Alexandre Pushkin - the great Russian poet
Russian 19th century author who often has been considered his country's greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin blended Old Slavonic with vernacular Russian into a rich, melodic language. He was the first to use everyday speech in his poetry. Pushkin's Romantic contemporaries were Byron (d. 1824) and Goethe (d. 1832), but his ironic attitude can be connected to the literature of 18th century, especially to Voltaire. Pushkin wrote some 800 lyrics with a dozen narrative poems.
"Love passed, the muse appeared, the weather
of mind got clarity newfound;
now free, I once more weave together
emotion, thought, and magic sound."
(from Eugene Onegin, 1823)
Aleksandr Pushkin was born in Moscow into a cultured but poor aristocratic family. On his father's side he was descendant of an ancient noble family and on his mother's side he was a great-great-grandson of an black Abyssinian, Gannibal, who served under Peter the Great. In his childhood the future poet was entrusted to nursemaids, French tutors, and governesses. He learned Russian from household serfs and from his nanny, Arina Rodionovna. Pushkin started to write poems from an early age. His first published poem was written when he was only 14.
While attending the Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo (1811-1817), he began writing his first major work, Ruslan and Ludmila (1820), a kind of fairy story in verse. It was based on Russian folk-tales which his grandmother had told him - in French. Years later at his father's estate he listened legends and fairy tales which his old nurse Arina Rodionovna told him, calling that process "making up for the defects in his accursed education." In 1817 he accepted a post at the foreign office at St. Petersburg. He became associated with members of a radical movement who participated later in the Decembrist uprising in 1825. Several of Pushkin's friends were involved in the affair, but he apparently had no connection with it. In May 1820 Pushkin was banished from the town because of his political poems, among them 'Ode to Liberty'. He was transferred south to Ekaterinoslav. During this time Pushkin discovered the poetry of Lord Byron . He was then moved to Kishinev, and in the summer of 1823 to Odessa. Count Vorontsoff, governor of Odessa, did not have high opinions about the poet: "... he is really only a wek imitator of a not very respected model - Lord Byron."
Although living in exile in different parts of Russia, Pushkin continued to write poems, rising gradually as the leader of Romantic movement. In 1823 he started his major masterpiece, the novel in verse Eugene Onegin, which appeared in 1833. His great historical tragedy, Boris Godunov, was published in 1831. It was based on the career of Boris Fyodorovich Godunov, the czar of Russia from 1598 to 1605. Boris is haunted by his quilt over the murder of the tsarevich Dmitry. When an ambitious young monk claims to be Dmitry, Boris tries to defend his throne, but he falls ill and dies. The composer Mussorgsky used this play as the basis of his opera (1869-74) of the same name.
Like to some magistrate grown gray in office
Calmly he contemplates alike the just
And unjust, with indifference he notes
Evil and good, and knows wrath nor pity.
(from Boris Godunov)
Pushkin's troubles with the authorities continued. In 1824 he was banished to his family estate of Mikhailovskoe. Pushkin's father tried in vain to keep his son under his control, but the result was, that the poet's friends applied to the czar, and Pushkin père was exiled from his own estate. When the new czar, Nicholas I, allowed Pushkin to return to the capital, he abandoned openly revolutionary sentiments. In 1829 he made a four-month visit to Transcaucasia, witnessing the action with Russian Army against the Turks. In 1830 he visited another family estate, Boldino, and was stranded by cholera for three months. This was a very productive literary period. He wrote a group of plays, among them The Avaricious Knight, Mozart and Salieri, The Stone Guest, and The Feast During the Plague. In 1833 Pushkin travelled east to the Urals for historical research.
"Lisaveta Ivanova listened to him with horror. So those passionate letters, those ardent demands, the whole impertinent and obstinate pursuit - all that was not love! Money - that was what his soul craved for! It was not she who could satisfy his desire and make him happy! The poor ward had been nothing but the unknowing assistant of a brigand, of the murderer of her aged benefactress!..." (from The Queen of Spades, 1834)
In 1834 Pushkin received an appointment as a functionary at the court, but his minor status was considered humiliation. Pushkin's debts were mounting and he was worried about his wife's possible infidelity.
In his last years Pushkin started to write historical work of Peter the Great, which was left unfinished. In 1829 he fell in love with 16-year-old Natalya Nikolayevna Goncharova, a beauty of the Imperial court, whom he married two years later. The marriage was unhappy and Pushkin had little peace for intense creative activity. His wife's frivolous social life led Pushkin into debt and eventually to his early death. A gossip of an affair between Baron Georges d'Anthès and his wife started to spread. Pushkin defended his wife's honor with her brother-in-law in a duel. He was fatally wounded and died on February 10 (New Style), 1837. The czar buried buried Pushkin in secret in the monastery near Mikhailovskoye, for fear of popular risings at the funeral. He also paid all the remaining debts of the poet.
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As an essayist Pushkin was prolific but most of his writings remained in draft form and over half were published posthumously due to repressive censorship. Chiefly Pushkin concentrated on literature and history. He saw that overwhelming use of French by the upper class delayed the progress of Russian literature. In this matter Pushkin was not speaking without own experience - his first language was French and he read French writers well on into adolescence. The responsibility of Decembrist Rebellion Pushkin shifted onto foreign influences, and argued against corporal punishment in teaching. He was fascinated by democratic republicanism but perceived the tendency to idealize both the natural state of life, as exemplified in the work of James Fenimore Cooper and in the political discussion in the United States, as shown in his essay "Dzhon Tenner" (1836, John Tanner).
Evgenii Onegin (1833, written 1823-31) - novel in verse. Evgenii Onegin retires to country on inheriting his uncle's estate. He befriends Vladimir Lenskii, who is in love with a local girl, Olga Larina. Her elder sister Tatiana falls in love with Onegin, but he rejects Tatiana's love. He considers himself mysteriously doomed, he would be a bad husband. "But I for bliss was not created: / To that my soul is foreign still. / In vain, in vain, are your perfections;/ Of them I count myself unworthy." At a party Onegin insults Olga, and Lenskii challenges him to a duel, and is shot dead. Three years later Onegin meets Tatiana who is married to a prince. He declares his love to her, and writes her a series of letters expressing a mad passion. Now it is her turn to reject him. She confesses that she loves him but insists that they must part for good. Pushkin's novel has been a rich source of character types for Russian writers. Tatiana has been regarded as the ideal of Russian womanhood. She is faithful, generous, sincere, and considerate. Among others Turgenev modelled his heroines after her. The libretto for Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin (1879) was adapted from Pushkin's novel by the composer's brother Modeste.