SOURCE: "Lyric Poetry—1820-1836," in Alexander Pushkin, Twayne Publishers, 1970, 211 p.

[In the following excerpt, Vickery studies Pushkin's mature lyric poetry.]

The term lyric is sometimes used in Russian criticism to denote any poem belonging to the shorter genres—from the epigram to the elegy, from the personal theme to the patriotic or civic (anything, in effect, that can be listed under stikhotvoreniya or short poems, as opposed to the longer poemy). There is also the more limited and specific meaning of the word which envisages a lyric as a short poem in which the personal feelings of the author stand in the foreground: objective reality may well serve as a basis for such a poem, but it is the subjective feelings of the poet which receive the primary emphasis. It is in this latter narrower sense that Pushkin's lyrics are mainly treated in the present [essay]. Our concern will be with those poems which most directly reflect his intimate personal experiences, reactions, moods, and outlook. And of these only a relatively small percentage can here be mentioned.

In speaking of the subjective and personal as characteristic of the lyric, it should be borne in mind that the lyric element was by no means confined to Pushkin's shorter poems. It found expression, … in such diverse works as The Prisoner of the Caucasus, Evgeny Onegin, the "Little Tragedies," and The Bronze Horseman. So close was indeed at times the connection between his lyrics and his longer works—both narrative and dramatic—that, as early drafts show, short "lyric" passages were sometimes transposed into longer works, or excerpted therefrom to appear as lyrics.

At the same time, in Pushkin's case, the subjective and personal elements cannot be regarded as excluding wider issues of a political and social character. For not only was Pushkin's lyric poetry largely "autobiographical" in the broad sense that its many varied themes had as their focal, unifying point the author's own personality, but the author's moods and attitudes frequently reflected changes in the general Russian political climate, as well as the political hopes and disappointments not of Pushkin alone, but of many of his contemporaries. In many cases, Pushkin's lyrics yield insights not only into the poet's inner world, but into the larger world of Imperial Russia in which he lived.

One question which occupies Pushkin scholars is how best to divide Pushkin's lyric output into periods. This is inevitably a difficult problem. Themes treated in adolescence reappear in his mature work. New themes are added at certain points in time—without, however, the old themes necessarily disappearing. Among literary genres, that of the lyric is one of the most tradition-bound. Thus, the borderlines between periods are hopelessly blurred. Recognizing, nevertheless, that in the course of his creative life changes in Pushkin's lyric writing are observable, it is possible to offer as a very rough guide the following breakdown:

(1) 1813-1820. This early period begins with Pushkin's juvenile experiments in the ready-to-hand Classical and Sentimentalist genres, particularly those practiced by the Arzamas group. In 1816-17 his elegies sound a hitherto unheard note of despondency produced by unhappiness in love. In 1817-20 there is some change in his love poetry which would seem to reflect the greater firsthand experience of his Petersburg years. But the most important innovation of these three years consists in the writing of liberal verses betokening his opposition to the regime.

(2) 1820-1826. 1820 marks the beginning of the powerful influence of Byronism which accords perfectly with Pushkin's own attitudes: his sense of betrayal by friends, alienation from society, unhappiness in love, and hopelessness with regard to his future. The impersonal liberalism of his Petersburg years comes increasingly to be blended in with more personal themes, and around 1823 a newfound skepticism begins to be heard with regard to the liberal movement in the West and in Russia. By 1823-24 Pushkin has developed a more mature, objective, and critical view of the "Byronic" hero. The period of his exile is marked by an abundance of love poetry—less "literary" by now and more closely reflecting actual situations and specific emotions.

(3) 1827-1831. The poetry of these years, which includes some of Pushkin's finest and most moving love poems, is marked by a growing awareness of the poet's isolated position in society, a profound disquiet with regard to life's aimlessness, a preoccupation with the past, with the passing of youth, and at times, with death. Pushkin's concern for the fate of the Decembrists also emerges in the poetry of these years, as do also his patriotic feelings prompted by the Polish uprising of 1831.

(4) 1831-1836. In his last years there is a marked decrease in lyric output in general, particularly in lyrics devoted to intimate personal emotions; a tendency to "objectify" personal emotions is apparent; noteworthy is an increased interest in formal experimentation devoted to non-subjective themes and aiming at an extreme simplicity in style.

It cannot be overemphasized that this schema provides only the roughest of guides to thematic and stylistic development, not a series of watertight compartments.¹

Pushkin's short poems written up to about 1820, as observed above, can, with a few exceptions, be treated as part of his apprenticeship. Elegance, technique, and feeling, although of a somewhat adolescent character, are clearly in evidence. But these early poems are, in the main, exercises in the literary tradition—both West European and Russian—in which Pushkin grew up. As Pushkin developed, he discarded many of the mannerisms of the Arzamas group, notably of Zhukovsky and Batyushkov. The formerly strong influence of Voltaire, Parny, and other eighteenth-century Classical poets diminished. The influence of André Chénier, Byron, and others was assimilated. Eventually, as we follow Pushkin's course, it no longer is meaningful to talk of influence. For though he continued all his life to experiment with non-Russian models, to borrow and to adapt, he reached a point where he was "using" models rather than "following" them, and his work became truly independent. But to this mature stage we shall come later.

