to the neighborhood of Heaven. The north also has its charms, particularly the Russian winter. There are exquisite verses on winter in the fifth chapter ofEugene Onegin, and in his lyrics about the swirling snowstorm in “Zinniy Vecher” (“Winter Evening”) or the winter road that symbolizes his sad journey through life. Both city and country come alive in the crisp cold of winter in the prologue to The Bronze Horseman.

Melancholy

Despite ever-recurring wit, irony, and gentle sensitivity, Pushkin’s poetry is fundamentally melancholy and often tragic. This dichotomy corresponds to the division of his personality: dissipated yet deep. The southern poems all end tragically, his plays are all tragedies, and Eugene Onegin ends with the death of Lensky and the irremediable disappointment of Tatyana and Onegin. Pushkin frequently writes of the evil and demonic forces of nature (as in Tatyana’s dream), of madness (Eugene in The Bronze Horseman), and of violence (in “Zhenikh,” “The Bridegroom”). A melancholy vein permeates his lyrics as well. Like the Romantics, Pushkin speaks frequently of death, perhaps foreseeing his own. The hour of parting from a loved one, a frequent subject of his lyrics, foreshadows death. As early as 1823, in “Telega zhizni” (“The Wagon of Time”), he sees the old man as the one who calmly awaits eternal sleep. Pushkin’s tragic vision is complicated by the absence of a Christian worldview with a belief in life after death. Unlike Dostoevski, Pushkin writes of unmitigated, not of redemptive, suffering. S. M. Frank, who does admit a spiritual dimension in Pushkin, compares his work to Mozart’s music, which seems gay but is in fact sad. Yet it is this very sadness which puts him in the tradition of Russian literature, anticipating Nikolai Gogol’s “laughter through tears.”

Ruslan and Liudmila

Pushkin’s first major work, Ruslan and Liudmila, was published in 1820. It is now usually placed in a minor category, but it was important at the time as the first expression of the Russian spirit. Witty and ironic, the poem is written in the style of a mock-epic, much in the tradition of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516, 1521, 1532; English translation, 1591). It also echoes Voltaire, and the fourth canto parodies Zhukovsky’s “Spyaschaya carevna” (“Twelve Sleeping Maidens”). In fact, the whole plot resembles Zhukovsky’s projected “Vladimir.” It consists of six cantos, a prologue added in 1828, and an epilogue. Pushkin began the poem in 1817 while still in school, and he was already in exile in the south when it was published.

Ruslan and Liudmila, in Walter Vickery’s words, transports the reader to the “unreal and delightful poetic world of cheerful unconcern,” returning to the legendary days of ancient Kiev, where Prince Vladimir is giving a wedding feast for his daughter Liudmila. The fortunate bridegroom Ruslan is about to enjoy the moment he has so voluptuously awaited, when a clap of thunder resounds and his bride is snatched away from him by the dwarf enchanter Chernomor. Prince Vladimir promises half of his kingdom and Liudmila as a bride to the man who rescues her. Ruslan sets off with his three rivals, Ratmir, Rogdai, and Farlaf. Ratmir eventually chooses a pastoral life, Rogdai is slain, and Farlaf reappears at the moment when Ruslan is about to return with Liudmila. In true knightly fashion, Ruslan saves Kiev from an attack by the Pechenegs, kills his last rival, and marries the princess.

Pushkin’s poem captures many exaggerated scenes from the byliny or heroic tales, such as the death of the giant head, and ends with a full-scale epic battle. It is a gentle mockery of chivalry, sorcery, and love. Critics from Zhukovsky to the Soviets hailed it as a true folk-epic in the spirit of narodnost (nationalism) although many of Pushkin’s contemporaries were shocked at his unfaithfulness to classical antiquity and his trivial subject. The public, however, welcomed it, seeing in it a new inspiration for the times. The prologue, especially, captures the popular spirit with its learned cat on a green oak who recites a folktale when he turns to the left and a song when he moves to the right.

As in all of Pushkin’s works, the language is the most important feature, offsetting the many flaws of Pushkin’s still immature talent. His choice of vocabulary is very Russian, even popular, and his rhythms and rhymes are graceful and effortless. Henri Troyat refers to him as “a virtuoso of rime” and says that this talent alone announced possibilities for the future.

Eugene Onegin

Eugene Onegin, Pushkin’s novel in verse, was begun in 1823 in Kishinev and completed in 1830. It is composed of eight cantos or chapters, as Pushkin preferred to call them. There are projects and fragments for two other parts, including Onegin’s journey. Each chapter contains forty to fifty-four stanzas of fourteen lines each, in four-foot iambic, and with a special rhyme scheme called the “Onegin stanza”: AbAbCCddEffEgg (small letters indicating masculine and capitals feminine rhymes). Pushkin did not return to this stanza form and it has rarely been used since. The novel itself resembles sentimental types such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761; Julia: Or, The New Eloisa, 1773) and Benjamin Constant’s Adolphe (1815; English translation, 1816). It is also a type of bildungsroman or the éducation sentimentale of Tatyana and Onegin. It is in reality a combination of several genres: novel, comic-epic, and above all poetry, for it is inseparable from the verse in which it is written.

The first two chapters, the product of Pushkin’s youth, show the greatest absence of structure. They abound in digressions and poetic ruminations ranging from the ballet to women’s feet. They introduce us to the hero Eugene Onegin, a St. Petersburg dandy, who spends his life in boredom until an inheritance brings him to an equally boring life in the provinces. Here he meets the dreamy poet Lensky, in love with a neighbor, Olga Larin. It is at this point that the tone of the poem changes, as Olga’s older sister, Tatyana, immediately develops an intense passion for Onegin, and in her simplicity reveals her love for him in her famous letter. Onegin politely refuses her and continues his aimless existence, interrupted by a flirtation with Olga, thus provoking a duel with Lensky in which the poet is killed.

