Lotman Yuri. Conversations about Russian culture

Now we have something wrong in the subject:
We better hurry to the ball,
Where to headlong in a Yamsk carriage
My Onegin has already galloped.
In front of the faded houses
Along the sleepy street in rows
Double carriage lights
Cheerful ones pour out light...
Here our hero drove up to the entryway;
He passes the doorman with an arrow
He flew up the marble steps,
I straightened my hair with my hand,
Has entered. The hall is full of people;
The music is already tired of thundering;
The crowd is busy with the mazurka;
There is noise and crowding all around;
The cavalry guard's spurs are jingling;
The legs of lovely ladies are flying;
In their captivating footsteps
Fiery eyes fly.
And drowned out by the roar of violins
Jealous whispers of fashionable wives.
(1, XXVII–XXVIII)

Dancing was an important structural element of noble life. Their role was significantly different from the function of dances in folk life of that time and from the modern one.

In the life of a Russian metropolitan nobleman of the 18th - early 19th centuries, time was divided into two halves: staying at home was devoted to family and economic concerns - here the nobleman acted as a private individual; the other half was occupied by service - military or civil, in which the nobleman acted as a loyal subject, serving the sovereign and the state, as a representative of the nobility in the face of other classes. The contrast between these two forms of behavior was filmed in the “meeting” that crowned the day - at a ball or evening party. Implemented here public life nobleman: he was neither a private person in private life, nor a serving man in public service - he was a nobleman in the assembly of the nobility, a man of his class among his own.

Thus, the ball turned out, on the one hand, to be an area opposite to the service - an area of relaxed communication, social recreation, a place where the boundaries of the official hierarchy were weakened. The presence of ladies, dancing, and social norms introduced extra-official value criteria, and a young lieutenant who danced deftly and knew how to make the ladies laugh could feel superior to an aging colonel who had been in battle. On the other hand, the ball was an area of public representation, a form of social organization, one of the few forms of collective life allowed in Russia at that time. In this sense Savor received the value of a public cause. Catherine II’s answer to Fonvizin’s question is typical: “Why aren’t we ashamed of not doing anything?” - “...living in society is not doing nothing.”

Since the time of Peter the Great's assemblies, the question of organizational forms social life. Forms of recreation, youth communication, and calendar ritual, which were basically common to both the people and the boyar-noble milieu, had to give way to a specifically noble structure of life. The internal organization of the ball was made a task of exceptional cultural importance, as it was intended to give forms of communication between “gentlemen” and “ladies” and to determine the type of social behavior within the culture of the nobility. This entailed the ritualization of the ball, the creation of a strict sequence of parts, and the identification of stable and obligatory elements. The grammar of the ball arose, and it itself developed into some kind of holistic theatrical performance, in which each element (from entering the hall to leaving) corresponded to typical emotions, fixed meanings, and styles of behavior. However, the strict ritual that brought the ball closer to the parade made all the more significant possible deviations, “ballroom liberties,” which compositionally increased towards its finale, building the ball as a struggle between “order” and “freedom.”

The main element of the ball as a social and aesthetic event was dancing. They served as the organizing core of the evening, setting the type and style of conversation. “Mazur chat” required superficial, shallow topics, but also entertaining and sharp conversation, and the ability to quickly respond epigrammatically. The ballroom conversation was far from that play of intellectual forces, “the fascinating conversation of the highest education” (Pushkin, VIII (1), 151), which was cultivated in the literary salons of Paris in the 18th century and the absence of which Pushkin complained about in Russia. Nevertheless, it had its own charm - the liveliness, freedom and ease of conversation between a man and a woman, who found themselves at the same time in the center of a noisy celebration, and in intimacy impossible in other circumstances (“Indeed, there is no place for confessions…” - 1, XXIX).

Dance training began early - from the age of five or six. For example, Pushkin began to study dancing already in 1808. Until the summer of 1811, he and his sister attended dance evenings with the Trubetskoy-Buturlins and Sushkovs, and on Thursdays children’s balls with the Moscow dance master Iogel. Iogel's balls are described in the memoirs of choreographer A.P. Glushkovsky.

As a student, he was 22 years old, fairly tall, and had considerable legs, albeit defective ones; then the teacher, unable to do anything himself, considered it his duty to use four people, two of whom twisted their legs, and two held their knees. No matter how much he screamed, they just laughed and didn’t want to hear about the pain - until his leg finally cracked, and then the tormentors left him.

I considered it my duty to tell this incident to warn others. It is not known who invented the leg machines; and machines with screws for the legs, knees and back: a very good invention! However, it can also become harmless from excess stress.”

Long-term training gave the young man not only dexterity during dancing, but also confidence in his movements, freedom and ease in posing his figure, which in a certain way influenced the person’s mental structure: in the conventional world of social communication, he felt confident and free, like an experienced actor on the stage. Grace, reflected in the precision of movements, was a sign of good upbringing. L. N. Tolstoy, describing the wife of a Decembrist who returned from Siberia in his novel “The Decembrists,” emphasizes that, despite long years spent in the most difficult conditions of voluntary exile, “it was impossible to imagine her otherwise than surrounded by respect and all the comforts of life. That she would ever be hungry and eat greedily, or that she would ever wear dirty laundry, or that she would trip, or forget to blow her nose - this could not happen to her. It was physically impossible. Why this was so - I don’t know, but every movement she made was majesty, grace, mercy for all those who could take advantage of her appearance...” It is characteristic that the ability to stumble here is associated not with external conditions, but with the character and upbringing of a person. Mental and physical grace are connected and exclude the possibility of inaccurate or ugly movements and gestures. The aristocratic simplicity of the movements of people of “good society” both in life and in literature is opposed by the stiffness or excessive swagger (the result of the struggle with one’s own shyness) of the commoner’s gestures. A striking example Herzen's memoirs preserved this. According to Herzen’s memoirs, “Belinsky was very shy and generally lost in unfamiliar society.” Herzen describes a typical incident at one of the literary evenings with the prince. V.F. Odoevsky: “Belinsky was completely lost at these evenings between some Saxon envoy who did not understand a word of Russian and some official of the Third Department who understood even those words that were kept silent. He usually fell ill for two or three days and cursed the one who persuaded him to go.

Once on Saturday, on the eve of the New Year, the owner decided to cook a roast en petit comité, when the main guests had left. Belinsky would certainly have left, but a barricade of furniture prevented him; he somehow hid in a corner, and a small table with wine and glasses was placed in front of him. Zhukovsky, in white uniform pants with a gold braid, sat down diagonally opposite him. Belinsky endured it for a long time, but, not seeing any improvement in his fate, he began to move the table somewhat; The table at first gave way, then swayed and slammed to the ground, the bottle of Bordeaux began to pour seriously on Zhukovsky. He jumped up, red wine flowing down his trousers; there was a hubbub, a servant rushed with a napkin to stain the rest of his trousers with wine, another picked up broken glasses... During this commotion, Belinsky disappeared and, close to death, ran home on foot.”

The ball at the beginning of the 19th century began with a Polish (polonaise), which replaced the minuet in the ceremonial function of the first dance. The minuet became a thing of the past along with royal France. “Since the changes that followed among Europeans both in clothing and in their way of thinking, news has appeared in dancing; and then the Polish, which has more freedom and is danced by an indefinite number of couples, and therefore frees from the excessive and strict restraint characteristic of the minuet, took the place of the original dance.”

One can probably associate with the polonaise the stanza of the eighth chapter, which is not included in the final text of Eugene Onegin, introducing Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna (the future empress) into the scene of the St. Petersburg ball; Pushkin calls her Lalla-Ruk after the masquerade costume of the heroine of T. Moore’s poem, which she wore during a masquerade in Berlin.

After Zhukovsky’s poem “Lalla-Ruk” this name became the poetic nickname of Alexandra Fedorovna:

And in the hall bright and rich
When in a silent, tight circle,
Like a winged lily,
Lalla-Ruk enters hesitatingly
And above the drooping crowd
Shines with a royal head,
And quietly curls and glides
Star - Harit between Harit,
And the gaze of mixed generations
Strives, with jealousy of grief,
Now at her, then at the king, -
For them without eyes there is only Evg<ений>;
One T<атьяной>amazed,
He sees only Tatyana.
(Pushkin, VI, 637)

The ball does not appear in Pushkin as an official ceremonial celebration, and therefore the polonaise is not mentioned. In War and Peace, Tolstoy, describing Natasha’s first ball, contrasts the polonaise, which opens “the sovereign, smiling and leading the mistress of the house by the hand” (“followed by the owner with M.A. Naryshkina, then ministers, various generals "), the second dance - the waltz, which becomes the moment of Natasha's triumph.

Second ballroom dance– waltz. Pushkin characterized him this way:

Monotonous and crazy
Like a whirlwind young life,
A noisy whirlwind swirls around the waltz;
Couple flashes after couple. (5, XLI)

The epithets “monotonous and crazy” have not only an emotional meaning. “Monotonous” - because, unlike the mazurka, in which at that time solo dances and the invention of new figures played a huge role, and even more so the dance-game of the cotillion, the waltz consisted of the same constantly repeated movements. The feeling of monotony was also enhanced by the fact that “at that time the waltz was danced in two steps, and not in three steps, as now.” The definition of the waltz as “crazy” has a different meaning: the waltz, despite its universal distribution (L. Petrovsky believes that “it would be unnecessary to describe how the waltz is generally danced, since there is almost not a single person who has not danced it himself or saw how it was danced"), enjoyed a reputation in the 1820s for being an obscene or at least excessively free dance. “This dance, in which, as is known, persons of both sexes turn and come together, requires proper caution<...>so that they do not dance too close to each other, which would offend decency.” Zhanlis wrote even more clearly in the “Critical and Systematic Dictionary of Court Etiquette”: “A young lady, lightly dressed, throws herself into the hands young man who presses her to his chest, who carries her away with such swiftness that her heart involuntarily begins to pound and her head goes spinning! That's what this waltz is!..<...>Modern youth are so natural that, putting refinement at nothing, they dance waltzes with glorified simplicity and passion.”

