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There are magical words, magical apart from their meanings, physically magical, with a magic inherent in the sound itself. words that before they deliver a message already have a meaning, words that are signs and meanings unto themselves, that do noi require comprehension, but only hearing, words of the animal's, the child's dream language.

It is possible that each person in his own life has his own magic words.

In my life the magic word was and remained—the Pathfinder.

If they had asked me, a seven-year-old girl in a seven-fold sleep: "What is the name of the work where you meet Savelicli and Lieutenant Grinev and the Empress Catherine the Second?" I would have answered right away: "The Pathfinder,"2 Even now the whole Captain's Daughter is that word and has that name.

It's strange that I, who was so slow at reasoning and so bad at guessing in childhood, and in life too, I whom it was so easy to fool, guessed right in this instance and right away, as soon as amid the murky maelstrom of the blizzard something black could be seen. Right away I was on guard, knowing, knowing, knowing, that it was not "a stump or a wolf" but that one thing. And when the unknown object started moving toward us and in two minutes became a man, I already knew that it was not a "good man," as the coachman called him, but a bad man, the bogey-man, that man.

The unknown thing was—a thoroughly known thing. I had waited for the Pathfinder my whole life long, my whole huge seven-year-old life.

It was the thing that waits for us at every turn of the road and of the corridor, that comes out from behind every clump of the forest and every corner of the street: the miracle into which the child and the poet walk without thinking as if walking home, that one and only walk homeward that we have, for which we give up—all our family homes!

And when the unknown thing, encountered in all the Russian and non-Russian folk tales, and in the very Marchen unseres Lebens and Wesens,3 also turns out to be a Pa-a-thfinder, the deed was done: my soul was taken over: given up.

Oh, I fell in love with Pathfinder right away, from that moment of the dream when the self-styled father, that is, the black-bearded peasant, who turns up on the bed instead of Grinev's father, looked at me with laughing eyes. And when the peasant, grabbing the axe, started blandishing it right and left, I knew that I, that is, Grinev, that we would come out whole, and if I was afraid, it was the fear of dreams, and I luxuriated in the lack of suffering in the fear, in the possibility of going through the whole fear to the very depths without suffering the consequences. (Thus, in a dream, you slow your pace on purpose, provoking the killer, knowing that at the last second, you'll fly away.) And when the frightening peasant started summoning me caressingly, saying: "Don't be afraid! Come here under the hand of my blessing!" I was already there under that blessing hand, standing there, and with all my considerable childish strength was pushing Grinev: "Well, go on then, go on, go on! Love him! Love him!" and I was ready to weep bitterly because Grinev didn't understand (Grinev isn't ever very strong on understanding) that the peasant loves him, the peasant hacks everyone, but loves him, the same as if a wolf suddenly were to give you a paw and you didn't take that paw.

And the Pathfinder's sayings! The roundabout, rolling speech, round as a pea, the speech of the red ripe apple on the silver saucer,4 only rounder, rolling farther! Sayings in which I didn't understand anything and didn't try to understand, except that he's talking about some other thing, the most important thing. It was the first allegorical speech of my life (the kind of speech ordained for me, first and last!) about the main thing, using different words; using his words to speak about something different, the kind of speech about which, twenty years later,

I wrote:

The poet makes his speech come from far away

The poet is made to go far away by speech...5

—just as it made the Pathfinder go far.

I must state that even at the second, third, hundredth reading, when I already knew by heart everything that would happen and how everything would happen, I was unfailingly, unceasingly torn apart by the fear that suddenly Grinev would not give the Pathfinder vodka instead of tea, would not give him the hareskin jacket, that he would listen to the fool Savelich and not to himself, not to me. And, oh God, what a relief when the jacket finally, for the nth time now, split apart on the Pathfinder's shoulders!

(There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't rending, the book has gone and changed, hua shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one hai stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?)

... Then, as we all know, the Pathfinder vanishes, the way a subterranean river goes away under the earth. And with him my interest also vanished. I read honestly, not omitting a single line, but I read with my eyes, estimating with my mind's eye how many printed versts were still left for me to cover—without the Pathfinder (the same as, in that same childhood, on long hikes—without water) in the completely unnecessary company of the Commandant, Vasilisa Egorovna, Shvabrin, and the not only unnecessary, but despised company of Marya Ivanovna, that same fool Masha who faints when they fire from the cannon, and about whom all you keep hearing is that she's "extremely-pale."

