Russian passions. Duels
A duel is one of the most unusual and interesting phenomena of Russian life, which arose in a certain historical era and has nothing in common with a similar phenomenon in the West. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, people began to appear for whom the duel became an everyday activity.
A duel is an agreed battle between two persons
deadly weapon
to satisfy the desecrated honor.
(From the history of the Russian duel)
A duel is one of the most unusual and interesting phenomena of Russian life, which arose in a certain historical era and has nothing in common with a similar phenomenon in the West. Duelists recklessly collected duels, like anal people collect rare stamps or unique books. The new duel was seen by them as a new trophy with which they could amuse friends at a night feast, and at the same time brag to the young ladies.
The Brether is always looking for a new feeling of combat. It was customary to bully anyone, whether military or civilian. The very feeling of anticipation of a duel was a pleasure, before the hand rests on the steel and pulls the trigger.
At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the exclusiveness of duels disappeared. People began to appear for whom the duel was becoming a daily activity. The need to tickle your nerves, but even more pleasure to get from the enemy caught on the fly.
For a strapper, the question of life and death has never been acute. He juggled them easily. Today such sensations are being replaced by extreme sports.
The reason for the duel could be the most insignificant, the bully-duelist needed a little clue. It was easy to “hurt honor”. There were many reasons for this. If the matter concerned a woman, then satisfaction was used. There could be no refusal or forgiveness.
The ladies who gave the reason for the fights were not wives or close relatives. They were actresses and dancers, that is, those skin-visual women who, with their pheromones and uninhibited behavior, blew off the heads of young officers who were ready to shoot their best friend in one look of playful eyes.
The year 1817 is marked by the return of the Russian army from France after the victory over Napoleon.
Russian officers are the flower of the nation, rich, educated, with a hot head and an exaggerated understanding of noble honor, this is a small part of those close to the emperor, for whom any dishonor was washed away by the noble blood of the nobility.
The epoch itself prepared future duelists with endless wars since Catherine's times. The war with the French brought to the circle a new cohort of young urethral heroes, for whom standing on the front line under a barrage of artillery fire was a familiar and commonplace thing.
Gradually, the intensity of the war went away, but an unclaimed desire for risk, courage and bravado remained. The lack of recognition made the recent officers - defenders of the Fatherland - brethren, ready to assert themselves in any way. Every detail provoked a duel.
The muscular army, still not quartered and not disbanded, was tormented by idleness, and the officers wasted time in hussar drinking, which turned into long-lasting revelry, with memories of "the days and exploits of the past." Boasting and bragging were often interrupted by the remark "To the barrier!"
In peacetime, the theater becomes one of the main "military footholds". The parterre is occupied by the military - now it is their battlefield, the reward on which is the favor of the actresses. Actors, as in ancient times, their predecessors, make their mysterious passes, spinning their heads, already intoxicated and hot. The theater at the beginning of the 19th century was the only place where one could openly express one's attitude to the "windy maidens", however, accepted in society.
Audience sympathy was divided into recognition of one actress and denial of another. This was the basis for the relationship of the ladies of the half-world with secular red tape, which often turned into real tragedies for the latter.
In a theater hall, provocation to a duel was the norm. The path from the theater chairs to the barrier at times turned out to be extremely short.
If a couple of shot admirers were not listed for some ballet prima, she could not count on further decent engagements. The lady herself became a participant in all the connections she herself modeled, easily, like a butterfly, fluttering from one boring relationship to another, caring little about the consequences of her flirting. The overtone of dramatic glory, trailing behind an actress or a dancer, gave her mystery, created an aura of mystery with a certain presence of demonism. The mystery woman attracted the glances of men, stirring up their natural desires of males.
Eroticism, reproduced in translucent ballet clothes "with a certain degree of concealment," the relaxedness in the stage behavior of the dancers becomes the first signal that a woman has felt her new, formed, not yet known to her, but so desired by men nature.
Fashion played an important role in this, placing an emphasis on liberalization in clothing style. Heavy crinolines and figs were locked in the closet of history, in anticipation of a new round of conservatism. They were replaced by simplicity and naturalness. Any war has a strong impact on women's clothing, greatly simplifying and cheapening it, making it more comfortable and functional.
In fact, the emancipation of women in Russia did not begin with the movement of suffragettes and feminists. Even in the time of Peter the Great, the wind of change, bursting into the terem life, with values dear to every anal boyar, with caftans and kokoshniks, replaced them with European dress and forced shaving of beards. And then for the first time at the Peter's assemblies he brought two young opposite sexes face to face, laying the foundation for secular relations. Under Catherine II, these relations were supported and encouraged in every possible way, although they were of a purely chamber nature.
The appearance on European stages of the first actresses and dancers can be defined as the beginning of the emergence of new "relations in times" between a man and a woman. If in the history of the theater of any country for many centuries, female roles were played by skin-visual boys, and for women, appearing on the stage was equivalent to a ban on boarding a ship, then at the beginning of the 19th century everything changed beyond recognition. They are being actively replaced by skin-visual women. Now the stage becomes for them a place of self-demonstration and revenge, and the backstage is a place where dramas and comedies are performed, worthy of the feathers of the most talented playwrights.
Fragile health overseas actresses could not stand Russian frosts, stage drafts and did not know the word "No!" noble boyfriends. Gradually they were replaced by Russians.
Quickly realizing that through the psychic of men, and most importantly, through their shortages, they are easy to control and even manipulate, the skin-visual seductresses have taken a firm position in the half-light. There, straight from the crowned Olympus, most of the inaccessible celestials of both capitals of the Great Empire rolled down, falling into the most intriguing and intricate networks, gracefully arranged by dexterous and gentle hands. By no means could they be called courtesans or geishas. They were goddesses within reach for some and a pipe dream for others.
