Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (, ) (–) was a
Russian author of the
Romantic era
[Basker, Michael. Pushkin and Romanticism. In Ferber, Michael, ed. , A Companion to European Romanticism. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.] who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian
poet[, retrieved on 24 November 2006.][, retrieved on 2 September 2006.] and the founder of modern
Russian literature.
[, retrieved 1 September 2006] Pushkin pioneered the use of
vernacular speech in his poems and
plays, creating a style of storytelling—mixing
drama,
romance, and
satire—associated with Russian literature ever since and greatly influencing later Russian writers. He also wrote historical fiction. His
Marie: A Story of Russian Love provides insight into Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great.
Born in
Moscow, Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the
Imperial Lyceum in
Tsarskoye Selo. Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals; in the early 1820s he clashed with the government, which sent him into exile in southern Russia. While under the strict surveillance of government censors and unable to travel or publish at will, he wrote his most famous play, the drama
Boris Godunov, but could not publish it until years later. His
novel in verse,
Eugene Onegin, was published serially from 1825 to 1832.
Pushkin and his wife
Natalya Goncharova, whom he married in 1831, later became regulars of court society. In 1837, while falling into greater and greater debt amidst rumors that his wife had started conducting a scandalous affair, Pushkin challenged her alleged lover,
Georges d'Anthès, to a
duel. Pushkin was mortally wounded and died two days later.
Because of his political views and influence on generations of Russian rebels, Pushkin was portrayed by
Bolsheviks as an opponent to bourgeois literature and culture and a predecessor of
Soviet literature and poetry
. In 1937, the town of
Tsarskoe Selo was renamed Pushkin in his honor.
Biography
A young Pushkin, by Xavier De Maistre. Oil on metal plate. The State Pushkin Museum,
Moscow.
Pushkin's father Sergei Lvovich Pushkin (1767–1848) descended from a distinguished family of the Russian nobility which traced its ancestry back to the 12th century.
[Н. К. Телетова [N. K. Teletova] (2007).] Pushkin's mother Nadezhda (Nadja) Ossipovna Hannibal (1775–1836) descended through her paternal grandmother from
German and
Scandinavian nobility.
She was the daughter of Ossip Abramovich Gannibal (1744–1807) and his wife Maria Aleksejevna Pushkina, and her paternal grandfather, i.e. Pushkin's great-grandfather, a page raised by
Peter the Great, was
Abram Petrovich Gannibal, who was born in
Lagon,
Eritrea or
Ethiopia.
After education in France as a
military engineer, Abram Gannibal became governor of
Reval and eventually General-en-Chef for the building of sea forts and
canals in Russia.
Born in
Moscow, Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen. By the time he finished as part of the first graduating class of the prestigious
Imperial Lyceum in
Tsarskoe Selo near
Saint Petersburg, the Russian literary scene recognized his talent widely. After finishing school, Pushkin installed himself in the vibrant and raucous intellectual youth culture of the capital,
Saint Petersburg. In 1820 he published his first long poem,
Ruslan and Lyudmila, amidst much controversy about its subject and style.
Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals. This angered the government, and led to his transfer from the capital (1820). He went to the
Caucasus and to the
Crimea, then to
Kamenka and
Chisinau, where he became a
Freemason. Here he joined the
Filiki Eteria, a secret organization whose purpose was to overthrow the Ottoman rule over
Greece and establish an independent Greek state. He was inspired by the
Greek Revolution and when the war against the
Ottoman Turks broke out he kept a diary with the events of the great national uprising. He stayed in
Chisinau until 1823 and wrote there two
Romantic poems which brought him wide acclaim,
The Captive of the Caucasus and
The Fountain of Bakhchisaray. In 1823 Pushkin moved to
Odessa, where he again clashed with the government, which sent him into exile at his mother's rural estate in
Mikhailovskoe (near
Pskov) from 1824 to 1826. However, some of the authorities allowed him to visit
Tsar Nicholas I to petition for his release, which he obtained. But some of the insurgents in the
Decembrist Uprising (1825) in Saint Petersburg had kept some of his early political poems amongst their papers, and soon Pushkin found himself under the strict control of government censors and unable to travel or publish at will. He had written what became his most famous play, the drama
Boris Godunov, while at his mother's estate but could not gain permission to publish it until five years later. The drama's original, uncensored version would not receive a premiere until 2007.