It is strange that even the duel didn't reconcile me to the absence of the Pathfinder, that even the avowal of love between Grinev and Masha didn't for a second eclipse in me the black beard and the black eyes. I did not participate in their love; all my love was for that other man, and their whole romance was reduced to my indignation: How can Grinev love Marya Ivanovna and Marya Ivanovna love Grinev when Pugachev exists.

And the stern letter of Grinev's father forbidding the son to marry, not only did not distress me but cheered rne: There! Now he'll leave her and once again, out on the road, he'll meet the Pathfinder and never ever part with him and (although I knew the continuation and the end) he'll die with him on the place of execution. And Masha will marry Shvabrin, and that's just what she deserves.

In my The Captain's Daughter there was no captain's daughter, the captain's daughter was so utterly absent that even now I pronounce that title mechanically, as if it were all in one word, without any captain and without any daughter. I say: The Captain 's Daughter, but I think: Pugachev.

For me the whole of The Captain's Daughter was and is reduced to the face-to-face meetings of Grinev with Pugachev: with the Pathfinder (who then vanishes) in the snowstorm, with the peasant in the dream, with the Pretender on the porch of the Commandant's house... but here—I must stop:

"They again led me up to the Pretender and put me on my knees before him. Pugachev extended his sinewy hand to me."

Was I prompting, Grinev to kiss Pugachev's hand, even here (as in that terrifying dream)?

To my own honor I say: no. For Pugachev (and I understood it) in that minute was power; no, more—he was coercion; no, more—he was life and death, and I, with all the love in me, could not kiss a hand in those circumstances. Because of all the love in me. It was just the love for him that ordered me not to kiss his hand in his power and glory and bestiality; to leave the kiss for another public place. Besides that, seeing as everyone around is whipering: "Kiss his hand! Kiss his hand!" it is clear that I ought not to kiss his hand. I knew from birth the value of that kind of unanimous whisper. So that both Ivan Kuzmich, and Ivan Ignatevich, and all of us who did not take the oath and the several who were hanged proved ourselves to be in the right.

But was I indignant at Pugachev, did I hate him for their execution? No. No, because he was supposed to execute them— because he was a wolf and a thief. No, because he executed them, but Grinev, who did not kiss his hand, he pardoned, and he pardoned him for the hareskin jacket. That is: a debt is noble in the paying of it.6 Gratitude. The gratitude of a villain. (That Pugachev was a villain I never doubted for a second and I already knew it when he was still only an unknown black thing.) About this person, and no other, it is said in the Gospel: there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ten just men who have not sinned. One of the most seductive utterances, the most fatal to good deeds to come from Christ's mouth.

But there is one thing more. Having come to Pugachev directly from the tales of Grimm, Polevoi, and Perrault,7 I, like every child, had grown used to bestial deeds. Do children actually hate the People-Eater for wanting to chop off little boys' heads? No, they only fear him. Do children actually hate the Verlioka? Gorynych the Serpent? Baba Yaga with her living morass of dead heads?8 All that is the pure element of fear, without which a fairy tale is not a tale and delight is not delight. To a child evil is supposed to be there in a fairy tale. The villainy of Pugachev is in childhood (and in non-childhood) just such necessary fairy-tale evil.

A child hates only treachery, betrayal, a broken promise, a violated agreement. For, a child as no one else is faithful to Ins word and believes a spoken word. He promised, but he didn't do it; he kissed, but he betrayed. But what reason did 1 have to hate my Pathfinder? Pugachev didn't promise anyone to be good just the opposite: without promising, promising the opposite, he proved to be good. It was my first encounter with evil and evil proved to be good. And after that I always suspected it of good.

Pathfinder Vozhatyi rhymed inside me with zhar "heat", Pugachev rhymed with chert "devil," and also with chumaki "oxcart drivers," about whom I was reading at the same time in Polevoi's tales. The oxcart drivers proved to be devils, their gold coins proved to be burning coals that burned through the cloth cover and, so it seems, burned up a cottage too. But to compensate, in another peasant's iron pot, a good peasant's, gold coins turned up instead of hot coals. All of it— the heated coals, kostrovyi zhar, the gold coins, chervontsy, the red cloth, kumach, the oxcart driver, chumak —merged into one terrible word: Pugach, and into one oppressive vision: the Pathfinder.

