Pusey, Edward Bouverie. Daniel the Prophet. London:John Henry and James Parker, 1864. Reprint. NewYork: Funk and Wagnalls, 1885.

_______. Occasional Sermons Selected from PublishedSermons of E. B. Pusey. London: Walter Smith, 1884.Specimens of Pusey’s pulpit work that show that hewas a rather awkward preacher but one who pro-claimed his message with great fervor.

_______, ed. The Minor Prophets with Commentary Ex-planatory and Practical. 6 vols. Oxford, England:Parker, 1860-1877. Reprint. 2 vols. New York: Funkand Wagnalls, 1885. This effort offers the best evi-

dence of the amazing erudition of Pusey and showshis method as an apologist for traditional beliefs,theological and biblical.

See also: Thomas Arnold; William Ewart Gladstone;Frederic Harrison; John Henry Newman; FriedrichSchleiermacher; Duke of Wellington.

Related articles in Great Events from History: TheNineteenth Century, 1801-1900: July 14, 1833: Ox-ford Movement Begins; October 9, 1845: NewmanBecomes a Roman Catholic.

Alexander PushkinRussian poetRevered by generations of Russian writers, Pushkin lefthis greatest legacy in his poetry. His literary memory iscompounded by the fact that his works inspiredinternationally celebrated operas, ballets, and films.

Born: June 6, 1799; Moscow, RussiaDied: February 10, 1837; St. Petersburg, RussiaAlso known as: Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

(full name)Area of achievement: Literature

Early LifeAlexander Pushkin (PEWSH-kyihn) was the son of atenant of a ministerial steward and a mother who wasdescended from an Abyssinian who had become theadopted godson and personal secretary of Peter the Great.Sergey Lvovich, Alexander’s father, was more inter-ested in drawing rooms and theaters than in his estate,which he left to the mismanagement of his wife, Na-dezhda Osipovna Hannibal.

With curly, chestnut-colored hair, Alexander was asallow, thick-lipped, and dreamy-eyed child. Neglectedby his parents, who preferred his younger brother Leoand his elder sister Olga, he turned to his nanny, ArinaRodionovna, who regaled him with legends and songsabout wizards, princesses, knights-errant, and elves. Healso enjoyed the company of his maternal grandmother,Marya Hannibal, and it was at her country estate thatPushkin learned to love his native language.

As soon as he was old enough to read, he had a numberof tutors, but he was a poor student. In 1811, he enteredthe lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo, a school instituted and

sponsored by imperial decree, where he studied every-thing from religion and philosophy to swimming andhorsemanship. At the age of fourteen, Pushkin publishedhis first poem, “To a Poet-Friend,” in the well-respectedEuropean Herald. His official entry into the literaryworld occurred on January 8, 1815, when, as part of hisqualifying examination for the upper school, he recitedhis own poem “Recollections of Tsarskoye Selo” beforedistinguished guests. His remarkable use of language,rhythm, onomatopoeia, and references to myth estab-lished him as a prodigy.

During 1817, Pushkin’s last year at school, he be-friended hussars stationed at Tsarskoye Selo and joinedthem in bouts of drinking and gambling. After his gradu-ation, he was appointed to the Ministry of Foreign Af-fairs, but in 1818 he joined the Society of the GreenLamp, a literary club with liberal political leanings. Thenext year, he was suspected of collaborating with revolu-tionaries. Further complications arose with the publica-tion in 1820 of his long poem Ruslan i Lyudmila (Englishtranslation, 1936). This poem created enormous contro-versy, winning praise for its epic quality but drawingcondemnation for, among other things, its atheism. Push-kin was forced into exile on Ascension Day, May 6,1820. He spent the next few years in the south of Russia,especially in Yekaterinenshtadt, the Caucasus, and Ki-shinev.

Life’s WorkBefriended by Nicholas Raevsky, the younger son of ageneral celebrated for his exploits in the NapoleonicWars, Pushkin was invited to holiday with the Raevsky

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family in the Caucasus, which fueled his imagination forhis poem Kavkazskiy plennik (1822; The Prisoner of theCaucasus, 1895). Raevsky’s elder brother Alexanderwas the model for the poet’s sneering Mephistopheleanhero in “The Demon” of the same year.

