Russia's Radical Byron: Reexamining the Decembrist Pushkin

European Review of History / Revue europeenne d'histoire. Special Issue: The politics of contested narratives: biographical approaches to modern European history , 2012

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate the political application of the biography of a person who has canonical status in Russian culture, such as a national poet. Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), generally regarded as the founder of the Russian literary language, obtained supreme status in the Russian cultural space. Over a period of two centuries, the perception of his person and literary legacy experienced several waves of reappraisal in order to be adjusted to the ideological needs of the state regime. Pushkin's biography became one of the crucial components for strengthening the ‘proper’ image of the poet as it was manipulated through a careful selection of facts from his life story. The surge of interest in and the growth of public attention to Pushkin's figure took place in the context of anniversaries, which entailed propagandising a simplified version of the poet's image ‘for the mass use’. Two anniversary celebrations, which took place under different political regimes, are the focus of this essay: 1899 and 1937. The author analyses a number of texts published on the occasion of both jubilee events that expressed the ‘official’ interpretation of the poet's biography in order to illustrate how the plausible features of social behaviour were communicated with the help of the ‘proper’ image of the national poet.

2013

is the mysterious link connecting the great Slavic literature with the literature of the West" 1. These surprising and unusual words were spoken by the greatest Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz, on 20 December 1842 at the Collège de France in Paris. On 20 December 1842 Mickiewicz, a Romantic and the most important of Polish poets, the man who expressed the Polish mentality the most fully, was in his third year of lecturing in Paris and was trying to introduce the Western cultural elite to the Slavic world: he outlined the history, the literature, and the unique character of the Slavs. He spoke not only about Polish or Czech culture, but also about the Southern Slavs and about Russia, a country on which he was a great expert, not onlya paradoxas a tsarist prisoner but also as a friend of many Russians and a poet loved by the Russian intelligentsia of his time (but that's just by the way). It also needs adding that today Mickiewicz's lectures at the Collège de France are considered to be the sum and synthesis of Polish Romanticism. It was in the third lecture of the third year of the Slavic literature course, when Mickiewicz was discussing "how Slavic poets, men of letters, writers understand their mission and their duties" 2 , that those extraordinary words were spoken about the mysterious relations between the spirit of contemporary Slavic poets and the spirit of Byron. What is the real significance of identifying such a connection between Byron and Slavic poets? What is the meaning of the words: "Byron is the mysterious link connecting the great Slavic literature with the literature of the West"? How was establishing such a connection between Byron and Slavic poets possible? What is its essence? 1 All documentation refers to the original texts in Polish. The cited fragments have been translated into English by Joanna Dutkiewicz who also translated the present paper. Mickiewicz (1997: 33). 2 Ibidem, p. 25.

2018

The article investigates various facets of George Gordon Byron’s influence on Nikolay Nekrasov. Traditionally, scholars have viewed these two poets as antipodes, belonging to different literary movements, Nekrasov to Realism and Byron to Romanticism. However, an analysis demonstrates that the themes and problematics of Byron’s poetry, as well as the classic Byronic hero and motifs, remained relevant to Nekrasov throughout his entire literary career, beginning with his early collection Mechty i zvuki (1840), up to his poem Komu na Rusi zhit’ khorosho (1877). Particularly the latter’s structure was influenced by the structure of Byron’s long poems.

2020

The narrative poem "A prisoner in the Caucuses" allows Alexander Pushkin to write about his distaste for the life and culture of the Russian elite while embracing the simplicity of the Circassian lifestyle. Pushkin elucidates dissatisfaction with Russian society by presenting a Byronic hero who is disillusioned with his native land and thus escapes to the Caucuses. He further reflects on his disapproval of Russian elite life by comparing the personas of the narrative poem i.e. the Russian captive as a sophisticated person and the Circassian maiden as a naive individual. This comparison enables the writer to illustrate Circassians as simple and sincere, as opposed to the false behavior of society in Russia. Pushkin then uses the prisoner’s observation of the Caucuses to explain his fondness for the mountain people and, in effect, rebukes his own ‘superior’ culture.

Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin Celebration of 1880, 1989

This file does not include the front matter, index, or bibliography.