The principal new important influence which Pushkin underwent in 1820 was that of Byron. This has been traced … [elsewhere] in connection with the "Southern poems." It made itself felt no less in Pushkin's lyric poetry. In fact, the first indication of Byronic influence occurs in a poem which in conception is undoubtedly indebted in some degree to Childe Harold's farewell to his native land (Canto I), and which Pushkin apparently wrote while sailing the Black Sea from Feodosia to Gurzuf:

The frenzied love of former years I called to mind,
And all I've suffered, all that's dear unto my heart,
And all the weary pain of thwarted hopes, desires….
Fly on, swift bark, and carry me to distant lands
At the dread bidding of the e'er treacherous seas,
Yet not, not to the gloomy shores
That hem with mist my native land,

The land where first fierce passion's fire
Awoke, inflamed my youthful heart,
And where on me the tender muses secret smiled,
Where, battered by life's early storms,
My youth decayed, my youth was lost,
Where light-winged joy and happiness deceived, betrayed,
Marked, doomed to suffering my heart, benumbed and cold.
I go to seek new sights and sounds;
Far, from you I flee, my native land….

And Pushkin goes on, in a vein with which we are familiar from the "Southern" poems, to deplore the follies and mistakes of his youth, and the young women who deceived him, all forgotten now; only not forgotten are the deep wounds of love inflicted on his heart, which nothing has been able to heal.

The corrosive "Byronic" skepticism, which leads to a negation of all positive values in life, is described in "The Demon" (1823):

In those past days when new to me
Were all the sights and sound of life—
The maiden's gaze, the tree leaves' rustle,
At night the nightingale's sweet song—
When feelings noble, lofty, proud,
When freedom, glory, yes, and love,
And when the arts' winged inspiration
So strongly made my blood to pulse—
Then was it that some evil spirit,
Casting upon my hopes and joys
A sudden shade of grief and pain,
Would come and sit alone with me.
Sad were the meetings 'twixt us two:
His smile and, yes, his beauteous gaze,
His venom-laden, biting words
Streamed a cold poison in my soul.
With calumny upon his lips
He tempted, challenged Providence;
Beauty he called an idle dream;
And inspiration he despised;
Did not believe in freedom, love;
He looked with mockery on life—
And for no thing in all the world
One word of blessing would he speak.²

The considerable number of poems written to different women during the first half of the 1820's show a wide range of feeling: grief at parting; jealousy; sorrow at the imminent death of a girl; the poet's reluctance to divulge the story of his mad passions and sufferings to the innocent and uncomplicated woman who has, for the moment, made him happy.

The theme of love is for Pushkin sometimes related to the theme of reborn inspiration: after a period of spiritual flatness and boredom the poet is reawakened by his meeting with a woman, he experiences an almost Dionysiac Lebensfreude, his heart is unlocked, reopened to joy and sorrow, his whole being comes alive again, and he feels once more the urge to create. This is the theme of his famous lyric to Anna Petrovna Kern. Pushkin had been strongly impressed by her in a brief meeting in 1819 in Petersburg. In 1825, while Pushkin was in exile in Mikhaylovskoe, Anna Petrovna visited her relatives on the neighboring estate of Trigorskoye. The following poem was the fruit of the second meeting:

The wondrous moment I recall
When you appeared before my view;
You came, a dream ephemeral,
The spirit of pure beauty, you.

Through hopeless sorrows, somber, drear,
Through life's vain follies, whirls, alarms,
For long your gentle voice I'd hear,
And call to mind your tender charms.

Life's gusting storms—the years passed by—
Dispersed my dreams, and I forgot,
Forgot your gentle voice and I
Your face's heavenly charms forgot.

Remote, in gloomy isolation,
My days dragged by, the months, the years—
Without a god or inspiration,
With neither love nor life nor tears.

Thy soul, my soul to life recall!
Before me you appeared anew!
You came, a dream ephemeral,
The spirit of pure beauty, you.

And my heart beats in wild elation,
My spirit waked takes wing above;
Reborn are god and inspiration.
Reborn are life and tears and love.

But Pushkin's lyrics during the first half of the 1820's were not confined either to the theme of love or to the depiction of ennui and disillusionment. Pushkin is still the voice of Russian liberalism. In a verse epistle to his fellow poet Gnedich (1821), Pushkin compares his situation to that of Ovid in exile, but unlike the latter, "I to Octavius, in blind hope, / Pour forth no prayers of flattery." In his most famous political poem of this period, "The Dagger" (1821), Pushkin treats this weapon as a just means of retribution against tryanny and injustice. "The Dagger" is indeed a more outspoken, belligerent, and vengeful poem than the 1817 "Ode to Freedom." However, it is not, in this sense, entirely typical of the political verse written by Pushkin in the South and in Mikhaylovskoe. During the years 1820-25 two important changes are discernible in Pushkin's political verse. First, the narrowly political themes of 1817-20 are treated more broadly. The poet is, "The Dagger" excepted, no longer content to inveigh against tyranny, injustice, and serfdom, as though the setting right of these abuses would solve life's problems. These abuses are now viewed in the wider context of more general problems such as the processes of historical change, the meaning of life, and the destiny of man. At the same time these broader questions become interwoven with the personal emotions and reflections of the poet, and there occurs a fusion between the political theme and the truly lyric element in Pushkin's poetry. Secondly, from about 1823 a new note of skepticism is heard, skepticism both as to the successful outcome of any revolutionary attempt and as to the genuine determination of the people to achieve freedom.

