Vladimir Nabokov

Pushkin and Gannibal

Footnote

~ZlBP~4M GAN.NIBAL

Will it come the hour o/my]reedom?

Time, time!--I call to it;
I roam above the sea, I wait ]or the
weather,
I beckon to the sails o[ ships.
Under the cope of storms, with waves
disputing,
on the free crossway of the sea
whenshall I start on my free course?
Time to leave the dull shore
o] a to me inimical element,
and mid the meridian swell,
beneath the sky of my A]rica,
to sigh for sombreRussia,
where I suffered, where I loved,
where my heart I buried.
EU~NZON~XN
S H X * N S Noteto Euge.eOne,in,based
pumainly
on the MS biography in German of
his maternal great-grandfather, reads:
The author, on his mothers side, is of African
descent. His great-grandfather,
AbramPetrorich Annibal,* in his eighth year was kidnapped
on the coast of Africa and brought to Gonstantinople. The Russian envoy, having rescued him,
sent him as a gift to Peter the Great, whohad
Tr~r following sketch , which deals mainly
with the mysterious origin of Pushkins
African ancestor, has no pretensions to settle
the many dil~culties encountered on the
way. It is the outcome o[ a Jew odd moments
spent in the admirable libraries of Cornell
and HarvardUniversities, and its purpose is
merely to draw attention to the riddles that
other workers have either ignored or answered
wrongly. Althoughin several instances 1 have
keenly ]elt the want of original documents,
preserved in Russia (where, it seems, they
are
), inaccessible even to native Pushkinians
I am consoled by the ]act that any material
pertaining to any research is incomparably
easier to obtain in the institutions of a ]ree
country than in those of a warypolice state.
It has been abridged from a longer scholarly
study,
v.

him baptised in Vilno. In his wake, his brother

arrived, first in Constantinople, and then in
St. Petersburg, with the offer to ransom him;
but Peter I did not consent to return his godchild. Up to an advanced age, Annibal still
rememberedAfrica, the sumptuous life of his
father, and nineteen brothers, of whom[sic] he
was the youngest; he remembered how they
used to be led into his fathers presence with
their hands bound behind their backs, whilst
he alone remained free and went swimming
under the fountains of the paternal home; he
also remembered his beloved sister, Lagan,%
swimmingin the distance after the ship in which
he was receding.
At eighteen, Annlbal was sent by the tsar to
France, where he began his military service in
the army of the regent; he returned to Russia
with a slashed head and the rank of French
lieutenant. Thenceforth he remained continually
near the person of the tsar. In the reign of Anna,
Annibal, a personal enemyof Biihren, was dispatched, under a specious pretext, to Siberia.
Getting bored with an unpeopled place and a
harsh climate, he returned to St. Petersburg of
his own accord and appeared before his friend
Miinnich. Mfinnich was amazed and advised him
to go into hiding without delay. Annibal retired
to his country estates and dwelled there all
through the reign of Anna, while nominally
serving in Siberia. WhenElizabeth ascended the
throne, she lavished her favours upon. him.
A. P. Annibal lived to see the reign of
Catherine II, when,relieved of important duties
of office, he ended his days with the rank of
general in chief, dying in his ninety-second year
in ~78x.
His son, Lieutenant General I. A. Annibal,
undoubtedly belongs to the number of the most
distinguished men of Catherines age. He died
in xSoo.
In Russia, where the memoryof eminent men
* This is the French form of the English and
German"Hannibal" and of the Russian "Gannibal"
or "Ganibal"; we should constantly bear in mind
that our poets classical education was entirely
dependent on French versions of, and French
commentariesto, the ancients.
"JAn inept, albeit traditional, Russian transliteration; the name is spelled "Lahann" in the
German biography.

11

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12

Vladimir Nabokov

is soonobliterated owingto the absenceof historical memoirs,the bizarre life of Annibalis

knownonly through family tradition.
ON THE RUSSIAN
NOBILITY SIDE, Pushkins family
name can be traced back to one Konstantin
Pushkin, born in the early xsth century, younger
son of a Grigoriy Pushka. From Konstantin,
there is a direct line of descent to Pyotr Pushkin (d. i692), the ancestor of both parents of our
poet (the paternal great-grandfatherof his father
and the maternal great-great-grandfather of his
mother).*
The basic documents regarding Abram
Gannibalsorigins are:
The petition: a clerical co~.y of a petition
addressed in February, i742 (i.e., in the reign
of Elizabeth, Peters daughter), by Major
General AbramGannibal, ober-l(omendant of
Revel, or Reval (now Tallin), N.W.Russia,
the Senate, applying for a noblemans diploma
and heraldic arms.
The Germanbiography: if. 4o-45 of a manuscript some4,ooo wordslong (classified in the
Lenin State Library, Moscow,as Cahier 2387A,
which is a batch of sheets sewn together, to

form a ,book, by the police immediately after

Pushkin s death), comprising an anonymous
biography of AbramGannibal, written in a
small Gothic hand, and pompously worded in
idiomatic but none-too-literate German.All we
know about this Germanbiography (the MSof
which I have not seen) is that it was written
after AbramGannibals death (x78x); that
contains certain details, such as a few names
and dates, that only Gannibal would have remembered;and that it also includes a number
of passages, contradicted either by historical
documents (such as Gannibals own petition)
or by plain logic, that were obviously inserted
by the biographer with a view to pad the story,
to span its gaps, and to give a eulogistic (but
actually absurd) interpretation of this or that
event in the heros life. I think, therefore, that
whoeverspun this grotesque fabric had before
his or her eyes someautobiographic notes left
by Gannibal himself. The Germanseems to me
to be that of a Rigan or Revalan. It maybe the
work of someLivonian or Scandinavian relative
of Mme. Gannibal (n& Schrberg). The bad
grammarseems to preclude its being a professional genealogistsjob.
Pushkins Note to Eugene Onegin (mainly
* Pyotr Pushkinsson, Aleksandr(d. I727), was based
on the biography, but with some new
the father of Lev(d. ~79o), whowasthe father
details
supplied by family tradition or romantic
Sergey (~77o-x848), whomarried NadezhaGanniimagination) has already been quoted.
hal (~775-t836) in i796 and fathered our poet,
Wehave in addition four items, curious and
AleksandrPushkin(i799--i837).
important in themselves, but not casting any
Pyotr
Pushkins youngerson, Fyodor(d. r728
),
was the father of Aleksey(d. t777), whowas the
new light on the subject: (i) an anonymous,
father of Maria(d. x818). MariaPushkinmarried very clumsy and incomplete, Russian version of
Osip Gannibal (I744-~8o6), third son of Avraam the Germanbiography, on ft. 28-29 and 56-58
Petrov, alias Gannibal, a Russianised African
of the same Cahier 2387A, in Pushkins hand,
(I693 ?-x78~). Osips and Marias daughter,
obviously dictated to him, judging by the
Nadezhda,married Sergey Pushkin (her mothers but
uncouth style, probably in October, i824, and
secondcousin) and was our poets mother.
certainly not later than the end of the year, by
Abram(Avram,Avraam,Ibragim) Petrovich,
Petrov (baptismal patronymic),Annibal, or Ganni- someone who had more German than he, with
some desultory marginalia by Pushkin; (a)
hal, or Ganibal (assumed surname), hereafter
referred to as "AbramGannibal," had eleven
very brief curriculumvitae, written or dictated
children by his secondwife, Christina Regineyon
somebodyby Pyotr Gannibal !n his old age,~"
(?) Schrberk, or Scheberch(b. x7o6, d. twomonths to
whenhe lived near the Pushkins Mihaylovskoe,
before her husband): amongthem, Ivan Gannibal at his small countryseat, Petrovskoe; (3) a few
(x73i ?-xSox),a distinguishedgeneral; Pyotr Ganni- words concerning Abramin a genealogical note,
bal (I742-r825?), artillery officer and country
written by Pushkin in the early i83os , known
squire; Osip Gannibal(i744-x8o6),also a military
as Rodoslovnaya Pushkin~h i Ganibalov, in
manof sorts, our poets maternal grandfather (in
which a short passage concerning Gannibal
I773 he married Maria Pushkin, secondcousin of
begins: "Mymaternal great-grandfather was a
Sergey Pushkin); and two obscurer Gannibals,
Negro..."; and (4) the factual as, faintly seen
Isaak (x747-I8o4)and Yakov(b. x749).
Thefollowingnotes, in so far as myownresearch through the fictional in Pushkin s unfinished
goes, mainly concern the origins and the first
historical romance(i827), six chapters and the
third of AbramGannibalslife.
beginning of a seventh, published posthumously
"1" In a letter dated Aug.xx, x825,Pushkinwrote (t837) as ~lrap Petra Veli]~ogo (The Blackamoor
to his country neighbour, Praskovia Osipov: "I
plan to look up myold Negrogreat-uncle, who, of Peter the Great), in which Abramappears
(Ibrahlm, Turkish form of
I suspect, will die oneof these da~s: I amanxious as Ibragim
to obtain romhim certain memoirsregarding my Abraham).
great-grandfather." Wasthis all he was able to
Our poet had no chronological information reget?
garding his great-grandfathers origin and youth.