The authorities were condescending to such connections, partly patronized this, considering them as a kind of outlet for officers, knowing for sure that the eminent sons of the Fatherland would not allow misalliance.
These fighters, veterans of the Patriotic War of 1812 were on average 25 years old, behind them lay Europe liberated from Bonaparte. Duels were fought at dawn. The opponents spent the night before as they wanted. There were no strict rules. The traditional Russian duel is pistols. The European version of the sword fight, where the result is not important, and most importantly participation, did not take root in Russia. The Breters were not satisfied with public fencing exercises and fights until the first blood. This is not serious: too much effort and energy was expended, and the result is two scratches.
This is understandable. In the Russian urethral mentality, where the price of one's own life is a penny, an insult inflicted by the enemy could only be washed away by streams of blood. The most avid duelists, of course, were people with a urethral vector, for whom the slightest disagreement with their opinion was considered a demotion. “Soul to God, heart to a woman, duty to the Fatherland, honor to anyone,” General Kornilov deduced as a formula many decades later.
The concept of "noble honor", for which, according to historians, they fought in a duel, is nothing more than rationalization and explanations that lead away from the essence. The very concept of "noble honor" arose in Russia relatively recently. The nobles under Peter I were mercilessly and revealingly flogged in crowded places for any serious offense. The Tsar-reformer "for the cause" bestowed upon the sensible son of some serf man the Letter of Nobility and half a kingdom in addition, allowing him to develop new lands in the Urals and beyond the ridge itself for the good and prosperity of Russia.
Peter the Great himself, as he corresponds to the urethral leader who cares about the integrity of the pack, "all challenges, fights and fights … the most severe" forbade and severely punished those who disobeyed.
Consequently, it is wrong to rely on "noble honor" in matters of a duel. Firstly, among the nobles there were always those who refused to duel. What kind of resonance it had in society is another question. Second, fights were less related to the civilian environment. Gusarit was considered good form among the military. The heroes-veterans of the Patriotic War of 1812, who had not yet cooled down from the Napoleonic campaigns, did not have the use of their courage in peace conditions, and were looking for thrills in conflicts and fights.
Here it is impossible not to mention the depressive-manic states of the most inveterate breters, manifested in the urethral-sound ligament of vectors, and again not to mention their skin-visual muses - the ladies of the semi-world, often provoking men to a duel by their behavior. If the later famous duelists Pushkin and Lermontov had their own creative realization through brilliant poetry and prose, then most of their urethral-sound counterparts did not have such an outlet.
Shooting with pistols was for sure, besides, it significantly reduced the time of participation in a duel. The Russian duel was equated with the "judgment of God", it could not be avoided, much less rejected. Refusing to duel is an indelible shame for the urethral man.
Kozhniki, if any, fell on the spot of a urethral breaker, for whom skin values were never honored, wishing to save their lives, they apologized, discussed the terms of reconciliation and managed to hush up the case. The rest of their lives they lived in "dishonor", which, frankly, they did not care much. The flexibility and plasticity of the skin properties helped them survive in the most difficult conditions, while making considerable fortunes or occupying vacant posts on the career military or departmental ladder after the urethralists had gone into oblivion.
Uncompromising Russian duels and the lack of moral right for people to refuse to participate in them had the inevitable result - the death of a person, often a representative of the color of the nation. Humane Europe, which passed the "duelist path" much earlier than the Russians, has worked out its behavior, making the duels demonstrative, but not fatal.
Russia, according to its mental characteristics, was not ready to be content with European practice. “The bloodier the better. Don't settle for any explanations! - Pushkin instructed his seconds.
The ban on dueling was naturally ignored. The Russian nobility "stubbornly avoided interference by the state and courts in matters of honor." No urethral person seeking "for the flags" can be limited by law. Duels became secret, which did not reduce the number of victims. And Alexander I himself, during whose reign the largest number of fights had occurred, punished the duelists only in exceptional cases. The law on a duel, which equated the death of a participant with murder, existed, only those who followed it. Most of the duelists were, if not in close, then in distant relationship or personal friendship with the emperor. And here, instead of the law, the usual Russian nepotism and cover-up came into play.
Then, in a skin-like manner, a Solomon solution was found - to shoot in the air in a duel. This led to an increase in the number of fights for each strap, but did not solve the problem. In every person there is what has come to be called "eros - thanatos" or "libido - mortido". The desire for life and the desire for death. They are most clearly manifested in duelists - urethral sound specialists. On the one hand, in an urethral way, a crazy desire for life to the fullest, where there is a mountain feast on a grand scale on the entire wide steppe and epic Russia. On the other hand, there is a sound lack of the value of one's own body, and hence the body of the enemy. Hence the constant flirtation with death and the enjoyment of its proximity:
There is rapture in battle, And the dark abyss at the edge, And in the angry ocean
Amid formidable waves and stormy darkness"
- wrote the urethral-sound Pushkin.
Alexander Sergeevich himself was close to the ideals and amplitudes of the depressive-manic states of duelists, who have the same natural bunch of vectors as his own. And the tragic duel on the Black River was in his arsenal, alas, the last, although far from the only one.
The constant destructive conflict in which the duelist resides is the confrontation between the "life instinct" and the "death instinct". The Orthodox faith, which forbade suicide, kept the urethral sound specialists from suicide, but did not prevent them from exposing their own body to the enemy's bullet. And here it is no longer important what was the reason - insulted honor or some kind of femme fatale. In this case, there was no difference where death found him - on the battlefield or at the barrier.
