“A Lonely Cottage on the Vasilyevsky Island” and Pushkin’s Tales about st. Petersburg

Abstract

Pushkin was not only a founder of the Petersburg text tradition; he was the first Russian author who wrote in the style of fantastic realism. Its main feature is a combination of a fantastic plot with realistic details, such as “The Queen of Spades,” “The Broze Rider,” and “A Small Cottage in Kolomna.” The article focuses on a grotesque oral story about the lonely cottage on the Vasilyevsky Island, told by Pushkin and written down and then published by his acquaintance Titov. Based on a hint contained in its introduction, it is argued that the story about a lonely cottage was composed by Pushkin as a sort of a secret funerary composition, which explains the gloomy atmosphere of the narrative. The article also draws parallels between this story and other works by Pushkin in the style of fantastic realism. As a founder of the Petersburg text tradition, it is shown how Pushkin’s picture of the world was moving from a deterministic vision to a probabilistic one.