As his literary fame increased, so did his social notori-ety. He continued to be extravagant in misconduct, sur-viving a duel against an officer whom he had accused ofcheating at baccarat and using the incident in his shortstory “Vystrel” (1831; “The Shot”). Pushkin finally re-signed from the government in 1824, but the emperortransferred him to the Pushkin estate in the desertedprovince of Mikhailovka, near Pskov. There he lived insparse, unheated quarters, without books or his custom-ary amusements. He wrote to friends requesting copiesof works by William Shakespeare, Friedrich Schiller, Jo-hann Wolfgang von Goethe, George Gordon, Lord By-ron, Miguel de Cervantes, Dante, Petrarch, John Milton,and Tacitus.

Engrossed in his own idiosyncratic activities, Pushkinneglected the family farm. During this period, he com-pleted Tsygany (1827; The Gypsies, 1957), a verse talebased on his experiences in Bessarabia, a story of de-feated egotism. Strong on description, it had affected,bombastic dialogue. Graf Nulin (1827; Count Nulin,

1972), a thin, rather banal response to Shakespeare’s TheRape of Lucrece (1594), shocked readers with its sexualfrankness. Pushkin wrote many lyric poems in the sameyear, including “André Chenier,” about the poet-martyrof the French Revolution. Its theme of heroic indepen-dence was regarded suspiciously by government cen-sors, who deleted all references to the revolution. Push-kin’s political consciousness was further exercised in hisdrama Boris Godunov (1831; English translation, 1918),a powerful story of ambition, murder, and retribution.Never produced in Pushkin’s own time, the play wassavaged by critics, who thought it massively disorga-nized because it shifted focus from Czar Boris to the Im-postor Dmitry.

This professional setback was coupled with troubleensuing from Pushkin’s friendship with several conspir-ators in the Decembrist Revolt on December 4, 1825,against Czar Nicholas I, who had ascended the throne af-ter Alexander I had died suddenly in November. Sickwith fury and shame for having had to plead for compas-sion over his friendship with a key conspirator, Pushkinwas escorted to the emperor, who appointed himself thewriter’s censor and commanded the court to take note ofthe new, repentant Pushkin.

In Moscow, Pushkin lived with a friend and was in-vited to salons and parties of the famous, but the secretpolice watched him diligently. The czar wanted the poetsupervised continually and tested Pushkin’s loyalty andliberalism by both subtle and unsubtle means. Pushkingrew tired of Moscow and left for St. Petersburg, wherehe saw little of his parents. He was investigated rather be-latedly for his authorship of Gavriiliada (1822; Gabriel:A Poem, 1926) and later was reprimanded for travelingwithout authorization.

Pushkin’s writing remained calm and controlled,though his life was not. In October, 1828, he beganPoltava (1829; English translation, 1936), a poem onPeter the Great. Also that year, his beloved nannyRodionovna died in St. Petersburg, and he met sixteen-year-old Natalya Goncharov in Moscow in the winter,falling victim to her youthful beauty. Natalya was to behis victimizing “madonna,” for she was a vain, shallowcreature. He became engaged to Natalya on May 6, 1830,but a cholera epidemic forced him to Boldino, where hecomposed Povesti Belkina (1831; The Tales of Belkin,1947), his first sustained fictional work, and almost com-pleted his masterpiece Evgeny Onegin (1825-1833; Eu-gene Onegin, 1881), which he had started in 1823.

Written as a novel in sonnet sequences, Eugene Oneginwas modern in its devastating sociological criticism

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Alexander Pushkin. (Library of Congress)

amid the doomed Romanticism of the central characters.Technically, the story was in eight cantos, each stanza infour-foot iambics, alternating between masculine andfeminine rhymes. It was the first occasion that Pushkinhad used a regular stanzaic arrangement for a long poem,and the “Onegin” stanza with its final rhymed coupletwas probably derived from Byron’s ottava rima. It wasthe figure of Onegin, however, that sealed the impor-tance of the work, for the melancholy Romantic had af-

finities with such figures as Goethe’sWerner and Byron’s Childe Harold,and he stands as the first hero of Rus-sian realism.