Not only the boring moralist Janlis, but also the fiery Werther Goethe considered the waltz a dance so intimate that he swore that he would not allow his future wife to dance it with anyone but himself.

The waltz created a particularly comfortable environment for gentle explanations: the proximity of the dancers contributed to intimacy, and the touching of hands made it possible to pass notes. The waltz was danced for a long time, you could interrupt it, sit down and then start again in the next round. Thus the dance created ideal conditions for gentle explanations:

On days of fun and desires
I was crazy about balls:
Or rather, there is no room for confessions
And for delivering a letter.
O you, honorable spouses!
I will offer you my services;
Please notice my speech:
I want to warn you.
You, mamas, are also stricter
Follow your daughters:
Hold your lorgnette straight! (1, XXIX)

However, Zhanlis’s words are also interesting in another respect: the waltz is contrasted with classical dances as romantic; passionate, crazy, dangerous and close to nature, he opposes the etiquette dances of the old time. The “common people” of the waltz was felt acutely: “Wiener Walz, consisting of two steps, which consist in stepping on the right and left foot and, moreover, danced as quickly as a crazy person; after which I leave it to the reader to judge whether it corresponds to a noble assembly or to some other.” The waltz was admitted to European balls as a tribute to the new times. It was a fashionable and youth dance.

The sequence of dances during the ball formed a dynamic composition. Each dance, having its own intonation and tempo, set a certain style of not only movement, but also conversation. In order to understand the essence of the ball, one must keep in mind that dancing was only the organizing core of it. The chain of dances also organized the sequence of moods. Each dance entailed topics of conversation suitable for him. It should be borne in mind that conversation was no less a part of the dance than movement and music. The expression “mazurka chatter” was not disparaging. Involuntary jokes, tender confessions and decisive explanations were distributed throughout the composition of successive dances. Interesting example We find changes in the topic of conversation in a sequence of dances in Anna Karenina. “Vronsky and Kitty went through several rounds of the waltz.” Tolstoy introduces us to a decisive moment in the life of Kitty, who is in love with Vronsky. She expects words of recognition from him that should decide her fate, but for important conversation a corresponding moment in the dynamics of the ball is needed. It is by no means possible to conduct it at any moment and not during any dance. “During the quadrille nothing significant was said, there was intermittent conversation.” “But Kitty didn’t expect anything more from the quadrille. She waited with bated breath for the mazurka. It seemed to her that everything should be decided in the mazurka.”

<...>The mazurka formed the center of the ball and marked its culmination. The Mazurka was danced with numerous fancy figures and a male solo that formed the climax of the dance. Both the soloist and the conductor of the mazurka had to show ingenuity and the ability to improvise. “The chic of the mazurka is that the gentleman takes the lady on his chest, immediately hitting himself with his heel in the center de gravité (not to say the ass), flies to the other end of the hall and says: “Mazurechka, sir,” and the lady says to him: “ Mazurechka, sir."<...>Then they rushed in pairs, and did not dance calmly, as they do now.” Within the mazurka there were several distinct styles. The difference between the capital and the provinces was expressed in the contrast between the “exquisite” and “bravura” performance of the mazurka:

The Mazurka sounded. It happened
When the mazurka thunder roared,
Everything in the huge hall was shaking,
The parquet cracked under the heel,
The frames shook and rattled;
Now it’s not the same: we, like ladies,
We slide on the varnished boards.
(5, XXII)

“When horseshoes and high boots appeared, taking steps, they began to knock mercilessly, so that when in one public meeting, where there were too two hundred young men, the music of the mazurka began to play<...>They made such a noise that they drowned out the music.”

But there was another contrast. The old “French” manner of performing the mazurka required the gentleman to easily jump, the so-called entrechat (Onegin, as the reader remembers, “danced the mazurka easily”). Entrechat, according to one dance reference book, is “a jump in which one foot hits the other three times while the body is in the air.” The French, “secular” and “amiable” style of mazurka in the 1820s began to be replaced by the English style associated with dandyism. The latter required the gentleman to make languid, lazy movements, emphasizing that he was bored with dancing and was doing it against his will. The gentleman refused the mazurka chatter and remained sullenly silent during the dance.

“... And in general, not a single fashionable gentleman dances now, it’s not supposed to be! - Is that so? - Mr. Smith asked in surprise<...>- No, I swear on my honor, no! - muttered Mr. Ritson. - No, unless they walk in a quadrille or spin in a waltz<...>no, to hell with dancing, it’s very vulgar!” Smirnova-Rosset’s memoirs tell an episode of her first meeting with Pushkin: while still an institute, she invited him to a mazurka. Pushkin silently and lazily walked with her around the hall a couple of times. The fact that Onegin “danced the mazurka easily” shows that his dandyism and fashionable disappointment were half fake in the first chapter of the “novel in verse.” For their sake, he could not refuse the pleasure of jumping in the mazurka.

The Decembrist and liberal of the 1820s adopted the “English” attitude towards dancing, bringing it to the point of completely abandoning it. In Pushkin’s “Novel in Letters,” Vladimir writes to a friend: “Your speculative and important reasoning dates back to 1818. At that time, strict rules and political economy were in vogue. We showed up at balls without taking off our swords (you couldn’t dance with a sword, an officer who wanted to dance unfastened the sword and left it with the doorman. - Yu. L.) - it was indecent for us to dance and there was no time to deal with the ladies” (VIII (1), 55 ). Liprandi did not have dancing at serious friendly evenings. Decembrist N. I. Turgenev wrote to his brother Sergei on March 25, 1819 about the surprise that the news caused him that the latter danced at a ball in Paris (S. I. Turgenev was in France with the commander of the Russian expeditionary force, Count M. S. Vorontsov ): “I hear you dancing. His daughter wrote to Count Golovin that she danced with you. And so, with some surprise, I learned that now they also dance in France! Une écossaise constitutionelle, indpéndante, ou une contredanse monarchique ou une danse contre-monarchique" (constitutional ecosession, independent ecosession, monarchical country dance or anti-monarchical dance - the play on words is in the enumeration political parties: constitutionalists, independents, monarchists - and the use of the prefix “counter” either as a dance or as a political term). The complaint of Princess Tugoukhovskaya in “Woe from Wit” is connected with these same sentiments: “Dancers have become terribly rare!”

The contrast between the man who talks about Adam Smith and the man who dancing the waltz or a mazurka, was emphasized by a remark after Chatsky’s program monologue: “He looks around, everyone is spinning in the waltz with the greatest zeal.” Pushkin's poems:

Buyanov, my perky brother,
He brought Tatiana and Olga to our hero... (5, XLIII, XLIV)

They mean one of the mazurka figures: two ladies (or gentlemen) are brought to the gentleman (or lady) and asked to choose. Choosing a mate was perceived as a sign of interest, favor, or (as Lensky interpreted) love. Nicholas I reproached Smirnova-Rosset: “Why don’t you choose me?” In some cases, the choice was associated with guessing the qualities envisioned by the dancers: “Three ladies approached them with questions - oubli ou regret - interrupted the conversation...” (Pushkin, VIII (1), 244). Or in “After the Ball” by L. Tolstoy: “...I didn’t dance the mazurka with her/<...>When we were brought to her and she did not guess my quality, she, giving her hand not to me, shrugged her thin shoulders and, as a sign of regret and consolation, smiled at me.”

Cotillion - a type of quadrille, one of the dances that concludes the ball - was danced to the tune of a waltz and was a dance-game, the most relaxed, varied and playful dance. “... There they make a cross and a circle, and they seat the lady, triumphantly bringing the gentlemen to her so that she can choose with whom she wants to dance, and in other places they kneel before her; but in order to reward themselves in return, the men also sit down in order to choose the kind of lady they like.

This is followed by figures making jokes, giving cards, knots made from handkerchiefs, deceiving or bouncing off one another in a dance, jumping high over a handkerchief...”

The ball was not the only opportunity to have a fun and noisy night. The alternatives were:

...games of riotous youths,
Thunderstorms of guard patrols... (Pushkin, VI, 621)

Single drinking bouts in the company of young revelers, brigand officers, famous “naughty people” and drunkards. The ball, as a decent and completely secular pastime, was opposed to this revelry, which, although cultivated in certain guards circles, was generally perceived as a manifestation of " bad taste", acceptable for a young man only within certain, moderate limits. M.D. Buturlin, prone to a free and wild life, recalled that there was a moment when he “did not miss a single ball.” This, he writes, “made my mother very happy, as proof, que j"avais pris le goût de la bonne société.” However, the taste for a reckless life took over: “I had quite frequent lunches and dinners at my apartment. My guests were some of our officers and St. Petersburg civilians were my acquaintances, mostly foreigners; there was, of course, a flood of champagne and booze. main mistake mine was that after the first visits with my brother at the beginning of my visit to Princess Maria Vasilyevna Kochubey, Natalya Kirillovna Zagryazhskaya (who meant a lot at that time) and others related or previously acquainted with our family, I stopped visiting this high society. I remember how once, when leaving the French Kamennoostrovsky theater, my old friend Elisaveta Mikhailovna Khitrova, recognizing me, exclaimed: “Oh, Michel!” stage, turned sharply to the right past the columns of the facade; but since there was no way out into the street, I flew headlong to the ground from a considerable height, risking breaking an arm or leg. Unfortunately, the habits of a riotous and wide-open life in the circle of army comrades with late drinking in restaurants had taken root in me, and therefore trips to high-society salons burdened me, as a result of which a few months passed when the members of that society decided (and not without reason) that I’m a little guy, mired in the whirlpool of bad society.”

