The Stone Guest [Kamenniy gost]: Shifting ideals in literature

Abstract

The article examines the change of ideals in the metaplot of A. Pushkin’s drama The Stone Guest [Kamenniy gost] through the prism of A. Veselovsky’s concept of ‘counter-current.’ The author shows that the play’s three female characters epitomize an ideal of the respective period. Don Juan’s three muses – Inez, Laura, and Donna Anna – appear in the play as three principal ideals symbolizing the ‘spiritual currents of the epoch’ (in the words of I. Rodnyanskaya). As a result, Pushkin’s metaplot features Don Juan as an embodiment of a wavering ‘literary mind,’ whose constant pursuit of a new ideal in each given period eventually brings him to a deadlock. This is a depiction of literature emerging at the ‘counter-current’ and confronted with the question of ‘Quo vadis?’ The author also demonstrates that the dramatic cycle of Little Tragedies [Malenkie tragedii] centres on the problem of an ideal influencing the development of literature and history. Pushkin views both categories as inseparable as communicating vessels – an approach similar to that expressed by Veselovsky in his Historical Poetics [Istoricheskaya poetika].