Pushkin’s marriage to Natalya inSeptember, 1831, was followed by amove to St. Petersburg, where heserved as historiographer and wherehis mounting debts compounded hisanxieties. The next five years weresolid successes as far as his literaryachievements were concerned. In1837, he was elected to the RussianAcademy.

The final four years of Pushkin’slife marked a transition from poetryto prose. In 1834, he produced Skazkao zolotom petushke (The Tale of theGolden Cockerel, 1918) in verse,but he found more renown with thenovella Pikovaya dama (1834; TheQueen of Spades, 1896), which borecomparison with Eugene Onegin.Its themes of destruction, death, andmadness were underlined by subtlesymbolism in a manner reminiscentof his great French contemporaryStendhal.

Pushkin’s final masterpiece wasKapitanskaya dochka (1836; TheCaptain’s Daughter, 1846), a histor-ical novella set during the period ofthe Pugachev Rebellion. The hero isa young officer loyal to the queenwho runs the gamut of happiness,pain, and vindication both in loveand in honor. In this work, Pushkinconjoins story and history, fashion-ing a thoroughly credible romancewhile also creating an interestingportrait of the rebel leader Emelyan

Ivanovich Pugachev by presenting him through the sen-sitivities of less important characters. The alternation ofscenes of love and domestic calm with scenes of battleand camp precedes Leo Tolstoy’s orchestration of simi-lar scenes in Voyna i mir (1865-1869; War and Peace,1886), although Pushkin’s scale is smaller.

Despite his literary prowess, Pushkin found himselfcaught up in a spiral of destructive passions. His wife,though by now the mother of his four children, was still a

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Pushkin’s Major Works

Poetry1820 Ruslan i Lyudmila (Ruslan and Liudmila, 1936)1822 Gavriiliada (Gabriel: A Poem, 1926)1822 Kavkazskiy plennik (The Prisoner of the Caucasus,

1895)1827 Bakhchisaraiskiy fontan (The Fountain of Bakhchisarai,

1849)1827 Graf Nulin (Count Nulin, 1972)1827 Tsygany (The Gypsies, 1957)1829 Poltava (English translation, 1936)1833 Domik v Kolomne (The Little House at Kolomna, 1977)1833 Skazka o mertvoy tsarevne (The Tale of the Dead

Princess, 1924)1833 Skazka o rybake ir rybke (The Tale of the Fisherman

and the Fish, 1926)1833 Skazka o tsare Saltane (The Tale of Tsar Saltan, 1950)1834 Skazka o zolotom petushke (The Tale of the Golden

Cockerel, 1918)1837 Medniy vsadnik (The Bronze Horseman, 1899)

FictionYears in left column are earliest dates of production or publication.1825-1832, 1833 Evgeny Onegin (Eugene Onegin, 1881)1828-1841 Arap Petra velikogo (Peter the Great’s Negro, 1896)1834 Kirdzhali (English translation, 1896)1834 Pikovaya dama (The Queen of Spades, 1858)1836 Kapitanskaya dochka (The Captain’s Daughter, 1846)1841 Dubrovsky (English translation, 1892)1841 Yegipetskiye nochi (Egyptian Nights, 1896)1857 Istoriya sela Goryukhina (History of the Village of

Goryukhino, 1966)

Drama1831 Boris Godunov (English translation, 1918)1852 Skupoy rytsar (The Covetous Knight, 1925)1839 Kamyenny gost (The Stone Guest, 1936)1832 Motsart i Salyeri (Mozart and Salieri, 1920)1833 Pir vo vryemya chumy (The Feast in Time of the Plague,

1925)1838 Rusalka (The Water Nymph, 1924)

flirt. Besides being the emperor’s special interest, she be-came the object of admiration of Baron Georges-CharlesD’Anthès, the adopted godson of Baron Heckeren. OnNovember 4, 1836, Pushkin received an anonymous “di-ploma,” designating him a member of the “Order ofCuckolds.” In response, Pushkin challenged D’Anthès toa duel, which was avoided by skillful manipulation onthe part of Heckeren. On his friend’s advice, D’Anthèsmarried someone else and tried unsuccessfully to makepeace with Pushkin. Matters came to a head with a duelon February 8, 1837, in which D’Anthès suffered a super-ficial rib injury while Pushkin was mortally wounded.Howling in agony, Pushkin turned to his wife to absolveher of any guilt for his death. He died on February 10.

