The image of Naples in A.S. Pushkin's creative consciousness. Article 4. Mythopoetics of Pushkins Neapolitana: the legend of Queen Joanna in the Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century
The concluding paper of the cycle is devoted to one of Pushkin's unaccomplished works, a poem about Cleopatra, which enters the first posthumous publication of Egyptian Nights as the second improvisation of the Neapolitan poet. Pushkin specified the source of the plot of his unaccomplished poem, namely, a remark on Cleopatra made by the Roman historian Aurelius Victor. However, this source motivates Pushkin's interpretation of the plot and the image only partially: the evidence provided by Aurelius Victor does not contain the most essential element: it does not inform the reader that Cleopatra demanded deathly payment from her admirers for a night spent with her, that is that the terrible plan was entirely the initiative and the stipulation proposed by the queen who thus was the direct cause of death and indirect murderer of her lovers. Cleopatra's theme is further developed in Pushkin's poetry on a reconstructed associative background of his personal Neapolitan myth. The first edition of the poem dates back to 1824, which is regarded as the first nascence of the Neapolitan motifs in the poetic reflection and Pushkin's texts when the political prototype of Naples results in such text fragments as the "Motionless guard was dozing on a regal threshold …" and "What have you been sent for and who sent you?" (1824), followed by landscape lyrics filled with intensively developing leitmotif "Who saw the land …" Cleopatra's second edition was written in 1828 when Pushkin's poetical fragments display the poet's interest in the Neapolitan local text for the second time ("I know the land: there on the shore…//the sea is splashing in solitude…" (1827), «Who knows the land where the skies are bright... (1828), "Go on! I am ready…" (1829)). Finally, in 1835 Pushkin comes back to this plan for the third time, having made two simultaneous attempts to create framing prosaic narration in the text fragment "We spent the evening in a summer residence …" and in Egyptian nights where the plotline "Cleopatra e i suoi amanti" becomes the theme offered to the Neapolitan improvisator. Thus, the myth of Cleopatra is correlated with the Neapolitan myth at least chronologically in evolution of the poet's plan. All stages of Pushkin's work on the poem are accompanied by the motifs of Bakhchisarai Fountain. The architectural and historical monument, the Bakhchisarai residence of the Crimean khans, the tomb of the khan's beloved and a local legend about passionate love and untimely death connected with these monuments of the past became a plan and the starting point of Bakhchisarai Fountain. The similar filiations of ideas can be found in the pretexts of the Neapolitan travelogue of the Russian literature at the turn of the 19th century in narrations about abandoned uninhabited palace of Neapolitan Queen Joanna the First. The historical legend connected with the tomb narrates about royal love and death, motivated by architectural features and the location of the building. It is noteworthy that all three literary versions of the historical legend, namely, a collective myth of Russian travellers about Queen Joanna, Pushkin's interpretation of the Bakhchisarai legend and Aurelius Victor's evidence concerning Cleopatra reveal obvious similarity of plot motifs and the ways of transformation of the historical legend in the literary text. The evolution of the motifs of the legend of Queen Joanna in the Russian literature can be tracked further in lyrical and epic texts of M. Lermontov, E. Rostopchina and A.N. Maykov.