Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power (22 page)

For the most part, the plays presented in St. Petersburg and Moscow were pallid Russian adaptations of the most renowned French plays. Molière’s
The Miser
and
Tartuffe
and Corneille’s
Polyeucte
were favorites. Suddenly, struck by a flash of inspiration, Sumarokov wrote a Russian historical drama,
Sinav and Truvor
, based on the history of the republic of Novgorod. This experiment in national literature made it all the way to Paris, where its novelty was hailed as a curiosity in
Le Mercure de France
. Little by little the Russian public, impelled by Elizabeth and Ivan Shuvalov, became interested in this new form of expression; while it began as an imitation of the great
oeuvres
of Western literature, when rendered in the mother tongue it acquired a semblance of originality. Sumarokov was on a trajectory; he launched a literary review,
The Busy Bee
, which evolved in a year’s time into a weekly magazine,
Leisure
, published by the Cadet Corps. He even enlivened the texts with a bit of irony, in the style of Voltaire but devoid of the least philosophical provocation. In short, he was a whirlwind, stirring up something new every day in this virgin field. And still, he and other pioneers as talented as Trediakov and Kantemir were bested by yet another author who had sprung to prominence. And in this case, too, it was Shuvalov who “discovered” the genius in that odd character, part intellectual, part Jack-of-all-trades, part vagabond, that was Sergei Lomonosov.

Son of a humble fisherman in the Arkhangelsk region, Lomonosov spent most of his childhood on his father’s boat, on the cold and stormy waters between the White Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. A parish priest taught him to read and, inspired by an abrupt passion for scholarship and for wandering, he fled the family home and set off on foot, ragged and famished, sleeping anywhere he could, eating anything he could find, living on charity and thievery but never deviating from his goal: Moscow. He was 17 years old when he finally arrived, with his belly empty and his head full of dazzling plans. Picked up by a monk, he presented himself as the son of a priest who had come to study under the great minds of the city; and lo and behold, he was admitted, as the monk’s protégé, to the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy (the only educational institution then in existence in the Russian empire). He was quickly noted there for his exceptional intelligence and sharp memory, on the basis of which he was sent to St. Petersburg and from thence to Germany. His principals instructed him to complete his knowledge in all areas. In Marburg, the philosopher and mathematician Christian von Wolff befriended him, encouraged him in his readings, introduced him to the works Descartes and to intellectual debate.

But, while Lomonosov was attracted by intellectual speculation, he also enjoyed poetry, especially since in Germany, under the aegis of Frederick II (who had a passion for culture), versification was a very fashionable pastime. Exalted by the examples from above, Lomonosov wrote verse too, plentifully and quickly. However, these literary exercises did not keep him pinned behind his desk for too long. All of a sudden he dropped his studies and started frequenting gambling dens and chasing skirts. His conduct was so scandalous that he was threatened with arrest, and had to leave the country lest he be forcibly enrolled in the Prussian army. He was caught and imprisoned but managed to escape and, out of money and out of energy, made it back to St. Petersburg.

These successive adventures, far from persuading him to conform, made him resolve to fight with all his strength against bad fate and false friends. Nevertheless, this time he sought to distinguish himself by producing poetry rather than by consuming alcohol. His admiration for the tsarina inspired him; he saw in her not only the heiress of Peter the Great, but the symbol of Russia moving toward a glorious future. In a beautiful burst of sincerity, he dedicated poems of almost religious reverence to Her Majesty. Certainly, he was well aware that in this, he was following in the footsteps of Vasily Trediakovsky and Alexander Sumarokov, but these two colleagues (who hardly welcomed his advent in the tight intellectual circles of the capital) did not intimidate him in the least. He and they both knew that he would soon cast them into the shade with the brilliance and scope of his visions and his vocabulary. He was hunting on the same grounds as they.

Following their example, he penned panegyrics to Her Majesty and anthems to the military prowess of Russia. But, while the pretexts of Lomonosov’s poems remained conventional, his style and prosody had a new vigor. His predecessors were mired in the stilted, pompous conventions of a language that was still impregnated with Old Slavonic. His writings were the first in Russia to approach - timidly, it is true - the language spoken by people who grew up on something other than scriptures and breviaries.