But before passing on to Grinev's subsequent meetings with Pugachev... On the porch of the Commandant's house, from the first reading, I recognized the Pathfinder in Pugachev. How could Grinev not recognize him? And if he really didn't recognize him, how could I not treat him with disdain? How was it possible after that dream to forget those black laughing eyes?

"An extraordinary scene was before me. Pugachev and a dozen Cossack elders, wearing colored shirts and caps, were sitting round a table covered with a cloth and littered with bottles and glasses; their faces were flushed with drink and their eyes glittered. Neither Shvabrin nor our sergeant— the freshly recruited traitors— were among them."

That means— only his own men were there, and Pugachev called Grinev into the circle of his own men, felt him to be his own man. The wish to pull someone into his ranks? Calculation? No. He had a lot of turncoats as it was, and there were those among them even more valuable than Grinev, a country gentleman's son, nowise remarkable. So then— what? The pull on his heart. The black creature who had come to love a nice white one. The wolf— isn't there a folk tale like that?— who had come to love a lamb. This man loved a lamb that he did not devour, maybe just because he did not devour it, the way we, villains and non-villains, often get attached to a person because of our own good deed. The gratitude for the hareskin jacket was already used up—by the gilt of life. That invitation to the table was now purely and simply the pull on his heart, love in all its purity. Pugachev summoned Grinev into his ranks because Grinev had matched his heart's desire, so as never to part, so as ("I'll make you a field marshal") once more to bestow a gift: first—life, then—power. And the impatient, unbearable directness of his questions to Grinev, and the gloomy waiting for Grinev's answer ("Pugachev was gloomy and silent") was evoked not by doubt of the content of that answer, but just by its undoubtedness: its hopelessness. Pugachev knew that Grinev, who under fear of death did not kiss his hand, could not serve him. He knew also that if he could have, he, Pugachev, would not have loved him, Grinev, that much. That it is just for the impossibility that he loves him so. Here in all its fullness resounds Annensky's9 immortal utterance: "But I love one thing—the impossible." (Did Pugachev have too few valiant fighters, young men not a jot worse than Grinev? No, but he needed just this one—the alien. The dreamed-of one. The impossible one. The one beyond possibility.) That whole scene is only the final verification, so as to undergo the last purgation of the soul—from all hope.

Let us pay close attention to the very ending of this immortal dialogue:

"—Serve me in faith and truth and I will give you a place among the field marshals and the Potemkins (the princes). What do you say?

—No, I answered firmly. —I am a gentleman by birth; I have sworn allegiance to the Empress who rules us: I cannot serve you. If you really wish me well—then let me go to Orenburg."

That means—Grinev believed. In Pugachev's complete disinterestedness, in the purity of his heartfelt attraction. Pugachev grew thoughtful.

"—And if I let you go, he said, will you promise at least not to fight against me?"

This question is his last gamble, he is yielding the last fort (he had yielded them all).

—How can I promise that? I answered.—You know yourself I am not free: if they order me to move against you—I will go, nothing can be done..."

What is in this answer? Duty. Non-freedom, not free-will.

This scene is a duel of magnanimities, a competition in greatness.

A confrontation within Pugachev of absolute power with the pull of his own heart.

A confrontation within Pugachev of what pulls a man and what binds a soldier.

A confrontation of Duty—and Revolt, of Oath—and Lawlessness, and, a brilliant contrast: in Pugachev, the outlaw—the man wins out; in Grinev, the child—the soldier wins out.

Pugachev swallowed the insult; he overcame everything, understood Grinev, and released him not only to an outward freedom but from within his own wolf's love: Go which way you like and do what you want.

(Read: what you must.)

But, with everything already given up, the final reprise of love:

"Tomorrow, come say goodbye to me."

So too lovers:

"For the last time."

I would give up all Dostoevsky's immortal dialogue for the frank, unrenowned, secondary-school, anthological dialogue of Pugachev with Grinev, all of it (as all Pugachev and all Pushkin) comprised in the epigraph:10

There's bliss in savage war, and bliss

Above the dreadful black abyss...

In the Feast During the Plague Pushkin said it in words: in The Captain's Daughter he said it in deeds.

* * * * *

Grinev is necessary to Pugachev not for a purpose, but for his soul. Thus Gypsies love white children. So too the Russian Tsar loved the Moor Ibrahim. So too Nicholas I did not love Pushkin.