In 1831, highlighting the growth of Pushkin's talent and influence and the merging of two of Russia's greatest early writers, he met
Nikolai Gogol. After reading Gogol's 1831–2 volume of short stories
Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, Pushkin would support him critically and later in 1836 after starting his magazine,
The Contemporary, would feature some of Gogol's most famous short stories. Later, Pushkin and his wife
Natalya Goncharova, whom he married in 1831, became regulars of court society. When the
Tsar gave Pushkin the lowest court title, the poet became enraged: he felt this occurred not only so that his wife, who had many admirers—including the Tsar himself—could properly attend court balls, but also to humiliate him. In 1837, falling into greater and greater debt amidst rumors that his wife had started conducting a scandalous affair, Pushkin challenged her alleged lover, his brother in-law
Georges d'Anthès, to a
duel which left both men injured, Pushkin mortally. He died two days later. His last accommodation is a
museum now.
The government feared a political demonstration at his funeral, which it moved to a smaller location and made open only to close relatives and friends. His body was spirited away secretly at midnight and buried on his mother's estate.
Pushkin had four children from his marriage to Natalya: Maria (b. 1832, touted as a prototype of
Anna Karenina), Alexander (b. 1833), Grigory (b. 1835), and Natalya (b. 1836) the last of whom married,
morganatically, into the royal house of
Nassau to
Nikolaus Wilhelm of Nassau and became the
Countess of Merenberg.
Literary legacy
Critics consider many of his works masterpieces, such as the poem
The Bronze Horseman and the drama
The Stone Guest, a tale of the fall of
Don Juan. His poetic short drama "Mozart and Salieri" was the inspiration for
Peter Shaffer's
Amadeus. Pushkin himself preferred his verse novel
Eugene Onegin, which he wrote over the course of his life and which, starting a tradition of great Russian novels, follows a few central characters but varies widely in tone and focus. "Onegin" is a work of such complexity that, while only about a hundred pages long, translator
Vladimir Nabokov needed two full volumes of material to fully render its meaning in English. Because of this difficulty in translation, Pushkin's verse remains largely unknown to English readers. Even so, Pushkin has profoundly influenced western writers like
Henry James.
[, retrieved on 24 November 2006.]Pushkin's works also provided fertile ground for Russian composers.
Glinka's
Ruslan and Lyudmila is the earliest important Pushkin-inspired opera, and a landmark in the tradition of Russian music.
Tchaikovsky's
operas
Eugene Onegin (1879) and
The Queen of Spades (1890) became perhaps better known outside of Russia than Pushkin's own works of the same name, while
Mussorgsky's monumental
Boris Godunov (two versions, 1868-9 and 1871-2) ranks as one of the very finest and most original of Russian operas. Other Russian operas based on Pushkin include
Dargomyzhsky's
Rusalka and
The Stone Guest;
Rimsky-Korsakov's
Mozart and Salieri,
Tale of Tsar Saltan, and
The Golden Cockerel;
Cui's
Prisoner of the Caucasus,
Feast in Time of Plague, and
The Captain's Daughter;
Tchaikovsky's
Mazeppa;
Rachmaninov's one-act operas
Aleko (based on The Gypsies) and
The Miserly Knight;
Stravinsky's
Mavra, and
Nápravník's
Dubrovsky. This is not to mention
ballets and
cantatas, as well as innumerable
songs set to Pushkin's verse.
Suppé,
Leoncavallo and
Malipiero, among non-Russian composers, have based operas on his works.
Increased attention has also been given to Pushkin's apparent
anti-Semitism, as well as that of other nineteenth-century Russian writers,
Fyodor Dostoevsky and
Nikolai Gogol.
Pushkin and Romanticism
Although Pushkin is considered the central representative of The Age of Romaticism in Russian literature, he can't be labelled unequivocally as a Romantic: Russian critics have traditionally argued that his works represent a path from
neo-Classicism through Romanticism to
Realism, while an alternative assessment suggests that "he had an ability to entertain contrarities which may seem Romantic in origin, but is ultimately subversive of all fixed points of view, all single outlooks, including the Romantic" and that "he is simultaneously Romantic and not Romantic".