Without actually descending from Mount Olympus, he took a few steps toward everyday speech. Who, among his contemporaries, would not find that appealing? He was widely acclaimed. But he was so avid for knowledge that literary success was not enough for him. Pushing the limits of ambition, he strove to cover the entire spectrum of human thought, to learn everything, to experience everything, and to succeed at everything all at the same time.

He was supported by Ivan Shuvalov, who had him appointed President of the Academy; he inaugurated his role by establishing a course in experimental physics. His curiosity encompassed every discipline, so that he published, one after another, an
Introduction to the True Physical Chemistry
, a
Dissertation on the Duties of Journalists in the Essays They Write on the Freedom to Philosophize
(in French) and, probably to bolster his reputation among the Orthodox clergy, suspicious as they were of Western atheism, a
Reflection on the Utility of Ecclesiastical Books in the Russian Language
. Many other works flowed from his prolific pen - including odes, epistles, and tragedies. In 1748, he composed a treatise on rhetoric, in Russian.

The following year, he set out to make an in-depth study on the industrial coloring of glass; and with the same enthusiasm, he undertook to draft the first lexicon of the Russian language. By turns poet, chemist, mineralogist, linguist, and grammarian, he would spend weeks at a time cloistered in his office in St. Petersburg or at the laboratory that he had set up in Moscow, in the Sukharev Tower, built by Peter the Great. Rather than wasting time eating, when so many pressing problems needed his attention, he would gulp down a few slices of buttered bread and a beer or two, and go on working until he fell asleep in his chair. As the night deepened, passersby would be worried by the light that still shone in his window - they wondered whether his labors were inspired by the God or the Devil. A monster of scholarship and intellectual avidity, warring against the ignorance and fanaticism of the people, Lomonosov even claimed, in 1753, to have preceded Benjamin Franklin in discovering electricity. But he was also concerned with the practical applications of science and so, still with the support of Shuvalov, he reorganized the first university, built an imperial porcelain factory, and established the art of glassmaking and mosaics in Russia.

Having very quickly recognized Lomonosov’s merits, Elizabeth repaid him in admiration and protection for the homage that he dedicated to her in his poems. She may have been only semi-literate, but her instincts sometimes filled in where culture was lacking. It was that same instinct that had led her to choose as her lover, then as de facto husband, a simple peasant and former church cantor, and to entrust the education of her empire to another peasant, the son of a fisherman - a genius and a polygraph. In both cases, she resorted to a child of the people to help her raise the people. In the end, the most significant legacy of her reign would be neither the monuments nor the laws, the ministers appointed or the battles won, nor all the festivals and fireworks, but the birth of the true Russian language. Nobody around her had yet sensed that, beneath the superficial calm, the country was undergoing a revolution. Not only were the mindsets and the morals changing imperceptibly, but the way in which people were choosing and arranging words to express their thoughts. Freed from the ancestral yoke of Church Slavonic, the Russian language of the future was beginning to take shape. And was the son of a fisherman from the Far North who, through his writings, was making the nobility literate.

Lomonosov’s greatest stroke of fortune was to have Elizabeth to help him in his extraordinary career; and Elizabeth’s greatest stroke of fortune was in having Lomonosov to create, under her wing, the Russian language of the future.

Footnotes

1. Cf. Henri Troyat:
Catherine la Grande
, and Bilbassov:
Catherine II
.

2. Cf. Daria Olivier,
Op. Cit.

1750 was a difficult year. Pulled in every direction, by world events as well as family affairs, Elizabeth was at her wits’ ends. Europe had fallen into a convulsion of competition and conflict, and the grand ducal couple was doing no better; neither drama seemed to have a clear plot or plan for the future.

