My Pushkin, Our Pushkin

Everyone has their own vision of Pushkin.

Russians, of course, think Pushkin is “the Pride”, “the Sun of Russian poetry.”

The French, I am told, appreciate Pushkin’s prose more than his poetry. It is not really clear why. Perhaps because prose is easier to translate. Or perhaps because it is hard for the French to admit that such fine verses were written by a poet so nonchalantly killed by a French bon vivant.

The English may cherish Pushkin because he loved and translated Lord Byron.

Africans may celebrate the poet’s bicentennial as if he were really their poet — Alexander Sergeevich’s great grandfather was an Abyssinian prince who was rescued from slavery by the Russian ambassador in Istanbul, then sent as a present to Peter the Great. In America, the Russian press tells us, a group of black US legislators received funds to raise awareness of Pushkin’s origins.

But let’s not argue over whose poet Pushkin is. It is certainly hard to dispute that Pushkin is first and foremost a Russian poet, yet his poetic heritage is accessible to all. For each of us has his own Pushkin — depending on the season of the year, on whether we fell in or out of love, on our mood, our age and many other factors.

Children know, or should come to know, his marvelous fairy tales. I remember how my babushka Lena used to tell me Pushkin’s fairy tales before I went to bed — just like Pushkin’s nanny Arina Rodionovna used to tell the poet stories, which he later immortalized in verse. It is thanks to this early initiation to Pushkin that I can distinguish the difference between good and bad Russian. And it is thanks to Pushkin’s skazki that I was later able to enjoy his successors — Lermontov, Blok, Pasternak and, of course,  Akhmatova, who praised Pushkin’s fairy tales even though “they were not at all meant for children ...” Nevertheless, she captured the poet’s brilliance eloquently in her essay “Pushkin and the Children”: “Pushkin’s verses gave children the Russian language in its most perfect magnificence, a language which they may never hear or speak again, but which will remain with them as an eternal treasure.”

Pushkin follows us through our life. As Russian children grow into adolescents, they read in a single sitting Pushkin’s captivating novel of the Pugachev insurrection, The Captain’s Daughter. Or the breathtaking story “Dubrovsky,” about the son of a wronged Russian landowner turned Robin Hood. Teenage girls memorize Tatyana Larina’s amorous letter to Yevgeny Onegin. And boys, depending on their purpose and inclination, learn Pushkin’s love poem dedicated to Anna Kern or Onegin’s response to Tatyana.

As adults, we gravitate to Pushkin’s historical themes, like “Boris Godunov” (which could just as well be written about the reign of modern Russia’s Boris) or his “Mozart and Salieri,” where evil and genius square off.

In fact, there is hardly a single important issue concerning matters of the heart or existence which Pushkin didn’t touch on in his verse. His work is far too rich and diverse to summarize even in the many pages devoted to him in this issue. Instead, we offer an illustrated look at the life and work of the poet, hoping it will inspire readers to pick up a copy of Pushkin’s poems or verse again (or for the first time) and get reacquainted with “The Queen of Spades,” Yevgeny Onegin or “Ivan Petrovich Belkin” (see Additional Reading on page 55).

Pushkin is the sort of great writer one must revisit many times in life. For each time we see things we miss. Each time we discover something new about human nature, the Russian soul or Russian history. And it is good to challenge ourselves, to be continually learning.

There is no better way to pay homage to Pushkin on his 200th anniversary than to simply revisit his works (rather than read interpretations of his life and work). As Dostoevsky said with sad irony: “Why do we need new works about Pushkin when even the old ones are completely new for the majority of the public?”

So, let us learn more about Pushkin from the original source — his art. For who of us, on June 6, would want to justify Pushkin’s reproach in “Journey to Arzrum”: “We are lazy and incurious”?

Pleasant journey!

 

“When one hears Pushkin’s name, one thinks of the Russian national poet. Indeed, none of our poets is higher than he, and none has a greater claim to be called a a national poet; this right is decisively his. In him, as in a dictionary, is contained all the riches, the strength and flexibility of our tongue. Pushkin is a rare and perhaps unique phenomenon of the Russian spirit: he is the Russian man in his supreme development, as he will appear perhaps 200 years hence. In him, the Russian nature, the Russian soul, the Russian language and the Russian characters are reflected in such purity, in the same refined beauty as a landscape seen reflected on the convex surface of a magnifying glass.” 

