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Alexander Pushkin

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Writers and critics

   Aleksandr Pushkin by Vasily Tropinin
   Enlarge
   Aleksandr Pushkin by Vasily Tropinin

   Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Пу́шкин,
   Aleksandr Sergeevič Puškin, listen ) ( June 6, 1799 [ O.S. May 26] –
   February 10, 1837 [ O.S. January 29]) was a Russian Romantic author who
   is considered to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern
   Russian literature. 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.

Life

   The 16-year old Pushkin recites a poem before Gavrila Derzhavin.
   Painting by Ilya Repin (1911).
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   The 16-year old Pushkin recites a poem before Gavrila Derzhavin.
   Painting by Ilya Repin (1911).

   Pushkin's father descended from a distinguished family of the Russian
   nobility which traced its ancestry back to the 12th century, while his
   mother's grandfather was Abram Petrovich Gannibal, who was a great
   military leader, engineer and nobleman under the auspices of his
   adoptive father Peter the Great. It should be noted that some British
   aristocrats descend from Gannibal, such as Natalia Grosvenor, Duchess
   of Westminster.

   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 St. 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, St. Petersburg. In 1820 he
   published his first long poem, Ruslan and Lyudmila, amidst much
   controversy about its subject and style.
   Pushkin's self-portrait on a one rouble coin, 1999
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   Pushkin's self-portrait on a one rouble coin, 1999

   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. He went first to Kishinev in 1820,
   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 Kishinev until 1823 and—after a summer trip to the Caucasus
   and to the Crimea—wrote 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
   north Russia 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 St. 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.
   Alexander Pushkin by Orest Kiprensky
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   Alexander Pushkin by Orest Kiprensky

   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. The two would become good friends and would support each other.
   Pushkin would be greatly influenced in the field of prose from Gogol's
   comical stories. 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,
   Georges d'Anthès, to a duel which left both men injured, Pushkin
   mortally. He died two days later.

   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.

   There were 4 children of Pushkin's marriage to Natalya: Alexander,
   Grigory, Maria, and Natalia (who would marry into the royal house of
   Nassau and become the Countess of Merenberg).

   His last words were: "Try to be forgotten. Go live in the country. Stay
   in mourning for two years, then remarry, but choose somebody decent."

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 four full volumes of material to
   fully render its meaning in English. Unfortunately, in so doing
   Nabokov, like all translators of Pushkin into English prose, totally
   destroyed the fundamental readability of Pushkin in Russian which makes
   him so popular, and despite other translations into English verse,
   Pushkin's verse remains largely unknown to English readers. But even
   with these difficulties, Pushkin has profoundly influenced western
   writers like Henry James.

   Because of his liberal political views and influence on generations of
   Russian rebels, Pushkin was conveniently pictured by Bolsheviks as an
   opponent to bourgeois literature and culture and predecessor of Soviet
   literature and poetry. They renamed Tsarskoe Selo after him.

   Pushkin's works also provided fertile ground for Russian composers.
   Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila is the earliest important Pushkin-inspired
   opera. 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; and Nápravník's Dubrovsky. This is
   not to mention ballets and cantatas, as well as innumerable songs set
   to Pushkin's verse.

Influence on the Russian language

   Statue of Pushkin in Tsarskoe Selo (1900).
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   Statue of Pushkin in Tsarskoe Selo (1900).

   Pushkin is usually credited with developing literary Russian. 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
   literary Russian.

Works

   The famous Pushkin Monument in Moscow, opened in 1880 by Turgenev and
   Dostoyevsky.
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   The famous Pushkin Monument in Moscow, opened in 1880 by Turgenev and
   Dostoyevsky.
   Six winged Seraph (after Pushkin's poem Prophet), 1905. By Mikhail
   Vrubel.
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   Six winged Seraph (after Pushkin's poem Prophet), 1905. By Mikhail
   Vrubel.
     * Ruslan i Lyudmila – Ruslan and Ludmila ( 1820) (poem)
     * Kavkazskiy Plennik – The Captive of the Caucasus ( 1822) (poem)
     * Bakhchisarayskiy Fontan – The Fountain of Bakhchisaray ( 1824)
       (poem)
     * Tsygany, – The Gypsies (narrative poem) (1827)
     * Poltava (1829)
     * Little Tragedies (including Kamenny Gost – The Stone Guest, Motsart
       i Salieri – Mozart and Salieri, The Miserly Knight, and A Feast
       During the Plague) ( 1830)
     * Boris Godunov (1825) (drama)
     * The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda (1830) (poem)
     * Povesti Pokoynogo Ivana Petrovicha Belkina – The Tales of the Late
       Ivan Petrovich Belkin (a collection of 5 short stories: The Shot,
       The Blizzard, The Undertaker, The Station Master and The Squire's
       Daughter) (1831) (prose)
     * The Tale of Tsar Saltan ( 1831) (poem)
     * Dubrovsky ( 1832- 1833, published 1841, prose novel)
     * The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights ( 1833, poem)
     * Pikovaya Dama – The Queen of Spades ( 1833) later adapted as an
       opera
     * The Golden Cockerel ( 1834, poem)
     * The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish ( 1835, poem)
     * Yevgeniy Onegin – Eugene Onegin (1825-1832) (verse novel)
     * Mednyy Vsadnik – The Bronze Horseman ( 1833, poem)
     * The History of Pugachev's Riot ( 1834, prose non-fiction)
     * Kapitanskaya Dochka - The Captain's Daughter ( 1836, prose) a
       romanticized historical novel of "Pugachevshchina," the life and
       times of Pugachev.
     * Kirdzhali – Kırcali (short story)
     * Gavriiliada
     * I Have Visited Again (poem)
     * Istoriya Sela Goryukhina – The Story of the Village of Goryukhino
       (unfinished)
     * Stseny iz Rytsarskikh Vremen – Scenes from Chivalrous Times
     * Yegipetskiye Nochi – Egyptian Nights (short story with poetry,
       unfinished)
     * K A.P. Kern – To A.P. Kern (poem)
     * Bratya Razboyniki – The Robber Brothers (play)
     * Arap Petra Velikogo – The Negro of Peter the Great (historical
       novel, unfinished, based on the life of his great-grandfather)
     * Graf Nulin – Count Nulin
     * Zimniy vecher – Winter evening

Hoaxes and other attributed works

   In the late 1980s, 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 little 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 2006 a bilingual
   Russian-English edition was published in Russia by Retro Publishing
   House.

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