the obsessions and madness of germann in pikovaja dama

Russian Literature XIV (I 983) 383-396 North-Holland

THE OBSESSIONS AND MADNESS OF GERMANN IN PIKOVAJA DAFlA

GARETH WILLIAMS

Germann's obsession with the need to obtain financial independence is a fundamental trait of his character when we first meet him. Although the self-re- straint and strength of will which he demonstrates in pursuing his aim are to some extent abnormal, he continues to be accepted by the young officers in whose company he is seen as the story opens. His obsession with financial independence is not great enough to outweigh all other considerations and make normal life impossible for him. He is careful that the other officers should have no opportunity of making fun of his thrifty nature.'

After he has heard the anecdote of the three winning cards he thinks about it all night. The next day, however, he seems determined to continue the patient accumulation of capital which had characterized his life before he heard the anecdote. It is only when he comes across the countess' house by chance that he recalls the anecdote. It takes such a hold on his imagination that he dreams that night of a game of cards in which he wins huge sums of money. The next day he once again finds himself in front of the countess' house, as though "some unknown force was attracting him to it" (5:243). His obsession with wealth, stimu- lated by the anecdote, is becoming a mania which he cannot control.

Almost all the elements in the character description of Germann point towards a single obsession, the obsession with financial gain. Most critics who allow the interpretation that the events of the tale are consequences of Germann's obsession' speak of this one obsession, which in their view is brought to the pitch of mania by the effect on Germann's ardent im-

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384 Gart-?th WiZliams

agination of hearing the anecdote. Sometimes Germann has been described as a representative of the new bourgeoisie which emerged in Europe after the defeat of Napoleon, and it has been suggested that social factors, such as the strain felt by the parvenu who mixes with his social superiors, are a contributory element in the psychological tension which leads to Germann's mania and madness.3 Recently some critics have been moving away from the conception of Germann as a person who is obsessed with one thing, a mono- maniac, towards a conception of Germann as a character in whom there are violently conflicting ten- dencies, whose resolution in the pursuit of wealth is not complemented but is opposed, to some eftent, by his strong passions and fiery imagination. This article is intended to make a contribution to this point of view by examining the possibility that Ger- mann has more than one obsession.

The first reaction by Germann to Tomskij's anecdote is one word, skazka (5:236). On the face of it, this remark indicates disbelief. Everything we have been told of Germann up to this point in the story, including his self-characterization, would support such an assumption. Yet such remarks as Tomskij's statement: "Germann is a German; he is thrifty (ras- Eetliv), that's all" (5:234) cannot be accepted without reservations. This glib statement is certainly not all there is to know about Germann, as it implies. It is an idle clich6,5 thrown out by Tomskij in order to finish with the subject of Germann and lead in to the anecdote which he wants to tell. Later, dancing the mazurka with Lizaveta Ivanovna, Tomskij's opinion of Germann is quite different. Tomskij says that Ger- mann has "the profile of Napoleon and the soul of Mephistopheles" (5:252) and hints that he may have committed criminal acts.

It is obvious that none of Tomskij's assessments can be taken at their face value, although they may contain an element of truth. As for Germann's self- characterization, the validity of that also is open to doubt, as events later in the story demonstrate. This is Puskin's technique in the introduction of Germann's two obsessions: to direct the reader's attention first of all to the obsession with money and thus mask the more gradual and subtle introduction of the second obsession, the obsession with the countess.

At this stage of the story we have been led to believe that Germann is a cautious, prosaic character and we interpret his interjection of skazka as an in- dication that he does not believe the anecdote. HOW-

The Obsessions and Madness of Germann 385

ever, if we knew at this stage of the story what we find out later about Germann, that he has "strong passions and a fiery imagination" (5:242), it is possible that we would not divest the word skazka entirely of its literal meaning, that is, "a fairy-tale".