Nikolai Gogol

 

Ö‚„ÂÌ˚È éÌ„ËÌ

Yevgeny Onegin

At the core of Pushkin’s epic poem is an elegantly simple tale of unrequited love. Young Tatyana falls in love with rakish Yevgeny; Yevgeny spurns her; Tatyana marries another and blossoms into womanhood. Years later, Yevgeny meets Tatyana again and falls head over heels for her. Tatyana professes her undying love for Yevgeny, but an even greater loyalty for her 

marriage vows.

 

How changed Tatyana is!

Into her role how firmly she has entered!

Of a constricting rank

the ways how fast she has adopted!

Who’d dare to seek the tender little lass

in this stately, this nonchalant

legislatrix of salons?

....

“Onegin, I was younger then,

I was, I daresay, better-looking,

and I loved you; and what then?

What did I find in your heart?

What answer? Mere austerity.

There wasn’t–was there– novelty for you

in the love of a humble little girl?”

 

Tatyana’s Letter to Onegin

I write to you —what would one more?

What else is there that I could say?

‘Tis now, I know, within your will

to punish me with scorn.

But you, for my unhappy lot

keeping at least one drop of pity,

you’ll not abandon me.

....

Scarce had you entered, instantly I knew you,

I felt all faint, I felt aflame,

and in my thoughts I uttered: It is he!

Is it not true that it was you I heard:

you in the stillness spoke to me

when I would help the poor 

or assuage with a prayer

the yearning of my agitated soul?

 

“Now march toward each other.” 

Cold blooded,

not aiming yet, the two foes

with firm tread, slowly, evenly

traversed four paces,

four deadly stairs.

His pistol Eugene then,

not ceasing to advance, 

gently the first began to raise.

Now they have stepped five paces more,

and Lenski, closing his left eye,

started to level also—but right then

Onegin fired . . . . Struck have

the appointed hours: the poet

in silence drops his pistol.

....

Onegin hastens to the youth,

looks, calls him . . . vainly:

he is no more. The youthful bard

has met with an untimely end!

....

One moment earlier

in this heart had throbbed inspiration,

enmity, hope, and love,

life effervesced, blood boiled;

now, as in a deserted house, 

all in it is both still and dark,

it has become forever silent.

 

 

“Despite all our love for Pushkin, a love that borders on worship, we for some reason find it difficult to explain why we consider him such a genius and why Pushkin and no one else always comes first in Russian literature. Aside from the grandeur that makes us want to shower him with honorific titles, behind which his face melts into one big familiar blur with sidewhiskers, the difficulty lies in the fact that he is absolutely accessible and at the same time inscrutable, enigmatic in the obvious accessibility of the truths he enunciated, truths that don’t contain, it would seem, anything so special...”

 Andrei Sinyavsky

 

 

“Everywhere in Pushkin we perceive a faith in the Russian character, a faith in its spiritual power; and if there is faith, then there must be hope as well, a great hope for the Russian: “With hopes for glory and for good,/I look ahead and have no fear.” ... And never has any Russian writer, before him or since, been so akin in spirit to his People as was Pushkin.

“One can positively state that had Pushkin not existed neither would the talented people who came after him ... had Pushkin not existed, it might well be that our faith in our Russian individuality, our now conscious hope in the strength of our People, and with it our faith in our future independent mission in the family of European peoples would not have been formulated with such unshakeable force.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 5 June 1880, 

at the Moscow dedication of 

Opekushin’s statue of Pushkin

 

“In the history of every nation there are periods when spiritual changes occur in the depths of the popular masses, which determine movement for entire centuries. And a considerable role in these complex processes of qualitative renewal belongs to art and literature. They become a spiritual catalyst, they help to ripen a new consciousness among millions of people and raise them to a the performance of great exploits ... Pushkin was such a revolutionary of the spirit of the Russian people.”

 Mikhail Bulgakov

 

“Pushkin! Following in your steps

We sang of secret freedom!

Give us your hand in these troubled times, 

Help us in our silent struggle!”

Alexander Blok, 1921, 

just months before his death.