Peter’s coarseness cropped up at every turn. His childish behavior, which should have improved with age, only grew more extreme. At the age of 22, he was still playing with dolls - directing his little band of Holstein soldiers dressed in Prussian uniforms in parades at Oranienbaum, and organizing mock military tribunals to condemn a foot soldier to be hanged. As for the games of love, he made less and less pretense of having any interest. He still boasted in front of Catherine about his alleged affairs, but he made very sure never to touch her. Was he afraid of her, or was she repulsive to him precisely because she was a woman and he was so ignorant about that kind of creature?

Frustrated and humiliated, night after night, she distracted herself with the many-volume French novels of
Mlle.
de Scudéry, Honore d’Urfé’s 5000-page pastoral romance Astrea, Clovis by Desmarets,
Mme.
de Sévigné’s Letters and - what nerve! - The Lives of Gallant Ladies by Brantome. When she was good and tired of turning the pages, she would dress as a man (following the empress’s example) and would go out to shoot ducks by the edge of a pond, or have a horse saddled and go off at a gallop, aimlessly racing the wind, struggling to calm her nerves. She was still sufficiently concerned with propriety to start out riding sidesaddle, but as soon as she thought she was out of sight, she would sit astride the horse. Duly informed, the empress deplored this practice which, in her view, might cause sterility in her daughter-in-law. Catherine must have wondered whether to be touched or outraged at this continued interest in her physical condition.

While the grand duke scorned her, other men were now courting her - and more or less openly. Even her appointed mentor, the so-virtuous Choglokov, was charmed by her and would drop a salacious compliment from time to time. Having been pleased by the attentions of the Chernyshevs in earlier days, Catherine now had the pleasure of basking in the assiduous attentions of a new member of the family; his name was Zahar, and he was certainly equal to his predecessors. At every ball Zahar was there, gazing at her with adoration and waiting for his chance to dance with her. There were even rumors that they had exchanged love letters. Elizabeth was afraid they might go too far, and broke up their flirtation. Chernyshev received on imperial order to rejoin his regiment immediately, far from the capital.

But Catherine hardly had time to miss him, for almost at once his place was taken by the seductive count Sergei Saltykov.

Descendant of one of the oldest and greatest families of the empire, he was accepted among the chamberlains of the junior court surrounding the grand duke and duchess. He was married to one of the empress’s young ladies of honor, and had two children by her. He was thus a member of the race of “real men” and was burning to prove it to the grand duchess, but prudence still held him back. The couple’s new monitor and chambermaid, Miss Vladislavov, an assistant to the Choglokovs, kept Bestuzhev and the empress informed of the progress of this doubly adulterous idyll.

One day, while Mrs. Choglokov was explaining to Her Majesty, for the tenth time, her concern about the grand duke’s neglect of his wife, Elizabeth finally had an inspiration. As her advisor had just repeated, no child could be born if the husband failed to “have some input.” Thus it was on Peter that and not on Catherine that they should be concentrating. Elizabeth summoned Alexis Bestuzhev and went over with him the best ways of solving the problem. The facts were simple: after five years of marriage, the grand duchess had not been deflowered by her husband.

However, according to the latest news, she had a lover, a “normal” man, Sergei Saltykov. Consequently, it was essential, to avoid an annoying intrigue, to beat Saltykov to the prize and make it possible for Peter to fertilize his wife. According to Boerhaave, the court doctor, a minor surgical procedure would relieve His Highness of the phimosis that made him unable to satisfy his august bride. Of course, if the operation did not succeed, Sergei Saltykov would be on hand to fulfill the role of sire, incognito. Thus they would have a double guarantee of insemination. In other words, to ensure the future lineage of Peter the Great, they had better bet on both horses: by allowing Catherine to enjoy herself with her lover and, at the same time, by preparing her husband to have effective relations with her. Concern for the dynasty and family feeling combined to persuade the tsarina to use every arrow in her quiver. And anyway, not having had a child herself in spite of her many love affairs, she could not imagine why any woman whose physical constitution did not preclude maternity might hesitate to seek with another man the happiness that her husband refused her. Little by little, in her mind, the grand duchess’s adultery (which at first seemed only a futile and aberrant idea) became an obsession approaching a holy conviction, the equivalent of a patriotic duty.