Word: pushkins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Russian Reds and Whites cannot live together in amity, but one parti-colored dead man they proudly own in common. Last week, on the hundredth anniversary of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin's death, for once both Reds and Whites sang together like so many harmonious morning stars. Arid for once, the burden of their song was praise: praise for Pushkin, Russia's No. 1 poet. To most U. S. readers, Pushkin is still only a funny name. Much of his poetry has been translated, but most of it reads like doggerel.* To that the all- Russian retort...
...contemporaries agreed that Pushkin was great, but posterity has made it nearly unanimous. Called "the founder of Russian literature," compared to Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Pushkin in his own day seemed more Byronic than anything else. So avidly did he pursue his rakehell career that it seems a miracle he had any energy left for writing, that he lasted as long as he did (38 years). Pushkin was born into the old nobility, but he also had black blood: his maternal great-great-grand father was an Abyssinian ras. Pushkin's parents were social, impecunious, improvident. They paid...
When Tsar Alexander I founded his Lyceum at Tsarskoe Selo to train gentlemen's sons for the government service, 12-year-old Pushkin was sent there because it was free, spent six precocious years annoying his masters, writing light and scurrilous verse, getting into scrapes. He paid little attention to study. Once, when called on to solve an algebra equation, Pushkin guessed the answer was zero. Bellowed the master: "Fine! In my class, Pushkin, everything ends in zero with you. Take your seat and write verses." He graduated from the Lyceum without honors but with a rising reputation...
...incurable optimist, Pushkin was glad it was not Siberia, did not realize he was banished till several years had gone by without his recall. He passed his days as usual, kept in duelling trim by shooting patterns on his bedroom wall with wax bullets, by twirling a heavy iron cane wherever he went, to strengthen his trigger hand. And he wrote verse: pornographic, blasphemous, lyric, political, and his masterpiece, Eugene Onegin, a novel in verse form. Once, as a punishment for some escapade, Pushkin was sent off to inspect a locust-ravaged district, write a report on conditions there...
When Nicholas I became Tsar, Pushkin's tireless hopes rose again. Unluckily for him, the Decembrist Revolt numbered many of his good friends, all of whom seemed to have subversive Pushkin poems among their papers. Though not directly implicated in the conspiracy, Pushkin was again under suspicion. He was allowed to lay his case before the Tsar. After an hour-long interview Pushkin emerged, seething with loyalty. He was free to go anywhere in Russia, except St. Petersburg...