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Pushkin and Gannibal

Whenbeginning (I827) his historical romance
.4rap Petra Velikogo, Pushkin attempted to
calculate Gannibalsbirth and death dates from
the scanty and conflicting data of the German.
biography (ft. 28 in the batch of sheets m the
order in which they were posthumouslysewed),
our poet computed that if Abramwas twentyeight in I725 (which would make him only
eighty-four at the time of his death), he must
have been born in I697, and at the age of nine
(in accordance with the statement in the Germanbiography, a statement that might have set
the numerativeball rolling in the first place)
was brought to Russia in "i7o8" (either a mere
slip for the correct x7o6or wishful miscalculation). Like many great men, Pushkin was
sedulous and wretched mathematician.
In another abstruse taskmnamely,at the top of
the fourth page of the abridged Russian version
of the Germanbiographydictated to him (:~387A,
f. 56)--our poet apparently attemptedto find the
date of Gannibals birth if, say, he were not
twenty-eight, but twenty-six, in x725. He discoveredthis to be i699 and, addingnine, obtained
the desired "i7o8," the year in whichhe thought
that Gannibal had been baptised immediately
uponhis arrival in Russia.
A cryptic note in the right-hand corner of
the second page reads: "brought [to Constantinople] [~]696," whichis evidently the result
of reckoning based on the fact that the German
biography says that Gannibal was seven when
removedfrom Abyssinia and ninety-two at the
time of his death. Wedo not knowhow Pushkin coped with the awkward mathematical
consequence that makes the little Moorspend
ten years in the Sultans seraglio and appear as
a gangling youth of seventeen before the tsar
in Moscow.
Gannibals Origin
H E G E R M^ ~ biography begins: "Awraam
Petrowitsch Hannibal war...von Geburt
ein Afrikanischer Mohr [a blackamoor, an
African black] aus Abyssinien .... " This fact
therefore was known to Pushkin (who took
downthe Russian translation), but nowherein
his ownnotes does he ever refer to a specific
region whenspeaking of his ancestor.
AlekseyVulf, in an entry in his journal, mentions retrospectively that Pushkin showedhim,
on Sept. I5, x827, at Mihaylovskoe,"the two
first chapters he has just written of a romance
in prose [now knownas Arap Petra Velil(ogo],
in which the main character represents his
great-grandfather Gannibal, the son of an
Abyssinian emir, captured by the Turks and
sent from Constantinople by the Russian
ambassadoras a gift to Peter I, whohad him
educated and grew very fond of him."

13

In the Russian version of the Germanbioigraphy

our poets unknown
transAfrican Negro."
ares "Afrikanischer
Mohr....dictamentor
Andthe Germanbiography itself, in a further
passage, refers to Gannibal as a Neger.
Abyssinians(or Ethiopians,in the strict sense)
have a skin colour varying from duskyto black.
Their type represents a Hamito-Semitic component of the Caucasian race; and a Negroid
strain may so strongly predominate in some
tribes that the term "Negro" is in such cases
applicable in a general sense; but apart from
these considerations (to whichI shall return at
the end of these notes), the European layman
of the time--and, in fact, AbramGannibal himselfmwouldclassify colloquially as a "Negro"
or "blackamoor" (in Russian, negr or arapM
note the ultima) any more or less dark-skinned
African who was not an Egyptian and not an
Arab(in Russian, arab).
In his brief curriculum vitae, in badly misspelled Russian, written or more probably dictated in his dotage, Pyotr Gannibal makesthe
following statement (probably in the autumnof
I825, whenour poet presumablyconsulted him):
Myfather...was a Negro; his father was of
noble origin; that is, a ruling seigneur. My
father was taken as an amanat [a Caucasian
term meaning"hostage"] to the court in Constantinople, whencehe wasstolen and dispatched
to TsarPeter I.
The Germanbiography continues thus:
[He was] the son of a local ruler, powerful
and rich, whoproudly traced his descent in
direct line from the house of the famedHannibal, the terror of Rome.[Abrams]father was
a vassal of the Turkish emperoror the Ottoman
Empirewhoby the end of the precedingcentury,
because of oppression and molestation [Drucl~
und Belgstigung], had revoked, with other
Abyssinianprinces, his countrymenand allies,
against his overlord,the sultan; whereupon
various
petty but bloodywars followed, in which, however, might eventually triumphed, and this
Hannibal[Abram],still a boy, the youngestson
of the ruling prince, withother highbornyouths,
wassent in his eighth year to Constantinopleas
a hostage. Although,given his youth, this fate
sho.uld not have befallen him so early, still,
owingto the fact that his father, accordingto
the Moslemcustom, had very manywives (even
up to about thirty, with a correspondinglylarge
progeny), the numerousold princesses and their
children joined forces in the common
intention
of protecting themselvesand their offspring; and
since Abramwasthe youngestson of one of the
youngest wives, whodid not have at court as
manysupporters [as the elder princesses had],
these contrived through trickery and intrigue,
almost by force, to put himon a Turkishvessel
and turned him over to the fate that had been
assigned him.

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14

Vladimir Nabokov

I shall presendy showthat in the I69os, the

period referred to here, no Abyssinian was a
vassal of the OttomanPorte, and no Abyssinian
prince could have been a Moslemor could have
been forced to send any tribute to Constantinople. The "terror of Rome"will also be
discussed. But before I attempt to clear up all
this muddle, let us glance at the geographical
situation.
Gannibals Birthplace
ASZA~GAr,rt, rlISALS petition (r74z) contHins the following brief but important
information:
I ama native of Africa, of the high nobility
there. I was born in the demesneof myfather,
in the town of Lagona[or Lagonoor Lagon:
u gorodeLagone--thisis the locative case, which
in Russian does not disclose the ultima of the
nominative]. Moreover, myfather had under
his rule twoother towns....
It will be noted that no particular region in
Africa is indicated in the petition. I assume
that this townis in Abyssinia. Onthe strength
of the Germanbiography, the locative case, as
already stated, does not provide one with any
clue to the orthography of the nominative;
moreover, the ridiculous Russian custom of
transliterating
both h and g by means of a
Russian gammadoes not tell us whether this
African namein a Romantranscription* should
be "Lagon," "Lahon," "Lagona," "Lahona,"
"Lagono," or "Lahono." I suspect that
"Lahona" is the correct transcription of the
unknownoriginal but shall further refer to the
place as "L." The similarity between the name
of the sister mentioned in the Germanbiography and the name of the native town mentioned only in the petition is very disturbing.
I have not found--within the limited scope of
my reading--any instance of an Abyssinian
child receiving the nameof its birthplace.
In the course of a workthat in its historical,
ethnical, and geo-nomenclatorial portions is
below criticism, Dmitri Anuchin (I899),
anthropologising journalist, states that after
talking to a "French traveller, Saint-Yves"
(Georges Saint-Yves?), and to "Professor
Paulichke" (presumably, Philippe Paulitschke),
* I.e., the charactersuniversallyacceptedin geographic nomenclature.This has nothing to do with
individualmistakesor transliterative predilections
(Latin, Spanish, Italian, German,English, French,
etc.) within the range of this alphabet, or the
tendency on the part of experts in this or that
transliterated language to break into a rash of
diacritical signs. This writer fervendyhopesthat
the Cyrillic alphabet, together with the evenmore
absurdcharactersof Asiatic languages,will be completely scrappedsomenear day.

he has come to the conclusion that "L" is a

townand a district located "on the right bank
of the river Marebin the province of Hamasen."
The "Loggo"supplied by Paulitschke, and also
by an Italian map of i899 (which I have not
seen), and the "Logo" of Salt (to be discussed
presendy), somehow,in the course of Anuchins
commentsand deductions, evolve first a caudal
t and then a caudal n, which none of my "Ls"
do; for at this point I abandonedAnuchinand
launched upon some research of my own.
CHARLES
POblCET(TRAVELLIIqG Ilq I698--17OO
)
divides the empire of Ethiopia into several
kingdoms (provinces), such as the Tigr&
divides the Tigr~ (ruled by Viceroy "Gaurekos")
into twenty-four principalities (districts),
which he names only a few, such as the
"Safari" (Serawe), a plateau 6,000 feet high.
HenrySalt, a century later, divides the Tigr~
proper ("commonlycalled the Kingdomof the
Baharnegash") into less than half of Poncets
numberof districts, amongwhich he names the
Hamazenin the north, the Serawesouth of it,
and, still further south, the tiny district of
Logo. At some later date, when the Hamazen
and the Serawebecameprovinces, the latter, in
its spread or shift southwards to the Mareb
River, engulfedthe Logodistrict and other small
districts.
The Mareb is easily located, and its name
hardly varies in travellers accounts, of which
there are so few prior to the I9th century. An
examination of the splendid reproductions of
the old maps in the splendid work of Albert
Kammerer(I952) shows that this is the Mareb
of lacopo dAngiolo (alias Agnolo della
Scarperia), RomeMS,c. i45o; of Melchisedec
Thevenot(after Balthazar Tellez), I663; of Job
Ludolf, I683; of BourguignondAnville, 1727;
of Bruce, i79o (drawn 1772); it is the Marib
Fra Mauro, I46o; the Marabo of Jacopo
Gastaldi, 1561; the Marabusof Livio Sanuto,
i578; the Marab of Father Manoelde Almeida,
I645 (sketched c. I63o). It is also the Moraba
of Poncets account(I7o4).
Anuchins informer, or more probably Anuchin
himself, has confusedtwo separate places: Logo
and Logote. Saint-Yves, travelling, I suppose,
sometimein the latter part of the i9th century,
had seen from a mesa (Tokule Mt.) the town
of "Logot"in the valley of the Mareb.In Salts
time (18Io), Logo and Logote (or Legote)
separate townlets in twoadjacent districts, the
northern Logo and the southern Legote, the
latter boundedsouth by the Munnaistretch of
Mareb River. According to the only other
author who mentions Logote (T. Lefebvre,
1846, III, zI, 28; whom,no doubt, Anuchins
French informer had read), the district of

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Pushkin and Gannibal

Logote(Salts Legote)is separated from the districts of "Tserana" and "Tokoul~" by the
Belessa River (which is the Mai Belessan of
Salt), a tributary of the Mareb. Lefebvre
describes the Belessa as following the example
of the Marebby disappearing under the sands
during the dry season, when, however, a little
digging provides one with plenty of water.
"Cette vall~e de Logote &ant tr~s malsaine et
remplie danimauxcarnassiers [lions, panthers],
tousles villages sont situ& sur la cha~ne," and
the villagers, having to comefrom those arid
heights for water into the valley, are "tr&
avares de leurs provisions."
The Mareb, which in its central course may
be roughly said to separate northern Abyssinia
from the rest of the country, is at various
seasons and at various points of its meandering
progress a raging torrent, an underground
stream, or a dribble losing itself amongthe
sands. Its various stretches bear, or haveborne,
local names.Its headwatersarise in the northeast, within fifty miles of AnnesleyBayon the
Red Sea; it is a tiny rivulet with a narrow bed
below Debarwa;then it swells, sweeps south,
turr~s west, and, collecting numerous other
streams from the northern mountains, flows
west toward the Sudanfrontier, to disappear in
the soil near Kassala, though in very wet
weather an ultimate trickle reaches Atbara.
Amongthese little northern tributaries we find
the Seremai, the Belessa, and the Obel. The last
appears on Bents map(i893) and on the U.S.
Armymap(i943); the Seremai River, which
apparently just east of the Obel, is mentionedby
Salt (i814) , who, on his way inland from the
Red Sea and the town of Dixan, which he left
Mar. 5, i8io, arrived the following day at the
picturesque village of Abha(p. 245):
March7th.--Westruck our tents at five in the
morning,and after proceedingabout a mile southward,broughtthe hill of Cashaatto bear due east
of us, at whichpoint.., weturnedoff a little to
the west, and travelled abouteight miles.., until
wereachedan agreeable station, by the side of
a river called Seremai. This river shapes its
course through the bottomof a small secluded
valley, surroundedon every side by steep and
* Rasselaswas representedin Pushkinslibrary
(Ballantynes Novelist Library, vol. V, London,
i823, whichalso contains Sternes Sentimental
Journeyand GoldsmithsThe Vicar o[ Wal(efielcO,
but Pushkin had not enoughEnglish to read it.
If he knewJohnsonstale at all, as he probably
did, it wasin a Frenchtranslation, of whichthere
wereseveral. A Russiantranslation was published
in Moscow,x795, but a Russian gentlemanwould
ignore the wretched Russian adaptations of the
time and prefer the morefluid, thoughhardly more
exact, Frenchversions.

