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]] Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin (n Romantic author whom many consider the greatest Russian Poet and the founder of modern Russian Literature . Pushkin pioneered the use of Vernacular Speech in his poems and Play s, creating a style of storytelling—mixing Drama , Romance , and Satire —associated with Russian literature ever since and greatly influencing later Russian writers. LIFE Pushkin's father descended from one of the Russian gentry's oldest families who traced their history to Khutyn Monastery in the 12th century, while his mother's grandfather was Ibrahim Petrovich Gannibal , an Africa n who was abducted and Enslaved when he was a child. He was brought to Russia and became a great military leader, engineer and nobleman after his adoption by Peter The Great . Born in Moscow , Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen. By the time he finished as part of the first graduating class of the prestigious Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo near St. Petersburg , the Russian literary scene recognized his talent widely. After finishing school, Pushkin installed himself in the vibrant and raucous intellectual youth culture of the capital, St. Petersburg . In 1820 he published his first long poem, ''Ruslan and Lyudmila'', amidst much controversy about its subject and style. Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals. This angered the government, and led to his transfer from the capital. He went first to Kishinev in 1820, where he became member of the Free masons. Here he joined the Filiki Eteria , a secret organization whose purpose was to overthrow the Ottoman rule over Greece and establish an independent Greek state. He was inspired by the Greek Revolution and when the war against the Ottoman Turks broke out he kept a diary with the events of the great national uprising. He stayed in Kishinev until 1823 and—after a summer trip to the Caucasus and to the Crimea —wrote two Romantic poems which brought him wide acclaim, ''The Captive of the Caucasus'' and ''The Fountain of Bakhchisaray''. In 1823 Pushkin moved to Odessa , where he again clashed with the government, which sent him into exile at his mother's rural estate in north Russia from 1824 to 1826. However, some of the authorities allowed him to visit Tsar Nicholas I to petition for his release, which he obtained. But some of the insurgents in the Decembrist Uprising (1825) in St. Petersburg had kept some of his early political poems amongst their papers, and soon Pushkin found himself under the strict control of government censors and unable to travel or publish at will. He had written what became his most famous play, the drama '' Boris Godunov '', while at his mother's estate but could not gain permission to publish it until five years later. ]] In 1831, highlighting the growth of Pushkin's talent and influence and the merging of two of Russia's greatest early writers, he met , to a Duel which left both men injured, Pushkin mortally. He died two days later. The government feared a political demonstration at his funeral, which it moved to a smaller location and made open only to close relatives and friends. His body was spirited away secretly at midnight and buried on his mother's estate. Critics consider many of his works masterpieces, such as the poem '' The Bronze Horseman '' and the drama '' The Stone Guest '', a tale of the fall of Don Juan . His poetic short drama "Mozart and Salieri" was the inspiration for Miloš Forman 's Amadeus . Pushkin himself preferred his verse novel '' Eugene Onegin '', which he wrote over the course of his life and which, starting a tradition of great Russian novels, follows a few central characters but varies widely in tone and focus. "Onegin" is a work of such complexity that, while only about a hundred pages long, translator Vladimir Nabokov needed four full volumes of material to fully render its meaning in English. Unfortunately, in so doing Nabokov, like all translators of Pushkin into English prose, totally destroyed the fundamental readability of Pushkin in Russian which makes him so popular, and Pushkin's verse remains largely unknown to English readers. Because of his liberal political views and influence on generations of Russian rebels, Pushkin was conveniently pictured by Bolshevik s as an opponent to bourgeois literature and culture and predecessor of Soviet literature and poetry. They renamed Tsarskoe Selo after him. Pushkin's works also provided fertile ground for Russian composers. Glinka 's '' Ruslan And Lyudmila '' is the earliest important Pushkin-inspired opera. Tchaikovsky 's Opera s '' Eugene Onegin '' (1879) and '' The Queen Of Spades '' (1890) became perhaps better known outside of Russia than Pushkin's own works of the same name, while Mussorgsky 's monumental '' Boris Godunov '' (two versions, 1868-9 and 1871-2) ranks as one of the very finest and most original of Russian operas. Other Russian operas based on Pushkin include Dargomyzhsky 's '' Rusalka '' and '' The Stone Guest ''; Rimsky-Korsakov 's '' Mozart And Salieri '', '' Tale Of Tsar Saltan '', and '' The Golden Cockerel ''; Cui 's '' Prisoner Of The Caucasus '', '' Feast In Time Of Plague '', and '' The Captain's Daughter ''; and Nápravník 's '' Dubrovsky ''. This is not to mention Ballet s and Cantata s, as well as innumerable Songs set to Pushkin's verse. INFLUENCE ON THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE Pushkin is usually credited with developing literary Russian. Not only is he seen as having originated the highly nuanced level of language which characterizes Russian literature after him, but he is also credited with substantially augmenting the Russian lexicon. Where he found gaps in the Russian vocabulary, he devised Calques . His rich vocabulary and highly sensitive style are the foundation for modern literary Russian. SAMPLE OF PUSHKIN'S WORK :Remembrance :Translated by Maurice Baring :When the loud day for men who sow and reap :Grows still, and on the silence of the town :The insubstantial veils of night and sleep, :The meed of the day's labour, settle down, :Then for me in the stillness of the night :The wasting, watchful hours drag on their course, :And in the idle darkness comes the bite :Of all the burning serpents of remorse; :Dreams seethe; and fretful infelicities :Are swarming in my over-burdened soul, :And Memory before my wakeful eyes :With noiseless hand unwinds her lengthy scroll. :Then, as with loathing I peruse the years, :I tremble, and I curse my natal day, :Wail bitterly, and bitterly shed tears, :But cannot wash the woeful script away. WORKS and Dostoyevsky .]]
FURTHER READING T.J. Binyon has written an English biography:
HOAXES AND OTHER ATTRIBUTED WORKS In the late 1980s, a book entitled "''Secret Journal 1836-1837''" was published by a Minneapolis publishing house, claiming to be the decoded content of an encrypted private journal kept by Pushkin. Promoted with little details about its contents, and touted for many years as being 'banned in Russia', it was an erotic novel narrated from Pushkin's perspective. Some mail-order publishers still carry the work under its fictional description. SEE ALSO
M.I.P. Company http://www.mipco.com published Secret Journal in 1986. Since then it is published in 24 countries. In 2006 Bilingual Russian-English edition was published in St. Peterburg, Russia by Retro Publishing House http://www.retropublishing.com REFERENCES
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