[Carl Copeland]

Thanks, Glenn and Christine!

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

In line 9 it says that we see the guards “на место” of the sainted women. Are the guards real people standing in front of and hiding the iconostasis where, presumably, the women are depicted, or have the women been painted over? I presume the former, since the N speculates that perhaps the purpose of the guards is to protect the picture from thieves or mice.

This is a question I hadn’t given much thought, and Christine has helped bring it into focus. I agree that Pushkin is contrasting the actual crucifixion with some modern scene in which sentries are guarding the crucifix and the two Maries are absent.

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

I wondered if Pushkin had intended to go back and fill out line 5 to make it conform to the meter. (You mentioned that the line had originally been hexameter, but I read the Russian as pentameter.)

The original hexameter line was “Стояли, бледные, две слабые жены.” Wachtel apparently thinks Pushkin meant to fill it out, because he says it should be printed “Стояли <…> две <…> жены,” but as far as I know, it has always been printed as an indented hemistich. The “weak women” are of course being contrasted with the fierce-looking sentries, and my first thought was that Pushkin decided to emphasize that contrast using the short line rather than adjectives. It’s something I suppose we’ll never know.

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

I wondered if Pushkin was slyly presenting an allegory of the Church’s view of women as either paragons of virtue or vessels of depravity.

There’s certainly a contrast between the Blessed Mary and the “Sinner Mary,” and in some of his poems, Pushkin seems to have something of a Madonna–Whore mindset, but here I thought their equality was more important—in contrast to the sanctimonious discrimination of church and state officials. I guess that’s close to what you're suggesting.

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

I always feel a bit lost when reading Pushkin. He is sometimes an ardent monarchist and sometimes a passionate proponent of democracy. His gleeful description of the execution of Louis XVI and his family in his “Ode to Liberty” is disturbing. No wonder Tsar Alexander I exiled him. He is sometimes devoutly Orthodox and sometimes an atheist.

Remember that he was 18 and just out of school when he wrote “Ode to Liberty,” and he wrote the outrageously blasphemous “Гавриилиада” in his early twenties. It’s impossible to imagine him writing these in his thirties.