By his mother, Nadezhda Ossipovna Pouchkina ( 1775 - 1836 ), one of the beauties of St. Petersburg , he was descended from one of the brightest noble families service instituted by Emperor Peter I , going back to Abraham Petrovitch Hanibal (her great grandfather), African slave liberated and ennobled by Peter the great, which he was the godson and faithful friend; Abraham Petrovitch led a remarkable career as a military engineer, which he completed as a general.
Passionate about history and genealogy, Pushkin was particularly proud of this glorious and celebrated ancestor, from whom he had inherited certain traits that distinguished him strongly from his fellow-citizens: olive complexion, thick lips, frizzy hair, which earned him surname "monkeys" by his high school classmates . If he himself considered himself ugly , his contemporaries stressed that the vivacity and brilliance of his steely blue eyes lit up his dark skin, gave him the fascinating seduction and charm of an oriental prince; He thus collected the female successes, despite a low attraction for worldliness.
By his father, Sergei Lvovich Pushkin (1770-1848), Major and military advisor, free spirit and Francophile , it was from one of the most illustrious families(ru) of the Russian nobility, dating back to a German gentleman came to Russia in the thirteenthcentury. His wife Nadezhda Ossipovna was also one of her little cousins by Pushkin .
Pushkin did not have a childhood happier: his mother, which he derived his African origins, rejected first child because of his appearance, especially his dark skin . The child suffered long from its appearance, sometimes up to hate the image that made him the mirrors .
Rejected, Pushkin took refuge in reading. Passionate and insatiable reader, he plundered the family library, attacking particularly the English classics ( Byron , William Shakespeare , Laurence Sterne ) and French ( Molière , Voltaire , Evariste Parny ). His profound knowledge of French culture and its perfect bilingualism (he cultivated throughout his life) earned him the nickname elsewhere of Frantsouz (Француз, "The French") among his comrades of the High School Tsarskoye Selo . Alexander Pushkin also astonished his entourage by his ease in improvising, as in reciting by heart innumerable verses; His memory was infallible, his remarkable vivacity of mind.
In 1817 he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; A sinecure. Following three years of life dissipated in St. Petersburg . During this time he wrote romantic poems inspired by foreign and Russian literature. He also met the great names of contemporary Russian literature, like Karamzin and Vasily Zhukovsky . His poems are sometimes playful and gays, as Ruslan and Lyudmila . They can be serious, especially when they criticize the autocracy , the serfdom and cruelty of the landowners. To this class belong Ode to Liberty, Hurrah! He returned to Russia, and The Village.
Although unquestionably liberal , Pushkin is not revolutionary , nor even really politically active, unlike many of his friends involved in reform movements that culminate with the revolt décabriste .
In 1820 , his poems are considered seditious, Pushkin was exiled by Emperor Alexander I . Narrowly escaping to Siberia , it is first sent to Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine ), where he contracted a violent fever. Weakened, he obtained permission to travel in the Caucasus and Crimea , in the company of Rayevsky family ; A stay that marked him deeply. Pushkin is then shipped to Kishinev in Bessarabia (now Moldova ), before leaving for Odessa . During this first part of his exile, spent in the south of the empire, Pushkin continues to lead a very disordered life devoted to amusement: love conquests, festivals and gambling. The latter, as well as its enthusiastic character, Choleric and mocking, pushes him several times to duels, from which he emerges unscathed.
In Odessa, Pushkin was initiated in Freemasonry in Lodge Ovid and it attracts the enmity of the governor of the city, Vorontsov (probably because of his fondness for the wife of the dignitary), and exile in the homestead Mikhailovskoye in the government of Pskov . Condemned to almost total isolation, he is mortally bored. When he writes or does not read, the only distractions that permitted him are walks and horse racing, the visits he makes to its neighbors, Praskovya Osipova and her daughters and nieces in their property Trigorskoye . But also stories that he tells his nurse Arina Rodionovna , to which he will devote his life recognition, even devoting worms. On the death of Alexander I in December 1825 Pushkin decides to plead his case in St. Petersburg, but a hunch does retrace his steps. Thus he avoids, at the request of his friends wanting to protect, to be involved in the abortive revolt of the Decembrists , attended many of his friends, even if he feels close to the revolutionary ideas of the circle Decembrists (in 1819 he joined the literary society "green lamp" at the origin of this circle) .
These six years of exile are essential for Pushkin's inspiration: travel to the Caucasus and the Crimea, discovery of the deep Russian countryside, discussions with various adventurers, tales of his nurse. These are also the first major works, still strongly influenced by the romantic influence of Byron : Prisoner of the Mountains (1821) describes the warlike customs of Circassians ; The Fountain of Bakhchisarai (1822) evokes the atmosphere of a harem in Crimea , the Gypsies (1824) is the drama of a Russian who falls for a gypsy; the Gabrieliade (Gavriliada, 1821), which he will later defend fiercely to be the author to escape from Siberia, is a blasphemous poem which reveals the influence of Voltaire . Above all, Pushkin began his masterpiece, Eugene Onegin (1823-1830) wrote his great tragedy Boris Godunov (1824-1825), and composed the "tales in verse" ironic and realistic.
