The High Stakes of Identity: Gambling in the Life and Literature of Nineteenth-Century Russia by Ian M. s> Helfant (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 307 approach to the study of Pechorin and to 'questions of meaning and masculinitythat are at the novel's heart' (p. 87). How is a woman to read the novel? In keeping with her catechetic manner,Jane Costlow's questions tend to be more interestingthan her answers.Her approach,though, is stimulating even if herjudgements seem snatched, as if Pechorin were too hot to touch. Her eloquent examination of his feminine side and the place of women, especiallyVera, in hislife, isvaluable and enlightening, though the conclusion that what he least wants is compassion and that his 'devastating portrait' indicts 'akindof hypertrophiedmasculinitythatis alive and well in ourworld, as well' can only leave one wondering why this 'monstrousbug' (p. I 02) ever arousedany interestat all. In fact, the witness to the interestshown in Pechorinat his firstappearance and lateris obviousfroman astutecollationof criticalarticlesby Kotliarevskii, Vladimir Fisheret al., including the grumpyand somewhat comic reaction of Nicholas I to a first reading (from Emma Gershtein's study). The Companion concludes with a section entitled 'Primary Sources' which offers a useful reminder of the varied responses that early reviewers made to Pechorin, Shevyrev'sintelligentreadingbeing matchedby Burachok'shostilityand high praisefrom such unlikelysourcesas FaddeiBulgarinand Brant. London RICHARD FREEBORN Helfant, Ian M. TheHighStakesofIdentity:Gambling in theLifeandLiterature of JNineteenth-Centuy Russia. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2002. XXV + 2I I pp. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography.Index. $79.95. IAN M. HELFANT'S monograph on gambling in nineteenth-century Russia is welcome insofar as it addresses a subject that has received little scholarly attentionbut which any literaryor culturalhistorianin the fieldwill recognize as important. Following an introductory chapter which gathers some of the attitudes to gambling from memoirs and lettersof the period, Helfant turnsin Chapter 2 of his monograph to the colourful F. I. Tolstoi, who was renowned for his cardsharpingas well as for his wit, literarytaste, and readiness to fight duels (and who was nicknamed Tolstoi 'the American', on account of his enforced disembarkation on the Aleutian Islands from a ship whose captain had understandably tired of his pranks). In Chapters 3 and 4 Helfant discusses Pushkin'sliterary and gambling relations with the minor poet Velikopol'skii and Lermontov's representation of gambling in the various versions of Masquerade respectively. In Chapter 5 he reconsiders interpretations of Pushkin's'Queen of Spades' and compares Shakhovskoi'sremodelling of the tale in a play firstperformedin I836, with a view to using Shakhovskoi'smore conventional use of prevailing stereotypes to provide fresh insight into Pushkin's canonical work. In Chapter 6 he examines a didactic novel on gentry mores by the minor writer Begichev, which in some respects foreshadows the novels of Lev Tolstoi, concentrating on the gambling mania 308 SEER, 8i, 2, 2003 of a character named Aglaev and other noblemen who call to mind the by now mythologized 'American'. Helfant claims to concern himselfabove all with the 'interactionof real-life and literary gambling performances', hoping thereby to elucidate the 'significance of gambling as an index of character in nineteenth-century Russia' and to trace 'its role in the fate of the gentry over the course of the century' (p. xxii). Drawing on 'perspectivesgained from modern risktheory, developments in cultural semiotics, and explorations of other types of contested and mythologized discourse (duelling, suicide, the Cossack myth)' (p. I i8), he explores various ways in which gambling could be construed. Inasmuchas it exposed theparticipantto riskand chance gamblingresembled experience on the battlefield.It also affordedthe nobleman an opportunityto asserthis social identity by demonstratinghis disdain for money or his ability to maintain composure in a potentially perilous situation. In these respects it had much in common with duelling, which was also conducted within the frameworkof a recognized code of honour andwhose relationshipto gambling Helfant usefullybears in mind throughout. At the same time, Helfant argues, gambling might even, as in the case of the self-confessedand unabashedcheat Tolstoi 'theAmerican', serve as a vehicle for the defiance of convention while not entirely infringing accepted codes of honour. It was an expression of udal'stvo (daring)and as such was more socially acceptable than cowardice on the battlefield(pp. 41-42). The major criticism that may be made of Helfant's monograph is that...