When Tomskij narrates his anecdote he does notmere- ly inform his audience that his grandmother knows the secret of three cards which will win at the game of faro. There is a wealth of historical detail in Tom- skij's anecdote. He talks of the j'eu de Za reine at Versailles, of society relationships, of the mode of dress at the time (the countess' beauty spots and far- thingale). In his anecdote the details of the ambience in which the secret was divulged are given more attention than the ostensible subject of the anecdote, the secret and the game of faro at which it was used by the countess. He describes how the countess was of- fered the secret by the mysterious comte de Saint- Germain, "about whom so many wondrous stories are told" (5:235), and mentions some of the "wondrous stories", that the count pretended to be the Wandering Jew and that he practised alchemy. He introduces his audience to a time when it was still possible for educated people to believe in alchemy and for a man like Saint- Germain to be accepted at the courts of Europe.

We are told that the anecdote made a strong impression on Germann's imagination and .that he thought of it all night (5:242). It is certain that he is fascinated by the opportunity of obtaining riches which possession of the secret seems to offer, but it is also possible that he is fascinated by the "fairy- tale" aspect of Tomskij's anecdote. He is a young man with a fiery imagination who has long kept his passions in check in order to accumulate capital. It is possible that his imagination finds a seemingly harmless outlet in a fascination with the past, the past when the "Venus of Muscovy" and her husband could spend half a million in six months, when Vex- sailles had not yet been overrun by the people in re- volt, the past when the magical was still possible. When he begs the countess for her secret, latex in the tale, Germann mentions the possibility that she made a pact with the devil in order to obtain the secret, and offers to take over from her this dreadful respon- sibility (5:250). Tomskij made no mention of such a pact. It is Germann, infected by the wondrous aspect of the anecdote, who has invented this possibility.

The evening after hearing the anecdote Germann wanders about St.Petersburg. "What if the old countess should reveal to me her secret!" he thinks, "or

386 Gareth Williams

tell me those three winning cards!" (5:242). The parallel syntactical construction of the two exclamations connected by the conjunction "or" seems to offer an alternative, that is, the secret of which Germann speaks and the identity of the three winning cards are not one and the same thing. He finds himself in front of the countess' house and starts to walk around it, "thinking of its owner and of her marvellous powers" (5:243). Once again the sentence is so worded as to separate the countess and the three cards. It is quite possible that Germann's imagination has been stimu- lated both by the possibility of winning riches and by the image of the young "Venus of Muscovy". This possibility receives some confirmation when one considers the numerical values of the "winning" cards and the age which Germann assigns to the countess.

The winning cards suggested to Germann by the ghost in Chapter 5 are the three, the seven and the ace. It is usually accepted by critics that the numerical value of the ace is one.6 As Leighton points out,7 re- ferring to the illustration in Rosen's article,' the ace of spades has a single spade in the centre. If put in numerical order the 1, 3 and 7 represent the suc- cessive stages of profit that a gambler could expect when playing faro if he won three times in succession, using his winnings and his stake in the previous round to bet, thereby doubling his stake at each round.g Germann seems to have calculated these winnings immediately after hearing the anecdote, for in the second chapter he refers to "thrift, moderation and dili- gence: those are my three winning cards, that is what will triple and multiply sevenfold my capital" (5:243).

Immediately before this passage Germann asks himself whether he should become the countess' lover in order to find out the secret, "but all that takes time, and she is eighty-seven" (5:243). The reader has been led to expect that Germann is obsessed only with money. The suggestion that Germann should become the countess' lover seems so manifestly absurd that the reader's attention is distracted from-the age which Germann has ascribed to the countess. When Narumov mentions Tom- skij's grandmother's age in the first chapter, before the anecdote of the three cards has been narrated, he says that she is eighty years old. The social eminence of the countess is such that somebody like Narumov, who wishes to be presented to the countess, is hardly likely to be mistaken about her age. Tomskij does not correct him. It is evident therefore that Germann has made a mistake. He has incorporated into the countess' age the final stage of multiplication of his capital


which he might expect if he could use the secret of the three cards, that is, a factor of seven." While the association of the countess with the seven by Ger- mann does not of itself prove that he is as obsessed by the countess as he is with the secret of the three cards, his mistake does indicate that his imagination is capable of distorting reality where the countess is concerned and that the countess is now, for Germann, not merely the source of the secret but also inextri- cably a part of its mystery.