Years pass, and Tatyana is married against her will to an elderly and unattractive general. Onegin meets her in Moscow and falls passionately in love with her. He declares his love, but this time it is Tatyana in her mature serenity who informs him: “I love you . . . but I have become another’s wife; I shall be true to him through life.” Here the poem ends abruptly yet fittingly as Tatyana emerges as the tragic heroine in this tale of twice-rejected love.

The poem maintains an internal unity through the parallel between Onegin’s rejection of Tatyana and her refusal of him. Eugene Onegin is, however, essentially a lyric poem about the tragic consequences of love rather than a pure novel with a solid substructure. Pushkin draws poetry out of a samovar, the wrinkled nanny who is modeled on Arina Rodionovna, and the broken-hearted resignation of Tatyana. The changing of the seasons indicates the passage of time as Pushkin sings of the beautiful Russian countryside. He likewise enters into his characters, and makes of Onegin a realistic hero and the first of a long line of “superfluous men” to appear in Mikhail Lermontov, Ivan Goncharov, and Ivan Turgenev. Tatyana is perfectly consistent as her youthful naïveté changes into a controlled maturity. She has often been described as the purest figure in the whole of Russian literature, and has become the prototype of Russian womanhood. Pushkin’s contemporaries read his poem with enthusiasm, and today it is still one of the great classics of Russian literature. Foreign readers may know it better through Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky’s opera; again, this results from the fact that it is essentially a poem, defying translation.

Poltava

Pushkin always showed a great deal of interest in Peter the Great, and refers to him in his lyric poetry, in longer poems, and in his prose (Peter the Great’s Negro). It is in Poltava and The Bronze Horseman that he reaches his height. Poltava, written in three weeks in 1828, has an epic quality but also draws on the ballad, ode, and oral tradition. It recalls Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion (1808), since it places historical characters in a Romantic background. Lord Byron in Mazeppa (1819), drew on the same sources but used instead an apocryphal account of the hero’s youth.

The main focus of Poltava is the battle of 1709, in which the Russians under Peter the Great defeated the Swedes under Charles XII. Poltava was the turning point in the Russo-Swedish War. Against this historical backdrop is set the romance of the aged Ukrainian Cossack hetman Mazepa with the young and beautiful Marya, daughter of Kochubey, who refuses to allow the marriage. The two marry in spite of him, and Kochubey seeks revenge by revealing, to Peter, Mazepa’s plan of revolt against him. His project miscarries, however, when Peter believes Mazepa’s denials. Kochubey is taken prisoner by Mazepa and is about to be executed when Marya learns about her husband’s treachery against her father. Arriving too late to save him, she leaves, returning to her husband only briefly as a madwoman before Mazepa’s flight with Charles XII after leading an unsuccessful revolt against the victorious Peter.

Although Pushkin has interwoven much historical material into his tale, he has been charged with excessive melodrama by critics from Belinsky to the present day, who see in Mazepa a kind of Gothic villain. Pushkin is likewise charged with unsuccessfully fusing the historical and the Romantic, and more recently, by John Bayley, for the gap “between two kinds of romance, the modern melodrama and the traditional tragic ballad.” Mazepa is one of Pushkin’s few dark and villainous characters, but Marya has been acknowledged as truly narodnaya by Belinsky and Soviet critics. Peter is the all-pervading presence, larger than life, who symbolizes the growing importance of Russia.

The Bronze Horseman

In The Bronze Horseman, Peter reappears in retrospect. Pushkin wrote The Bronze Horseman in 1833 partially in response to the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, who had attacked the Russian autocracy. It consists of an introduction and two parts, 481 lines in all, and is rightly considered one of Pushkin’s greatest masterpieces. It combines personal lyricism and political, social, and literary themes and raises philosophical questions in paradoxical fashion. The title refers to the equestrian statue of Peter the Great by E. M. Falconet that still stands along the Neva River. The historical incident that inspired the poem was the devastating flood that struck St. Petersburg on November 7, 1824.

In the introduction, Peter the Great stands looking over the Neva, then a deserted swamp with a few ramshackle huts. He plans to build a city there, which will open a window to the West and terrify all his enemies. A hundred years pass, and the young city is the pride of the north, a cold sparkling gem of granite and iron, the scene of royal balls, military reviews, and winter sports. Suddenly, the picture changes as Pushkin begins his sad tale. Eugene, a poor government clerk (whose last name is not important), is making plans to marry Parasha. That very night, the Neva whirls and swirls and rages like an angry beast; the next day Parasha’s home is destroyed, and she is lost. Eugene visits the empty spot, and goes mad from the shock. Life continues as usual, but poor Eugene wanders through the city until one day he shakes his angry fist at the Bronze Horseman, who gallops after him down the streets of St. Petersburg. Later, a dilapidated house is washed up on one of the islands; near it Eugene’s corpse is found.

Pushkin’s poem shows complete mastery of technique. In lines starkly terse yet rich with onomatopoeic sounds, Pushkin conjures up the mighty flood, the proud emperor, and the defenseless Eugene. In the last scene, Peter and Eugene come face to face, and seemingly the emperor wins, yet Pushkin is far from being reconciled to the notion that individual destiny must be sacrificed to historical necessity. Indeed, Eugene is the first of a long line of downtrodden Russian heroes, such as Akakiy Akakyevich and Makar Devushkin, possessing dignity and daring to face authority. Peter is the human hero, contemplating greatness; he is also the impassive face of destiny. The poem itself poses the problem of Pushkin’s own troubled existence as well as the ambiguous and cruel fate of all human beings.