Pushkin and George Sand

The proposed article reveals the problem of objective perception of Pushkin's skeptical attitude to the personality of George Sand and her novels. In some mystical way this skeptical attitude was connected with poet’s attitude to the personality of Anna Kern and her work as George Sand’s translator and in the same time (as Pushkin guesed) with her being George Sand’s “copy”. But Anna Kern was not “a copy” of George Sand. She was 5 years older, and her multitude love stories (including her love story with Pushkin himself) preceded the world-known George Sand’s love stories – in her life and in her novels as well. Simultaneously Pushkin created a novel in George Sand’s genre – histoire d’amour sur fond champêtre (this genre was in fact created by George Sand): “Dubrovskiy, le roman infini”. This unfinished novel gives us a key to the nature of Pushkin's skeptical attitude – neither to the personality of George Sand nor to her novels – but to some values propagated by Franch writer, especially the free interpretation of married women’s duties. George Sand’s popularity all over Europe (including Russia) promoted the dissimination of those values. The comparison of Pushkin's “Dubrovskiy” with George Sand’s “Valentine” (1832) brings some clarification of the matter. Plot and social and historic background of “Dubrovskiy” and “Valentine” are almost the same, and it is no coincidence. Pushkin chooses for “Dubrovskiy” the circumstances which give him an opportunity for polemic with George Sand’s “Valentine”. But the polemic begins where “Dubrovskiy” is left finished (rather unfinished). A mistery of the unfinished Pushkin’s novel has never been resolved ever since. Well-known Pushkin’s plan of it’s final part is nothing more than a stingy outline. Nevertheless the context of other Pushkin’s works and his biography gives us some opportunities for a reconstruction of his arguments (subjective and objective as well) in his polemic with George Sand. А comparison of Pushkin’s “Dubrovskiy” with Pushkin’s “Snowstorm” and a final part of “Evgeniy Onegin” clearly shows author’s intentions in the unfinished novel. Dostoyevskiy (in his speech devoted to the opening of Pushkin’s monument in Moscow) had announced the matter in such words: “A Russian woman is not a French one”. Given George Sand’s popularity in Russia in the second part of 19 century it can be argued that Dostoyevskiy had in mind Pushkin’s discussion on the so called “woman`s question” with the author of “Valentine”.