Germann uses Lizaveta Ivanovna as a stalking-horse to approach the countess, yet from the moment he sees the "fresh little face and black eyes" (5:243) of Li- zaveta Ivanovna there is something in his relationship with her which is not fully explained by the need to obtain entry into the countess' house. Lizaveta Iva- novna sees him flush when their eyes meet (5:242); when Lizaveta Ivanovna replies to his letter he returns home "very taken up with his intrigue" (5:245). These words do not seem suitable in the context of his burn- ing desire to obtain the secret, but they describe ex- actly the excitement of beginning a flirtation. As the correspondence continues, Germann is "inspired by passion" (5:246) as he writes the letters. According to Tomskij, who, while he may embroider a story, does not seem to lie, Germann may well have designs on Li- zaveta Ivanovna, since he shows emotion when a friend of his, who is in love with Lizaveta, talks of his love for her (5:252). When she recalls their correspondence, Lizaveta Ivanovna remembers "those passion- ate letters, those ardent demands" (5:253). Yet when Germann enters Lizaveta Ivanovna's room with his empty pistol he seems totally indifferent to her: "neither the poor girl's tears nor the amazing charm of her grief disturbed his harsh soul" (5:253).

It is as though Germann has been using Lizaveta Ivanovna as a surrogate for that image of the young countess which fascinates his imagination; the passion in his letters is a passion of the imagination which evaporates when he is in the presence of Lizaveta Iva- novna, but which reappears when the "ghost" of the countess suggests to him that he should marry Lizaveta Ivanovna.

Although Germann lives thriftily in order to accumulate capital, he is no miser. He is not interested in money for money's sake. His aim is to achieve "peace of mind and independence" (5:243). It is gen- erally accepted that Germann's ambition is to become a tua, that is, a person of considerable financial and social standing, and it is sometimes argued that the

388 Gareth Williams

ace arises in Germann's mind as a winning card for this reason.ll The countess is an "ace" among "aces". This is one of the reasons why Germann is fascinated by her. An enormous distance separates Germann from the countess. He is an 11outsider'112 in the world of high society. He roams the streets outside the countess ' house while the rich and famous enter it. A parallel can be drawn between the distance which separates Germann from the real-life old countess and the distance which separates him from the image of the young and beautiful countess. In both cases the distance seems unbridgeable. It may be that in both cases the distance is bridged, if only temporarily, by Ger- mann.

When Germann mounts the steps of the countess' porch, he is making, in a physical sense, the transi- tion from an "outsider" to an "insider". He no longer has to wait in the snow in the street. He. sees all the detail of the intimate environment of the countess. He is put in the position of a lover, or, perhaps, a husband. He has achieved this position through his own efforts. He is an usurper. There is something of the conqueror about him as he waits, quivering like a ti- ger, and then with a firm step enters the house. But PuSkin has already given an ironic warning of the hu- miliations which await those who mount the steps of other people's houses to ask for favours. In the description of Lizaveta Ivanovna Puskin quoted Dante: "Bitter is the bread of others, says Dante, and hard are the steps of another's porch" (5:240). The second part of this sentence has no relevance to Lizaveta Ivanovna, but it has to Germann. Germann, as he enters the porch of the countess' house, is both conqueror and petitioner. The irony of this contrast is the source of much of the humour in the scene between Ger- mann and the countess.

Since Tomskij is the son of the son of the countess, her name must be Tomskaja. During the scene in the countess' bedroom Germann says: "He who is unable to preserve the inheritance he has received from his father will die in poverty, no matter what devilish efforts are employed. I am not a spendthrift" (5:248). But Germann does fail to look after his inheritance. He gambles it away at cards and therefore he is a spendthrift, mot. If one reverses the first three letters of the countess' name one forms the adjective motskaja, "belonging to or appertaining to a spendthrift". To some extent the countess is "possessed" by Germann in this scene, when he enters her most intimate sanctuary and witnesses her most intimate mo-


ments. Yet the reversal of the letters in mot under- scores the irony of PuBkin's presentation of this aspect of their relationship.

