Russian literature virtually begins withAlexander
Pushkin (1799-1837), a writer both revered
and loved. Born into an aristocracy speaking French,
Pushkin taught himself Russian and was barely out of school
when his Ruslán and Ludmíla attracted
attention. Politically, he was trouble from the start, and
was repeatedly exiled to the provinces and refused permission
to travel abroad. His private life was not edifying, and
his private letters often worse, but Alexander
Pushkin the writer was a wonder. His huge popularity
vanished with the 1825 Decembrist uprising, but the output
afterwards showed the range and accomplishment of a supreme
master. Though never a court
dandy, he married the vain and beautiful Natalia Goncharova,
and through her was provoked and killed in an unnecessary
duel.
Pushkin and Russian poetry
Pushkin came as a breath of fresh air: self-opinionated,
mercurial and irreverent. Everything
he touched — poetry, short stories, plays, fairy tales
— were set on new paths and given unrivalled expression.
Alexander Pushkin brought together natural speech and foreign
influences to create modern poetic Russian. From him derive
the folk tales and genre pieces of Esénin,
Leskóv
and Górky.
From him too come the deep introspection of Lérmontov,
Tyútchev
and Dostoévsky.
And then there are the dream sequences of Gógol,
Bély,
Blok and Mandelstám.
And the belief that the writer must be the moral and political
conscience of his age: Akhmátova,
Pasternák,
Solzhenítsyn,
Yevtushenko.
Only Pushkin had such a range
of verse styles: lyrics, elegiacs, lampoons — all
of them original and infused with deep feeling, brio and
the unexpected.
Alexander Pushkin's protagonist in Evgény Onégin
owes much to Byron's Don
Juan, but the story is wholly
Russian, and has inspired countless imitations, operas,
films and translations.
Reading the Russian
Russian is not as daunting as first appears,
certainly not as taxing a learning an oriental language. Most
libraries have courses to get you over the Cyrillic script
and into hearing the language properly. Many Internet sites
can also help with cassettes,
books,
CDs and online
teaching courses. For those short of time there are parallel
texts and decent translations — of the great Russian
novels, naturally, but also poetry: 1911,
kulichki,
virtualave. Nothing
quite captures reading Evgény Onégin, in the original,
for example, where even the best translation may be like hearing
Mozart played on a penny whistle.
Books etc. on Russian poetry
Bibliographies for Alexander Pushkin and Russian literature
can be found in the Russian Poetry sectionof the The
New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (1993)
and the Cambridge History of Russian Literature (1989).
Good introductions include R. Lord's Russian and Soviet
Literature: An Introduction (1972), V. Nabokov's Lectures
on Russian Literature (1981), V. Terras's A History
of Russian Literature (1994), S. Mirsky's A History
of Russian Literature: From its Beginnings to 1900 (1999)
and C. Kelly's Russian Literature: A Very Short Introduction
(2001). There are many biographies of Alexander Pushkin, mostly
in Russian, but try H. Troyat's Pushkin (1970) or E.
Feinstein's Pushkin: a Biography (1999).
