The Daughter of the Commandant

The Daughter of the Commandant by Russian writers in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Nevertheless, this idea is little explored. In the case of Pushkin and his use of Scott in his contribution to the development of Russian historical novel, the understanding of generic adaptation seems limited to one of two extremes. Either the process is somewhat mechanical combination of generic traits and individual content, where Pushkin adopts Scott's editor, epigraphs, and setting Sixty Years Since and places them in a Russian context. Following D. P. Jakubovich's lead in The Daughter of the Commandant is so organically informed by all of Scott's novels that the direct reference to The Heart of Midlothian becomes of no interest. The juxtaposition of Pushkin's novel with its Western literary sources, however, indicates that the process of adaptation from another literary tradition, at least as practiced by Pushkin, is strikingly similar to operations of the creative mind at any other time. After all, neither Scott nor even Shakespeare invented the story, which served as the kernel for The Daughter of the Commandant, The Heart of Midlothian, and Measure for Measure. In the light of mythological or fairy-tale elements in the story commented on by both Lotman and Tillyard, it is hardly possible to credit Giraldi Cinthio with being its originator either (Evdokimova, 2003). By the time Pushkin came along, this story had existed for many centuries in many different national traditions and in many different forms vacillating between drama and prose narrative. The fact that Pushkin himself was aware at least to a certain extent of this history is evident not just from his use of Shakespeare and Scott, but of Shakespe are through Scott. Moreover, it should be mentioned that Pushkins first attempt in the genre of the historical novel is The Arab of Peter the Great. It is the story of Pushkin's own great grandfather, the Abyssinian Ibrahim Hannibal, who had been presented to Peter the Great as a gift and who, with czar's encouragement, made a great career for himself. Pushkin fashions the story into a picture of family life and manners of the time of Peter the Great. However, he recognized that to accomplish his objectives he would have to become more intimate with the period. He stopped his work on the manuscript and started to intensively study Peter and his era. To complete it, Pushkin asked for and got permission to consult the documents in the national archives from Czar Nicholas in the early 1830s. His research was substantial and included the era of Catherine. At some point he also came across materials relating to Pugatchov rebellion. He decided to represent these events both poetically and historiographically (Pushkin, 2003). The result of this project was the historical novel published in 1836 - The Daughter of the Commandant. Another moment of great importance is that Pushkin integrated the values of family and manners. Hence, The Daughter of the Commandant is in a broader and more significant sense a family novel. Families of the characters, the first-person narrator Grinev and Mironova, the daughter of the commandant, are described in detail. The main site of the story, a small border garrison, is described as a careful representation of families and manners. The theme of family is given comic emphasis by showing how captain's wife commands not only her family, but in fact, the whole garrison. The two historical antagonists, the Empress Catherine and the kozak rebel Pugatchov, are shown only in connection with members of families of Grinev and Mironov. When he first encounters Grinev, Pugatchov is not yet the leader of the rebellion and becomes Grinev's friend. He also acts later as a kind of proxy wooer for the hero (as Peter did for Ibrahim). Even the Empress Catherine, who only appears late in the no vel, is introduced neither as the belligerent antagonist of Pugatchov, nor as the arrogant and splendiferous czarina, but as a lady of about forty, seated on a bench in the park, with red cheeks, in a white morning dress, accompanied by a little white dog, dispensing motherly advice to the confused heroine, who has come to her for help. It is well known that Pushkin created this image of Catherine after a contemporary painting of her. He chose it from many available portraits. He did not choose any of the ceremonial portraits, but rather this very private and familial one. Thus we see that in either of these novels Pushkin was seeking to combine historical figures and events with the Romanesque love story of figures of middle elevation (Shaw, 1963). What instead determines structure and perspective in this sort of historical novel is that by the presence of the middle hero in the middle genre of the novel, all figures and events, including historic ones, are portrayed from a corresp onding refracted viewpoint. To conclude, it has been mentioned that Pushkin imitated Walter Scott. But the area of imitation can be reduced to the choice of subject (17th century) and to the manner of treating the past as if it was the present. The Daughter of the Commandant is Pushkin's main contribution of this kind. It was written under the confessed influence of Scott, and critics have pointed out remarkable similarity of the final chapter to a similar scene in the "Heart of Midlothian". The Daughter of the Commandant contains quite as much incidents and adventures as any of the Waverley novels. With all that, it is about seven or eight times shorter than any of them. Pushkin writes only what is absolutely necessary to the story. There are no descriptions, no accessories, or useless characters. The conversations are rapid and to the point. The whole story is like an express train hurrying to its terminus, and a novel by Scott is like a cavalcade of Canterbury Pilgrims leisurely proceeding along a highway.