A brutal card game and noisy walks through the streets of St. Petersburg at night completed the picture. Noisy street adventures - “the thunderstorm of midnight watches” (Pushkin, VIII, 3) - were a common night activity for “naughty people”. The nephew of the poet Delvig recalls: “... Pushkin and Delvig told us about the walks that they took on the streets of St. Petersburg after graduating from the Lyceum, and about their various pranks and mocked us, young men, who not only did not find fault with anyone, but even stopping others who are ten or more years older than us...

Having read the description of this walk, you might think that Pushkin, Delvig and all the other men walking with them, with the exception of brother Alexander and me, were drunk, but I can definitely certify that this was not the case, but they just wanted to shake the old fashioned and show it to us , to the younger generation, as if in reproach to our more serious and thoughtful behavior.” In the same spirit, although somewhat later - at the very end of the 1820s, Buturlin and his friends tore off the scepter and orb from the double-headed eagle (pharmacy sign) and walked with them through the city center. This “prank” already had a rather dangerous political connotation: it gave rise to criminal charges of “lese majeste.” It is no coincidence that the acquaintance to whom they appeared in this form “could never remember without fear this night visit of ours.”

This is no coincidence: “crazy feasts”, youth revelry against the backdrop of the Arakcheevskaya (later Nikolaevskaya) capital inevitably took on oppositional tones (see the chapter “Decembrist in Everyday Life”).

The ball had a harmonious composition. It was like some kind of festive whole, subordinated to the movement from the strict form of ceremonial ballet to variable forms of choreographic acting. However, in order to understand the meaning of the ball as a whole, it should be understood in contrast to the two extreme poles: the parade and the masquerade.

The parade in the form it received under the influence of the peculiar “creativity” of Paul I and the Pavlovichs: Alexander, Konstantin and Nicholas, was a unique, carefully thought out ritual. It was the opposite of fighting. And von Bock was right when he called it “the triumph of nothingness.” A battle required initiative, a parade required submission, turning the army into a ballet. In relation to the parade, the ball acted as something exactly the opposite. The ball contrasted subordination, discipline, and erasure of personality with fun, freedom, and the harsh depression of a person with his joyful excitement. In this sense, the chronological course of the day from the parade or preparation for it - exercise, arena and other types of “kings of science” (Pushkin) - to ballet, holiday, ball represented a movement from subordination to freedom and from rigid monotony to fun and variety.

However, the ball was subject to strict laws. The degree of rigidity of this subordination varied: between balls of thousands in the Winter Palace, dedicated to especially solemn dates, and small balls in the houses of provincial landowners with dancing to the serf orchestra or even to the violin played by a German teacher, there was a long and multi-stage path. The degree of freedom was different at different stages of this path. And yet, the fact that the ball presupposed composition and strict internal organization limited the freedom within it. This necessitated the need for another element that would play in this system the role of “organized disorganization,” planned and foreseen chaos. The masquerade took on this role.

Masquerade dressing, in principle, contradicted deep church traditions. In the Orthodox consciousness, this was one of the most stable signs of demonism. Dressing up and elements of masquerade in folk culture were allowed only in those ritual actions of the Christmas and spring cycles, which were supposed to imitate the exorcism of demons and in which the remnants of pagan ideas found refuge. That's why European tradition masquerade penetrated into the noble life of the 18th century with difficulty, or merged with folkloric mummery.

As a form of noble celebration, the masquerade was a closed and almost secret fun. Elements of blasphemy and rebellion appeared in two characteristic episodes: both Elizaveta Petrovna and Catherine II, when carrying out coups d'etat, dressed up in men's guards uniforms and mounted horses like men. Here, the mummering took on a symbolic character: a woman, a contender for the throne, turned into an emperor. One can compare with this Shcherbatov’s use of one person—Elizabeth—in different situations names are either masculine or feminine.

From military-state dressing up, the next step led to masquerade play. One might recall in this regard the projects of Catherine II. If such masquerade masquerades were held publicly as, for example, the famous carousel, to which Grigory Orlov and other participants appeared in knightly costumes, then in complete secrecy, in the closed premises of the Small Hermitage, Catherine found it amusing to hold completely different masquerades. So, for example, with her own hand she wrote detailed plan a holiday in which separate changing rooms would be made for men and women, so that all the ladies would suddenly appear in men's suits, and all the gentlemen wore ladies' clothes (Catherine was not disinterested here: such a suit emphasized her slimness, and the huge guards, of course, would have looked comical).

The masquerade that we encounter when reading Lermontov's play - the St. Petersburg masquerade in Engelhardt's house on the corner of Nevsky and Moika - had the exact opposite character. This was the first public masquerade in Russia. Anyone who paid a fee could visit it. admission ticket. The fundamental mixing of visitors, social contrasts, permitted licentiousness of behavior, which turned Engelhardt's masquerades into the center of scandalous stories and rumors - all this created a spicy counterbalance to the severity of St. Petersburg balls.

Let us recall the joke that Pushkin put into the mouth of a foreigner who said that in St. Petersburg morality is guaranteed by the fact that summer nights are light, and winter ones are cold. These obstacles did not exist for Engelhardt's balls. Lermontov included a significant hint in “Masquerade”:

Arbenin
It would not be bad for both you and me to be scattered.
After all, today is the holidays and, of course, a masquerade
At Engelhardt...<...>

Prince
There are women there... it's a miracle...
And they even go there and say...

Arbenin
Let them talk, but what do we care?
Under the mask, all ranks are equal,
The mask has neither a soul nor a title; it has a body.
And if the features are hidden by a mask,
Then the mask from feelings is boldly torn off.

The role of the masquerade in the prim and uniformed St. Petersburg of Nicholas can be compared with how the jaded French courtiers of the Regency era, having exhausted all forms of refinement during the long night, went to some dirty tavern in a dubious area of Paris and greedily devoured the fetid boiled unwashed intestines. It was the sharpness of the contrast that created here a refined and satiated experience.

To the words of the prince in the same drama by Lermontov: “All masks are stupid,” Arbenin responds with a monologue glorifying the surprise and unpredictability that the mask brings to a prim society:

Yes, there is no stupid mask: Silent...
Mysterious, she will talk - so cute.
You can put it into words
A smile, a look, whatever you want...
For example, look there -
How nobly he speaks
Tall Turkish woman... so plump
How her chest breathes both passionately and freely!
Do you know who she is?
Perhaps a proud countess or princess,
Diana in society... Venus in a masquerade,
And it may also be that this same beauty
He will come to you tomorrow evening for half an hour.

The parade and masquerade formed the brilliant frame of the picture, in the center of which was the ball.

We associate the ball only with a holiday. In fact, it had a complex structure - dances, conversations, customs.

The ball was contrasted with everyday life, service and, on the other hand, a military parade. And the ball itself was contrasted with other ways to spend time - for example, drinking parties and masquerades. All this is discussed in the book of a famous culturologist.
Of course, we were unable to edit the text of a well-known monograph. But we allowed ourselves to make subheadings (from Lotman’s text) for ease of reading on the screen. And the editor's comments were added.

Part two

Now we have something wrong in the subject:

We better hurry to the ball,

Where to headlong in a Yamsk carriage

My Onegin has already galloped.

In front of the faded houses

Along the sleepy street in rows

Double carriage lights

Cheerful ones pour out light...

Here our hero drove up to the entryway;

He passes the doorman with an arrow

He flew up the marble steps,

I straightened my hair with my hand,

Has entered. The hall is full of people;

The music is already tired of thundering;

The crowd is busy with the mazurka;

There is noise and crowding all around;

The cavalry guard's spurs are jingling*;

The legs of lovely ladies are flying;

In their captivating footsteps

Fiery eyes fly.

And drowned out by the roar of violins

Jealous whispers of fashionable wives.

(“Eugene Onegin”, chapter 1, XXVII-XXVIII)

Note Pushkin: “Inaccuracy. - At balls, cavalry officers appear in the same way as other guests, in a uniform and boots. It's a valid point, but there's something poetic about Spurs. I refer to the opinion of A.I.V.” (VI, 528).

Dancing was an important structural element of noble life. Their role was significantly different from both the function of dances in the folk life of that time and from the modern one.

In the life of a Russian metropolitan nobleman of the 18th - early 19th centuries, time was divided into two halves: staying at home was devoted to family and economic concerns, here the nobleman acted as a private person; the other half was occupied by service - military or civil, in which the nobleman acted as a loyal subject, serving the sovereign and the state, as a representative of the nobility in the face of other classes.

The contrast between these two forms of behavior was filmed in the “meeting” that crowned the day - at a ball or evening party. Here the social life of a nobleman was realized: he was neither a private person in private life, nor a serving man in public service; he was a nobleman in an assembly of nobles, a man of his class among his own.

The presence of ladies, dancing, and social norms introduced extra-official value criteria, and a young lieutenant who danced deftly and knew how to make the ladies laugh could feel superior to an aging colonel who had been in battle.

(Editor's note: Well, nothing has changed in dancing since then).

On the other hand, the ball was an area of public representation, a form of social organization, one of the few forms of collective life allowed in Russia at that time. In this sense, secular life received the value of a public cause.

Catherine II’s answer to Fonvizin’s question is typical: “Why aren’t we ashamed of not doing anything?” - “...living in society is not doing nothing.”

Assembly. The author of the event was very flattered. And at first the interiors were simpler, and the ladies with their gentlemen, taken out of caftans and sundresses into uniforms (okay, a German caftan is almost a uniform) and corsets with a neckline (but this is horror) behaved more constrained. Peter's documents on ballroom etiquette are very clearly written - just a pleasure to read.

Since the time of Peter the Great's assemblies, the question of organizational forms of secular life has also become acute.

Forms of recreation, youth communication, and calendar ritual, which were basically common to both the people and the boyar-noble milieu, had to give way to a specifically noble structure of life.

The internal organization of the ball was made a task of exceptional cultural importance, as it was intended to give forms of communication between “gentlemen” and “ladies” and to determine the type of social behavior within the culture of the nobility. This entailed the ritualization of the ball, the creation of a strict sequence of parts, and the identification of stable and obligatory elements.