In 1826 , once quelled the Decembrist revolt , Nicolas I. , the new emperor of Russia, returns the poet in Moscow. In private audience, he offers him pardon, provided he renounces the excesses of his youth. And, since the poet complains of censorship , Emperor, asking the patron of the arts, offered him to be his personal censor. Pushkin has no choice but to return to exile. He accepts.
Thus began a new phase of political persecution for the poet. Pushkin must account for his slightest displacement to the authorities. His literary activity is closely controlled. The emperor even gave artistic advice to his protégé: well, about Boris Godunov , "Make it a novel to Walter Scott !"And the worst part is that, simultaneously, it is considered a heinous collaborator of despotism to the Liberals, who considered him one of their own.
Pushkin resumes his idle and dissolute life. He also accompanied the Russian army of Ivan Paskevich in its military campaign of 1828-1829 against the Ottoman Empire . This adventure inspires a story, travel to Erzurum, but also earned him many problems with the authorities, he had not seen fit to inform his travels. In literature, he completed Poltava (1828), a poem in praise of Peter the Great .
However, the idea of marrying began to obsess Pushkin, convinced that it would be the way of happiness for him. It sets its sights on a young beauty Moscow, Natalia Nikolaevna Goncharova .
After many difficulties, mainly due to the mother of the girl, who reproaches her past debauchery and proscribed, Pushkin ends up marrying him in Moscow the . First installed in Moscow on Arbat Street , the couple quickly moved to St. Petersburg .
Pushkin also deploys an intense journalistic activity, particularly in the context of the literary journal The Contemporary . This allows him to reveal new authors such as Nicolas Gogol , which publishes The Nose , and that it provides about Revizor and Dead Souls . His prestige is enormous. However, some of the audience, regretting the exalted tone of his early works, do not appreciate the stripped-down style of the latter. Politically, the reformers also blame one whom they see as a symbol of the liberal cause of adopting a too servile attitude towards the tsarist power.
However, if the last years of Pushkin's life are not happy, it is above all for family reasons. His family and that of his wife are a constant source of practical problems, mainly financial ones, which divert him from writing. His wife Natalia, who gave him four children , also proves particularly costly. As Pushkin's activities are constantly controlled and prohibited by the authorities, he has no other resource than to beg the Emperor's financial assistance, accompanied by new constraints and vexations.
Natalia is also very flirtatious. Dragging her husband to all parties, she falls under the spell of an Alsatian officer, Baron Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthes . The latter is becoming more and more pressing, the rumors more and more poisonous, Pushkin tries a first time to provoke a duel. The confrontation is avoided just by Anthès pretending to be in love with Natalia's sister and marrying him right away. But the Frenchman, who had become Pushkin's own brother-in-law, soon resumed his seductive maneuvers. Anonymous letters proclaim Pushkin "coadjutor of the grand master of the Order of cuckolds and historian of the Order ", also began to circulate. Exasperated, the poet sends a letter of insult to the adoptive father of D'Anthes, whom he suspects of encouraging his son's dishonest enterprises. The , A new anonymous letter teaches Pushkin that Natalia had an interview with D'Anthes. The duel between the two men is inevitable . It takes place on the 27th of January, in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, near the river Chernaya ( "Black"). The poet receives a bullet in the stomach and died at his home two days later, in agony as a result of this injury .
His wife is put in a coffin dressed in a suit instead of his military dress . A huge crowd pays tribute to the writer in his room. The authorities are taking steps to minimize public events . The funeral service changes place at the last moment. It was to take place in St. Isaac's Cathedral, but ultimately it is only allowed in the Храм Спаса Нерукотворного Образа (temple of the Savior of the miraculous image) in St. Petersburg. His coffin was then carried near his family home to be buried in Sviatogorski monastery in the government of Pskov .
Pushkin was already considered at the time of his death as the greatest Russian writer. The dramatic circumstances of his disappearance have transformed him into a legend. He still enjoys enormous popularity in Russia .
If he did not invent the modern Russian language, as is sometimes claimed , it is he who completes the work of those who fought for decades to impose Russian as it was spoken, not one, fixed, administrative texts ( ukases ) and religious. Pushkin's second merit is to have liberated Russian literature from foreign influence. He is inspired by the great European masters, but without being the imitator of any (except in some early writings), unlike those who had preceded him.
On his style, all agree to recognize him a simplicity, precision and elegance extremes. His writing is that of a conventional writer, heir to the Enlightenment , though living in the heart of the Romantic era (the influence of it is felt that in his early poems).
The contradiction between the eventful life and the harmonious work of the poet inspired this consideration Henri Troyat"If he had written as he lived, Pushkin had been a romantic poet, uneven in its inspiration.If he had lived as he wrote, he would have been a weighted, sensitive, and happy man.He was neither one nor the other.It was Pushkin . "
Pushkin's work is less known abroad than that of other Russian writers, such as Leo Tolstoy or Fyodor Dostoevsky. This is due to the fact that it is mostly poetic. Now poetry is hardly translatable, in general. Translations of the nineteenthcentury, in particular, give a particularly distorted picture of the poetry of Pushkin. As for his work in prose, it is of limited scope. Moreover, his style, classic, may seem dry; it was compared to that of Prosper Merimee (one of the authors who contributed to make his work known in France). Another explanation frequently given by his biographers , is that Pushkin, solar, player, light, does not fit the typical image of the Russian writer cursed.
Unsent blank back with light corner bumping & some toning. Fine condition.
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