Article

Name: Self-Supporting Card Plot in «The Queen of Spades»

Authors: O. B. Zaslavsky

Kharkov V. N. Karazin National University

In the section Literary Life of the Plot

Abstract:

The success of a card secret arises not only due to the knowledge of the cards themselves but also due to an implied treaty between a bearer and receiver of a gift. We reconstruct the conditions of this treaty T1 that describe the transmission of this secret from Saint-Germain to the countess and from her to Chaplitsky. As a result, a receiver of such a gift becomes its potential bearer. Further, not only the knowledge of concrete cards and the conditions of the treaty are transmitted along the chain but also the ability itself to such a transmission (the property of hereditability).

Only one conditions of treaty T1 is explicated in the text – this is the prohibition of further gambling. The other conditions are recovered according to the logic of the plot. In doing so, we find a so-called «hidden plot» that ensables us to explain the Chaplitsky’s story and relate it to the motif of receiving a heritage. At the same time, this finding explains why the countess opened her mystery just to Chaplitsky (but not to other young people). This is because both of them found themselves in the situation when a rich relative had a possibility to cover a card debt but denied to do it. The presence of the mechanism in which the card secret is transmitted from one generation to another, makes a card plot self-supporting.

When the countess’s ghost opens the secret to Germann, the initial conditions change, so instead of treaty T1 that was in force in the previous cases, now a new treat T2 becomes relevant. We analyze the difference between T1 and T2 and how the violation of T2 leads Germann to the failure. Marriage between Germann and Lizaveta Ivanovna, necessity of which was claimed by the ghost, is important not only for the countess’s ghost itself but also for fantastic forces that sent the ghost to Germann. In case of the marriage, Germann could transmit the card secret to his children and thus continue the card plot.

We also suggest an interpretation of a new condition in T2 which was absent from T1 – to stake no more than 1 card per day. This gave possibility for Germann to fulfill the condition about marriage before the end of game. As he ignored this condition (not given explicitly but tacitly assumed), fantastic forces, correspondingly, also ignore theirs. They intruded in the game giving rise to his failure. Replacing the image of a young queen with that of an old woman corresponds to previous actions of Germann himself who preferred to seek for a card secret instead of love of the countess's pupil and did not change this state of affairs.

Our reasonings generalize essentially a recent key observation made by V . S. Listov about the motif of inheritance in this Pushkin work.

Keywords: treaty, inheritance, fantastic forces, plot

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