The grammar of the ball arose, and it itself developed into some kind of holistic theatrical performance, in which each element (from entering the hall to leaving) corresponded to typical emotions, fixed meanings, and styles of behavior.

However, the strict ritual that brought the ball closer to the parade made all the more significant possible deviations, “ballroom liberties,” which compositionally increased towards its finale, building the ball as a struggle between “order” and “freedom.”

The main element of the ball as a social and aesthetic event was dancing.

They served as the organizing core of the evening, setting the type and style of conversation. “Mazur chat” required superficial, shallow topics, but also entertaining and sharp conversation, and the ability to quickly respond epigrammatically.

The ballroom conversation was far from that play of intellectual forces, “the fascinating conversation of the highest education” (Pushkin, VIII (1), 151), which was cultivated in the literary salons of Paris in the 18th century and the absence of which Pushkin complained about in Russia. Nevertheless, it had its own charm - the liveliness, freedom and ease of conversation between a man and a woman, who found themselves at the same time in the center of a noisy celebration, and in otherwise impossible intimacy (“Indeed, there is no place for confessions…” - 1, XXIX).

Dance training began early - from the age of five or six.

For example, Pushkin began to study dancing already in 1808. Until the summer of 1811, he and his sister attended dance evenings with the Trubetskoys, Buturlins and Sushkovs, and on Thursdays children’s balls with the Moscow dance master Yogel.

Yogel's balls are described in the memoirs of choreographer A.P. Glushkovsky. Early dance training was painful and reminiscent of the harsh training of an athlete or the training of a recruit by a diligent sergeant major.

The compiler of the “Rules”, published in 1825, L. Petrovsky, himself an experienced dance master, describes some of the methods of initial training as follows, condemning not the method itself, but only its too harsh application:

“The teacher must pay attention to ensure that students do not suffer from severe stress to their health. Someone told me that the teacher considered it an indispensable rule that the student, despite his natural inability, should keep his legs to the side, like him, in a parallel line.

Long-term training gave the young man not only dexterity during dancing, but also confidence in movements, freedom and ease in posing his figure in a certain way. also influenced the mental structure of a person: in the conventional world of social communication, he felt confident and free, like an experienced actor on stage. Grace, reflected in the precision of movements, was a sign of good upbringing.

L. N. Tolstoy, describing in the novel “Decembrists” (Editor's note: Tolstoy’s unfinished novel, on which he worked in 1860-1861 and from which he moved on to write the novel “War and Peace”), the wife of a Decembrist who returned from Siberia, emphasizes that, despite the many years she spent in the most difficult conditions of voluntary exile,

“It was impossible to imagine her otherwise than surrounded by respect and all the comforts of life. That she would ever be hungry and eat greedily, or that she would ever have dirty underwear on, or that she would trip, or forget to blow her nose - this could not happen to her. It was physically impossible.

Why this was so - I don’t know, but every movement she made was majesty, grace, mercy for all those who could take advantage of her appearance...”

It is characteristic that the ability to stumble here is associated not with external conditions, but with the character and upbringing of a person. Mental and physical grace are connected and exclude the possibility of inaccurate or ugly movements and gestures.

The aristocratic simplicity of the movements of people of “good society” both in life and in literature is opposed by the stiffness or excessive swagger (the result of the struggle with one’s own shyness) of the commoner’s gestures. A striking example of this is preserved in Herzen’s memoirs.

According to Herzen’s memoirs, “Belinsky was very shy and generally lost in unfamiliar society.”

Herzen describes a typical incident at one of the literary evenings with the prince. V.F. Odoevsky: “Belinsky was completely lost at these evenings between some Saxon envoy who did not understand a word of Russian and some official of the Third Department who understood even those words that were kept silent. He usually fell ill for two or three days and cursed the one who persuaded him to go.

Once on Saturday, on the eve of the New Year, the owner decided to cook a roast en petit comite, when the main guests had left. Belinsky would certainly have left, but a barricade of furniture prevented him; he somehow hid in a corner, and a small table with wine and glasses was placed in front of him. Zhukovsky, in white uniform pants with gold braid, sat down diagonally opposite him.

Belinsky endured it for a long time, but, not seeing any improvement in his fate, he began to move the table somewhat; The table at first gave way, then swayed and slammed to the ground, the bottle of Bordeaux began to pour seriously on Zhukovsky. He jumped up, red wine flowing down his trousers; there was a hubbub, a servant rushed with a napkin to stain the rest of his trousers with wine, another picked up broken glasses... During this commotion, Belinsky disappeared and, close to death, ran home on foot.”

The ball at the beginning of the 19th century began with a Polish (polonaise), which replaced the minuet in the ceremonial function of the first dance.

The minuet became a thing of the past along with royal France. “Since the changes that followed among Europeans both in clothing and in their way of thinking, news has appeared in dancing; and then the Polish, which has more freedom and is danced by an indefinite number of couples, and therefore frees from the excessive and strict restraint characteristic of the minuet, took the place of the original dance.”

And in the hall bright and rich

When in a silent, tight circle,

Like a winged lily,

Lalla-Ruk enters hesitatingly

And above the drooping crowd

Shines with a royal head,

And quietly curls and glides

Star-Kharit between Harit,

And the gaze of mixed generations

Strives, with jealousy of grief,

Now at her, then at the king, -

For them, Evgenia is the only one without eyes.

I'm amazed by Tatiana alone,

He sees only Tatyana.

(Pushkin, VI, 637).

The ball does not appear in Pushkin as an official ceremonial celebration, and therefore the polonaise is not mentioned. In War and Peace, Tolstoy, describing Natasha’s first ball, contrasts the polonaise, which opens “the sovereign, smiling and leading the mistress of the house by the hand” (“followed by the owner with M.A. Naryshkina *, then ministers, various generals"), the second dance - the waltz, which becomes the moment of Natasha’s triumph.

L. Petrovsky believes that “it would be unnecessary to describe how M. A. Naryshkina is the mistress, and not the wife of the emperor, and therefore cannot open the ball in the first couple, while Pushkin’s “Lalla-Ruk” is in the first couple with Alexander I.

The second ballroom dance is the waltz.

Pushkin characterized him this way:

Monotonous and crazy

Like a young whirlwind of life,

A noisy whirlwind swirls around the waltz;

Couple flashes after couple.

The epithets “monotonous and crazy” have not only an emotional meaning.

“Monotonous” - because, unlike the mazurka, in which at that time solo dances and the invention of new figures played a huge role, and even more so the dance-game of the cotillion, the waltz consisted of the same constantly repeated movements. The feeling of monotony was also enhanced by the fact that “at that time the waltz was danced in two steps, and not in three steps, as now.”

The definition of the waltz as “crazy” has a different meaning: the waltz, despite its universal distribution, for there is almost not a single person who has not danced it himself or has not seen it danced), the waltz enjoyed a reputation in the 1820s for being obscene or, at least, an excessively free dance.

“This dance, in which, as is known, persons of both sexes turn and come together, requires due care so that they do not dance too close to each other, which would offend decency.”

(Editor's note: Wow, we heard about the dream).

Janlis wrote even more clearly in the “Critical and Systematic Dictionary of Court Etiquette”: “A young lady, lightly dressed, throws herself into the arms of a young man who presses her to his chest, who carries her away with such swiftness that her heart involuntarily begins to pound and her head goes around! This is what this waltz is!..Modern youth is so natural that, putting sophistication at nothing, they dance waltzes with glorified simplicity and passion.”

The waltz created a particularly comfortable environment for gentle explanations: the proximity of the dancers contributed to intimacy, and the touching of hands made it possible to pass notes. The waltz was danced for a long time, you could interrupt it, sit down and then start again in the next round. Thus, the dance created the ideal conditions for gentle explanations:

On days of fun and desires

I was crazy about balls:

Or rather, there is no room for confessions

And for delivering a letter.

O you, honorable spouses!

I will offer you my services;

Please notice my speech:

I want to warn you.

You, mamas, are also stricter

Follow your daughters:

Hold your lorgnette straight!

The “common people” of the waltz was felt acutely: “Wiener Walz, consisting of two steps, which consist in stepping on the right and left foot and, moreover, danced as quickly as crazy; after which I leave it to the reader to judge whether it corresponds to a noble assembly or to some other.”

The waltz was admitted to European balls as a tribute to the new times. It was a fashionable and youth dance.

The sequence of dances during the ball formed a dynamic composition. Each dance, having its own intonation and tempo, set a certain style of not only movement, but also conversation.

In order to understand the essence of the ball, one must keep in mind that dancing was only the organizing core of it. The chain of dances also organized the sequence of moods. Each dance entailed topics of conversation suitable for him.

It should be borne in mind that conversation was no less a part of the dance than movement and music. The expression “mazurka chatter” was not disparaging. Involuntary jokes, tender confessions and decisive explanations were distributed throughout the composition of successive dances.

An interesting example of changing the topic of conversation in a sequence of dances is found in Anna Karenina.

“Vronsky and Kitty went through several rounds of the waltz.”

Tolstoy introduces us to a decisive moment in the life of Kitty, who is in love with Vronsky. She expects words of recognition from him that should decide her fate, but for an important conversation a corresponding moment in the dynamics of the ball is necessary. It is by no means possible to conduct it at any moment and not during any dance.

“During the quadrille nothing significant was said, there was intermittent conversation.” “But Kitty didn’t expect anything more from the quadrille. She waited with bated breath for the mazurka. It seemed to her that everything should be decided in the mazurka.”

The mazurka formed the center of the ball and marked its culmination. The Mazurka was danced with numerous fancy figures and a male solo that formed the climax of the dance. Both the soloist and the conductor of the mazurka had to show ingenuity and the ability to improvise.

“The chic of the mazurka is that the gentleman takes the lady on his chest, immediately hitting himself with his heel in the center de gravit (not to say the ass), flies to the other end of the hall and says: “Mazurechka, sir,” and the lady says to him: “ Mazurechka, sir." Then they rushed in pairs, and did not dance calmly, as they do now.”