Influence on the Russian language
Alexander Pushkin is usually credited with developing Russian literature. Not only is he seen as having originated the highly nuanced level of language which characterizes Russian literature after him, but he is also credited with substantially augmenting the Russian lexicon. Where he found gaps in the Russian vocabulary, he devised calques. His rich vocabulary and highly sensitive style are the foundation for modern Russian literature. Russian literature virtually begins with Alexander Pushkin. His talent set up new records for development of the Russian language and culture. He became the father of Russian literature in 19th century, marking the highest achievements of 18th century and the beginning of literary process of 19th century. Alexander Pushkin introduced Russia to all the European literary genres as well as a great number of West European writers. He brought natural speech and foreign influences to create modern poetic Russian. Though his life was brief, he left examples of nearly every literary genre of his day: lyric poetry, narrative poetry, the novel, the short story, the drama, the critical essay, and even the personal letter. Pushkin's work as a journalist marked the birth of the Russian magazine culture, including him devising and contributing heavily to one of the most influential literary magazines of 19th century, the Sovremennik (The Contemporary, or Современник). From him derive the folk tales and genre pieces of other authors: Esenin, Leskov and Gorky. His use of Russian language formed the basis of the style of novelists Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, and Leo Tolstoy. Pushkin was recognized by Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol, his successor and pupil, the great Russian critic Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky, who produced the fullest and deepest critical study of Pushkin's work, which still retains much of its relevance. Alexander Pushkin became an inseparable part of the literary world of the Russian people. He also exerted a profound influence on other aspects of Russian culture, most notably in opera. Translated into all the major languages, his works are regarded both as expressing most completely Russian national consciousness and as transcending national barriers. Pushkin’s intelligence, sharpness of his opinion, his devotion to poetry, realistic thinking and incredible historical and political intuition make him one of the greatest Russian national geniuses.List of Works
Pushkin Monument in Moscow as it appears now.
- 1821 - Gavriiliada (Гавриилиада) ; English translation: The Gabrieliad
- 1824 – Tsygany (Цыганы); English translation: The Gypsies
- 1825 – Graf Nulin (Граф Нулин); English translation: Count Nulin
- 1829 – Poltava (Полтава); English translation: Poltava
- 1833 - Andjelo (Анджело); English translation: Angelo
Verse novel
- 1825-32 – Yevgeny Onegin (Евгений Онегин); English translation: Eugene Onegin
Drama
- 1825 – Boris Godunov (Борис Годунов); English translation: Boris Godunov
- * Skupoy rytsar (Скупой рыцарь); English translations: The Miserly Knight, The Covetous Knight
Prose
- * Vystrel (Выстрел); English translation: The Shot, short story
- * Metel (Метель); English translation: The Blizzard, short story
- * Grobovschik (Гробовщик); English translation: The Undertaker, short story
- * Stanzionny smotritel (Станционный смотритель); English translation: The Stationmaster, short story
- * Baryshnya-krestyanka (Барышня-крестьянка); English translation: The Squire's Daughter, short story
- 1834 - Kirdzhali (Кирджали); English translation: Kirdzhali, short story
- 1836 - Puteshestvie v Arzrum (Путешествие в Арзрум); English translation: A Journey to Arzrum, travel sketches
- 1836 - Roslavlev (Рославлев); English translation: Roslavlev, unfinished novel
- 1837 - Yegipetskie nochi (Египетские ночи); English translation: Egyptian Nights, unfinished short story
- 1841 - Dubrovsky (Дубровский); English translation: Dubrovsky, unfinished novel
Tales in verse
Awards and honors
A minor planet, 2208 Pushkin, discovered in 1977 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh is named after him.
A crater, Pushkin, on Mercury is also named in his honor.
The Pushkin Trust was established in 1987 by the Duchess of Abercorn to commemorate the creative legacy and spirit of her ancestor Alexander Pushkin and to release the creativity and imagination of the children of Ireland by providing them with opportunities to communicate their thoughts, feelings and experiences.
Many authorities claim that Alexander Pushkin is the greatest poet of Russia.Hoaxes and other attributed works
In 1986, a book entitled Secret Journal 1836–1837 was published by a Minneapolis publishing house (M.I.P. Company), claiming to be the decoded content of an encrypted private journal kept by Pushkin. Promoted with few details about its contents, and touted for many years as being 'banned in Russia', it was an erotic novel narrated from Pushkin's perspective. Some mail-order publishers still carry the work under its fictional description. In 2001 it was first published in Moscow by Ladomir Publishing House which created a scandal. In 2006 a bilingual Russian-English edition was published in Russia by Retro Publishing House. Now published in 24 countries. Staged in Paris in 2006. See http://www.mipco.com/english/push.htmlReferences in popular culture
Pushkin, his relationships, his writing and his life is portrayed in the shōjo manga Bronze Angel, by Saitō Chiho.
Pushkin referenced in the game Team Fortress 2 as an achievement that may be attained by the Heavy Weapons Guy, a Russian character, called Pushkin the Kart. See also
Pushkin's self-portrait on a one ruble coin, 1999
