What It Is
A ballad by Pushkin about a knight who had a vision, never looked at another woman again, wrote the initials of the Virgin in his own blood on his shield, fought in Palestine crying out a holy name, and died like a madman. In the Epanchins' house it first appears as a family joke, a subject for a painting by Adelaida Ivanovna Epanchina for which no one found a face, and then as the figure through which Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina speaks of Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin without saying his name. She links it to Don Quixote, the book in which she kept the prince's note, and recites it before him, swapping the letters on the shield for the initials of Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova. From then on the name returns, on other people's lips, each time someone wants to say what connects Aglaya to the prince.
Where It Appears
In ch. I of Part Two, Aglaya keeps the prince's note in a thick book and only a week later sees what it was.
Это был «Дон-Кихот Ламанчский». Аглая ужасно расхохоталась — неизвестно чему, It was Don Quixote de la Mancha. Aglaya burst into a terrible fit of laughter, no one knows at what.
In ch. VI of Part Two, on the terrace of Lebedev's dacha, Nikolai Ardalionovich Ivolgin proclaims that nothing is better than the poor knight, the family laughs, and the prince blushes like a boy. Prince Sch. explains the joke of the previous month, and Aglaya, now composed again, gives a lecture on the poem, insisting on letters that Kolya corrects.
этому «бедному рыцарю» уже всё равно стало: кто бы ни была и что бы ни сделала его дама. Довольно того, что он ее выбрал и поверил ее «чистой красоте», а затем уже преклонился пред нею навеки; в том-то и заслуга, что если б она потом хоть воровкой была, то он все-таки должен был ей верить, to this "poor knight" it no longer mattered who his lady was or what she had done. It was enough that he had chosen her and believed in her "pure beauty," and then bowed down before her forever; the merit lies precisely in this, that even if she later turned out to be a thief, he would still have to believe in her.
Still in ch. VI of Part Two, she links the knight to the book in which the note is kept.
«Рыцарь бедный» — тот же Дон-Кихот, но только серьезный, а не комический, "The poor knight" is the same Don Quixote, only serious, not comic.
In ch. VII of Part Two, Aglaya recites the ballad looking only at the prince, with a seriousness and simplicity that hold everyone spellbound, and he notices something.
во время чтения Аглая позволила себе переменить буквы A. M. D. в буквы Н. Ф. Б., during the reading Aglaya allowed herself to change the letters A. M. D. into the letters N. F. B.
Still in ch. VII of Part Two, the prince cannot separate the beauty of the reading from the malice of the swap, and Evgeny Pavlovich Radomsky, who has understood, asks Aglaya whether the poor knight is back.
как можно было соединить такое истинное, прекрасное чувство с такою явною и злобною насмешкой?, how could such a true, beautiful feeling be joined with such open and spiteful mockery?
In ch. XII of Part Two, Yelizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina asks the prince what the poor knight is, and he says he does not know, that it was a joke made without him.
In ch. I of Part Three, among the questions Yelizaveta Prokofyevna asks herself about her daughter is why the anonymous letter mentions that damned poor knight, if Aglaya did not even show the prince's letter to her sisters.
In ch. II of Part Three, when Aglaya defends the prince before the family, Kolya shouts hurrahs for the poor knight, and Aleksandra Ivanovna Epanchina whispers to her mother that it is the same joke as before.
In ch. VIII of Part Three, on the green bench, Aglaya explains to the prince why she read the ballad: she wanted to praise him for one thing and, at the same time, to mark him for what he did to Nastasya Filippovna and to show that she knew everything.
In ch. V of Part Four, when the household realizes that Aglaya's fate is being decided, everyone swears that everything had been clear since the poor knight, and Yelizaveta Prokofyevna wonders what that detestable poor knight meant at the time.
In ch. IX of Part Four, Radomsky describes to the prince the day of their arrival in Petersburg: the story of an offended woman told to a knight, a man still a virgin, who sees her that same day and is bewitched by her fantastic beauty.
In ch. XII of Part Four, in the letter from Paris, Aglaya's fate shows where she went looking for another hero.
Пленил он Аглаю необычайным благородством своей истерзавшейся страданиями по отчизне души, и до того пленил, что та, еще до выхода замуж, стала членом какого-то заграничного комитета по восстановлению Польши и сверх того попала в католическую исповедальню какого-то знаменитого патера, овладевшего ее умом до исступления., He captivated Aglaya with the extraordinary nobility of a soul tormented by suffering for its homeland, and captivated her to such a degree that she, even before marrying, became a member of some foreign committee for the restoration of Poland, and moreover fell into the Catholic confessional of some famous priest, who took over her mind to the point of frenzy.
What It Means
The poor knight is Aglaya's way of saying, in front of the family, what she thinks of the prince: ridiculous and worthy of respect at the same time, a Don Quixote whom she calls serious. The swapping of letters puts on the shield the woman the whole city gossips about, and the praise of loyalty to a lady who may be a thief becomes, in the same gesture, an accusation.
The ballad tells of a knight who chooses his lady and looks at no other, and what Aglaya admires in her is exactly what will make her lose the prince. In ch. VI of Part Two she says the knight's merit lies in believing in the lady even if she were a thief; in ch. VIII of Part Four the prince stays with Nastasya Filippovna, and Aglaya runs off. Two readings. In one, Aglaya described from the start the loyalty she feared, and the recitation was a way of confronting it in public; in the other, she wanted such a knight for herself and, without him, accepted in ch. XII of Part Four the first man who spoke to her of a lost cause.
Relationships
- Default themes: Beauty, Madness.
- Themes in the novel: Beauty, Madness.
- Characters: Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina, Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova, Adelaida Ivanovna Epanchina, Nikolai Ardalionovich Ivolgin, Evgeny Pavlovich Radomsky, Yelizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina, Aleksandra Ivanovna Epanchina.
- Related symbols: the Chinese vase, the other challenge Aglaya gives the prince in front of the family.