Poltava (poem)

Outline of the poem

The poem opens with an epigraph from Byron's 1819 Mazeppa, which depicts the Hetman as a Romantic hero, exiled from Poland for conducting a love affair with a married noblewoman. Pushkin follows this epigraph with a passionate dedication to an anonymous loved one. The first edition carried a foreword [предисловие] in which Puskhin objects to the heroic presentation of Ivan Mazepa in works by other writers and his intention to correct them by depicting him as he actually was.

The poem itself is divided into three parts - or "songs" [песни] - of roughly equal length. Part I opens by setting the scene in the estate of the nobleman Vasily Kochubei, and describing the beauty of his daughter Maria. Maria has fallen in love with the Hetman Mazepa, who is her godfather and much older than she is: therefore they keep their love secret. However, they are quickly discovered, and are forced to elope, which brings shame on the family and leaves their parents scared.

The narrative then switches to a description of the political trouble in Ukraine: there is a significant support for a break with Russia; Mazepa is supporting the rebels. Kochubei vows to take revenge upon Mazepa for breaking the bond of trust between them and eloping with Maria. He has remained loyal to the Tsar and sends a messenger to denounce the Hetman to the Tsar.

Most of Part II is written as a dramatic dialogue in the tradition of closet drama. Mazepa is focused on his plans to rebel against the Tsar, and Maria is worried that he no longer loves her. He asks her to promise that she would always choose him over her father, but declines to tell her of his betrayal of the Tsar.

Meanwhile, Kochubei has been captured by the rebels and he is tortured and interrogated by Orlik. The rebels demand to know where he has hidden his money but he declines to reply. Maria's mother comes to find her and help her save her father; but they arrive too late: Kochubei has already been executed. Mazepa is tormented on discovering Maria's disappearance and sets out to look for her.

Part III switches back to a single third-person narrator. Mazepa pretends that his physical health is failing, so that to lull tsar's vigilance, while King Charles XII of Sweden is preparing for battle against Peter I. Peter I and his cavalry arrive and defeat the Swedish army and the Ukrainian rebels. Mazepa does little fighting and flees the battlefield as fast as he can. He finds he can no longer sleep and sees Maria again. This time it's clear that she has lost her mind (she couldn't get through her father's execution). In a memorable passage, Maria no longer recognizes him, because she sees him for what he truly is: a ridiculous and horrible old man.

The poem closes with a reflection by the narrator after one hundred years, claiming that while Mazepa is now forgotten, Peter I, the hero of the battle, has created an enormous monument for himself. The narrator tells us that he does not know the fate of Maria.

Analysis

This poem has received considerably less attention than Pushkin's other narrative poems, and its reception has been mixed. A.D.P. Briggs sees Pushkin's fusion genres and subject matter as unsuccessful, calls it overly-long - at nearly 1500 lines it is one of the longest of Pushkin's narrative poems - and protests the lack of variety in rhyme. Babinski also makes the charge that the disparate elements in the poem are not well-integrated, suggesting the poem is "not a continuous narrative… barely a narrative poem at all, more like a three-act play with an all-purpose narrator to keep the material together."

Several critics have made the charge that Poltava is an apology for Russian Imperialism. J.P. Pauls (1962) accuses Pushkin of "propagating the Russian imperialistic cause" and "distorting" historical truth. This view is echoed by Svetlana Evdokimova (1999), who contrasts what she sees as unabashed patriotism of Poltava with the richer, more ambiguous portrayal of Peter I and Empire in The Bronze Horseman (1833). Pushkin's biographer Henri Troyat suggested that Pushkin deliberately wrote a pro-Imperial poem in order to assuage Tsar Nicholas I, who was suspicious of his political loyalties after his return from exile.

Soviet critics tended to be more sympathetic towards the poem. V.M. Zhirmunskii (1924) sees the poem as the moment of Pushkin's decisive break with Byron, arguing that Pushkin uses a moral and historical perspective to create psychological portraits and evaluations of his characters, while Byron relies on emotion alone. S.M. Bondi argues that Pushkin successfully pulls together historical and personal themes and the poem is a valuable meditation on the place of the Russian state among European powers. However, while Pushkin certainly made the claim that he was writing a historically-accurate poem, Babinski points out "for all his insistence upon historicity, Pushkin slanted the facts."

Western critics who have been kinder to Poltava have focused on its characterization. John Bayley says that Mazepa "has something of the depth of a Shakespeare portrait". David Bethea also suggests that Poltava owes something to Shakespearean characterization. The most sympathetic treatment of the poem is offered in a book-length treatment by Virginia Burns (2005), which praises the poem for its successful characterization, tight structure and the scope of its philosophical inquiry.

Composition and publication

Pushkin's notebooks show that he began Poltava on April 5, 1828, and completed the rest of it in October: Song I on October 3, Song II on October 9, Song III on October 16 and the Dedication on October 27. He finished the Foreword on 31 January 1829 and the poem was published later that year.

Influence

Tchaikovsky's 1884 opera Mazeppa was loosely based on Poltava.