15

ruggedhills, in a nookof which, about a mile

to the eastward, lay a large towncalled Logo,
whencethe surroundingdistrict takes its name.
Logo at that time (i8io) was commanded
a rebellious chieftain "whoin the campaignof
the preceding year had been reduced to
obedience by the Ras," and who made an
attempt to stop and rob Salts caravan. For all
we know, he may have been Pushkins fourth
cousin.
From Logo the Salt party travelled southsouth-west: "Our road now lay...through a
wild and uncultivated country; we crossed the
stream called MaiBelessan... and, after mounting a steep ascent, reachedthe village of Leg6te.
... The distance we had travelled from our last
station [on the Seremai River, one mile west
from the village of Logo] may be computed
at about eight miles." Salt then crossed the
Mareb and proceeded southward toward the
"completely scarped" mountain (Debra Damo),
"whichin the earliest periods of the Abyssinian
history, served as a place of confinementfor the
youngerbranches of the royal family" (p. 248),
at which point Salt recalls Dr. Johnsons
"beautiful and instructive romance."This is a
reference to SamuelJohnsonsinsipid tale, The
Prince o/ lbissinia or (in later editions) The
History o] Rasselas, Prince o] Abissinia,* which
appeared anonymouslyin two volumes in the
spring of i759--at a time readers managedto
find poetry and talent in the journalism of
Voltaires flat Contes. Earlier (x735) Johnson
had translated for a few shillings Joachim Le
Grands Voyagehistorique dAbissinie, du R.P.
J&drneLobo. It is pleasing to reflect that Salt
mayhave seen onthe very sameday the birthplace of Pushkins ancestor and the scene of
Johnsonsstory.
The only mapson which I have been able to
locate Logoare: the one in Salts work and a
smaller one (obviously copied from Salt, without acknowledgment)illustrating the x83o-32
journal kept by SamuelGobat (a Swiss clergymanborn in i799). It lies about forty-five miles
north-north-west of Aksumand about fifty miles
south of Debarwa.I doubt if it exists to-day;
perhaps it has wanderedto someother site, as
Abyssinian villages have been knownto do. On
none of the numerous maps made prior to the
x8th century have I found any locus suggestive
of "Logo," or "Lagon," or "Lagona," except
obviousItalian or Spanish descriptive terms for
"lake," "canal," "hot spring," or "pool"
(lagone).
The trouble is that at exactly the necessary
period, betweenthe last visits of Jesuit priests
in the I63os and James Bruces travels in the
x77os, no vocal European except Poncet (i698~7oo) journeyed to northern Abyssinia.

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16

Vladimir Nabokov

I have discovered, however,another candidate

for Gannibals birthplace. Salt, in his earlier
journal (~8ii), mentions the village
"Lahaina,"* which he saw on his way northward from "Antalow" (Antalo), the-capital
of Tigr&Endorta, to "Muccullah"(Macalle),
the same province. This Lahaina is, or was,
about six miles from Antalo, in a direction
nearly NNE,and thus about a hundred miles
SSE of Logo. I cann,ot locate it on any map,
but judging ,b,y Salts account (he had just
passed by a picturesque village called
the
U.S. Army
map,
i943), with
I should
place
Haraqu~,"
which
I identify
Gargara
of
Lahaina midway between 39 and 400 E and
midway between i3 and I4 N. Beyond
"Haraqu~," after proceeding from one hill to
another, Salt saw

thing, but had to yield to number;she accompanied him to the very deck of the small ship,
still nursing the hope that she might obtain by
entreaties the freedom of this muchbeloved
brother or purchaseit with her jewels; but when
she foundthat her tender efforts remainedfruitless to the last, she cast herself in despairinto
the sea and was drowned. To the very end of
his days, the venerable old man[Abram]would
shed tears of the tenderest friendship and love
as he recollected her; for althoughhe was still
very youngat the time of that tragic event, yet
wheneverhe thought of her this vague memory
would becomenew and complete for him; and
this offering [Abramstears] was the better
deserved by her sisterly tenderness since she
had struggled so hard to free him, and since
these two were the only siblings from the same
mother.

Pushkin, in his note to the 1825 edition of

Eugene Onegin obviously improves upon the
German biography when he says "[Abram]
also rememberedhis beloved [or "favourite"]
sister, Lagan, swimmingin the distance after
the ship in which he was reced
"ing. "
There is no reason why this Lahaina, rather
As I have already mentioned, Pushkin carethan Logo or Logote, should no~ have been the
lessly follows here the Russiantradition of renLagonaor Lahona of Gannibal s petition, and
dering the Latin H by the Russian gamma(so
there mayhaveexi,s, ted oth,e,r similarly sounding that, for instance, Henry becomes Genri and
place-names (on a Lahambasis, for instance).
Heine masquerades as Geyne). Moreover, he
I wouldconsider, therefore, the determination
attempts to feminise the ending of the name,
of "L" as not serried at this time of writing;
which terminates in a consonant (an impossible
but I aminclined to assumethat it was situated
ending for a feminine name in Russian), by
in the general region of Northern Abyssinia,
closing it with a "soft sign" (an apostrophe in
where we have been following, through the
transliteration).
bibliographic dust, the mules and camels of
The receding ship, in whose wake swam-several adventurouscaravans.
somewhat ahead of the romantic era--a passionate sister, might be easily condemnedto
Gannibals Sister
dwindle to a reed raft on a seasonable river;
rt a R the passage concerning the scheming indeed, the entire event might be dismissed by
the cynic as one of those fairy-tale recollections
senior wives, who managed to have the
that old age confuses with true happenings;
youngest ones son turned over to the Turks,
but there is one reason it should command
the Germanbiography continues thus:
attention: the name "Lahann" is, I find, a
His only full sister, Lahann, whowas some plausible Abyssinian nameA"
years older than he, had yet sufficient courage
Generally speaking, names in L, and particuto opposethis act of violence. Shetried everylarly in La, occur comparatively seldom in
Abyssinian chronicles. According to Amhartic
* Or is this a mis-spclling for "Lahama"or
"Lehama,"a small district in Endorta mentioned dictionaries, there is a mans name"Layahan";
by Lefebvre? Thereis, of course, another"Lahaina" and in the reign of KingBahafa(x7~9--28)there
was a general named Lahen, who died about
in the world, namely,the formerresidence of the
kings in the HawaiianIslands.
i7z8 when governor of Hamasen.
~" In Turkish, a language that Gannibal must
We do not know how old was Ras Fares,
havebeen able to understandat one time, lahana governor of Tigr~, in the I69os, nor do we know
means "cabbage" and lahin "note," "tone,"
the numberof his wives or concubines. But we
"melody." In Arabic, laban means "melody"
do knowthat Fares must have been an elderly
"modulation," "mispronunciation," and layan
man at the time, and we also know from dab
means"sofmess," "gentleness," Ziirtlichkelt. In
chronicles (Basset, XVIII, 3io) that a young
several Oriental languages, the stem lab= is
wife of his, whodied at the latest in x697, bore
associated with "loose woman(cf. the Russian
lahanka,a slattern, Pskovandial., and lahudra,an
the nameof Labia ,,D, engel or LahyaDen,g,e~l
inferior whore).
(meaning in Tigr~ beauty of the Virgin ),
on a rising ground to our right [to the east]
a village of considerableextent called Lahaina,
fromwhichplacethe road, turninga little moreto
the west, led througha morecultivated country,
thickly set with acacia and brushwood
....