Within the mazurka there were several distinct styles. The difference between the capital and the provinces was expressed in the contrast between the “exquisite” and “bravura” performance of the mazurka:

The Mazurka sounded. It happened

When the mazurka thunder roared,

Everything in the huge hall was shaking,

The parquet cracked under the heel,

The frames shook and rattled;

Now it’s not the same: we, like ladies,

We slide on the varnished boards.

“When horseshoes and high boots appeared, when taking steps, they began to knock mercilessly, so that when there were not too two hundred young males in one public meeting, the mazurka music began to play, and they raised such a clattering noise that the music was drowned out.”

Entrechat, according to one dance reference book, is “a jump in which one foot hits the other three times while the body is in the air.”

The French, “secular” and “amiable” style of mazurka in the 1820s began to be replaced by the English style associated with dandyism. The latter required the gentleman to make languid, lazy movements, emphasizing that he was bored with dancing and was doing it against his will. The gentleman refused the mazurka chatter and remained sullenly silent during the dance.

“...And in general, not a single fashionable gentleman dances now, it’s not supposed to. - Is that so? - Mr. Smith asked in surprise. “No, I swear on my honor, no!” muttered Mr. Ritson. “No, unless they walk in a quadrille or twirl in a waltz, no, to hell with dancing, it’s very vulgar!”

Smirnova-Rosset’s memoirs tell an episode of her first meeting with Pushkin: while still an institute, she invited him to a mazurka. ( Editor's note: SHE invited? Ooo!) Pushkin silently and lazily walked with her around the hall a couple of times.

The fact that Onegin “danced the mazurka easily” shows that his dandyism and fashionable disappointment were half fake in the first chapter of the “novel in verse.” For their sake, he could not refuse the pleasure of jumping in the mazurka.

“Your speculative and important reasoning dates back to 1818. At that time, strict rules and political economy were in vogue. We showed up at balls without taking off our swords (you couldn’t dance with a sword, an officer who wanted to dance unfastened the sword and left it with the doorman. - Yu. L.) - it was indecent for us to dance and had no time to deal with the ladies” (VIII (1), 55 ).

Liprandi did not have dancing at serious friendly evenings. Decembrist N. I. Turgenev wrote to his brother Sergei on March 25, 1819 about the surprise that the news caused him that the latter danced at a ball in Paris (S. I. Turgenev was in France with the commander of the Russian expeditionary force, Count M. S. Vorontsov ): “I hear you dancing. His daughter wrote to Count Golovin that she danced with you. And so, with some surprise, I learned that now they also dance in France! Une ecossaise constitutionelle, indpendante, ou une contredanse monarchique ou une dansc contre-monarchique" (constitutional ecosession, independent ecosession, monarchical country dance or anti-monarchical dance - the play on words lies in the listing of political parties: constitutionalists, independents, monarchists - and the use of the prefix "contr" sometimes as a dance term, sometimes as a political term).

The complaint of Princess Tugoukhovskaya in “Woe from Wit” is connected with these same sentiments: “Dancers have become terribly rare!” The contrast between a person talking about Adam Smith and a person dancing a waltz or mazurka was emphasized by the remark after Chatsky’s program monologue: “He looks around, everyone is twirling in the waltz with the greatest zeal.”

Pushkin's poems:

Buyanov, my perky brother,

He brought us to our hero

Tatiana and Olga... (5, XLIII, XLIV)

they mean one of the mazurka figures: two ladies (or gentlemen) are brought to the gentleman (or lady) with a proposal to choose. Choosing a mate was perceived as a sign of interest, favor, or (as Lensky interpreted) love. Nicholas I reproached Smirnova-Rosset: “Why don’t you choose me?”

In some cases, the choice was associated with guessing the qualities envisioned by the dancers: “Three ladies who approached them with questions - oubli ou regret * - interrupted the conversation...” (Pushkin, VDI (1), 244).

Or in “After the Ball” by L. Tolstoy: “I danced the mazurka not with her. When we were brought to her and she did not guess my quality, she, giving her hand not to me, shrugged her thin shoulders and, as a sign of regret and consolation, smiled to me".

Cotillion - a type of quadrille, one of the dances that concludes the ball - was danced to the tune of a waltz and was a dance-game, the most relaxed, varied and playful dance. “...There they make a cross and a circle, and they seat the lady, triumphantly bringing the gentlemen to her so that she can choose with whom she wants to dance, and in other places they kneel before her; but in order to thank themselves in return, the men also sit down in order to choose the lady they like. Then come the figures with jokes, the presentation of cards, knots made from scarves, deception or bouncing off one another in a dance, jumping high over a scarf...”

The ball was not the only opportunity to have a fun and noisy night.

The alternative was

:...games of riotous youths, Thunderstorms of guard patrols..

(Pushkin, VI, 621)

single drinking bouts in the company of young revelers, bribery officers, famous “scamps” and drunkards.

The ball, as a decent and completely secular pastime, was contrasted with this revelry, which, although cultivated in certain guards circles, was generally perceived as a manifestation of “bad taste”, acceptable for a young man only within certain, moderate limits.

(Editor's note: Yes, as permitted, tell me. But about “hussarism” and “riot” there in another chapter).

M.D. Buturlin, prone to a free and wild life, recalled that there was a moment when he “did not miss a single ball.” This, he writes, “made my mother very happy, as proof, que j’avais pris le gout de la bonne societe”**. However, Oblivion or Regret (French). that I loved being in good company (French). the taste for a reckless life took over:

“I had quite frequent lunches and dinners at my apartment. My guests were some of our officers and my civilian St. Petersburg acquaintances, mostly foreigners; here, of course, there was a sea of champagne and burnt liquor on tap. But my main mistake was that after the first visits with my brother at the beginning of my visit to Princess Maria Vasilyevna Kochubey, Natalya Kirillovna Zagryazhskaya (who was very important at that time) and others in my family or previous acquaintance with our family, I stopped visiting this high society .

I remember how once, when leaving the French Kamennoostrovsky Theater, my old friend Elisaveta Mikhailovna Khitrova, recognizing me, exclaimed: Oh, Michel! And I, in order to avoid meeting and explicating her, rather than go down the stairs of the restyle where this scene took place, turned sharply to the right past the columns of the facade; but since there was no way out into the street, I flew headlong to the ground from a considerable height, risking breaking an arm or leg.

Unfortunately, the habits of a riotous and wide-open life in the circle of army comrades with late drinking in restaurants had taken root in me, and therefore trips to high-society salons burdened me, as a result of which a few months passed when the members of that society decided (and not without reason) that I’m a little guy, mired in the whirlpool of bad society.”

Late drinking sessions, starting in one of the St. Petersburg restaurants, ended somewhere in the “Red Zucchini”, which stood about seven miles along the Peterhof road and was a former favorite place for officers’ revelry. A brutal card game and noisy walks through the streets of St. Petersburg at night completed the picture. Noisy street adventures - “the thunderstorm of midnight watches” (Pushkin, VIII, 3) - were a common night activity for “naughty people”.

The nephew of the poet Delvig recalls: “... Pushkin and Delvig told us about the walks that they took on the streets of St. Petersburg after graduating from the Lyceum, and about their various pranks and mocked us, young men, who not only did not find fault with anyone, but even stopping others who are ten or more years older than us...

In the same spirit, although somewhat later - at the very end of the 1820s, Buturlin and his friends tore off the scepter and orb from the double-headed eagle (pharmacy sign) and walked with them through the center of the city. This “prank” already had a rather dangerous political connotation: it gave rise to criminal charges of “lese majeste.” It is no coincidence that the acquaintance to whom they appeared in this form “could never remember without fear this night visit of ours.”

If he got away with this adventure, then for trying to feed a bust of the emperor with soup in a restaurant, punishment followed: Buturlin’s civilian friends were exiled to civil service in the Caucasus and Astrakhan, and he was transferred to a provincial army regiment. This is no coincidence: “crazy feasts”, youth revelry against the backdrop of the Arakcheevskaya (later Nikolaevskaya) capital inevitably took on oppositional tones (see the chapter “Decembrist in Everyday Life”).

The ball had a harmonious composition.

It was like some kind of festive whole, subordinated to the movement from the strict form of ceremonial ballet to variable forms of choreographic acting. However, in order to understand the meaning of the ball as a whole, it should be understood in contrast to the two extreme poles: the parade and the masquerade.

In relation to the parade, the ball acted as something exactly the opposite. The ball contrasted subordination, discipline, and erasure of personality with fun, freedom, and the harsh depression of a person with his joyful excitement. In this sense, the chronological course of the day from the parade or preparation for it - exercise, arena and other types of “kings of science” (Pushkin) - to ballet, holiday, ball represented a movement from subordination to freedom and from rigid monotony to fun and variety.

This necessitated the need for another element that would play in this system the role of “organized disorganization,” planned and foreseen chaos. The masquerade took on this role.

Masquerade dressing, in principle, contradicted deep church traditions. In the Orthodox consciousness, this was one of the most stable signs of demonism. Dressing up and elements of masquerade in folk culture were allowed only in those ritual actions of the Christmas and spring cycles, which were supposed to imitate the exorcism of demons and in which the remnants of pagan ideas found refuge. Therefore, the European tradition of masquerade penetrated into the noble life of the 18th century with difficulty or merged with folkloric mummery.

Here, the mummering took on a symbolic character: a woman - a contender for the throne - turned into an emperor. One can compare with this Shcherbatov’s use of names in relation to one person - Elizabeth - in different situations, either in the masculine or in the feminine gender. One could also compare with this the custom for the empress to dress in the uniform of those guard regiments that are honored with a visit.

From military-state dressing up* the next step led to masquerade play. One might recall in this regard the projects of Catherine II. If such masquerade masquerades were held publicly as, for example, the famous carousel, to which Grigory Orlov and other participants appeared in knightly costumes, then in complete secrecy, in the closed premises of the Small Hermitage, Catherine found it amusing to hold completely different masquerades.