PuSkin's technique in the presentation of Germann's obsession with the countess changes once Germann has entered the house. At this juncture Puskin ceases to conceal the obsession. He shows the obsession, but shows it in such an obvious manner that the reader passes it by either without noticing it or giving it a different interpretation. Much in the interview between Germann and the countess points to the parallel which could be drawn between Germann and a lover. The parallel is so obvious that most readers do not con- sider it to be a genuine possibility. Since the whole scene is built on the contrast between Germann as conqueror and Germann as petitioner, the parallel with a lover can be regarded as one aspect of that contrast, as an ironic paralliel. This is how most critics have treated the reference by the bishop at the funeral of the countess to the "angel of death" who found her "vigilant in good thoughts and waiting for the mid- night bridegroom" (5:256). The overt meaning of the bishop's words is a reference to the parable of the five wise and the five foolish virgins (Mathew xxv. l-13); it is difficult to take seriously in the covert meaning the parallel between the old countess and a virgin awaiting her bridegroom, the more so as in the symbolism of the parable the bridegroom is Christ himself.

There are, however, several moments in the chapter in which Germann meets the countess which present as a genuine alternative the comparison between Germann and a lover and which tend to confirm the impression that Germann is obsessed both with the countess and with her secret. V.V.Vinogradov has pointed out that Germann ex eriences time only in relation to the countess. 2 She is associated in his mind with great we, an age greater than her real age. From the first time he hears of her age, the concept of time and the concept of the almost magical beauty of the countess are mingled in Germann's mind. When he first thinks of becoming her lover, the concept of time intrudes itself: "but all that takes time; she may die in a week, in two days!" (5:243).

In the chapter when Germann meets the countess time and the countess are constantly associated, sometinies through Germann's perception of time and sometimes in scenes which may or may not be narrated to us as Ger- mann saw them. As Germann waits outside the countess' house, as he waits in the study next to her bedroom

390 Gareth WiZZiams

and hears the clocks strike first one and then two o'clock, the link between Germann, time and the countess seems like the link between a lover and the time of his assignation with his mistress. As Germann enters the bedroom of the countess he sees all around him objects which bear witness to the time, sixty years ago, when she was a fabulous beauty, and he sees that beauty preserved in a picture by Mme Vig6e-Lebrun. As he descends the secret staircase after- the death of the countess, when he has failed to find out the secret of the three cards, he thinks not of the secret but of the past of the countess. "Perhaps up this very staircase, he thought, about sixty years ago, into this very bedroom, at this very hour, wearing an em- broidered tunic, his hair combed back C? Z'oissau,royal, pressing to his breast his three-cornered hat, there crept a fortunate young man who has long since mouldered in his grave" (5:254).

This passage is preceded by the statement that Ger- mann was "agitated by strange feelings" (5:254) The word "strange" here is, in all probability, not an evaluation by the narrator of the feelings of Germann. At no time in the tale does the narrator betray his attitude towards Germann, unless it is in the equivo- cal and enigmatic epigraphs. Germann himself finds it strange that at such a time he should think not of the loss of the secret but of some long-dead lover of the countess and should compare himself to that lover. He is conscious of his obsession with the three cards, but he does not realize the extent to which the image of the countess has taken hold of his imagination.

There is no hint of parody in this passage. The details of the dress and hair of the imagined lover show the power which the past of the countess has over Ger- mann's imagination. In the light of this genuine comparison between Germann and a lover it is possible to reassess Germann's behaviour when he leaves the room of Lizaveta Ivanovna. He enters the countess' bedroom again and looks at her for a long time "as though he wanted to confirm the horrible truth" (5:254). One assumes that he wants to confirm the horrible truth that she is dead and can no longer give him the winning cards, but other interpretations are possible. It is possible that he does not know himself why he stares for so long at a corpse which is already stiff. Per- haps his obsession with the countess has become such a mania that he can no longer control his actions. No other explanation seems possible of the scene when he watches the old countess undress. There is no need for him to watch the maids as they undress the countess.