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Pushkin and Gannibal

whichhas a striking resemblanceto that of the
girl who may have been her daughter.
Gannibals Parentage
O UNDrRST^NDthe various improbabilities and absurdities in the German
biography, the history of Abyssinia should be
briefly recalled.
The Gospel was introduced there about ^.r~.
327 by Frumentius(c. 29o--c. 35o), a native
Phoenicia, who was consecrated bishop of
Aksumby Athanasius of Alexandria. An awareness of that primitive empire, so near to Arabia,
so far from Rome,was slow in reaching western
Europe. The first reliable information was the
fortunate outcomeof ill-fated ventures on the
part of heroic Jesuit missionaries whoaffronted
the nameless dangers of a fabulous land for the
holy joys of distributing images of their fair
idols and of secretly rebaptising native children
under the pious disguise of medical care. Some
of these brave menwere successful as martyrs,
others as map-makers. In the ~6th century,
Portuguese troops helped the Abyssinians to
break a relatively brief spell of Moslemdomination that began about i528 and lasted till the
middle of the century. At one time, c. I62o,
under King Susneyos, Abyssinia was actually
converted by PortugueseJesuits into a grotesque
form of Catholicism, which petered out about
x63o, in the beginningof the reign of Fasilidas,
who restored the old religion and had the
churches occupied again by the Monophysite
clergy. In modern times, Russians have been
pleasantly surprised at finding a kind of natural
Greek-Orthodoxtang to certain old eremetic
practices still persisting in Ethiopia; and Protestant missionaries have been suspected by the
natives of paganismbecauseof their indifference
to pictures of female saints and wingedboys.
In the period that alone interests us--the last
years of the x7th century and the first ones of
the I8th--most Abyssinians were Christians;
i.e., members of the Abyssinian Church, a
dreary, Coptic-flavouredbrewof the most absurd
ideas of old Christian and Jewish priests, all
this spiced with barbarous local abominations.
Despite the memory
of cruel invasions, the state
tolerated, for commercialreasons, Moslemsand,
for sporting ones, heathen Negrotribes, such
as the Shangalla group, to which belonged the
black savages inhabiting at the time a region
not far from, or including, Logo, at a point
"where the river Mareb, leaving Dobarwa,flows
through thick bushes" (Bruce, x79o). In the late
~7th century, and afterward, these heathens
were enthusiastically hunted by Abyssinian
kings in periodical safaris, and there is nothing
impossible in a hypothesis that Pushkins

17

ancestor was captured in the process and sold

to the Turks.
By x7oo, little trace remained of the Moslem
invasion that had been led by Ahmedibn
Ibrahim el Ghazi, surnamedGran (Lefty), ~ossibly a Somali, more than a century and a nalf
before. Indeed, by the time of John I (c. I6678I), the Moslems,although holding the eastcoast islands, had no political powerinland and
were compelled to live in separate quarters in
Abyssinian towns. It is conceivable that
Gannibals father was a pagan warrior or a
well-to-do Moslem
trader, and it is likewise conceivable that he was a local chief of princely
blood, ruling over a district or a province, but
it is impossible for one to imagine that about
~7oo, someI5o miles north of Gondar,the proud
capital of Abyssinia, and less than 50 miles
north from her sacred city Aksum, an
Abyssinian nobleman governing three towns
would be a subject of the Turkish sultan and
thus a vassal of the OttomanEmpire l
Weshall now suppose that (i) Gannibals
father was indeed a regional governor in
northern Abyssinia and that (2) Gannibals
recollection of "taxes" and "tributes" corresponded in a twisted and nebulous way to cer.
tain historicalrealities.
Gannibal was born in a town beginning with
L, in the Tigr~ proper or the Tigr&Endorta,
about i693, in the reign of Jesus the Great
(Jyasu I), whosucceededhis father John in x68o
(according to Basset), and was assassinated
result of the machinations of QueenMelakotawit (Fr. transliteration), whowantedher son,
Tekla-Haymonot,to reign. Poncet, whenspending the summerof i7oo in Debarwa, then the
capital of Tigr~, feasted there with two regional
governors: one of them was apparently the
governor of the whole Tigr~ province
(bahrnegasor bahr-negus,a title that originally
meant "lord of the sea," but that by the beginning of the preceding century had lost muchof
its importance); the other chief was either
temporaryco-ruler or a district governor.
The chronicle published by Basset mentions
only one governor of Tigr~ about x7oo, namely
Ras Fares (ras or raz meaning "head" in the
Geez language). He became governor in the
eleventh year of the reign of Jesus I and was
still governorin the twenty-secondyear of that
reign. In the first years of the I8th century he
seems to have been assigned to other, presumably military, duties, although exercising his
governorshipoff and on; and perhaps the other
fellow, George,ruled in the intervals--and was
being broken in at the time Poncet found the
bahrnegastwinned. Ras Fares survived the twoyear-long reign of Tekla-HaymonotI and was
exiled to the isle of Mesrahby the next emperor,

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18

Vladimir Nabokov

Theophilus (Tewoflos), whoreigned for three

years (c. x7o8-~). At this point I lose track of
Fares, whopresumablydied in exile.
Jesus I (~682-x7o6) was a not-untalented
despot, and a mighty hunter, inordinately fond
of chasing the buffalo and the Galla. He also
kept a sharp eye on his provincial and district
administrators. In the seventeenth year of his
reign--that is, in the late x69os (whenGannibal
was five or six years of age)--the exactions of
the officials and their robbery of the nation in
collecting taxes becameso outrageous that the
emperor summoned all the notables from
Endorta and other districts and demandedan
explanation of them. The principal article of
merchandisewas rock salt. The officials, in the
name of customs dues, used to confiscate most
of the salt that the merchantsbrought on their
asses into the town. The emperor decided that
the tax on salt should be uniform throughout
the country. The tax on five mules laden with
salt wasto be one slab.
The scandal coincided with Poncets arrival
in Abyssinia, and it is possible to believe that
Ras Fares and various district governors in the
province of Tigr6 (including Endorta) were involved. In these cases the emperor xvould no
doubt feel evenfreer than usual to exact tribute
from the governors--and probably would think
nothing of ordering themto send their children
as samples of Abyssinian nobility to the court
of a Frankish king.

called the French ex-poet Rimbaud), Christian

Abysinianboys cost eighty Levantdollars (about
x5o shillings) per head. Onesuspects that most
of the little Africans shipped to Arabia and
Turkeywereused there as catamites before reaching the ageof toil.
I do not know how probable it may have
been for the child of a seigneur, a province
governor, or district governorto be direcdy or
indirecdysold into slavery; but there is definite
information (for instance, in Poncet) that
~7oo Emperor Jesus could and did command
the noblemen--i.e., various relatives of his, as
all nobles were--to dispatch their children to a
distant European court, with the result that
these unfortunate Abyssinian youngsters were
captured en route by the Turks.
Poncet, a French pharmacist in Cairo, who
was invited to Abyssinia to treat Jesus I for
conjunctivitis, left Cairo June xo, s698, and,
via the Nile and Dongola, reached Gondar
July ~r, ~699. The emperor proclaimed a young
Armenian merchant (named "Murat" or, more
exactly, Muradben Magdelun, said to be the
nephew of one of the emperors ministers)
ambassador to France: he was to accompany
Poncet to Paris with gifts for Kin.g Louis XIV,
such as elephants, horses, and leunes enfans
~thiopiens, scions of noble families.
On his return voyage to Cairo (now via the
Red Sea), Poncet left GondarMay~, ~7oo, for
Massawa, planning to stop on the way in the
capital of Tigr~, Debarwa,which he reached in
Gannibals En~?avement mid-July, and to wait there for Murad, who
was still collecting the animalsand the children.
N Tr~E Asvss~Nxs of those days everyBut there were further delays; several horses
body seems to have been selling everybody
and the only elephant, a youngtuskless beast,
else into slavery. There is a charming story
died while crossing the Serawe Mrs., and on
about an Abyssinian priest whois sent young
Sept. 8, x7oo, after waiting for Muradfor almost
divinity students by a friend, another priest,
two months, Poncet/eft Debarwafor the coast.
sells these youths one by one to a Moslem
trader,
Nine days later he reached the island of
then sells him his friend the priest, and then
Massawa,embarkedfor Jidda on Sept. 28, and
gets sold himself. In his Travels (~79o), Bruce
arrived there on Dec. 5" Murad being still
mentions Dixan, the first frontier town he
delayed, the next meetingplace was fixed at the
reached in Abyssinia from the coastal island of
head of the Red Sea in Suez, for which Poncet
Masuah(Massawa), on the Red Sea.
set out Jan. r~, ~7or. At the end of April he
Dixanis built on the top of a hill, perfectly in
form of a sugar loaf, and consists of Moslems reached the Mt. Sinai Monastery, where a
monthlater Muradfinally caught,,u,p with him,
and Christians; the only trade of either of these
bringing a sad report: in Jidda, le Roy de la
sects is a veryextraordinaryone, that of selling
Mecque" (the Grand Sherif Saad?) took away
children. TheChristians bring such as they have
from him the highborn Ethiopian children that
stolen in Abyssiniato Dixanas to a sure deposit;
and the Moorsreceive them there, and carry
Murad had collected for the king of France~
them to a certain market at Masuah, whence and it is not inconceivable that someof these
they are sent over to Arabiaand India.
the governor of Mecca(or that of Jidda) forAbout x7oo, according to Poncet, the price
warded to the sultan of the OttomanEmpire,
for a robust male slave was only ten/cus (fifty
MustafaII, as his ownlittle tribute. All Murad
shillings). In ~88o,accordingto EnidStarkie, the
now had were two young attendants obtained
averageprice of a small boy wastwenty strips of
on the way at Suakin, "the bigger one an
copper cut from a kettle. Someeight years later,
Ethiopian, the smaller a [Negro?] slave."
in the days of "trader Rainbow"(as the English
Poncets and Muradscaravan reached Cairo in

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Pushkin and Gannibal

the first weekof June, and Poncet presented
himself there before the Frenchconsul, Maillet.
In Cairo Poncet, nowimpatient to leave for
France, got into trouble with Maillet, who
questioned Murads ambassadorial status, and
with the Turks, whoque,s, tioned the religion of
the two slave boys (Murads acquisition?) whom
Poncet was taking with him. Says Le Grand:
"LAga et les gens de la Douane [vinrent]
lavertir [June 26, 17Ol] que ses deux domesfiques Abissins 6tant Mahom&ans
devoient
rachet6s... [Poncet] r6pondit que sices enfans
&aient Mahom&ans"he would make a gift
of them to the Turkish governor of Egypt. But
the local Jesuit superior, "touch6 de z~le pour
le salut de ces deux enfans," intervened, and
Poncet was not bothered any more. Whetherhe
got the two youngsters out of Cairo, we do not
know. It is also not clear if we should count
as one of these boys or count separately as a
third item, or consider as representing both, a
"jeune esclave I~thiopien" whomMurad had
brought to the French consul at Cairo, to be
shipped to France together with the remains.ears and trunk--of the young elephant. This
petit esclave, whenalready placed on the Nile
barge that was to take him to the ship, began
to cry that he was a Moslem,that he was being
kidnapped, that he did not want to go to
Christendom, which provoked a tumult, in consequenceof whichthe Turkish officials removed
the boy from the barge and placed him in the
keep of one Mustafa Kiaya Kazdugli, after
which Poncet sailed for France. Incidentally,
the episodeis curiouslydistorted in its re-telling
by Bruce, who says that Poncet, whenembarking at Bulaq, on the Nile, for his voyage to
France, "watchedhelplessly as a bought slave,
a poor Abyssinian lad, whomhe was bringing
for Louis the Fourteenth... was being taken
out of ship by the Janizaries...and
made a
Mahometanbefore his eyes"--which implies, if
I correctly understand what Bruce means, that
the boy was an uncircumcised heathen Negro,
and not a Christian Ethiopian, whowould have
been circumcised anyway (on the eighth day
after his birth).