SignificanceThere is no critical disagreement over Alexander Push-kin’s legacy to succeeding generations of Russian writ-ers in prose and poetry. His mature work drew on a vari-ety of genres and influences, and he can no more belimited by the term “Romantic” than the term “realist.”He was not a rebel by nature, so his Romanticism re-mained a force of circumstance. His most outstandingsuccesses, Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, andThe Captain’s Daughter, show a tension between a Ro-mantic emotionalism and a cool intellect that moderateshis tendency toward excess.

Although the tone of his writing varies almost asmuch as his inconstant temperament in life, the totalbody of his writing is charged with satirical humor andimplicit sociological criticism. The most explicit evi-dence of this lies in works such as Ruslan and Liudmila,Gabriel, Count Nulin, and Eugene Onegin. Versatile ineverything from verse epistles to lyrics and narratives,from historical studies to Romantic tragedies, Pushkinwas preeminently a poet and novella writer.

The paradox of Pushkin was that he was intenselyRussian even when he was derivatively French. His land-scape was thoroughly indigenous, as were his mostmemorable characters. His plays (of which only BorisGodunov has the scope and intensity of a major work)follow history’s course even as they move into human-kind’s inner world of mind, spirit, and will. Although atfirst there is little that is Slavic about Pushkin, his workevokes some of the most cherished memories of Russia’spast and his own times.

—Keith Garebian

Further ReadingBinyon, T. J. Pushkin: A Biography. London: Harper-

Collins, 2002. Well-reviewed biography, focusing on

Pushkin’s turbulent life. Binyon quotes passages ofPushkin’s poetry to provide a better understanding ofthe poet’s personal experiences.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Alexander Pushkin. New York:Chelsea House, 1987. Edited with an introduction byHarold Bloom, one of the major postmodernist critics,this is a representative selection of some of the bestacademic criticism on Pushkin. Opens with an intro-ductory critical essay by Bloom and a note that com-ments on the eleven individual essays that follow.Includes discussions of Pushkin’s poetry, prose, lan-guage, imagination, and image as a Russian nationalpoet. Contains a chronology and a bibliography.

Feinstein, Elaine. Pushkin: A Biography. Hopewell,N.J.: Ecco Press, 1998. Details Pushkin’s volatile lifeand personality. Features selections from his poetry(some of which were translated by the author) to dem-onstrate how Pushkin’s work displayed “the facilityof Byron, the sensuous richness of Keats and a bawdywit reminiscent of Chaucer.”

Mirsky, D. S. Pushkin. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1926. Acritical biography that is sometimes unsatisfyinglybrief in its treatment of many works, but reveals muchabout Pushkin’s psychology.

Simmons, Ernest J. Pushkin. Cambridge, Mass.: Har-vard University Press, 1937. A well-documented ac-count of Pushkin’s life, although it contains no rigor-ous discussion of his work.

Troyat, Henri. Pushkin. Translated by Nancy Amphoux.Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970. A massive butcompelling biography that is richly evocative ofPushkin’s life and times, while giving detailed analy-ses of all of his significant writing. Although highlylaudatory of the artist, it never forgets to present theman in all of his emotional mutations.

Vickery, Walter N. Alexander Pushkin. New York:Twayne, 1970. A useful guide for nonspecialist read-ers that conforms to a house style favoring much plotdescription and generalized comment. Its main focusis on Pushkin’s themes and poetic personality.

See also: Alexander I; Lord Byron; Fyodor Dosto-evski; Nikolai Gogol; Mikhail Lermontov; NikolayIvanovich Lobachevsky; Modest Mussorgsky; Nich-olas I; Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov; Stendhal; PeterIlich Tchaikovsky; Leo Tolstoy.

Related articles in Great Events from History: TheNineteenth Century, 1801-1900: June 23-December14, 1812: Napoleon Invades Russia; December,1849: Dostoevski Is Exiled to Siberia.

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