Lizaveta Ivanovna in her note has said that the countess never entered the study (5:247). Yet Germann is "a witness to the repulsive secrets of her toilet" (5: 248). He watches through a chink, because he cannot help himself. It is at this stage that Germann may be considered to be insane.

If one considers that Germann is insane before he goes to the funeral of the countess, and that a major factor in his insanity is his obsession with the countess as a pillar of society, a tuz, and as a Venus, a queen of love, it is not surprising that Germann, when he bends over the countess' coffin, should see her dead face come alive and wink at him. PuSkin does not conceal here the fact of Germann's obsession with the countess; it is as Germann sees the countess' face and prepares to kiss herI that he becomes irrational. Pus- kin diverts the rea.der's attention by making quite obvious the link,between Germann and the countess and making the parallel between Germann and a lover seem like a macabre parody of the truth, as he had done during the meeting of Germann and the countess. In the scene in the countess' house Puskin points to the link between Germann and the countess through describing them in similar terms and putting them in similar po- sitions; when Germann is in the study he "turned to stone" (5:248), and the countess sits "turned to stone" (5:254); Germann kneels in supplication (5:250), the

old woman stretches out her arm as though in entreaty (5:250). At the funeral Germann is "as pale as the de- ceased herself" (5:256) and falls on his back, with the result that he assumes the same posture as the countess. He lies with the countess, and also with Li- zaveta Ivanovna, who also faints. All this is so like parody and caricature that it is difficult not to take it as such; but when Germann wakes up, or thinks he wakes up, after having left the funeral, drunk a great deal and fallen asleep, he thinks not of the secret of the three cards .but of the funeral of the old countess, the last occasion when he could see the countess in the flesh.

Rosen has suggested that as the countess lies framed in the rectangular coffin she resembles the queen of spades framed in a card, and has pointed out several other instances where the countess is framed against a rectangular background; against the back of the Voltaire chair, and twice against the background of a window (Rosen:268). He omits to mention the in- stance when Germann sees the portrait of the young countess in her bedroom. This portrait is described in some detail. It is of "a young beauty with an aquiline

392 Gareth Williams

nose, with hair combed back from the temples and with a rose in her powdered hair" (5:248). The painting was painted in Paris by Mme Vigse-Lebrun, famous for her paintings of the French royal family, in particular for her many portraits of Marie-Antoinette. If one looks at the plate showing Russian playing cards of about 1830 in Rosen's article (Rosen:261), the queen of spades is a woman with a pronounced aquiline 5 nose, who is holding a rose. Th.e back of the queen's head is covered with a lacy headdress. If one bears in mind the twin obsessions of Germann and the extent to which he has already linked the one with the other, it would not be surprising if he saw in the countess as she lay in her coffin, wearing a lace bonnet, an image rather like that of a playing card, of a queen. It has a-l- ready been mentioned that in Russian playing cards of the period the ace bore a single spade i.n th.e centre. There were no numbers or letters on playing cards in Russia at this time. When the countess screws up one eye, surely all Germann's attention is concentrated on her other eye, which is looking mockingly at him. If this is the case, then he may see framed in the rec- tangle of the coffin just one pip - the eye of the countess. The way is now prepared visually for Germann to fail to choose the ace and to take instead the queen from his pack. It has long ago been prepared mentally, since the Germann who is obsessed with the desire to obtain financial independence must think of the countess as one of the greatest "aces" in St.Pe- tersburg society, while the Germann who is obsessed by the image of the Muscovite Venus must think of her as the queen of love.16