19

Let us pause here for a momentin order to

check the chronological situation. Weshall see
presently that the Russian envoy could have
obtained the young arap only between the
autumn of 17o2 and the summerof 17o5 and
that the most probable year is 17o3. Working
backward,wearrive at the following conclusion:
The journey from his home in inner
Abyssinia--which, according to the German
biography, Gannibal was forced to leave at
seven years of age--to Turkeymust have taken
considerably longer than the meaningless gapfiller "nicht lange nach" implies--even if we
choose for him the shortest itinerary of the
time, from the Tigr~ province to north-western
Turkey. There was an initial trek to a Red Sea
port, then the tricky passage up the Red Sea
to Suez, then another land journey to a Mediterranean port, and finally the long, awesome,and
nauseous voyage to Stambul. Taking into
account the difficulties of navigation and many
delays, we must reckon the whole journey to
have lasted at least one year--probably longer,
especially if we take into consideration that
Gannibal might have been conveyed to Turkey
not by sea but by the caravan road via Arabia
and Syria. In other words, he must have left
homein 17oo if, by 17o3, he had been living
in Constantinople since the end of 17Ol.
Wenow have to choose between two possibilities: (0 that the boy landed in the Constantinople slave market in the ordinary course of
the trade or (2) that, as the Germanbiography
avers, he was smuggled out of the sultans
seraglio and delivered to the Russian envoy,
with the help of a grandvizier.
If we consider the first proposition, all we
can say is either that the Russian envoys agent
may have induced his employer to show more
gratitude by persuading him that the young
slave had really been a highborn prisoner in
the palace or, more likely, that the Russian
envoy, having purchased the boy by ordinary
means, cookedup the exotic version to impress
the tsar. Since, however, we are inclined to
accept the story of Gannibalsnoble origin, for
want of a better hypothesis, we mayas well see
what historical backgroundthere is to support
the contention of the Germanbiography, which,
Gannibal in Turkey
after the sentencereferring to the length of time
FTER DESCRIBINGLahanns death at
spent by Gannibal in Constantinople, launches
the time of her brothers departure from
upon the account of his deliverance with the
Abyssinia or some neighbouring seaport, the
following idiotic argument:
Germanbiography continues:
At that time the EmperorPeter I was IntroNotlong after this separation forever, Hanniducing the arts and the sciences in his realm
bal arrived in Constantinopleand with the other
and endeavouring to spread them among[his]
younghostages was confinedin the seraglio, to
noblemen.Hedid succeedto someextent in this
be raised there amongthe noble pages of the
undertaking;yet consideringthe great multitude
sultan, and there he spent one year and some
of nobles in that mostextensive of the worlds
months.
empires, thc numberof people ~vhoshowedin-

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Vladirnir Nabokov

20

clination toward learning proved much coo

insignificant, a state of affairs that causedthe
late emperor most grievous and vexing pain.
He cast aroundfor meansto extract from among
the nation.., examplesand models. Finally, he
conceivedthe idea of writing to his ambassador
in Constantinople,requesting him to obtain for
him and send him some young black boys of
goodabilities. His minister followedh~s orders
with the utmostfidelity: he got acquaintedwith
the supervisor of the seraglio wherethe sultans
pages werebeing reared and educated, and then,
through the intermediation of the grand vizier
obtained, in a secret and dangerous manner,
three lads ....
One of these was Gannibal.
PYorRTOLSTOY
is described by historians as a
crafty, unscrupulous,and sinister character. In
I717, he was sent by the tsar to retrieve Prince
Alexis, the heir to the throne, whohad taken
advantageof his ferocious sires journey abroad
to escape from Russia to Austria and Italy, and
whomthe tsars agents tracked down and
brought back, in a series of quiet movesmarked
by the kind of hypnotic tenacity, persuasion,
and deceit that we associate to-day with the
forced repatriation of fugitives by Soviet thugs.
The man who could lure Alexis from the
security of Naplesto his terrible fatherland, to
be tortured to death there under Peters supervision, might easily have devised a means to
obtain a poor little blackamoorfor his masters
amusement.
Myopinion that the tsars envoy to the Ottoman- Porte obtained Gannibal, by the tsars
order and for the tsars service, not earlier than
17o3 and not later than x7o4is corroborated by
Gannibal himself in the following two documents:
(I) In a letter from Paris to Councillor
Makarov, dated Mar. 5, x72x (probably, N.S.),
Gannibal mentions that he has served the tsar
for seventeenyears.
(2) In an address to Empress Catherine
in i726 (when presenting her a textbook on
military engineering that he had compiled on
the basis of his La F~re or Metznotes), he mentions that he has lived for twenty-two years
Pthri
dome(at the
the (who
entourage,
e household)
of domicile,
the late intsar
died in

~725)-

Gannibal and Raguzinski

"1" N T r~ ~. M~. ^ N a" X U ~," the Germanbiol. graphy continues, using its favourite
formula:
the father of the late general [of AbramGannibali, whohad been ripe in years and almost
senile at the time of Abramsdeparture, died,
and the successionof his rule fell to the lot of

one of Abramsstepbrothers .... The Russian

envoy, whowas glad to observe the will of his
emperor, sent to Moscow[the three lads]:
Ibrahim Hannibal; another black boy--a compatriot of his of noble birth--who,however,died
of smallpox on the way; and a Ragusan of
nearly the sameage, i.e., under ten. Although
deploring the loss of one of the boys, the
emperor was delighted that the two others
arrived safely, and tookover personallythe care
of bringing themup; the moreeagerly because,
as already said, he wished to makeexamplesof
them.., and put [Russians] to shame by convincing themthat out o~ every people, and even
from amongwild men--such as Negroes, whom
our civilised nations assign exclusively to the
class of slaves~there can be formed menwho
by dint of application can obtain knowledge
and learning [and thus] becomehelpful and
useful to their monarch.... A no mean connoisseur of mankind,the emperorinvestigated
in advancethe inclinations of his newlyarrived
objects. He destined Hannibal,whowasa quick,
keen, and fiery youngfellow, for a military
career, and he destined the Ragusan(later known
in Russia as Count Raguzinski), whowas of
quie.ter and moremeditativenature, for the civil
service.
Under Mustafa II and AhmedIII, Turkey
exacted a tribute from Ragusa(e.g., the sumof
4,0oo ducats in 17o3) as well as from Arab
tribes; but the law for collecting Christian
tribute boys, although nominally in existence
until x75o, had not been enforced since the
middle of the preceding century. There is no
reason to believe that Sara Vladislavich had
been dispatched to Constantinoplein the natural
course of personal adventure and paternal trade;
but the fact of there having been Ragusan
tribute boys in thepast may have somehowinfluenced the account of Gannibals boyhood.
OnSept. 25, 17o2, a monthafter his arrival
in Turkey, Pyotr Tolstoy wrote to Count
FyodorGolovin, Minister of Foreign Affairs:
A Ragusandwelling in Constantinople, Sava
Vladislavov, who as you knowis a good man,
has now, by myadvice, set out with wares for
Azovand from there will proceed to Moscow.
[He] is here an infinitely useful person to His
MuscoviteMajesty.
Sometimein the autumnof that year Vladislavich arrived in Azovwith an ostensible cargo
of olive oil, cotton, and calico, and eventually
(by the first week of April, I7o3) reached
Moscow,where in result of the great secret
reports he brought he was made much of by
Peter I.
Bringing sables and ermines, Russian fox
(white-collar and red) and wolf (Muscovite
4Azovan), he returned to Constantinople in x7o
or
5 early ~7o5, and then in the summerof ~7o
set out again for Azov and Moscow,carrying

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Pushk n and Gannibal

more calico and more secret dispatches from
PyotrTolstoyas well as a live presentfor the tsar.
It is evident that Gannibal was obtained
sometimebetween the dates of Vladislavichs
two departures from Constantinople. To judge
by a letter from the tsar to the Constantinople
ambassadors brother, Ivan Tolstoy, commander
of Azov, Vladislavich was in Moscowwith the
reports, and presumablywith the little blackamoor,not later than Jan. i2, x7o6(the exact date
of his arrival mightbe easily settled by consulting unpublished papers in the local archives).
Vladislavich travelled in x716-22on diplomatic
missions to Venice and Ragusa and in x725-28
was envoy to China.

21

taught by someforeign-born fancier on his staff

to performvarious tricks, such as doffing a cap,
shouldering a toy musket, and marching under
arms into water.
At the time, according to western European
observers, reiteration of baptism, and baptism
anew, of youths and adults, was performed at
Peters court by pouring cold water three
times over the whole body from head to foot.
If Gannibal had been born an Abyssinianprinceling, he wouldhavebeen baptised at birth, since
Abyssinia had been Christianised six centuries
before Russia; but it is quite probablethat upon
capture the Turks had him Moslemised
(pobasurmanili, in the Russian of the time),
whatever that process implies. The question,
however,is completelyfutile because, first, any
African was to Russians a heathen and, second,
the ceremony performed on the young blackamoor, at the Pyatnitski church, in late September or early October, x7o7(not "~7o5, as the
memorialplaque there oddly says), with Peter
as godfather and Christiana Eberhardina, wife of
King AugustusII of Poland, as godmother, was
conductedin the rowdyand slapstick atmosphere
of Peters court and smacks of mockmarriages
betweenfreaks or the elevation of jesters to the
rank of governors of Barataria. Indeed, there
seems to have been an attempt by somezealous
courtiers, a few months before, to marry the
blackamoor:in a letter from Poland, dated May
I3, I7o7, the tsar writes to Councilor Avtonom
Ivanov that he does not wish to have the arap
conjugated--with, presumably, the daughter of
somegrandees Negroservant, or a dwarf, or a
Russian female house fool. This was a critical
momentfor the gene. that participated in the
making of Pushkln, and the tsar should be
thankedfor directing the course of chance.