SHS Web of Conferences, 2018

The article discusses the place and role of A. S. Pushkin in the history of Russian culture and political thought. Such a feature of the Russian picture of the world as “literary-centrism”, which is the primacy of the word, confidence in the word. Like other Russian writers, Pushkin’s works present a moral ideal, but he does not try to teach something, does not construct an ideal model, but simply shows an ideal in the unity of form and content. Further, the article traces the main stages of the evolution of the great poet’s political views: the Lyceum-Petersburg period; the period of the southern exile; the period of exile in Mikhailovsky; and the period of creative maturity in the last decade of his life. The ideological evolution of Pushkin is a transition from liberalism and revolutionism to conservatism and monarchism, combined with the idea of personal freedom. The author concludes that the political worldview of Pushkin organically combined the phenomena of power and freedom....

Pushkin Review/ Пушкинский вестник, 2020

Vladislav Khodasevich is known not only as a poet who idolized Pushkin, but also as a Pushkinist. Yet, when the issue of Pushkinian influence in his poem "Не матерью, но тульскою крестьянкой…" (Not by my mother, but by a Tula peasant woman…, 1922) comes up, only one parallel is noted: Khodasevich depicted his wet nurse, the Tula peasant Elena Kuzina, in such a way as to make the name of Pushkin's wet nurse Arina Rodionovna come to mind for the reader. The present article aims to demonstrate that Pushkin permeates literally every cell of this poem, all the more so since Pushkin is made into an index of Russianness in it. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, when the poem was created, the issue of Russianness was front and center: a new Soviet dictatorship and internationalism had supplanted "Old" Russia. Khodasevich, who was planning to emigrate, had to come to grips with his identity. He felt his almost filial attachment to "Old" Russia acutely, and he saw in Pushkin its personification. A monographic analysis of Khodasevich's poem is needed to demonstrate how this set toward Russianness and the concomitant veneration of Pushkin found their embodiment in the poem’s generic range, lyrical plot, intertextuality, rhetoric, and word choice.

Tragic Encounters: Pushkin and European Romanticism, 2023

Literary scholars largely agree that the Romantic period altered the definition of tragedy, but they have confined their analyses to Western European authors. Maksim Hanukai introduces a new, illuminating figure to this narrative, arguing that Russia’s national poet, Alexander Pushkin, can be understood as a tragic Romantic poet, although in a different mold than his Western counterparts. Many of Pushkin’s works move seamlessly between the closed world of traditional tragedy and the open world of Romantic tragic drama, and yet they follow neither the cathartic program prescribed by Aristotle nor the redemptive mythologies of the Romantics. Instead, the idiosyncratic and artistically mercurial Pushkin seized upon the newly unstable tragic mode to develop multiple, overlapping tragic visions. Providing new, innovative readings of such masterpieces as The Gypsies, Boris Godunov, The Little Tragedies, and The Bronze Horseman, Hanukai sheds light on an unexplored aspect of Pushkin’s work, while also challenging reigning theories about the fate of tragedy in the Romantic period.

2017

lareviewofbooks.org/article/reader-have-you-not-heard-on-writings-from-the-golden-age-of-russian-poetry IF YOU NEED to ask who Konstantin Batyushkov is, this is the book for you. For fans of Russian poetry, and especially for Russophone poets, Batyushkov (1787-1855) is a vital figure who wrote exquisite verse and helped to usher in what is known as the Golden Age of Russian poetry. Admired by contemporaries, he is read and cited by later poets as well. Peter France, framer of this book, notes that Batyushkov is too often mentioned or discussed merely as a precursor of the best-known Golden Age poet, Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837); Pushkin is a relatively minor presence in this narrative, though often "name-checked" to provide context. This selection-cumbiography of Batyushkov is part of the Russian Library now emerging from Columbia University Press, underlining the commitment of that series to making Russian classics available in English. The cover describes Peter France as presenter and translator, which understates what he has done: besides introducing the volume, he is the author of a substantial artistic and intellectual biography of the poet that provides a large selection of Batyushkov's own writings in France's translation. The verse is set apart graphically, making it easy to flip through the book following the poetry-ideally after reading the whole thing through.

Russian Literature, 2017

This introductory essay summarizes the political and theoretical backgrounds of poetry of the twentieth century and provides an overview of the contributions to this special triple issue on Poetry and Politics. Taking the Platonic idiosyncrasy towards poetry and the State ('Republic') as its dialectical departure point, the substance and matter of the volume encompasses several characteristic case studies which appear to be highly relevant in this context. This special issue deals with the oeuvre of such iconic Russian poets as Velimir Khlebnikov, Vladimir Maiakovskii, Daniil Kharms, Dmitrii Prigov, Arkadii Dragomoschenko and many others. Special attention is paid to the general issue of ideology and the Russian Avant-Garde pragmatics of shocking action related to Futurism and early Soviet culture.

The Russian Review, 2006

2015

2015