At the beginning of Chapter 6 Puskin refers openly to Germann's obsession with the countess: "Two fixed ideas cannot co-exist in the world of the spirit, just as, in the physical world, two bodies cannot occupy the same space. The three, the seven and the ace soon obscured the image of the dead old woman in Germann's imagination" (5:258). These sentences imply that it is impossible for two fixed ideas, that is obsessions, to co-exist and that the obsession with the three cards dominates Germann's mind. But PuSkin would have relied on his reader's knowledge of the many discussions of the possibility of coextension of matter and spirit which had taken place during the eighteenth century.17 He would have expected his reader to realize that the seeming finality of the logic of the first sentence is based on the incorrect premise that ideas take up physical space. These two sentences amount to an ad- mission that Germann had two obsessions, and that the


obsession with the three cards has only "obscured" the obsession with the countess, in all probability, for a short time, as clouds may obscure (zasZonit') the sun.

During the remainder of the sixth chapter Germann's obsession with the countess is "obscured" in the nar- rative. It is possible to interpret the large luxur- iant flower, the Gothic portal andlFhe huge spider of which he dreams as sexual symbols. No attempt will be made in this article to add further interpretations to the many interpretations of Germann's dreams and fantasies which have been put forward. Whatever interpretation is adopted, it is clear that Germann finds difficulty in leading a normal life for some time before he has undergone the psychological shocks of the three gambling sessions. Both asleep and awake his imagination is hyperactive and he is incapable of per- ceiving reality as it is normally perceived. This fact would tend to confirm the supposition that his madness had begun some time previous to the apparition of the ghost of the countess.

The description of Germann's madness is very brief. "Germann went mad. He is in the Obuchovskaja hospital, room 17. He never answers questions and mutters with unusual rapidity: 'Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, queen!"' (5:262). Although the material we are given is scanty, the repetition of the numbers 1 and 7 after their significance for gambling has been exhausted would seem to be a hint by Puskin that Germann is still obsessed with the countess, who is associated in his mind with the seven, and that he associates himself, the ace or one, with the countess.

If Germann is obsessed with the countess it is possible to give a rational explanation of the "fantastic" events which take place in the tale, that is, the way the dead countess screws up one eye, the apparition of the countess to Germann and the resemblance of the queen of spades to the countess as it screws up one eye. However, the possibility of the fantastic events being genuinely fantastic cannot be dismissed. On the contrary, if the tale is read from the point of view that Germann has two obsessions it becomes even more difficult for the reader to find firm ground and defi- nite landmarks in the tale; the number of possibil- ities of interpretation of various aspects of the tale is increased considerably. In these circumstances the possibility of the fantastic seems more rather than less likely.

By the time Pikovaja dama was published the depic- tion of the acquisitive bourgeois was becoming so wide- spread in European literature as to be almost a clichs.

394 Gareth WiZZiams

E.C.Shepard gives many examples of the dominance of the city and of capital in the society tale in Russia in the 183Os.l' Descriptions of the bourgeois abounded in the French society tale, of which Jules Janin's Le Pie'destaZ (1832) is such an archetypal example that it forms a part of the intellectual background of the hero of Podrostok. Puskin makes the figure of Germann more complex than that of a typical bourgeois by making him both a person who wants to succeed at all costs in the new era in which money buys success and a person who looks back with nostalgia to the finan- cially non-competitive, almost feudal society of the last years before the French revolution, in his hope- less love for the image of the countess - a combina- tion of the bourgeois and the knight-errant.

University CoZZege of Swansea

NOTES

1. A.S.Pugkin, Sobranie soc'inenij, t-5 (Moskva 1960),242. Further references to this edition will be given in the text by volume and page number. All translations are my own.

2. For an article which opposes any interpretation of the fantastic events of the tale as being caused by Germann's psychological characteristics, see A.Kodjak, "'The Queen of Spades' in the Context of the Faust Legend", in: Alexander Pugkin: A Symposium on the 175th Anniversary of His Birth, ed. A.Kodjak and K.Taranovsky (New York 1976), 87-118.

3. See for example G.A.Gukovskij, P&kin i problemy realisti&- skogo stilja (Moskva 1957), 341-347; N.L.Stepanov, Proza Pus'- kina (Moskva 1962), 76; J.Bayley, Pushkin (Cambridge 1971), 317-318.

