Rationality In Aleksandr Pushkin's The Queen Of Spades

Incompatible Rationality in Aleksandr Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades
In Aleksandr Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades, Pushkin portrays Herman as a rational European devil who is incapable of thriving in Russian culture. When he hears about the three winning cards, he unintentionally forgoes rationality, while still attempting to maintain it. In his obsession, he falls prey to greed and descends into evil. When he loses in his final round, the queen mocks him, just as Russian mysticism mocks western rationality. Pushkin shows European rationality as having no place in Russian culture, and he depicts how it decomposes under the influence of Russian mysticism. Herman’s descent from rationality to obsession depicts the incompatibility of Russian superstition

and European logic.
Pushkin represents Herman as the perfectly rational European. He enjoys watching the other men gamble, but “he has never had a card in his hand in his life, he has never in his life laid a wager,” and he cannot “sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous” (Pushkin 71). Tomsky explains that because “he’s German…he counts the pennies,” meaning that he is economical, thrifty and, of course, rational (Pushkin 71). Upon hearing the story of the three-card trick, he decries it as a “tall story,” but then becomes obsessed. He declares to himself that his three winning cards are “calculation, moderation, and hard work,” and that those will lead him to wealth, not some impossible secret (Pushkin 73, 80). However, to his own misfortune, he falters and he considers how quickly he could become wealthy instead of the rational means. Now, he embodies the ideals of both the rational European and the superstitious Russian. He wants to believe that the trick is real because it would mean way to get rich without any risk. Herman continues his descent from rationality as he becomes more and more fixated on the secret.
Following this lapse, Herman entertains his irrational obsession with the trick and his own rational tendencies. Any doubt of the trick leaves his mind when he sees a means of obtaining it. As the narrator says, “Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world as two bodies can occupy one and the same space in the physical world” (Pushkin 96). Irrationality and rationality cannot both survive in one being. Had Herman continued to disregard the story, he could have become wealthy and “[provided himself] peace of mind and independence” through his own wiles, without any mystical secrets (Pushkin 80). The obsession with the secret eats at his rational mind, creating a paradox, which allows him to pursue the secret without seeming irrational. This rationality is part of his character and he cannot dispose of it, so as he becomes more irrational, his morality decays. He is basing his actions on a rumor, therefore allowing irrationality into his decisions. He cannot give over to complete irrationality because he cannot understand that the trick is still a gamble, not a sure thing. The Russian irrationality requires the gamble, because if it were not a gamble, it would be rational. The two opposites cannot occupy the same space. Herman’s conflict cannot exist, so he must either give over completely to rationality, or completely to irrationality. As he does neither, he goes mad. He clings to his only rational thought, which is that he has a sure way to get rich. This leads to unjustifiable actions. Irrational actions based in rationality lead to maliciousness, which Herman has aplenty.
Accordingly, the root of Herman’s plan is impure. Unlike those who learn before him, Herman is not in dire straits. In fact, he has an inheritance left by his father and is able to “[live] solely on his pay” (Pushkin 80). The Countess seeks help after she “[loses] a very considerable sum” and has no way to repay it (Pushkin 72). Similarly, Chaplitsky loses “around three hundred thousand roubles” and “[is] in despair” when he seeks help from the Countess (Pushkin 74). Herman is in no way struggling to get by and he has lost no great sums of money. He has no humbling experience as the others do before they learn the secret. Instead of coming forward in need, Herman comes forward in greed. Greed is the spawn of rationality and irrationality because, while Herman has enough which was fine for him before, he can now hope to obtain the superfluous. He is aiming to obtain the “superfluous” because, since he has a trick, he will not have to “sacrifice the necessary” (Pushkin 71). Similarly, the previous people who learned the trick did not demand it. The Countess paints her picture to Saint-Germain so that he takes pity on her ad teaches her the trick. When Chaplitsky needs help, the Countess takes pity on him. Neither come forward asking for a trick or impudently reasoning with their potential savior. Herman’s tactics are more sinister. His methods hurt those around him and never contrive any sort of sympathy for his cause.
He begins by leading Lizaveta to believe that he is romantically interested in her. She in under the Countess’ control and marriage would free her from the Countess’ elderly whims. Eventually, he entrances her with the “inexorable nature of his desires and the turmoil of his unfettered imagination” (Pushkin 84). Unfortunately, this desire has nothing to do with Lizaveta. She is a pawn that he fiendishly uses in his plot, “nothing more than an unwitting accomplice to a bandit” (Pushkin 91). Before he enters the mansion, thereby taking full advantage of the sham relationship, he is “quivering like a tiger” because he is a predator, not only to naïve Lizaveta, but also to the Countess (Pushkin 84). He is a threat because he is so ruthlessly determined to learn the trick. It is important to note that Herman was not perfectly moral before he lost rationality. As Tomsky says, “he has the soul of Mephistopheles…[and] he has at least three crimes on his conscience” (Pushkin 90). This suggests that his rationality was not very moral to begin with and his logic may have meant that the ends justified the means when it best suited him. However, once irrationality creeps into his mind, he becomes immovably set on achieving his goal.
Herman begins by asking the Countess a favor, but he reaches the point of no return when he disregards the only thing that the Countess tells him about the trick.

