More Suffering Horses in Russian Literature IVAN BUNIN, "Петлистые уши" "NOOSIFORM EARS"

Statue of Ivan Bunin in Yelets, Russia

More Suffering Horses in Russian Literature

Probably the two most well-known descriptions of oppressed horses in all of Russian literature are (1) The mare in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Frou-Frou who, owing to her rider Vronsky’s fatal mistake in the steeplechase, falls while leaping a barrier and has to be shot; and (2) the mare beaten to death by drunken peasants in Raskolnikov’s dream (Part I of Crime and Punishment).

Ivan Bunin’s short story “Петлистые уши (Noosiform Ears),” set in St. Petersburg and written as a travesty of Crime and Punishment, has two other incidences of suffering horses. Here is the first of them:

“The resplendence of illuminations on Nevsky Prospekt was smothered by the dense haze, which was so penetrating and cold that a policeman’s mustache had acquired a whitish tint, seemed to have gone gray as he stood at the corner of Vladimirskaya, directing the maelstrom of carriages, sleighs, and goggle-eyed automobiles whirling toward one another. Near Palkin a sloe black stallion who had fallen on his side, onto the shaft, desperately thrashed about, flailing his hooves against the slippery roadway, struggling to right himself and get back up; hastily and frantically bustling about, looking outlandish in his monstrous overskirt, a foppish cabman was attempting to help him, while a red-faced giant of a constable, who had trouble moving his cold, benumbed lips, was screaming, waving a hand in its cotton glove, driving away the crowds” [Ivan Bunin, Night of Denial, Northwestern University Press, 2006, p. 274-75].

              Statue of Tsar Aleksandr III, in Courtyard of the Marble Palace, St. Petersburg

The second incidence of the horse theme in “Noosiform Ears” is the mention, twice, in the story of the equestrian statue of Tsar Aleksandr III, on his “hideous, stout horse.” St. Petersburg is full of statues of tsars on horses, including The Bronze Horseman (Peter the Great mounted high), emblematic of the city itself and probably the most famous monument in all of Russia. But perhaps the most distinctive equestrian statue in the city is that of Aleksandr III.

Unveiled May 23, 1909, on Znamensky Square, next to what is now the Moscow Railway Station, the monument honored Tsar Aleksandr for his role in constructing the Trans-Siberian Railway. Almost immediately this odd statue—stout rider on exhausted stout horse—was received with derision. The sculptor, P.P. (Paolo) Trubetskoj is supposed to have said, privately, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about; I just depicted one animal sitting on another.” Publicly he defended his work of art as a serious depiction of Russian might embodied in the figure of the tsar, but it is hard not to see this statue as deliberately mocking. The fat tsar so seems to weigh down the poor horse that it appears about to fall.

For more on this monument see Ivan Bunin, Night of Denial, notes to the stories, p. 577-79.