Authors

Ileana Orlich¹;  ¹ Arizona State University, United States

Discussion

Statues generate conversations, explain the historical and cultural context, connect social structures and ideas, explore the parallel history of various countries, and assert untold narratives circumventing moral and cultural blindness. A startling monument is Etienne Maurice Falconer’s statue of Peter the Great (1672-1725) in San Petersburg. Recommended to Empress Catherine II (1729-1796) by Diderot, Falconer modelled his work after Bernini’s statue of Louis XIV, another monarch who, like Tsar Peter, identified his kingdom with his own person. Unveiled in 1782, the statue is known by its trademark name launched in Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman that commemorates the centennial of Tsar Peter’s death.

Pushkin’s description glazes over the imposing statue: its plain stone that stands for the brute force of the land and the polished bronze of the majestic horseman magnificently wrapped in his Roman toga and proudly mounted on his vigorous horse. With a mind charged by the splendid city, the passerby is awed by the Tsar’s idolized figure with an extended arm looming over the sky. Having studied at the Lyceum Tsarkoe Selo founded by Peter’s great grandson, Tsar Alexander I (1777-1825) and a native son of the city that Peter built, Pushkin seems to invite the reader to traverse the Russian century between the two tsars. A similar invitation comes from the notable diplomat and Enlightenment figure Joseph de Maistre, whose book Les soirées de Saint Petersburg (1809-1821) underscores the longue durée of one of the richest periods in Russia’s history and culture. For de Maistre, the statue projects an ambivalent foreshadowing: “The equestrian statue of Peter stands on the edge of the Neva …On these desolate shores Peter founded his capital and created subjects. His terrible arm is still extended over the posterity, which huddles around the august effigy; one looks and does not know if that hand of bronze is raised to protect or to threaten.” Is this statue a reminder of Peter’s architectural marvels and military triumphs or a warning to posterity of his enlightened despotism foreshadowed in Pushkin’s chilling verses According to Martin Malia, Leibniz (1646-1716) viewed Russia as a blank slate, ideal for becoming a civitas dei of religion and a republique des lettres for philology. He also visited the Tsar twice and remained in contact with him and his court. I wish to examine such admiration in the context of luminaries like Voltaire and the ideologies of the Enlightenment that encouraged social liberties from a progressist angle that contained a veiled totalitarian vocation, i.e., a figure head that ruled the masses with an iron fist in the direction of his goals albeit for their own good.