4. S.G.Bo?!arov, PoZtika Pu.?kina (Moskva 1974), 186-190; Ju.M.Lot- man, "Tema kart i kartoznoj igry v russkoj literature naEala XIX veka", Trudy po znakovym sistemam, 7 (Tartu 1975), 136.

5. Pugkin strongly criticized the use of a similar clich6, that Germans are akkuratny, that is, punctual, tidy, or neat, in N.I.Chmel'nickij's play Neres'itel'nyj, and used the approval which he assumed the clichg would receive from the audience as an example of the lack of sensitivity of the Russian public. See his letter to N.I.Gnediz, 13 May 1823.

The Obsessions and Madness of German 395

6. Kodjak gives the ace a numerical value of eleven, but does not explain his reason for doing so (Kodjak, op,cit.,92).

7. L.G.Leighton, "Numbers and Numerology in 'The Queen of Spades"', Canadian Slavonic Papers, 19 (1977), 418.

8. N.Rosen, "The Magic Cards in 'The Queen of Spades"', Slavic and East European Journal, 19 (1975), 255-275, contains some very interesting illustrations of Russian playing cards.

9. The best description of the game of faro is in Eugene Onegin, ed. and trans. V.Nabokov, vol.2 (New York 1964), 261.

10. This discrepancy was first indicated in G-Williams, "Pushkin and Jules Janin: A Contribution to the Literary Background of 'The Queen of Spades"', Quinquereme, IV-2 (1981), 213.

11. See for example J.T.Shaw, "The 'Conclusion' of Pugkin's Queen of Spades", in: Studies in Russian and Polish Literature: In Honor of Wacrfaw Lednicki, ed. Z.Folejewski (The Hague 1962), 119. For the use of the word tuz in the sense of a person of considerable social standing by a friend of Pugkin, see 1.1. PuSEin, Zapiski o Pu.?kine: Pis'ma (Moskva 1956), 70 and 381.

12. For a discussion of Germann as an "outsider", see M.Falchikov, "The Outsider and the Number Game (Some Observations on Piko- vaja dama) ", Essays in Poetics, II-2 (1977), 96-106.

13. V.V.Vinogradov, "Still 'Pikovoj damy'", in: Puskin: Vremennik p&kinskoj komissii, 2 (Moskva/Leningrad 1936), 117. See also V.V.Vinogradov, Stil' Pu.?kina (Moskva 1941), 589.

14. According to the Orthodox rite. 15. A certain type of aquiline nose was such a pronounced charac-

teristic of the Bourbon family that such a nose is still call- ed a nez Bourbon, or bourbonien. It was natural that Russian playing cards, which were pqor copies of French ones, should reproduce the French royal nose.

16. The countess is associated on more than one occasion in the tale with the royal family of France. She loses money to a Bourbon prince at Versailles at the jeu de la reine, she has, unusually for a Russian, an aquiline nose, and she is painted by the portrait painter who was famous for having painted more than twenty portraits of Marie-Antoinette. Piques, the suit of cards, is the same word as the word for that weapon which played such an important part in the French revolution, the pike, except that the suit of cards is of masculine gen- der. In a sense, Marie-Antoinette might be considered to be the dame de pique par excellence. In these circumstances the possible pun on jeu de la reine and jeu de l'araignee which is noted by Rosen (op.cit., 273) seems more likely than it does at first sight.

17. See for example Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique under Id& or several passages in Diderot's L'Entretien entre d/Alembert et Diderot.

18. M.M.Schwartz and A-Schwartz, "The Queen of Spades: A Psycho- analytic Interpretation", Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 17 (1975), 275-88, give an interpretation of Ger-

396 Gareth Williams

mann's dreams and fantasies in terms of sexual symbolism. 19. E.C.Shepard, "The Society Tale and the Innovative Argument

in Russian Prose Fiction of the 183Os", Russian Literature, X-2 (1981), 111-161.

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the obsessions and madness of germann in pikovaja dama

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