A Russian Dialogue With the West:

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A Russian Dialogue With the West Alexander
Pushkinss The Queen of Spades
The Queen of Spades means secret hostility. A
New Book on Fortunetelling
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Alexander Pushkin and His Times
(17991837)
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Pushkins Family
Pushkins Mother
Pushkins Father
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Imperial Lyceum (Tsarskoe Selo)
Pushkins dacha, where he wrote The Queen of
Spades
Natalia Goncharova, Pushkins Wife
The Duel Spot
Pushkins study
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The Golden Age of Russian Culture

• The Making of a Nation
• Westerners and Slavophiles

Nicholas I (17961855) ruled 1825--1855
Alexander I (1777--1825) ruled 1801--1825
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(No Transcript)
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The Queen of Spades East Meets West, or
Strange Encounters of the Third Kind

• Russians at home and abroad

• The foreign presence in the story

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The West-Europeans in Pushkins Tale (in order of
appearance in the text)
Duke de Richelieu (16961788)
St.Germain (17101784)
Giacomo Casanova (17251798)
Dante Alighieri (12651321)
Napoleon Bonaparte (17691821)
Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier (17451799)
Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun (1755-1842)
Franz Mesmer (17341815)
Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (17401810)
Emmanuel Swedenborg (16881772)
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Two fixed ideas can no more exist in one mind
than, in the physical sense, two bodies can
occupy one and the same place. (Ch. 6, p. 880)
Genre questions
Romantic and Realistic interpretations of
The Queen of Spades

• Tchaikovskiis opera

• Iakov Protazanovs 1916 silent film version
  (script by Fiodor Otsep)

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A Russian Faust?

• Hermanns madness

• Numbers and cards

• Dream imagery

• the poor Lisa