So, for example, with her own hand she drew up a detailed plan for a holiday in which separate rooms for changing clothes would be made for men and women, so that all the ladies would suddenly appear in men's suits, and all the gentlemen in ladies' suits (Catherine was not disinterested here: such the costume emphasized her slimness, and the huge guards, of course, would have looked comical).

The fundamental mixing of visitors, social contrasts, permitted licentiousness of behavior, which turned Engelhardt's masquerades into the center of scandalous stories and rumors - all this created a spicy counterbalance to the severity of St. Petersburg balls.

Let us recall the joke that Pushkin put into the mouth of a foreigner, who said that in St. Petersburg morality is guaranteed by the fact that summer nights are bright and winter nights are cold. These obstacles did not exist for Engelhardt's balls.

Lermontov included a significant hint in “Masquerade”: Arbenin

It would be good for both you and me to scatter

After all, today is the holidays and, of course, a masquerade

At Engelhardt...

There are women there... it's a miracle...

And they even go there and say...

Let them talk, but what do we care?

Under the mask, all ranks are equal,

The mask has neither a soul nor a title; it has a body.

And if the features are hidden by a mask,

Then the mask from feelings is boldly torn off.

Yes, there is no stupid mask:

She is silent... mysterious, but she will speak - so sweet.

You can put it into words

A smile, a look, whatever you want...

For example, take a look there -

How nobly he speaks

Tall Turkish woman... so plump

How her chest breathes both passionately and freely!

Do you know who she is?

Perhaps a proud countess or princess,

Diana in society...Venus in a masquerade,

And it may also be that this same beauty

He will come to you tomorrow evening for half an hour.

The parade and masquerade formed the brilliant frame of the picture, in the center of which was the ball.

In loving memory of my parents Alexandra Samoilovna and Mikhail Lvovich Lotman

The publication was published with the assistance of the Federal Target Program for Book Publishing of Russia and international fund"Cultural Initiative".

“Conversations about Russian Culture” belongs to the pen of the brilliant researcher of Russian culture Yu. M. Lotman. At one time, the author responded with interest to the proposal of “Arts - SPB” to prepare a publication based on a series of lectures that he gave on television. He carried out the work with great responsibility - the composition was specified, the chapters were expanded, and new versions appeared. The author signed the book for inclusion, but did not see it published - on October 28, 1993, Yu. M. Lotman died. His living word, addressed to an audience of millions, was preserved in this book. It immerses the reader in the world of everyday life of the Russian nobility of the 18th - early 19th centuries. We see people of a distant era in the nursery and in the ballroom, on the battlefield and at the card table, we can examine in detail the hairstyle, the cut of the dress, the gesture, the demeanor. At the same time everyday life for the author - a historical-psychological category, a sign system, that is, a kind of text. He teaches to read and understand this text, where the everyday and the existential are inseparable.

“A collection of motley chapters”, the heroes of which were outstanding historical figures, reigning persons, ordinary people of the era, poets, literary characters, is connected together by the thought of the continuity of the cultural and historical process, the intellectual and spiritual connection of generations.

IN special issue Tartu "Russian Newspaper", dedicated to the death of Yu. M. Lotman, among his statements, recorded and saved by colleagues and students, we find words that contain the quintessence of his last book: “History passes through a person’s House, through his private life. It is not titles, orders or royal favor, but the “independence of a person” that turns him into a historical figure.”

The publishing house thanks the State Hermitage and the State Russian Museum, which provided engravings stored in their collections free of charge for reproduction in this publication.

INTRODUCTION:

Life and culture

Devoting conversations to Russian life and culture of the 18th century XIX century, we must first of all determine the meaning of the concepts “life”, “culture”, “Russian culture XVIII- beginning of the 19th century” and their relationships with each other. At the same time, let us make a reservation that the concept of “culture,” which belongs to the most fundamental in the cycle of human sciences, can itself become the subject of a separate monograph and has repeatedly become so. It would be strange if in this book we set out to solve controversial issues related to this concept. It is very comprehensive: it includes morality, the whole range of ideas, human creativity, and much more. It will be quite enough for us to limit ourselves to that side of the concept of “culture” that is necessary to illuminate our relatively narrow topic.

Culture, first of all, - collective concept. An individual can be a carrier of culture, can actively participate in its development, nevertheless, by its nature, culture, like language, is a social phenomenon, that is, social.

Consequently, culture is something common to a collective - a group of people living simultaneously and connected by a certain social organization. From this it follows that culture is form of communication between people and is possible only in a group in which people communicate. (An organizational structure that unites people living at the same time is called synchronous, and we will further use this concept when defining a number of aspects of the phenomenon that interests us).

Any structure serving the sphere of social communication is a language. This means that it forms a certain system of signs used in accordance with the rules known to the members of a given group. We call signs any material expression (words, drawings, things, etc.) that has the meaning and thus can serve as a means conveying meaning.

Consequently, culture has, firstly, a communication and, secondly, a symbolic nature. Let's focus on this last one. Let's think about something as simple and familiar as bread. Bread is material and visible. It has weight, shape, it can be cut and eaten. Bread eaten comes into physiological contact with a person. In this function of it, one cannot ask about it: what does it mean? It has a use, not a meaning. But when we say: “Give us this day our daily bread,” the word “bread” does not just mean bread as a thing, but has a broader meaning: “food necessary for life.” And when in the Gospel of John we read the words of Christ: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger” (John 6:35), then we have before us a complex symbolic meaning both the object itself and the words denoting it.

The sword is also nothing more than an object. As a thing, it can be forged or broken, it can be placed in a museum display case, and it can kill a person. This is all - the use of it as an object, but when, attached to a belt or supported by a baldric placed on the hip, the sword symbolizes a free person and is a “sign of freedom”, it already appears as a symbol and belongs to culture.

In the 18th century, a Russian and European nobleman does not carry a sword - a sword hangs on his side (sometimes a tiny, almost toy ceremonial sword, which is practically not a weapon). In this case, the sword is a symbol of a symbol: it means a sword, and the sword means belonging to a privileged class.

Belonging to the nobility also means being bound by certain rules of behavior, principles of honor, even the cut of clothing. We know of cases when “wearing clothes indecent for a nobleman” (that is, peasant dress) or also a beard “indecent for a nobleman” became a matter of concern for the political police and the emperor himself.

A sword as a weapon, a sword as a part of clothing, a sword as a symbol, a sign of nobility - all these are different functions of an object in the general context of culture.

In its various incarnations, a symbol can simultaneously be a weapon suitable for direct practical use, or be completely separated from its immediate function. So, for example, a small sword specially designed for parades excluded practical use, actually being a picture of a weapon rather than a weapon. The parade sphere was separated from the battle sphere by emotions, body language and functions. Let us remember the words of Chatsky: “I will go to death as to a parade.” At the same time, in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” we meet in the description of the battle an officer leading his soldiers into battle with a ceremonial (that is, useless) sword in his hands. The very bipolar situation “fight - game of fight” created difficult relationships between weapons as symbols and weapons as reality. Thus, the sword (sword) becomes woven into the system of symbolic language of the era and becomes a fact of its culture.

And here’s another example, in the Bible (Book of Judges, 7:13–14) we read: “Gideon has come [and hears]. And so, one tells the other a dream, and says: I dreamed that round barley bread was rolling through the camp of Midian and, rolling towards the tent, hit it so that it fell, knocked it over, and the tent fell apart. Another answered him, “This is none other than the sword of Gideon...” Here bread means sword, and sword means victory. And since the victory was won with the cry “The sword of the Lord and Gideon!”, without a single blow (the Midianites themselves beat each other: “the Lord turned the sword of one against another in the whole camp”), then the sword here is a sign of the power of the Lord, and not of military victory .

So, the area of culture is always the area of symbolism.

Conversations about Russian culture:

Life and traditions of the Russian nobility (XVIII - early XIX centuries)

Lotman Yu.M. Conversations about Russian culture: Life and traditions of the Russian nobility (XVIII-beginningXIXcentury) - St. Petersburg, 2000.

Questions and tasks for the text:

What role did the ball play in the life of a Russian nobleman, according to Lotman?

Was the ball different from other forms of entertainment?

How were nobles prepared for balls?

In what literary works Have you come across a description of the ball, the attitude towards it or individual dances?

What is the meaning of the word dandyism?

Restore the model of the appearance and behavior of a Russian dandy.

What role did the duel play in the life of a Russian nobleman?

How were duels treated in Tsarist Russia?

How was the duel ritual carried out?

Give examples of duels in history and literary works?

Lotman Yu.M. Conversations about Russian culture: Life and traditions of the Russian nobility (XVIII - early XIX centuries)

Dancing was an important structural element of noble life. Their role was significantly different from both the function of dances in the folk life of that time and from the modern one.

In the life of a Russian metropolitan nobleman of the 18th - early 19th centuries, time was divided into two halves: staying at home was devoted to family and economic concerns - here the nobleman acted as a private individual; the other half was occupied by service - military or civil, in which the nobleman acted as a loyal subject, serving the sovereign and the state, as a representative of the nobility in the face of other classes. The contrast between these two forms of behavior was filmed in the “meeting” that crowned the day - at a ball or evening party. Here the social life of a nobleman was realized... he was a nobleman in a noble assembly, a man of his class among his own.

Thus, the ball turned out, on the one hand, to be an area opposite to service - an area of relaxed communication, social recreation, a place where the boundaries of the official hierarchy were weakened. The presence of ladies, dancing, and social norms introduced extra-official value criteria, and a young lieutenant who danced deftly and knew how to make the ladies laugh could feel superior to an aging colonel who had been in battle. On the other hand, the ball was an area of public representation, a form of social organization, one of the few forms of collective life allowed in Russia at that time. In this sense, secular life received the value of a public cause. Catherine II’s answer to Fonvizin’s question is typical: “Why aren’t we ashamed of not doing anything?” - “... living in society is not doing nothing” 16.

