the first chapter, this involvement of the subject of artistic reality was expressed in the affirmation of the objectivity of this reality.
In the second chapter of The Queen of Spades, the narrator lyrically asserts Lizaveta Ivanovna's self-determination, inciting the reader to sympathize with her ("Indeed, Lizaveta Ivanovna was an unfortunate creature").
Thus, the expression of speech, embedded in the syntax and semantics of the form of subjective evaluation, indicates that the author becomes a companion of his characters. He not only expresses his personal attitude towards them: he begins to understand and evaluate reality through the prism of their consciousness, however, never merging with them. However, this merging is already impossible due to the fact that the author faces three “consciousnesses, three characters into which he plunges and whose world becomes the world of narration - the images of the old countess, Lisa and Herman. The trinity of aspects of the image makes the structure of reality multi-valued. The world of the “Queen of Spades” begins to disintegrate into different subjective spheres. But this disintegration cannot be realized, if only because the subject of the narration, having become a form of correlation between the characters' faces, does not lose its author's personality. After all, these three subjective spheres - Liza, Herman and the old woman - are intertwined in many ways, intersect in the unity of the narrative movement; because they all revolve around the same objects, they all reflect the same reality in different ways in the process of its development. However, not only the intersection of these subjective spheres, the forms of their semantic relationships organize the unity of the plot movement, but also the opposition of the characters to the author. The author approaches the sphere of consciousness of the characters, but does not take on their speeches and actions. The characters, acting and speaking for themselves, are at the same time attracted to the sphere of the author's consciousness. In the images of the characters, two elements of reality are dialectically merged: their subjective understanding of the world and this world itself, of which they themselves are a part. Having arisen in the sphere of the author's narration, they remain within its boundaries, as objects of artistic reality and as subjective forms of its possible comprehension.
"At the end of the first chapter, there is an open descent of the author into the world he depicts." (Vinogradov V.V.)
In the section on the question What is the surname of Herman in "The Queen of Spades" by A. S. Pushkin? given by the author Yotary Soldier the best answer is This is his last name - Hermann. There is no name in the work.
Mystery one: Hermann's lack of a name.
It is not difficult to notice that the main character of the work does not have a name (or maybe a surname). Let's prove that "Hermann" is a surname. Let's take a proof by contradiction: let "Hermann" be a name. But in this case, contradictions arise: firstly, in the word "Herman", denoting the name, there is only one letter "H", in contrast to the one written by Pushkin; secondly, based on the dialogues, we can conclude that the gentlemen use the last name of a person when they address each other or talk about someone in the third person:
- What did you do, Surin? .
- And what is Hermann! .
Therefore, "Hermann" is a surname.
Hermann approaches the coffin. “At that moment it seemed to him that the dead woman looked at him mockingly, screwing up one eye. Hermann, hastily leaning back, stumbled and fell backward on the ground.<...>A dull murmur arose between the visitors, and a thin chamberlain, a close relative of the deceased (italics mine - M.A.), whispered into the ear of an Englishman standing next to him that the young officer was her natural son, to which the Englishman answered coldly: "Oh?"
We will not delve into the reasons that forced Pushkin to introduce this remark of the chamberlain. Let's risk and accept these words as a "working hypothesis" for commenting and understanding both the opera (especially) and the story.
We believe that Herman is the bastard son of the Countess. In opera, this hypothesis can clarify a lot.
First of all - the mysterious mutual attraction-repulsion of the Countess and Herman. Tomsky's ballad is also clarified in some way. If Herman is the son of the Countess, then Saint-Germain turns out to be the only contender for the role of father, all the more it is not news that "Germain" and "Herman" - different variants one surname.
Note: the underlying Latin root is germen, and further, descending - genmen from geno - offspring, sprout, shoot. From this - germanus - native, or consanguineous. See Dvoretsky I. Kh. Latin-Russian Dictionary.
