Aleksandr Pushkin Biography and List of Works

Russian author often considered his country's greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin was the first to use everyday speech in his poetry. In his work Pushkin blended Old Slavonic with vernacular Russian producing a rich, melodic language.

"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 a 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. In 1817 he accepted a post at the foreign office in St. Petersburg. He became associated with members of a radical movement who later participated in the Decembrist uprising of 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.

Although living in exile in different parts of Russia, Pushkin continued to write poems, gradually emerging as the leader of Romantic Movement. In 1823 he started his 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 guilt 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 grey 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. When the new czar, Nicholas I, allowed Pushkin to return to Moscow, 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 there for three months by a cholera outbreak. This was a very productive literary period. He wrote a number 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 in order to conduct historical research.

In 1834 Pushkin received an appointment as a functionary at the court, but his minor status was considered a humiliation. Pushkin's debts were mounting and he was worried about his wife's possible infidelity.

In his last years Pushkin started to write a historical work on Peter the Great, which was left unfinished. In 1829 he fell in love with 16-year-old Natalya Nikolayevna Goncharova, whom he married two years later. The marriage was unhappy and Pushkin found scant time for intense creative activity. His wife's frivolous social life led Pushkin into debt and eventually to his early death. Gossip of an affair between Baron Georges d'Anthès and his wife started to spread. Pushkin defended his wife's honour with her brother-in-law in a duel. He was fatally wounded and died on February 10 (New Style), 1837. He was buried in the monastery near Mikhailovskoye.

"Please, never despise the translator. He's the mailman of human civilization."

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 the overwhelming use of French by the upper class delayed the progress of Russian literature, shifted the responsibility of Decembrist Rebellion 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. 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 but she knows how empty his character is, and it is her turn to reject him. Pushkin's novel has been a rich source of character types for Russian writers. Tatiana has been regarded as the ideal of Russian womanhood. 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. - - See: Vladimir Nabokov's commentary and translation of Alexandr Pushkin' 'Eugene Onegin' (4 vol), 1964

For further reading: Puskin by D.S. Mirsky (1926); Pushkin by Ernest Simmons (1964); Pushkin by David Magarshack (1967); Alexander Pushkin by Walter Vickery (1970); Russiam Views of Pushkin, ed. by D. Richards (1976); Alexandr Pushkin: A Critical Study by A.D.P. Briggs (1983); Pushkin's Prose by Abram Lezhnev (1983); Alexander Pushkin, ed. by Harold Bloom (1987); Russian Views of Pushkin's 'Eugene Onegin', ed. by Sona Stephanie Sandler (1989); Eugene Onegin by A.D.P. Briggs (1992); Pushkin by Robin Edmonds (1994); Pushkin by Iurii Lotman (1995); Pushkin's Poems by J.Thomas Shaw (1996); Social Functions of Literature: Alexander Pushkin and Russian Culture by Paul Debreczeny (1997)

See also: Nikolay Gogol, Prosper Merimée - Note: The Complete text in Russian of Secret Journal 1836-1837 (Tainiye zapiski) by A.S. Pushkin, translated into 16 languages and banned in Russia, as well as excerpts from other books: M.I.P. Company, The Publisher of Controversial Russian Literature. - Mikhail Armalinsky's article.

RUSLAN I LJUDMILA, (1820)