Herman is so determined to find his holy grail of gambling that he does not consider that the Countess may be serious when she swears that the story “was a joke” (Pushkin 80). In Douglas Clayton’s essay, “The Queen of Spades: a seriously intended joke,” Clayton points out that, at the time of her debt, the story “was a joke at her husband’s expense” and a “story told to [her husband] to disguise the truth” of how she actually paid off the debt (Clayton 12). Clayton goes on to suggest that, in order to pay her debt, the Countess may have slept with Saint-Germain in order to repay her funds, discounting any real mysticism in the story. However, Herman is far past his former rationality that he believes she is just withholding the secret from him. There is not other explanation for her silence. He reasons with her, begs her, and eventually threatens her, resulting in her death. Herman’s actions are based off of a rumor he heard when he was drinking with his friends, which he takes at face value. Even when he hears that the story was a joke, he cannot believe it because he has allowed so much irrational change to transform him. If he were to accept that the story was not true, he would have irrationally obsessed over nothing. In order for him to maintain his internal façade of rationality, the only thing he can do is

believe that the Countess simply does not want to tell him. A rational person could not justify his actions if they did not lead him to something highly valuable.
Herman begins to lose his humanity as a result the conflicted ideas that he harbors.

The guilt that he causes Lizaveta “[does] not touch his grim soul” and he “[does] not feel any gnawings of conscience at the thought of the old woman’s death” (Pushkin 91). He has lost any semblance of sympathy because he is so obsessed with the secret. In fact, the only thing that upsets him about that night is “the irretrievable loss of the secret from which he had anticipated enrichment” (Pushkin 91). His greed and selfishness pull him into a lower level of morality. After leaving Lizaveta’s room, Herman “[descends] a dark staircase” which can be seen as his descent into hell (Pushkin 92). He has left all real rationality behind, left all morality behind, and has essentially become the “Mephistopheles” that Tomsky sees before his

transformation.
In addition to his descent down the stairs, Herman experiences another fall, emotionally and literally. As he approaches the Countess’ coffin, “the deceased [gives] him a mocking glance and a [winks] and eye,” causing him to “[miss] his footing and [crash] face upwards to the ground” (Pushkin 94). Now, not only has he suffered from the conflict between rationality and irrationality, but the conflict is mocking him. Without the Countess, there is no secret to seek. Her rumor is the root of his descent into irrationality, and now she is gone and he has nothing. Instead of facing the conflict, he has a vision of the Countess telling him the secret. Perhaps his conscience is making a small effort to be present here by adding in that the Countess “forgive [him] [her] death, on the condition that [he] marry [her] ward, Lizaveta” (Pushkin 95). When he loses in his final round, “the queen of spades [winks] at him and [grins,]” and in that card he sees a resemblance to “the old woman” from whom he learns the secret. The Countess is mocking him from beyond the grave. But, of course, it is not the Countess. Herman cracks because the relationship he had constructed of rational thought and irrational secrets and tricks fails him. Now, he falls into madness and Pushkin places him under psychiatric care.
Herman’s downfall comes from allowing the ideals of rationality and irrationality to simultaneously occupy his person. They cannot exist there harmoniously. He believes he is following rationality, but he falls further into irrationality as he becomes obsessed with the mystical secret. His European origins make rationality inherent to his being, and when he begins believing in the Russian story, the conflict destroys him. When rationality is surrounded by its opposite, it will crumble. Rationality and irrationality cannot occupy the same space, thus European ideals cannot peacefully coexist with Russian ideals without major transformations in one or the other.