Since the time of Peter the Great's assemblies, the question of organizational forms of secular life has also become acute. Forms of recreation, youth communication, and calendar ritual, which were basically common to both the people and the boyar-noble milieu, had to give way to a specifically noble structure of life. The internal organization of the ball was made a task of exceptional cultural importance, as it was intended to give forms of communication between “gentlemen” and “ladies” and to determine the type of social behavior within the culture of the nobility. This entailed the ritualization of the ball, the creation of a strict sequence of parts, the identification of stable and obligatory elements. The grammar of the ball arose, and it itself developed into some kind of holistic theatrical performance, in which each element (from entering the hall to leaving) corresponded to typical emotions, fixed meanings, and styles of behavior. However, the strict ritual that brought the ball closer to the parade made all the more significant possible deviations, “ballroom liberties,” which compositionally increased towards its finale, building the ball as a struggle between “order” and “freedom.”

Dance training began early - from the age of five or six. For example, Pushkin began to learn dancing already in 1808...

Early dance training was painful and reminiscent of the harsh training of an athlete or the training of a recruit by a diligent sergeant major. The compiler of the “Rules”, published in 1825, L. Petrovsky, himself an experienced dance master, describes some of the methods of initial training in this way, while condemning not the method itself, but only its too harsh application: “The teacher must pay attention to ensuring that students strong stress was not tolerated in health. Someone told me that the teacher considered it an indispensable rule that the student, despite his natural inability, should keep his legs to the side, like him, in a parallel line... As a student, he was 22 years old, quite decent in height and had considerable legs, though faulty; Then the teacher, who could not do anything himself, considered it his duty to use four people, two of whom twisted their legs, and two held their knees. No matter how much he screamed, they just laughed and didn’t want to hear about the pain - until his leg finally cracked, and then the tormentors left him...”

In “War and Peace,” Tolstoy, describing Natasha’s first ball, contrasts the polonaise, which opens “the sovereign, smiling and leading the mistress of the house by the hand,” with the second dance, the waltz, which becomes the moment of Natasha’s triumph.

Pushkin characterized him this way:

Monotonous and crazy

Like a young whirlwind of life,

A noisy whirlwind swirls around the waltz;

Couple flashes after couple.

The epithets “monotonous and crazy” have not only an emotional meaning. “Monotonous” - because, unlike the mazurka, in which at that time solo dances and the invention of new figures played a huge role, and even more so from the dance - playing the cotillion, the waltz consisted of the same constantly repeating movements. The feeling of monotony was also enhanced by the fact that “at that time the waltz was danced in two steps, and not in three steps, as now” 17. The definition of the waltz as “crazy” has a different meaning: ... the waltz... enjoyed in the 1820s the reputation of an obscene or at least excessively free dance... Zhanlis in the “Critical and Systematic Dictionary of Court Etiquette”: “Young a person, lightly dressed, throws herself into the arms of a young man, who presses her to his chest, who carries her away with such swiftness that her heart involuntarily begins to pound and her head goes spinning! That’s what this waltz is!.. Modern youth are so natural that, putting sophistication at nothing, they dance waltzes with glorified simplicity and passion.”

The sequence of dances during the ball formed a dynamic composition. Each dance... set a certain style of not only movements, but also conversation. In order to understand the essence of the ball, one must keep in mind that dancing was only the organizing core in it. The chain of dances was also organized by the sequence of moods... Each dance entailed appropriate topics of conversation for it... An interesting example of changing the topic of conversation in a sequence of dances is found in Anna Karenina. “Vronsky and Kitty went through several rounds of the waltz”... She expects words of recognition from him that should decide her fate, but for an important conversation a corresponding moment in the dynamics of the ball is necessary. It is by no means possible to conduct it at any moment and not during any dance. “During the quadrille, nothing significant was said, there was an intermittent conversation... But Kitty did not expect anything more from the quadrille. She waited with bated breath for the mazurka. It seemed to her that everything should be decided in the mazurka.”

The mazurka formed the center of the ball and marked its culmination. The mazurka was danced with numerous bizarre figures and a male solo, which constituted the culmination of the dance... Within the mazurka there were several distinct styles. The difference between the capital and the provinces was expressed in the contrast between the “exquisite” and “bravura” performance of the mazurka...

Russian dandyism.

The word “dandy” (and its derivative, “dandyism”) is difficult to translate into Russian. More precisely, this word is not only conveyed by several opposite Russian words, but also defines, at least in the Russian tradition, very different social phenomena.

Originating in England, dandyism included a national opposition to French fashions, which caused violent indignation among English patriots at the end of the 18th century. N. Karamzin in “Letters of a Russian Traveler” described how, during his (and his Russian friends’) walks around London, a crowd of boys threw mud at a man dressed in French fashion. In contrast to the French “refinement” of clothing, English fashion canonized the tailcoat, which had previously been only riding clothing. "Rough" and sporty, it was perceived as national English. French pre-revolutionary fashion cultivated grace and sophistication, while English fashion allowed extravagance and put forward originality as the highest value 18 . Thus, dandyism was colored in the tones of national specificity and in this sense, on the one hand, it merged with romanticism, and on the other, it was adjacent to the anti-French patriotic sentiments that swept Europe in the first decades of the 19th century.

From this point of view, dandyism acquired the color of romantic rebellion. It was focused on extravagance of behavior that offends secular society and on the romantic cult of individualism. An offensive manner for the world, “indecent” swagger of gestures, demonstrative shocking - all forms of destruction of secular prohibitions were perceived as poetic. This lifestyle was typical of Byron.

At the opposite pole was the interpretation of dandyism that was developed by the most famous dandy of the era, George Bremmel. Here, individualistic contempt for social norms took other forms. Byron contrasted the energy and heroic rudeness of the romantic to the pampered world, Bremmel contrasted the coarse philistinism of the “secular crowd” with the pampered sophistication of the individualist 19 . This second type of behavior was later attributed by Bulwer-Lytton to the hero of the novel “Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman” (1828) - a work that aroused the admiration of Pushkin and influenced some of his literary ideas and even, at some moments, his everyday behavior...

The art of dandyism creates a complex system own culture, which outwardly manifests itself in a kind of “poetry of a refined suit”... Bulwer-Lytton’s hero proudly says to himself that he “introduced starched ties” in England. He “by the power of his example”... “ordered the lapels of his boots to be wiped with 20 champagne.”

Pushkinsky Evgeny Onegin “spent at least three hours // In front of mirrors.”

However, the cut of the tailcoat and similar fashion attributes constitute only the outward expression of dandyism. They are too easily imitated by profane people who cannot access his inner aristocratic essence... A man must make a tailor, not a tailor - a man.

The Bulwer-Lytton novel, which is a kind of fictionalized program of dandyism, became widespread in Russia; it was not the reason for the emergence of Russian dandyism; rather, on the contrary: Russian dandyism aroused interest in the novel...

It is known that Pushkin, like his hero Charsky from “Egyptian Nights,” could not stand the role of “poet in secular society,” so sweet for romantics like Kukolnik. The words sound autobiographical: “The public looks at him (the poet) as their property; in her opinion, he was born for her “use and pleasure”...

The dandyism of Pushkin's behavior is not in an imaginary commitment to gastronomy, but in outright ridicule, almost arrogance... It is arrogance, covered with mocking politeness, that forms the basis of the dandy's behavior. The hero of Pushkin’s unfinished “Novel in Letters” accurately describes the mechanism of dandyish impudence: “Men are extremely dissatisfied with my fatuite indolente, which is still news here. They are all the more furious because I am extremely polite and decent, and they just don’t understand what exactly my impudence consists of - although they feel that I am impudent.”

Typically dandyish behavior was known among Russian dandies long before the names of Byron and Bremmel, as well as the word “dandy” itself, became known in Russia... Karamzin in 1803 described this curious phenomenon of the fusion of rebellion and cynicism, the transformation of selfishness into a peculiar religion and a mocking attitude towards all the principles of “vulgar” morality. The hero of “My Confession” proudly talks about his adventures: “I made a lot of noise on my journey - by jumping in country dances with important ladies of the German Princely Courts, I deliberately dropped them to the ground in the most indecent way; and most of all, by kissing the Pope’s shoes with good Catholics, he bit his foot and made the poor old man scream with all his might.”... In the prehistory of Russian dandyism, many notable characters can be noted. Some of them are the so-called Khripuns... “Khripuns” as a phenomenon that has already passed are mentioned by Pushkin in the versions of “The Little House in Kolomna”:

The guards are lingering,

You wheezers

(but your wheezing has died down) 21 .

Griboyedov in “Woe from Wit” calls Skalozub: “Wheezer, strangled, bassoon.” The meaning of these military jargons of the era before 1812 remains incomprehensible to the modern reader... All three names of Skalozub (“Khripun, strangled, bassoon”) speak of a tight waist (cf. the words of Skalozub himself: “And the waists are so narrow”). This also explains Pushkin’s expression “Protracted guardsmen” - that is, tightened at the waist. Tightening the belt to the point of rivaling a woman's waist - hence the comparison of a tightened officer with a bassoon - gave the military fashionista the appearance of a "strangled man" and justified calling him a "wheezer." The idea of a narrow waist as an important feature male beauty lasted for several more decades. Nicholas I pulled it tight, even as his belly grew longer in the 1840s. He preferred to endure intense physical suffering just to maintain the illusion of a waist. This fashion has captured not only the military. Pushkin proudly wrote to his brother about the slimness of his waist...