In this dialogue there is an uncannily autobiographical element:11

Pugachev-to Grinev:

-And if I let you go

will you promise at least

not to fight against me?

—How can I promise you

that?

Nicholas I— to Pushkin:

— Where would you have been on

December 14th if you had been

in the city?

—On Senate Square, Your High

ness!

The same intonation of passionate and dangerous truth: skirting the edge of the abyss. In Grinev's answers we constantly hear an intonation that, if it did not always resound in the monarch's study, always did resound inside Pushkin and in any case in the margins of his notebooks.

1. Emelyan Pugachev (1726-1775) was the originator of a rebellion known as the Peasant War of 1773-74. The first uprisings took place in September 1773 among the Yaik Cossacks east of the Volga and spread through the provinces of Orenburg and Kazan. At its height, in the early summer of 1774, the movement covered an extremely large area along the Volga river, from Perm to Tsaritsin, and Pugachev had at his command over twenty thousand irregular troops. Pugachev assumed the name of the murdered Tsar Peter III (reigned December 1761 to June 1762), and his movement called for the restoration of a legitimate monarch to replace the usurper, Catherine II. The strength of the rebellion, however, came from the seething discontent among the serfs, the Cossacks, and the Old Believers. Each of these groups had important grievances against Catherine's government. Catherine at first treated the outbreak as unimportant. On July 12, 1774, however, Pugachev captured Kazan. Thoroughly alarmed, Catherine agreed to make General Peter Panin, a man she personally disliked, the leader of the operations against the rebels. In the same month a Russo-Turkish peace was concluded, permitting experienced officers and regular troops to move against Pugachev's poorly-organized bands. On September 15, 1774, Pugachev was surrendered by some of his former supporters to the Russian regular army. He was brought to Moscow, tried, and executed on January 11, 1775. For Tsvetaeva, as is evident in the essay that follows, Pugachev is the main protagonist of Pushkin's novel The Captain's Daughter. Despite its focus on Pugachev, Tsvetaeva's prose work will be well-nigh incomprehensible to readers who are not very familiar with the fictional story and characters of Pushkin's historical novel. Since the essay is intended mainly for readers with a good basic knowledge of Russian literature, the notes that follow are extremely brief. I have relied for much of my information on commentary written by Tsvetaeva's daughter, Ariadna Ef-fron, and A. Saakiants to the edition of "Pushkin and Pugachev" published in the small volume of Tsvetaeva's prose and poetry entitled My Pushkin (Moi Pushkin), introduced by Vladimir Orlov (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel'), 1967.

2. The appellation of "Pathfinder" (Russian Vozhatyi) refers to Pugachev.

3. German. "Fairy tales of our life and being."

4. That is, speech which is filled with riddles as in folk tales. "The Red-Ripe Apple and the Silver Saucer" ("Zalivnoe iabloko, serebrianoe bliudechko") is the title of a Russian folk tale.

5. The couplet opens the first poem in the cycle of three poems entitled "The Poet," dated April 1923. The Russian reads: "Poet-izdaleka zavodit rech'. / Poeta-daleko zavodit rech'."

6. A proverbial saying: Dolg platezhom krasen.

7. The brothers Grimm; Nikolai Alexeevich Polevoi (1796-1846), Russian writer, critic, journalist and historian; and Charles Perrault (1628-1703). Perrault is properly considered the grandfather of folk and fairy tale collectors and writers. In 1697 he published a volume which became famous throughout Europe, the Stories and Tales from the Past with Moral Lessons (Histoires et Contes du temps passe avec des moralites), better known as The Tales of Mother Goose (Contes de ma mere I'Oye).

8. Baba Yaga, Zmei (that is, "serpent") Gorynych, and the Verlioka are all familiar villains from Russian folk and fairy tales.

9. Innokenty Annensky (1856-1909) philologist, critic, and Symbolist poet. The line reads: No liubliu ia odno - nevozmozhno.

10. The couplet comes from the fourth stanza of the Chairman's song in Pushkin's little tragedy, "A Feast During the Plague" ("Pir vo vremia chumy"), 1830.

11. A slightly inaccurate citation of the conversation which took place between Pushkin and Tsar Nicholas I on September 8, 1826. (See V. V. Veresaev, Pushkin in Life, Vol. II, p. 53.)