Gannibals First Years in Russia

x THe. x~ur. of Gannibals arrival in
Russia, Peter was in the midst of the
Swedishcampaign,with the battlefield--a fluctuating and somewhat phantomic affair--in
Poland. In Moscowhe amused himself with
establishing an anatomical and biological
museum,with a botanical garden in front of it.
The young blackamoor was no doubt welcomed
as an additional curio. Peter visited Kiev in
July-August i7o6, and, travelling north again,
was just in time to enjoy watching, on Sept. II,
x7o6, the first inundation in "Piterburh" (or
"Paradis," as he fondly called the townhe had
just founded). Especially entertaining was the
sight of men and womenhuddling on the roofs
of submergedshacks.
Peter was again in Vilno (on his way back
from Warsawto Petersburg) by Sept. 24, ~7o7,
and stayed there till Oct. ~o. It is within these
time-limits that the, at least, fourteen-year-old
Abyssinian was baptised and given the nameof
Pyotr. More or less synchronously (Sept. 27,
x7o7), his royal sponsor jotted downa little
rr v s "r v R ~ to someof the anecdotesabout
memorandumdealing with the naming of the
young Gannibal.
progeny of Lenita or Lenta (from ,,th,e Latin
lenis, "gentle," or lentus, "tenacious, slow"),
The best-known story is one given in prean English mastiff: two years before, in the
posterous detail by the Germanbiography, and
repeated with personal variations by Golikov
monastery of Polotsk, the tsar had had this
and Pushkin. The gist of it is that young
hound maul Theophanus, an outspoken Uniate
Abram, upon becoming the tsars valet or
monk of the St. Basil Order, whomhe had
assistant valet, slept in an adjacent roomand
then hacked in two with his sword. The pseudoprovedhis intelligence by transcribing the drafts
classical names for her seven pups, which the
tsar translated no doubt from some current
of decrees that his master would scribble at
night on slates.
nomenclator, read--as translated back from
In a document dated Dec. 2o, x7o9 (quoted
Peters uncouth Russian--Pirrhous (reddish),
Eous (dawn), Aethon (bright), Phlegethon
by ,M. Vegner,p. 23), a passage reads: "By[the
tsar s] order, in view of the Christmasholidays,
(blazing), Pallas, Nymph, and Venus. The
coats have been made for Joachim the dwarf
eventual surnameAnnibal given to the blackaand Abramthe blackamoor, with camisoles and
moor may also have been thought up by the
enlightened monarch, although there are other
breeches. Moreover,eight arshins [six yards] of
possibilities. The fate of the youngmastiffs can
scarlet cloth.., and brass buttons have been
purhased for both." E. Shmurlo(i892) vaguely
be traced to another note, a fortnight later, in
which the tsar commandsLenitas pups to be
refers to some documents in which "Abramis

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Vladirnir Nabokov

mentionedthree times, in the same breath, with

the tsars jester Lacosta." This is YahDekosta
or, correctly, Jan dAcosta, Peters favourite
court jester, a Christianised Jew born in
Holland.* According to another anecdote, one
day in the summer of about i7i 5, on board
ship, just before a royal cruise fromSt. Petersburg to Revel, the tsars physician, Lestocq,
and a gentleman of the chamber, Jonson, two
merry fellows, having found the tsars Russian
Jester Tyurikovfast asleep on the deck, played
a period prank upon him: they took some tar
and glued his long beard to his bare chest. Upon
awakeningthe poor jester howled, at which the
tsar, interrupted in his studies of navigationand
keelhauling, came pounding along, bumped
into the innocent Gannibal, and, in a rage,
flogged him unmercifully with a length of rope.
At dinner the two pranksters could not help
chuckling at the sight of the Moorsglum face.
Whenthe good tsar,a humorist in his own
right, learned the cause of their mirth, he burst
out laughing too and told Abramthat to mend
matters he would ignore his next misdemeanour.

blackamoorin more or less Turkish garb lurking in the emblematic background--holding a

battle horse or a bunch of grapes--in several
portraits of Peter I. He is present in an engraving executed by Adriaan Schoonebeeck(d.
I7o5) from a lost picture painted about i7o4;
there he stands at the back, and to the anatomical right, of the tsar, who,for the nonce, sports
a Frenchkings dress. I amnot sure there is not
someerror in the dating of the thing itself or of
its engravers death. But if we accept the date,
and the possibility of the pictured blackamoor
being Gannibal, we have to suppose that either
he was brought by Raguzinski on the latters
first trip to Moscow
(I7o3) or that he was portrayed-prospectively, as it were--onthe strength
of information received in Moscowfrom Constantinople: a blackamoorin attendance was a
symbol of supreme luxury and grandeur, and
the tsar must have awaited his i7o6 NewYear
gift from his envoy with as mucheagerness as
he did shipmentsof lilies and lilacs.

Gannibal in Western Europe

S J A r~ u ~ R Y, ~7x6,Peter I set out on a European tour. After spending a month or so in
Copenhagen,he pursued his journey to Holland
THISIS ABOUT
ALLI was able to gather in the
and France. He landed in Dunkerque, and
way of published material pertaining to Ganniarrived in Paris where he forthwith asked for
bals first ten years in Russia. Wecan dismiss
as family fantasy a passage in the German beer and bawds. Philippe, Duke of Orldans,
was regent of France (i715-23) during the
biography that asserts that "the ruling halfminority of Louis XV.The Muscovitetsars sixbrother" of Gannibal instructed a youngbrother
to travel to Constantinople to ransom Abram; weekstay produced little more than a crop of
dirty stories--though whythe grandees of the
that, not finding him there, this brother
Rdgence, a filthy pack in a d- isgusting and
travelled on to Petersburg, bringing as gifts
talentless age, should have been so puzzled
"precious weapons and Arabic writs," which
by Peters habits is not quite clear.
established Abramsprincely origin; that the
In the same spring of I7I 7, four young men
latter refused to go back to heathendom; and
arrived in France from Russia to study fortithat the brother set out on his return journey
fication and military mining. They may have
"with tears on both sides." There is hardly any
come with the tsar, but more probably they
need to remark that no Abyssinian seigneur
voyaged separately from him hnd did not
could have travelled to Muscovyvia Turkey
soiourn in Denmark. The four men: Abram
without being enslaved there, nor is there any
Arap, Stepan Korovin, Gavrila Rezanov, and
historical information of any free Abyssinian
Aleksey Yurov, our heros chum.
undertaking such a journey in the first part of
The Germanbiography, with its usual overthe I8th century.
It is likely.that the tsar took. his arapalong statement, bad grammar,and inexactitude, says
that Peter I sent Gannibal straight to the
on someof his travels or campaigns,but hardly
Regent, asking the latter "to assume superon all his marches, as family tradition has it.
vision," and that Gannibal at first studied
Weget a ghosdy glimpse of a stylised young
"underthe great Belior [sic] at a military school
*He was a man of parts and a memberof a
for youngnoblemen." The reference is, I sugwell-knownMarranofamily (da Costa, or Mendez gest, to Bernard Forest de Belidor (i63~.i760,
da Costa) that had fled fromPortugal in the I7th
a brilliant young French engineer, who taught
centuryand settled in Italy, Holland,England,and
the Ecole dArtillerie of La F&e(in the
other countries. }an dAcosta, whowas a lawyer at
Aisne,
north-west of Laon) and wrote
in Hamburg,sought a more colourful life and
finding a patron in the Russian consul followed Sommairedun tours darchitecture militaire,
dvile et hydraulique (i72o) and other distinhim to Muscovy.The tsar was delighted with his
gnished works.
wit, madehim a count, and gave him a barren
island off the Finnishcoast.
According to the Germanbiography, Ganni-

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Pushkin and Gannibal

bal then joined an artillery regiment in France
andas a capitaine of a companyparticipated in
a war against Spain. This war was declared
Jan. 9, I719, and peace was signed Feb. 17,
I72o. During an undermining operation--somewhere in Catalonia, I suppose--he was severely
woundedin the head and taken prisoner (it is
odd that he never mentions this event in his
letters from France). Uponhis return to France,
Abramapparently went on with his studies at
another school, the Ecole dArtillerie of Metz,
an institution foundedby the illustrious military
engineer S~bastien Le Prestre, Marquis de
Vauban(I633-I7o7).
By January, I72% the Russian ambassador,
Prince V. L. Dolgorukov, had announced to
the four young men that they would have to
return to Russia, but a year of procrastination
followed. It wouldseemthat part of that year
Abramand his companions spent in Paris--in
the hectic Paris that had been left a financial
shambles by John Law. Early spring was
markedby fabulous balls and illuminations in
honourof the arrival of a tentative bride for the
king, the blondelittle infanta, aged four and a
half, whom,however,the twelve-year-old Louis
did not like. The Regentwas energetically pursuing his life of debauchery. Courtesans wore
stockings of flesh-coloured silk. Thieves and
highwaymenwere subjected to the iron boot,
the toasting of toes against an ordinaryor extraordinary fire, and foot baths of boiling oil. The
financial term "liquidated" (liquide) was used
in regard to executedcriminals. The poet Arouet
(better knownas Voltaire) was thrashed by the
footmen of an officer whomhe had called a
police spy. Prodigious sums were wonand lost
at faro. The Marquis de Saillant successfully
wagered he would ride ninety miles on horseback in six hours.
In the midst of these dazzling frolics, little
is knownof Abramsexistence, except that he
was continuously and abjectly hard up. I can
find nothing in the French memoirs of the
R~gencethat wouldcorroborate statements made
by Pushkin in his novel that all the ladies
desired to entertain le nbgre du Czar, that he
hobnobbed with Voltaire, and that the playwright Michel Guyot de Merville introduced
him to a womanof fashion, "Countess L~nore
de D.," whobore him a black baby. The letters
Abramwrote in Russian from France to various
officials (clamouring for money,pleading not
to be sent homeby sea, saying he wouldrather
walk than sail, begging in vain to be left in
France for further studies, and so forth) seem
to me to have been worded not by him but by
his companionin hyperbolic distress, Aleksey
Yurov. After six or seven years abroad, Abram
appears to have forgotten Russian so thoroughly

