Queen of Spades: Delia's Thoughts:

From mockery to genius! This is how Pushkin went through his collection of short stories. "The queen of spades" is a masterpiece of irony, obsession and fantasy coming from a man who can not only deride French superficiality in romantic writing, but also give a clear example of what brilliant literature should be. The Queen of Spades presents the story of an officer who spends time around gamblers, but only observing them. At such a gathering, he learns about a powerful secret that could turn every gambler into a rich man, and becomes obsessed with finding it. He makes Lizaveta, the Countesses' companion, fall in love with him, hoping to approach the countess and make her reveal the secret he yarned for. Lizaveta falls into his trap, and Herman finds his way into the Countesses' room. The old lady dies without revealing her secret, but later haunts Herman as a ghost and tells him what the winning sequence of cards is. Herman has great success with the first two cards, but he mistakenly picks the wrong one as the third and looses all. The card he picked is the Queen of Spades. Pushkin's understanding of the human pathology and his craft as a writer, make this story unique. The Queen of Spades revolves around gambling and thus, around obsession. A pathological gambler is obviously addicted to winning and is possessed by it. However, Herman starts, at the beginning of the story, as a simple observer of gambling. He does not want to play because of fear of loosing, but his obsessive watching of the game and of the other players clearly show a deeply enrooted pathology.