Is the story true about how Georges Dantes challenged Maxim Gorky to a duel?

For many years, a story has been circulating on the Internet about how, in his old age, Pushkin’s killer challenged Alexei Peshkov, the future classic of Russian literature. We checked how true this legend is.

According to the plot of this story, at the end of the 19th century, the young but already popular writer Maxim Gorky (real name Alexey Peshkov) in a town near Paris was introduced to an elderly senator who turned out to be Baron de Heeckeren - the same Georges Dantes, the author of the fatal shot at Pushkin in a duel in 1837. Gorky refused to shake hands with the killer of his idol, which angered the Frenchman, and after an exchange of barbs, it was decided to duel. However, the next morning Gorky received a letter from Dantes, in which he reported that he had read Gorky’s works and the writer’s poems delighted him. “I hesitated and realized that I could not deprive Russian poetry of its rising sun! In this regard, I ask you to consider our conflict as settled!” - Dantes allegedly wrote, and since then Maxim Gorky stopped writing poetry.

Writers have reported on this incident at various times. Grigory Gorin And Max Fryand also a TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov. History is periodically published by users social networks.

If you trace the chronology of the spread of the legend of Gorky and Dantes over the last quarter of a century, it is easy to notice that the traces lead to the story of Grigory Gorin, published in the online publication “Gazeta.ru" in February 2000. IN section “The Incredible Stories of Grigory Gorin,” the writer introduced readers to interesting stories told to him by representatives of the older generation. At that time, none of the storytellers were already alive, and Gorin himself doubted the veracity of each of the stories, so he asked readers to share additional information, if possible, by writing to him by email. Unfortunately, this initiative was not developed - only four stories, and on June 15 of the same year Gorin died suddenly. Whether the writer received any important comments from readers about the story of Dantes and Gorky is unknown.

Gorin writes that he heard it around 1970 at a seminar for young writers in Yalta from the writer and literary critic Viktor Shklovsky. Maxim Gorky himself allegedly told about the incident from his biography. Indeed, Shklovsky had been friends with Gorky since 1915, visited his home many times and repeatedly mentioned a colleague in his memories And literary works. However, not a single edition of Shklovsky’s works, including collected works, “Verified” did not find any mention of the Dantes case. They are not in the 25-volume edition either. complete works Maxim Gorky.

Let's look at some of the details that appear in Gorin's narration.

Indeed, the French officer Georges Charles Dantes, Pushkin's brother-in-law, was sentenced to death for the murder of the poet, which was later commuted expulsion with a gendarme abroad. He lived in his homeland long life, which included a glorious political career - membership in the Constituent Assembly, the rank of commander Order of the Legion of Honor and an honorary senator. However, contrary to the statement contained in Gorin’s story, there is no reliable information that Dantes, after the duel, met with Natalya Goncharova or her second husband Lansky (Pushkin’s widow married him only seven years after the poet’s death), since he was arrested and expelled from the country, and subsequently became persona non grata in Russia. Relatives did not even come to see off his wife Ekaterina Goncharova. In one of the Russian newspapers printed an interview with Dantes' son, who allegedly once witnessed a chance meeting between his father and Natalya Goncharova on a Parisian street, but the conversation did not take place then. There is also no information about the “compromising letters” returned by Dantes.

There is an unconfirmed legend that in 1887 Pushkinist Alexander Onegin met with Dantes. Only one thing is known for certain: the last years of the life of Georges Dantes spent at his home in Souls, in northeastern France, which after the Franco-Prussian War was ceded to Germany. There he died in 1895 at the age of 83 after a long illness. Gorin’s story states that it was around that year that Dantes’ memorable conversation with Gorky took place.

However, Maxim Gorky made his first trip abroad committed only in February 1906 through Finland on behalf of the revolutionaries. By 1895 he was completely wasn't “a popular Russian writer” - at that time, the 27-year-old writer had published only a few stories, essays and novellas, and his poems were not published at all, except for the prose poem “Song of the Falcon” published in the same year. Translate Gorky into foreign languages started only a few years later, and the Russian language Dantes practically didn't know, so I could not get acquainted with Peshkov’s work. Until 1895, the Russian writer did not even have the opportunity to visit restaurants near Paris and meet with senators, and even with a personal translator - he somehow earned his living by writing articles and feuilletons in Volga newspapers.

“Verified” did not find any traces of mentioning the story of Dantes and Gorky before the publications of Grigory Gorin. Even if we assume that Viktor Shklovsky really told him this story, then its main statements are still refuted by facts from the biographies of the two main defendants. Shklovsky was known in literary circles as an inventor - for example, he attributed to authorship of the expression “Hamburg score” with the corresponding history about the terminology of wrestlers, allegedly heard live. Apparently, here too we are dealing with a literary hoax.

Cover photo: collage from Wikimedia Commons

Fake

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