23

that upon his return the autocrat bundled him

off to grammarschool at the Aleksandronevski
Monastery, where he was enrolled on Mar. I4,
I723, O.S. He seems to have been returned to
the imperial household on Nov. 27, I724. Commentators have wonderedif perhaps the event
might refer to some other "Abramthe blackamoor" (though no other is known), since
seemedto them to clash with the fact that on
Feb. 4, I724, by a ukase in the tsars ownhand
Abramwas madea lieutenant (poruchik) in the
bombardier company of the Preobrazhenski
regiment. However, the whole age was a
freakish one.
Gannibal brought from France a small library
(sixty-nine titles) consisting mainlyof historical
works, military manuals,travels, and a sprinkling of fashionable exotica; all these volumeshe
sold (in I726) for two hundred roubles to the
Imperial Library but bought them (or a similar
set) back in I742. Althoughthe list is quite
conventional, with works by Bossuet, Malebranche, Fontenelle, Corneille, and Racine
representingits literary section, there is a distinct stress on various voyages, with Chardin
taking the reader to Persia to discover that a
milk diet cures ulcers; Lahontanvisiting, in a
kind of proto-Chateaubriandesque America
(~688), the Gnacsitares and the Mozemleks,
whomnone saw after him; and Cyrano de
Bergerac journeying to the moon,where people
have namesonly expressible by little melodies
of a few musical notes.
Gannibal and Annibal
r r IcI^rrY, the name of Peter Is godchild had becomePyotr Petrovich Petrov
(Christian name, patronymic, and surname),
but he had grown used in Turkey to the name
of Ibrahim and was allowed to call himself by
its Russian counterpart, Avraam or Abram.
Actually, he should not have boggled at bearing his godfathers name:after all, it had been
a Petrus Aethiops (Pasfa Sayon Malbazo) who
published in Rome,about i549, after thirteen
years of labour, the NewTestament in the
language of Abyssinianliturgy (that is, Geez,
the ancient Ethiopic, which was later replaced
by Amharic).
The statement in the beginning of the Germanbiographyto the effect that Abramsfather,
a proud Abyssinianseigneur, traced his lineage
two thousand years back to Hannibal, the
famousCarthaginian general, is of course nonsense: it is impossible to conceive that an
Abyssinian of the i7th century should have
knownanything of him. The surname Gannibal
was applied to Abramin official documentsas
early as i723, upon his return from France. In
other references, and in all earlier ones, he is

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Vladimir Nabokov

called Abram arap or Abram Petrov Amp,

where the middle term is the patronymicin the
act of changinginto a surname.It is interesting
to mark how puzzled Russian commentators
are by this choice of name, which in reality
is such an obvious one. Anuchin, for example,
absurdly suggests that Abram or Abrams
family might have derived "Gannibal" from
Adi Bare (a village just north of Debarwa,
northern Abyssinia)! Whynot from Lalibala
(an Abyssinianemperorof the I3th century),
from Hamalmal (a provincial governor who
rebelled against his royal cousin, Malak
SagadI, in the late i5oos), or, still better, from
gane bal, which means "strange master" in
Tigr$; there are no holds barred in these linguistic petits-ieux.
Actually, of course, our heros eponymwas as
trite and familiar a figure in the pseudo
classically-minded Europeof the x8th century-in its textbooks, essays, historical works, newspaper articles, and academicspeeches--as were
C~esar and Cicero. In Tsar Peters Russia no
illumination was complete without the names
of Greek and Romanheroes appearing in a
pyrotechnical display of old saws. Pushkin was
quite right in Gallicising the adopted surname
that Abramhad most probably brought from
France in I723. There, and in Italy, it was not
infrequently met with as a given name (e.g.,
Fran$ois Annibal, duc dEstr~es, d. I687). He
had certainly encountered it in his military
studies. He had read about "le grand g~nie
dAnnibarin Bossuets Discourssur lhistoire
universelle. If he really took part in the Spanish
War,he must have been stationed in I7i 9 at the
fort of Bellegarde (re-built by Vaubanin I679
)
and have trodden there, on the Spanish border,
near the village of Le Perthus (Pyr~n&s
Orientales), the Elephant Steps of Hannibals
Highway,still visible to-day amongthe arbutus
and oak brush. And one also wonders if in
Metz he had not had for schoolmate a certain
Pierre Robert dit Annibal(i669-i783), whomust
have been living there about i72o, according to
the parish records published by Porier.
Gannibals Later Years in Russia
E C A V I T A I N E Petrov dit Annibal, having
acquired in France some kowledge of bulwarks and buttresses, lived, from i7=3 on, in
Russia, teaching mathematics and building
fortresses.
I have not performed any special research in
regard to this final lap of his life; it is fairly
well knownin its main features, and as Russian commentatorshave pointed out, Pushkins
presentation of AbramsSiberian period is false.
On May8, I727, immediately after the end of
CatherineIs reign, he was dispatchedto inspect

a fort in Kazanand then to build one in Selenginsk, on the Chinese border--where, incidentally, Lieutenant Gannibal encountered his
former patron, Count Vladislavich-Raguzinski,
who was returning from his Chinese embassy.
Vaguelyaccused of political intrigue, Gannibal
found himself kept at work in Selenginsk and
Tobolskfor a couple of years, and only in the
beginning of Annas reign the governor of
St. Petersburg, Miinnich, needing a good military engineer, had him transferred to a Baltic
fort. In x73I, Gannibal married Evdokia
(Eudoxia) Dioper, daughter of a sea captain,
Andrey Dioper, presumably of Greek origin.
She was unfaithful to him, and so was he to
her. According to documents described by
Stepan Opatovich (in Russkaya starina, i877),
Gannibal, in i73~ , rigged up at his home a
private torture chambercomplete with pulleys,
iron clamps, thumbkins, leathern whips, and
so forth. An obstinate and formalistic man,he
then managedto have his victim imprisoned
by the state for marital betrayal. She stayed five
years in jail, after which--while divorce proceedings were dragging onwshe was more or
less at liberty till i753, whenthe final separation
was accorded; upon which, the unfortunate
womanwas packed away to a remote convent,
where she died. In the meantime, in I736,
Gannibal had married (unlawfully) his mistress
of four years standing, the daughter of another
captain, an army captain this time, named
Matthias Schrberg, Lutheran, of SwedishGermandescent. By this second wife (whose
first name was Christina Regine, according to
the German biography) Gannibal had eleven
children, of whomthe third son, Osip, was to
be Pushkins maternal grandfather.
Gannibalspent a few years as a country squire
on a piece of acquired land, and then went on
building fortresses. In i742, Elizabeth, Peter rs
younger daughter, made him a major general
and four years later granted him the country
seat of Mihaylovskoein the province of Pskov,
which was to be forever linked up with Pushkins name. During these years, Gannibal
provedhimself an expert at arranging fireworks
at state festivals and composingdenunciations
of various officials. In i762, after building his
last fortress and propelling his last rocket, he
was retired and lived in obscure senility for
another twenty years on yet another country
.estate (Suida, near Petersburg), where he died
m i78i, at the advanced age of (probably)
eighty-eight.
Conclusions
E s ~ ~ ~ s the unfinished romance(i827) The
Blackamooro[ Peter the Great (in which
a greatly glamourisedIbrahim is given fictitious

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Pushkin and Gannibal

25

Pushkin, with his sense of the exotic, never

once allude to Abyssinia (Pushkin, of course,
knew of its mention in the Germanbiography,
the Russian translation of which had been dictated to him). Nonetheless, it is upon nonbelievers in the Abyssinian theory that the
burden of the proof rests; while, on the other
hand, those whoaccept it must waver between
seeing in Pushkin the great-great-grandson of
one of those rude and free Negro nomadswho
haunted the Mareb region or a descendant of
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, from whom
Abyssiniankings derived their dynasty.
According to N. Barsukov (I89i), who had
it from Elizaveta Pushkin, widowof our poets
This skipper was the glorious skipper
brother Lev, the hands of NadezhdaGannibal,
Throughwhomour country was advanced,
Pushkins mother, had yellowish palms; and
Whoto our native vessels rudder
according to another source, quoted by V. VinoGavemightily a sovereigncourse.
gradov (i93o), all the daughters of Isaak
Gannibal, Pushkins grand-uncle, son of
This skipper wasaccessible
Abram,spoke with a peculiar sing-song intonaTo my grandsire; the blackamoor,
tion--"an African accent," quaintly says an
Boughtcheaply, grewup staunchand loyal,
old-timer, who remarks that they "cooed like
Theemperorsbosomfriend, not slave ....
Egyptian pigeons."
"Figlyarin" (from lqglyar, a zany, a coarse
There exists no authentic portrait of Abram
buffoon) is a play on the name of a hated
Gannibal. A late I8th-century oil, which some
reviewer, Fadey (Thaddeus, Thady) Bulgarin.
suppose represents him, wearing a decoration
It was thought up by the minor poet Vyazem- he never received, is, anyway, hopelessly
ski, Pushkins friend, and first used by another
stylised by the dauber. Nor can one draw any
poet, Baratinski, in a published epigram of
conclusion from the portraits of his progenyas
i827. Pushkins piece was written in i83o, and
to what blood predominated in Abram, Negro
it is his answer to the following vicious
or Caucasian. In Pushkin, admixtures of Slavic
innuendo by Bulgarin in his magazine Severand German strains must have completely
naya pchela (The Northern Bee):
obscuredwhateverdefinite racial characteristics
Byronslordship and aristocratic capers, com- his ancestors mayhave possessed, while the fact
bined with Godknowswhat way of thinking,
that certain portraits of Pushkin by good
have driven to frenzy a multitude of poets and
artists, and his death mask, do bear a remarkrhymesters in various countries: all of them
able resemblance to modern photographs of
have started talking about their six-hundredtypical Abyssinians, is exactly what o-ne-might
year-old nobility l...It is openlyrelated that
expect in the descendant of a Negromarried to
somepoet or other in SpanishAmerica,likewise
a Caucasian. It should be repeated that
an imitator of Byron, being of mulatto descent
on his fathers or (I do not quite remember) "Abyssinian" implies a very complicated blend
of the Hamitic and the Semitic and that, moremothers side, beganto affirm that one of his
over, distinct Negroid types comminglewith
ancestors was a Negroprince. A search in the
townhalls archives disclosed that in the past
Caucasian ones on the northern plateau and
there had been a lawsuit betweena skipper and
amongruling families almost as muchas they
his mate on account of that Negro, and that
do amongthe nomadicheathens of the lowland
the skipper maintained he had acquired the
brush. The Galla tribes (the Oromota), for
Negrofor a bottle of rum.
example, who overran the country simulIt wouldbe a waste of time to conjecture that
taneously with the Turkish invasion in the I6th
Abramwas not born in Abyssinia at all; that
century, are Hamites with a strong Negro
he had been captured by slave traders in a
strain. Abrammayhave had the characteristics
totally different place--say, the Lagonaregion
that Bent found in the Tigrd and Hamasen
of equatorial Africa, south of Lake Chad, intribes: "skin...of a rich chocolate colour, the
habited by MussulmanNegroes; or that he was,
hair curly, the nose straight with a tendency
as Helbig (i8o9) affirms, a homelesslittle Mohr toward the aquiline, the lips thickish," or-while still technically an Abyssinian--hemight
(Negro), acquired in Holland ,by Peter I
serve as a ships boy (Bulgarin s source);
have possessed the traits that Pushkin, a conmay also brood on the puzzling question why ventionalist in these matters, gives Ibrahim in
Gannibal, with his sense of the political, and
his novel: "a black skin, a flat nose, inverted

