The Queen of Spades was published in the journal Biblioteka dlya Chteniya (Library for Reading) in 1834. Hermann, a young military engineer of German origin, is obsessed with gambling but too prudent to play. He learns that an elderly countess possesses the secret of three winning cards, given to her decades ago by the Count of Saint-Germain. Hermann determines to obtain the secret by seducing the countess’s young ward, Lizaveta — but when seduction proves too slow, he confronts the old woman directly, terrifying her into death.
The dead countess appears to Hermann in a vision and reveals the secret: three, seven, ace. Hermann plays — and wins with the three, wins with the seven, but on the final card draws not the ace but the queen of spades. The card seems to wink at him. He goes mad.
The story is Pushkin at his most compressed and perfect: every sentence serves multiple purposes (advancing plot, developing character, establishing atmosphere), and the ambiguity between natural and supernatural explanation is maintained with absolute precision. Is the countess’s ghost real or Hermann’s hallucination? Is the final card’s transformation a supernatural punishment or the inevitable result of a mind unhinged by obsession? The story inspired Tchaikovsky’s opera (1890), which darkened and romanticized the material considerably.
Collecting The Queen of Spades
First book appearance in Povesti (Tales, St. Petersburg, 1834): Russian-language.
Market values:
- Original Russian editions: Extremely rare
- Penguin Classics or other fine translations: $10–$25