 

“Pushkin was one of those creative genuises, those great historical personalities who, while working for the present, paved the road toward the future, and therefore cannot possibly belong only to the past.” 

Vissarion Belinsky

 

“I live on. He is the one who will replace Derzhavin.”

The poet Gavril Derzhavin, hearing the young Pushkin recite one of his poems

 

“Pushkin’s writings, which created a new Russian literature, and formed a new Russian reading public, will live for ever, and with them, for ever immortal, will remain the personality of Pushkin.”

Nikolai Chernyshevsky

 

“... Pushkin ... remains ever alive for those who, like myself, love him and for all those who are able to find him, a living presence, in his immortal writings...” 

Ivan Pushchin, Decembrist 

and friend of Alexander Pushkin

 

 

“‘Pushkin, would you have participated in [the revolt of] December 14 [1825], had you been in Petersburg then?’ 

‘Absolutely, Sovereign. All my friends were in the plot, and I couldn’t have not participated. Only my absence has saved me, for which I thank God!’” 

Dialogue between Tsar Nicholas I and Pushkin after the Russian tsar freed Pushkin from his exile at the family estate of Mikhaylovskoye in 1826. 

 

“Pushkin began as Pushkin from the outset, and not as some poet who, though very gifted, would not yet realize his true vocation, who would just become a Pushkin at some later point. He was already such a poet when he was just beginning his path. The very first verses of Pushkin are precisely Pushkin’s ... Pushkin’s childhood verses are already impregnated with Pushkin’s spirit ... It is impossible to mix them up with anyone else’s verses ...

“The uniqueness of Pushkin’s gift was that, for Pushkin, there was no higher award for his creativity than to live up to his gift. Whereas his followers – even those such as Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy –- waited for something which their art could serve, Pushkin wanted only one thing: to remain loyal to his art. For Pushkin it is enough to just be a poet, to follow his poetic endeavor, and the rest, he thinks, will follow in line as a matter of course.”

Boris Bursov, one of Russia’s leading Pushkinists

 

I often asked him: “Well, how’s it going, Pushkin my friend?” “What can I say, my friend,” he would answer: “I’m getting 

by ...” He’s a real original.

The imposter Khlestyakov, in Nikolai Gogol’s play, The Inspector General

 

ÅÓËÒ ÉÓ‰ÛÌÓ‚

Boris Godunov

Pushkin’s dramatic poem and play about guilt and the forces of history centers on the reign of Boris Godunov and on his crisis of conscience from his complicity in killing Tsarevich Dmitry. It ends with the arrival of the Polish “false Dmitry” in Moscow, in 1605. Photos on these pages are from the film Boris Godunov (1987), directed by Sergey Bondarchuk and starring the director in the title role (left). Below, the crowd scene finale.

 

Citizens of Moscow!

The world has seen your suffering

Under the cruel intruder’s rule

The persecution, executions, the dishonor, taxes,

Hard work, hunger — you have experienced all of these.

 

 

I have attained ultimate power;

I’ve reigned in peace now for six years, 

But do not feel contentment in my soul. Is it not so

When we fall in love and yearn

For love’s solace, but only satisfying 

The heart’s hunger with quick possession,

Cooling, become restless and bored?

For naught the sorcerers predict

Long years of power without strife.

Neither power, nor life bring joy;

Ahead I sense the heavens’ thunder, woe.

There is no happiness for me. I thought to calm

My people with prosperity, glory,

By generosity to win their love

But hollow acts of charity rejected.

The masses hate the power of the living.

They only know love for the dead.

 

Tsar Saltan

A fairy tale in which a dogged peasant endures impossible trials to win the hand of the tsar’s daughter.

 

And the tsar burst into tears

Hugging the tsarin‡

His son and the young bride

All the guests sat at table:

And a merry feast began

....

One day later Tsar Saltan

Was put to bed half-drunk

And I was there, I drank honey and beer

And my moustache was barely wetted.”

 

Ruslan and Ludmila

This ironic poem of Ruslan saving his betrothed from numerous threats was Pushkin’s first claim to fame.

 

Refusing to believe his eyes

Mesmerized by unexpected happiness

Our warrior falls down to the feet

Of his loyal, unforgettable beloved

....

He calls her – but the maiden is sleeping,

Her eyes and mouth sealed tight...