T. Binyon - Pushkin

They passed through Temizhbek on 8 August, and spent the night at a neighbouring fort, where they dined with the commandant. The heat was oppressive throughout the journey, and all the party suffered from it. On the eleventh they were in Ekaterinodar, and two days later arrived in Taman on the Black Sea coast – ‘the foulest little town of all Russia’s coastal towns’, Lermontov calls it in A Hero of Our Time. In 1820 it was ‘a miserable collection of wooden shacks with two hundred inhabitants, half of whom were beggars, the other half bandits’. 25 However, they did not have to test its hospitality, since both the party and escort were accommodated at the fortress in nearby Fanagoriya. Meanwhile the weather had changed: though the Crimea could be seen in the distance on the far side of the Kerch Strait, the crossing could not be attempted for a day or two.

On the morning of 15 August they were able to embark, though weather conditions were still unfavourable: the crossing took nine hours, instead of the usual two and a half. They arrived in Kerch – the ancient Panticapaeum, founded by Greeks in the seventh century BC, and later the capital of Mithridates the Great’s territory in southern Russia – towards evening. ‘The view of Kertch, and the large bay in which it is situated, was very beautiful,’ noted Laurence Oliphant, who visited the town in 1852; ‘the broken outline of the opposite hills projected far across the straits; while the houses of the town rose one above another up the steep side of the hill of Mithridates; – the whole reminding me of Naples, to which it certainly bears a humble resemblance.’ 26 Pushkin, eager to glimpse the classical remains, rushed up the hill at sunset, as soon as they had disembarked. ‘Here I will see the ruins of the tomb of Mithridates, here I will see the remains of Panticapaeum, I thought – on the nearest hill amidst a cemetery I saw a heap of stones, of boulders, rudely chiselled – noticed a few steps, the work of human hands. Whether this was the tomb, the ancient fundament of a tower – I do not know.’ * 27 He ‘plucked a flower for remembrance, but lost it the next day – without regret’. 28 On the following morning the party left for Feodosiya, halting, as all visitors did, to view the Golden Barrow, a huge Cimmerian funeral mound, and the ruins of Panticapaeum. The latter proved as disappointing as the tomb: ‘Rows of stones, a ditch, almost level with the ground – that is all that remains of the city of Panticapaeum. There is no doubt that much that is valuable is concealed beneath the earth, accumulated through the ages; a certain Frenchman has been sent from St Petersburg for excavations, but he lacks money and knowledge, as usually is the case with us.’ * 29

In Feodosiya (or Kefa, as it was then known) they stayed two nights with the former town governor, Semen Bronevsky, and at dawn on 18 August boarded a navy brig, the Mingreliya , for the passage to Gurzuf. During the journey Pushkin composed the elegy ‘Extinguished is the orb of day’, which in manuscript bore the heading ‘An Imitation of Byron’, and had the epigraph ‘Good night my native land’ – a misquotation of Byron’s line ‘My native Land – Good Night!’ from ‘Childe Harold’s Good Night’. They arrived before dawn on 19 August:

Splendid are you, shores of the Tauris;

When one sees you from the ship

By the light of morning Cypris, â€

As I for the first time saw you;

You appeared before me in nuptial brilliance:

Against the blue, transparent sky

Shone the masses of your mountains,

The pattern of your valleys, trees and villages

Was spread before me.

And there, among the Tatar huts …

What ardour woke within me!

What magical yearnings

Compressed my fiery breast!

But, Muse! forget the past. 30

The ardour which turned his breast to fire was inspired by the Raevskys’ eldest daughter, the twenty-three-year-old Ekaterina. He had known her well in St Petersburg, but she did not possess the mature charms which he had then admired; here, however, she was without rivals, and Pushkin’s all too susceptible heart was soon hers. ‘Mikhailo Orlov is to marry General Raevsky’s daughter, after whom the poet Pushkin languished,’ Aleksandr Turgenev wrote to Vyazemsky the following year. 31 She was a splendid, tall, goddess-like creature, with a strong will and forceful personality; the very ‘ideal of a proud maid’ seen against a background of sea and cliffs. 32 Several years later, when engaged on his historical drama Boris Godunov , in a letter to Vyazemsky he remarked of his heroine, the haughty and ambitious Marina Mniszek, ‘My Marina is a fine wench: a real Katerina Orlova! Do you know her? However, don’t tell anyone this.’ 33

Nothing could come of the infatuation: Ekaterina was two years older than he, did not return his feelings, and was already informally engaged to General Orlov. Moreover, in a few weeks he would have to leave for Kishinev. A few months later, in perhaps the finest lyric of this period, he returned in spirit to Gurzuf and memories of Katerina:

Sparser grows the flying range of clouds:

Melancholy star, evening star,

Your ray has silvered the faded levels,

The dreaming gulf, the dark crags’ summits;

I love your weak light in the heavenly height:

It awakened thoughts, which slumbered in me.

I remember your rising, familiar orb,

Above that peaceful land, where all is dear to the heart,

Where graceful poplars in the valleys rise,

Where dream the tender myrtle and the dark cypress,

And sweetly sound the southern waves.

There once on the hills, full of thoughts of love,

Above the sea in brooding idleness I wandered,

While on the huts the shade of night descended –

And a young maiden sought you in the darkness

And to her friends named you by her name. * 34

Ekaterina, in beauty herself a very Venus, is seeking the planet Venus in the evening dusk and, it has been suggested, humorously confusing ‘Cytherean’ – a title given to Aphrodite from the legend that she landed at Cythera after her birth in the sea – with her own name, Katerina. 35 She certainly identified herself with the star; in 1823 her husband wrote to her: ‘I feel myself near to you or imagine you near each time I see that memorable star which you pointed out to me. You may be sure that the moment it rises above the horizon I will catch its appearance from my balcony.’ 36 When Pushkin speaks of first seeing Gurzuf ‘By the light of morning Cypris’, using another of Aphrodite’s titles, he is making a coded reference to Ekaterina.

‘If there exists on earth a spot which may be described as a terrestrial paradise, it is that which intervenes between Kütchückoy and Sudack on the south coast of the Crimea,’ wrote Edward Clarke, an English traveller. 37 It is here that Gurzuf is situated – a small Tatar village of clay huts, clinging to the steep, craggy, pine-covered slopes which rise from the sea-cliff to the stone brow of the plateau above. On the edge of the cliff are the remains of a fortress, built by the orders of Justinian in the sixth century, and refortified by the Genoese, who had a settlement here, in the fourteenth. They were followed by the Turks, who controlled the Khanate of the Crimea until 1774, when it became independent, only to be annexed by Catherine in 1783. The village and surrounding district had belonged to Potemkin, but its ownership had passed to Armand Emmanuel du Plessis, duc de Richelieu, governor-general of Odessa and New Russia from 1803 to 1814. He had built a small palazzo, which he only visited once for a few weeks in 1811, and which otherwise stood empty. A three-storeyed edifice, built into the mountain slope, it had a profusion of windows and huge, light galleries on the first floor, which enabled its inhabitants to enjoy the splendid views, but did little for their comfort. It was here that the Raevskys stayed.