Bill Kerwin's Reviews > Boris Godunov

You can learn important things about a great writer by reading other great writers who have imitated him. I learned about Twain’s Huckleberry Finn by reading Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Doctorow’s Billy Bathgate, I learned about Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d’Arthur by reading Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and I learned about Shakespeare, his tragedies and histories, by reading Alexander Puskin’s Boris Godunov.

Shakespeare was fascinated by political history, the motivations of kings and would-be kings, and the young Pushkin—an early admirer of Byron, the philosophes, and the revolutions in America and France—was fascinated by political history too. His revolutionary sentiments earned the young poet an exile to his mother’s estate, and there, in his mid-twenties, he immersed himself in the histories and tragedies of Shakespeare (in a French translation) and in Karamzin’s History of the Russian State.

In Karamzin, Pushkin became fascinated with a period contemporaneous with Shakespeare: the reign of Boris Godunov (1598–1605) and the rise of the “False Dmitri.” Godunov acted as regent for Ivan the Terrible’s saintly but weak-willed son Feodor, and, after Feodor’s death, for Dmitri, Feodor’s son. When the boy, at the age of ten, was found dead, Godunov was thought responsible. Gudonov was soon acclaimed czar, but Dmitri’s death came back to haunt him: a young man (rumored to be a renegade monk) claiming to be the real Dmitri, recruited an army in Poland and marched on to Godunov's palace.

Pushkin must have been struck with the Shakespearean echoes: the saintly weak-willed king (Henry VI), the murderous Lord Protector (Richard Duke of Gloster), the guilty king unable to sleep (Henry IV, Macbeth), and a march on the stronghold of the king (Macduff and Birnam Wood, Richmond and Bosworth Field). To this he added some unusual, more surprising Shakespearean touches: a courtship scene with a Romeo and Juliet beginning and an ending with a bargain more like Macbeth; an idiot beggar who speaks the truth to Czar Boris like Lear’s fool speaks the truth to Lear; a Duke of Clarence style dream; and a low tavern with drunken monks, featuring a hair’s-breadth escape which looks a little like Falstaff’s Boar’s Head Inn. But Pushkin’s imitation consists of much more than an echoed scene here and there, for he perfectly captures the free, wide-ranging spirit of Shakespeare: unaffected by the shackles of the classical unities, generous and universal in its sympathies, comprehensive in its soul.

I’ll end with a portion of Boris' famous soliloquy (and one of the finest arias in Mussorgsky’s opera too). The echos of Richard III, Henry IV, and Macbeth are strong here:

I have attained the highest power. Six years
Already have I reigned in peace; but joy
Dwells not within my soul. Even so in youth
We greedily desire the joys of love,
But only quell the hunger of the heart
With momentary possession. We grow cold,
Grow weary and oppressed! In vain the wizards
Promise me length of days, days of dominion
Immune from treachery--not power, not life
Gladden me; I forebode the wrath of Heaven
And woe. For me no happiness. . . .
Ah! Now I feel it; naught can give us peace
Mid worldly cares, nothing save only conscience!
Healthy she triumphs over wickedness,
Over dark slander; but if in her be found
A single casual stain, then misery.
With what a deadly sore my soul doth smart;
My heart, with venom filled, doth like a hammer
Beat in mine ears reproach; all things revolt me,
And my head whirls, and in my eyes are children
Dripping with blood; and gladly would I flee,
But nowhere can find refuge--horrible!
Pitiful he whose conscience is unclean!