Glasses played an important role in the dandy's behavior - a detail inherited from the dandies of the previous era. Back in the 18th century, glasses became a fashionable part of the toilet. Looking through glasses was equated to looking at someone else's face point-blank, that is, a daring gesture. The decency of the 18th century in Russia forbade those younger in age or rank to look through their glasses at their elders: this was perceived as impudence. Delvig recalled that at the Lyceum it was forbidden to wear glasses and that therefore all women seemed beauties to him, ironically adding that, having graduated from the Lyceum and acquiring glasses, he was very disappointed... Dandyism introduced its own shade into this fashion: a lorgnette appeared, which was perceived as a sign Anglomania...

A specific feature of dandyish behavior was also viewing in the theater through a telescope not the stage, but the boxes occupied by the ladies. Onegin emphasizes the dandyism of this gesture by looking “sideways,” and looking at unfamiliar ladies like that is double insolence. The female equivalent of “daring optics” was the lorgnette, if it was not directed towards the stage...

Another characteristic feature everyday dandyism is a pose of disappointment and satiety... However, “premature old age of the soul” (Pushkin’s words about the hero of “Prisoner of the Caucasus”) and disappointment could be perceived in the first half of the 1820s not only in an ironic way. When these properties manifested themselves in the character and behavior of people like P.Ya. Chaadaev, they acquired a tragic meaning...

However, "boredom" - the blues - was too common for the researcher to dismiss it. For us, it is especially interesting in this case because it characterizes everyday behavior. So, like Chaadaev, the blues drive Chatsky abroad...

Spleen as a reason for the spread of suicide among the English was mentioned by N.M. Karamzin in “Letters of a Russian Traveler”. It is all the more noticeable that in the Russian noble life of the era we are interested in, suicide out of disappointment was quite a rare occurrence, and it was not included in the stereotype of dandy behavior. Its place was taken by a duel, reckless behavior in war, a desperate game of cards...

Between dandy behavior and different shades political liberalism of the 1820s there were intersections... However, their nature was different. Dandyism is, first of all, a behavior, and not a theory or ideology 22. In addition, dandyism is limited to a narrow sphere of everyday life... Inseparable from individualism and at the same time invariably dependent on observers, dandyism constantly fluctuates between a claim to rebellion and various compromises with society. His limitations lie in the limitations and inconsistency of fashion, in the language of which he is forced to speak with his era.

The dual nature of Russian dandyism created the possibility of its dual interpretation... It was this two-facedness that became characteristic feature a strange symbiosis of dandyism and St. Petersburg bureaucracy. English habits of everyday behavior, the manners of an aging dandy, as well as decency within the boundaries of the Nicholas regime - this will be the path of Bludov and Dashkov. The “Russian dandy” Vorontsov faced the fate of the commander-in-chief of the Separate Caucasian Corps, governor of the Caucasus, field marshal general and his serene prince. Chaadaev, on the other hand, had a completely different fate: he was officially declared insane. Lermontov's rebellious Byronism will no longer fit within the boundaries of dandyism, although, reflected in Pechorin's mirror, he will reveal this ancestral connection going back into the past.

Duel.

A duel (combat) is a pair fight that takes place according to certain rules, with the goal of restoring honor... Thus, the role of the duel is socially significant. The duel... cannot be understood without the very specificity of the concept of “honor” in the general system of ethics of the Russian Europeanized post-Petrine noble society...

The Russian nobleman of the 18th - early 19th centuries lived and acted under the influence of two opposing regulators of social behavior. As a loyal subject, a servant of the state, he obeyed orders... But at the same time, as a nobleman, a man of a class that was at the same time a socially dominant corporation and a cultural elite, he obeyed the laws of honor. The ideal that creates for itself noble culture, implies the complete banishment of fear and the establishment of honor as the main legislator of behavior... From these positions, medieval knightly ethics is experiencing a certain restoration. ...The behavior of a knight is not measured by defeat or victory, but has self-sufficient value. This is especially evident in relation to a duel: danger, coming face to face with death become cleansing agents that remove insult from a person. The offended person himself must decide (the correct decision indicates the degree of his mastery of the laws of honor): is the dishonor so insignificant that in order to remove it, a demonstration of fearlessness is sufficient - a display of readiness for battle... A person who too easily goes for reconciliation may be considered a coward, unjustifiably bloodthirsty - a brute.

The duel, as an institution of corporate honor, met opposition from two sides. On the one hand, the government’s attitude towards the fights was invariably negative. In the “Patent on duels and starting quarrels,” which made up the 49th chapter of Peter the Great’s “Military Regulations” (1716), it was prescribed: “If it happens that two people come to the appointed place, and one draws their swords against the other, then We command them, although none of them will be wounded or killed, without any mercy, and also the seconds or witnesses who will be proven against will be executed by death and their belongings will be given away... If they begin to fight, and in that battle they are killed and wounded, then as if they were alive, so let the dead be hanged” 23 ... the duel in Russia was not a relic, since nothing similar existed in the life of the Russian “old feudal nobility”.

Catherine II unequivocally pointed out that the duel was an innovation: “Prejudices not received from ancestors, but adopted or superficial, alien” 24...

Montesquieu pointed out the reasons for the negative attitude of the autocratic authorities towards the custom of dueling: “Honor cannot be the principle of despotic states: there all people are equal and therefore cannot exalt themselves over each other; there all the people are slaves and therefore cannot rise above anything... Can a despot tolerate it in his state? She places her glory in contempt for life, and the whole power of a despot lies only in the fact that he can take life. How could she herself tolerate a despot?

On the other hand, the duel was criticized by democratic thinkers, who saw in it a manifestation of the class prejudice of the nobility and contrasted noble honor with human honor, based on Reason and Nature. From this position, the duel was made the object of educational satire or criticism... A. Suvorov’s negative attitude towards the duel is known. The Freemasons also had a negative attitude towards the duel.

Thus, in a duel, on the one hand, the narrow class idea of protecting corporate honor could come to the fore, and on the other, the universal, despite archaic forms, idea of protecting human dignity...

In this regard, the attitude of the Decembrists to the duel was ambivalent. Allowing in theory negative statements in the spirit of general educational criticism of the duel, the Decembrists practically widely used the right to duel. So, E.P. Obolensky killed a certain Svinin in a duel; K.F. repeatedly called out different people and fought with several of them. Ryleev; A.I. Yakubovich was known as a brute...

The view of a duel as a means of protecting one’s human dignity was not alien to Pushkin. During the Kishinev period, Pushkin found himself in the offensive position of a young civilian man, surrounded by people in officer uniforms who had already proven their undoubted courage in the war. This explains his exaggerated scrupulousness during this period in matters of honor and almost brute behavior. The Kishinev period is marked in the memoirs of contemporaries with numerous challenges to Pushkin 25 . Typical example- his duel with Lieutenant Colonel S.N. Starov... Pushkin's bad behavior during the dances in the officers' meeting became the reason for the duel... The duel was conducted according to all the rules: there was no personal enmity between the combatants, and the impeccable observance of the ritual during the duel aroused mutual respect in both. Careful observance of the ritual of honor equalized the position of a civilian youth and a military lieutenant colonel, giving them an equal right to public respect...

Breter behavior as a means of social self-defense and assertion of one’s equality in society perhaps attracted Pushkin’s attention in these years to Voiture, a French poet of the 17th century, who asserted his equality in aristocratic circles with emphasized bratism...

Pushkin’s attitude towards the duel is contradictory: as the heir to the enlighteners of the 18th century, he sees in it a manifestation of “secular enmity”, which is “wildly... afraid of false shame.” In Eugene Onegin, the cult of the duel is supported by Zaretsky, a man of dubious integrity. However, at the same time, a duel is also a means of protecting the dignity of an offended person. She puts on a par the mysterious poor man Silvio and the favorite of fate, Count B. 26 A duel is a prejudice, but honor, which is forced to turn to her help, is not a prejudice.

It was precisely because of its duality that a duel implied the presence of a strict and carefully executed ritual... No dueling codes could appear in the Russian press under the conditions of an official ban... Strictness in observing the rules was achieved by appealing to the authority of experts, living bearers of tradition and arbiters in matters of honor. ..

The duel began with a challenge. It was usually preceded by a clash, as a result of which one party considered itself offended and, as such, demanded satisfaction. From this moment on, the opponents no longer had to enter into any communication: this was taken upon themselves by their representatives-seconds. Having chosen a second, the offended person discussed with him the severity of the insult inflicted on him, on which the nature of the future duel depended - from a formal exchange of shots to the death of one or both participants. After this, the second sent a written challenge to the enemy (cartel)... It was the responsibility of the seconds to seek all opportunities, without harming the interests of honor and especially ensuring that the rights of their principal are respected, for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Even on the battlefield, the seconds were obliged to make a last attempt at reconciliation. In addition, the seconds work out the conditions of the duel. In this case, the unspoken rules instruct them to try to prevent irritated opponents from choosing bloodier forms of combat than is required by the minimum strict rules of honor. If reconciliation was not possible, as was the case, for example, in the duel between Pushkin and Dantes, the seconds drew up written conditions and carefully monitored the strict execution of the entire procedure.

So, for example, the conditions signed by the seconds of Pushkin and Dantes were as follows (original in French): “The conditions of the duel between Pushkin and Dantes were as cruel as possible (the duel was designed for fatal outcome), but the conditions of the duel between Onegin and Lensky, to our surprise, were also very cruel, although there was clearly no reason for mortal enmity here...

1. Opponents stand at a distance of twenty steps from each other and five steps (for each) from the barriers, the distance between which is ten steps.

2. Opponents armed with pistols can shoot at this sign, moving towards each other, but in no case crossing barriers.

3. Moreover, it is accepted that after the shot, the opponents are not allowed to change place, so that the one who fired first would be subjected to fire from his opponent at the same distance 27.

4. When both sides fire a shot, then in case of ineffectiveness the fight is resumed as if for the first time: the opponents are placed at the same distance of 20 steps, the same barriers and the same rules are maintained.

5. Seconds are indispensable mediators in any explanation between opponents at the battlefield.

6. The seconds, the undersigned and vested with full powers, ensure, each for his own side, with his honor, strict compliance with the conditions stated here.”