adventures in France and Russia--all this is

not in the authors best vein), there is among
Pushkins works a remarkable piece in verse
referring to the same character. In this postscriptum of five stanzas to a poem on his
paternal lineage (Moyarodoslovnaya), in iambic
tetrameter, Pushkin has this to say about his
maternal ancestor (I have not rendered the
rhymes, feminine and masculine, which alternate in the original):
Figlyarin, smugat home,decided
That my black grandsire, Gannibal,
Wasfor a bottle of rumacquired
Andfell into a skippers hands.

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Vladimir Nabokov

lips, and rough woolly hair." The taxonomic

problem remains unsettled and will probably
remainso despite "anthropological sketches" of
the Anuchin brand. And although Abram
Gannibal used to refer to himself, in humble
letters to grandees, as "a poor Negro," and
although Pushkin saw him as a Negro with
"African passions" and an independentbrilliant
personality, actually Pyotr Petrovich Petrov,
alias AbramGannibal, was a sour, grovelling,
crotchety, timid, ambitious, and cruel person;
a good military engineer, perhaps, but humanistically a nonentity; differing in nothing from
a typical career-minded,superficially educated,
coarse, wife-flogging Russian of his day, in a
brutal and dull world of political intrigue,
favouritism, Germanic regimentation, oldfashioned Russian misery, and fat-breasted
empresseson despicable thrones.

vincing, unless we take it to imply cascades,

small waterfalls, etc., and not the playing sprays
of an African Versailles, Abrams paternal
home. Of that homewe knoweven less than we
do of a certain farm at Snitterfield, near Stratford. One thinks of the faucets in Johnsons
watery Rasselas (of which Salt thought in
Abyssinia) as well as of the cent milles jets
deau of King Belus marble palace on the
Euphrates in Voltaires unreadable novella
Voyages et Aventures dune princesse babylonienne, pour servir de suite ~ ceux de Scarmentado, par un vieux philosophe qui ne radote
pas toujours ).
(Geneva, x768
o ~ r r ~ r: ~ s to think, that Dr. Johnsons
i vcontemporary,
Pushkins great-grandfather,

was born practically in "Rasselas" lap, at the

foot of the joint memorialblending Ethiopian
history and the didactic romanceof the French
WrSr~ALLWOW
o BSc~tO a certain passage in
x8th century, one may allow oneself also to
Pushkins note to EugeneOnegin: It reads:
visualise a Frenchman of Louis XIVs time
Up to an advancedage, Annibalstill remem- feasting with Pushkins dusky great-greatgrandfather in the land of Prester John. Let me
bered Africa, the sumptuouslife of his father,
conclude these rapid notes about Gannibal with
and nineteen brothers, of whomhe was the
youngest; he rememberedhowthey used to be
the following poetical excerpt from the anonyled into his fathers presencewith their hands mousEnglish translation (~7o9) of the travels
boundbehind their backs, whilst he alone reof Charles Poncet, who stayed in Debarwain
mained free and went swimming under the
the
summerof x7oo:
fountains of the paternal home....
After a solemnservice for the emperorsson
Had Pushkin explicitl stated here that the
[Fasilidas, heir to the throne], whohad just
paternal home was in Abysslma, we mlght
died, the two Governorsseated themselvesin a
have argued that he had borrowedfrom literary
great hall, and placed mein the middlebetween
them. After that, the officers and persons of
sourcesof his timethis strikingly specific detail
note, both menand women,rangd themselves
of an Ethiopian rulers sons being treated as
round the hall. Certain womenwith tabors...
captives, potential parricides, possible usurpers.
beganto sing.., in so doleful a tone that I could
The banishmentof youngprinces to bleak hillnot hinder beingseizedwith grief ....
tops in the Tigr~ province by kings and viceroys as a precaution against violent succession
Ones marginal imagination conjures up here
had had a great romanesque impact on the
manya pleasing possibility. Werecall Coleridges
imagination of western Europe in the ~Sth
Abyssinian maid (Kubla Khan, x797) singing of
centu And, most curiously, the Abyssinian
"MountAbora," which (unless it merely echoes
chronicler Za-Ouald(French transcrlptaon) tells
the nameof the musicalinstrument)is, I suggest,
us that in the twenty-secondyear (~7o2, ~7o3,
either Mr. Tabor, an amba(natural citadel), some
or ~7o4) of Jesus Is reign, he caused all his
3,ooofeet highin the Sir~ district of the Tigr~, or
sons to be put in chains--and was assassinated
~till more exactly the unlocated amba Abora,
which I find me.n, tioned by the chronicler Zaa couple of years later by his only free son,
Tekla. I do not think that Pushkindeliberately
Ouald (in Basset s translation) as being the
introduced here this local note--to corroborate
burial place of a certain high official named
a statement of locus he had never made and
Gyorgis (one of Poncets two governors?)
allude to a specific incident he could not have
i7o7. Wemayfurther imagine that Coleridges
known.It seems more plausible to suppose that
and Poncets doleful singer was none other than
the governor of "L" dutifully followed his
Pushkins great-great-grandmother; that her
"sultan" in this colourful custom. In fact, I
lord, either of Poncets two hosts, was Pushkins
would say that this, and the sisters name
great-great-grandfather; and that the latter was
Lahann, are the only details that have a true
a son of Cella Christos, Dr. JohnsonsRasselas.
Abyssinianflavour.
There is nothing in the annals of Russian
The other detail, concerning the swimming Pushkinologyto restrain one from the elaboraunder the fountains, pod]ontanami,is less contion of such fancies.

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MaxFrisch

Andorra
From a New Play

very important part in Andorra too. He knew,

he felt what everyone thought without putting
it into words; he examinedhimself to see if it
was really true that he was always thinking
about money,he examinedhimself till he discoveredthat it wasso, that it wastrue, he really
was always thinking about money.He confessed
it; he madeno secret of it, and the Andorrans
looked at each other, without a word, the
corners of their mouths scarcely twitched.
Where the Fatherland was concerned, too, he
knewexactly what they thought. Every time he
took the wordin his mouththey let it lie, like
a coin that has fallen in the dirt. Becausea Jew
-the Andorransknewthis too--has fatherlands
whichhe chooses, whichhe buys, but no fatherland like us, no fatherland to whichhe is born;
and howeverwell he meant it whenthe Fatherland was being discussed, he spoke into a silence
as though into cotton wool.
Later he realised that he was obviously lacking in tact, indeed on one occasion they told
him so to his face, when,disheartened by their
behaviour, he becamepositively passionate. The
Fatherland belongedto the others, once and for
all, and he was not expected to be able to love
it, on the contrary his continual wooingof the
Fatherland merely opened up a chasm of
suspicion; he was courting favour, advantage,
approval, which they felt to be a meansto an
end, even if they themselves could discern no
possible end. So it went on, until one day he
discovered with his restless intelligence, which
had to keep analysing everything, that he really
didnt love the Fatherland, that he disliked the
very worditself, whichalwaysled to embarrassmentevery time he used it. Obviouslythey were
right. Obviouslyhe couldnt love at all, not in
the Andorransense; he had the heat of passion,

Authors Preface

r~r r~Ar~x:Naturallythe play does not refer

to the real small state of this name,to the
little nation in the Pyrenees which I do not
know,nor does it refer to another real small
state which I do know;Andorra is the name of
a model. There is another mapof the world;
on this map, and nowhereelse, we find Shakespeares Illyria, DfirrenmattsGfillen, Brechts
Setzuan, GiraudouxsTroy, etc.
The story: It is invented, and in this instance
I even rememberwhen and where it occurred
to me: in r946 in the Caf~ de la Terrasse,
Zfirich, in the morning. Written as a prose
sketch, published in Tagebuchz946-~r949, entitled "The AndorranJew."
There lived in Andorra a young man who
was taken for a Jew. The task wouldbe to tell
the supposedstory of his origin, his daily contacts with the Andorrans, whosaw in him the
Jew--the ready-made image that was waiting
for him everywhere.For example,their distrust
of his natural emotions which a Jew, as the
Andorrans know, cannot have. He was thrown
backon the acuteness of his intellect, whichfor
that very reason becamemore acute, of necessity. Or his attitude to money,which plays a
Tr~sbrilliant presentationof ".4ndorra"in
Ziirichs Schaus.pielhauslast winter marked
the mostconspwuous
successin the careerof
the distinguished Swiss novelist and playwright. It is alreadyplayingto impressively,
eerily silent Germanaudiences in Munich
and Berlin (in a productionby Fritz Korther); it has beenbroadcastby the B.B.C.,and
will shortly be publishedby Methuenin the
translation by MichaelBullock.
27

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