This skepticism was undoubtedly induced in large measure by the failures in these years of the revolutionary movements in Portugal, Spain, and Naples. Pushkin's misgivings may also have arisen to some extent as a result of his contacts in the South with various members of the Russian revolutionary secret societies. His political skepticism is also to be seen as one facet of the tendency, noted above, to broaden the narrowly political theme, since it is applied not merely to political developments but to human nature in general. It is also tied in with the more specifically personal theme, since the poet complains that his call for freedom falls on deaf ears. This disillusioning dilemma, which seems to have provoked a spiritual crisis, is expressed in the following poem (1823), based on the parable of the sower:

Sowing the seed of freedom I
Early went forth, before the dawn,
Into the wilds and with pure hand
In furrows dark with slavery
Freedom's life-giving seed I cast—
I cast in vain; 'twas waste of time,
Of labor and of noble thought …
Graze on in peace, ye peoples, graze!
You sleep and hear not honor's call.
What use have herds for freedom's gifts?
The butcher's or the shearer's knife
Were better—and from age to age
The yoke, the harness bells, the whip.³

"To the Sea" (1824) exemplifies perfectly Pushkin's growing tendency to combine the problem of freedom, presented now on a broad, almost philosophical base, with the problems of his personal life. Actually, this lyric started out as a meditation on the sea and the poet's destiny. The opening stanzas were written shortly before Pushkin's enforced departure from Odessa. The sea is seen as a symbol of freedom and power, and the poet recounts his own failure to carry out the plans he had nursed during the Odessa period—to escape from Russia by sea. The thought of Byron's death caused Pushkin, who had meanwhile arrived in Mikhaylovskoe, to enlarge his original theme to embrace both Byron, identified with the sea, as a symbol of freedom, and Napoleon.⁴ Thus, in its final form, "To the Sea" is a lyric poem, which focuses on the poet's subjective emotions, but which defines these emotions by reference to the sea and to the world arena from which had recently passed two figures who had in different ways dominated the age:

Farewell, thou freedom's element!
For the last time before my gaze
Thy blue waves rise and surge and sink
And sparkle, beautiful and proud….

Alas, I wished but never left
The dull and tedious earth-locked shore
To hail thee with enraptured joy
And through thy troughs, atop thy crests
To speed full-sail a poet's flight!

And thou didst call … but I was chained;
In vain my soul was torn and rent:
Held back by passion's powerful spell,
Alas, I stayed upon the shore …

Oh why regret? And whither now
My carefree steps can I direct?
One point in all your vasty wastes
Would make an impress on my soul.
One sea-swept rock, proud glory's tomb …
There memories of majesty
Waned and turned cold, were laid to sleep:
'Twas there Napoleon sank to rest.

There with his grief Napoleon lies.
And in his steps, like the storm's roar,
A second ruler of men's minds
Has sped away beyond our ken.

Has gone—and Freedom mourns his death—
Leaving the world his poet's wreath.
Surge waves, storm seas, and thunder gales:
He was thy bard, he sang of thee….

The world's grown empty … Whither now,
Great ocean, could'st thou bear me? Where?
Man's fate is everywhere the same:
Where life seems blessed, there lies in wait
Man's petty sway or tyrant's tread.

Farewell, thou sea! I'll not forget
The solemn beauty of thy waves;
Long after this I still will hear
Their crashing roar at eventide.

Into the silent, lonely woods
I'll carry in my memory

Thy cliffs, thy headlands and thy bays,
Thy sunlight, shades and sound of waves.

In this poem Pushkin bade farewell not only to the sea, not only to his life and loves in Odessa, but also in some measure to the early Byronic Romanticism which had taken such strong hold in 1820 at the start of his Southern exile. "To the Sea" expressed his regretful conviction that with the passing of such gigantic spirits as Napoleon—his ambition and despotism notwithstanding—and Byron, the poet of freedom, the world had somehow become a smaller and emptier place. It also expresses (in the last stanza but two) a certain skepticism, which was to reappear in Pushkin's work, as to the benefits which were allegedly to be obtained by replacing despotism by more liberal forms of government. At the root of this skepticism is the poet's suspicion that no form of government can make men free and happy, and that the essence of man's freedom and happiness lies outside the sphere of government—elsewhere, in some spiritual independence which Pushkin himself never achieved.⁵

One problem which was to preoccupy Pushkin throughout his creative life had to do with the role of the poet in society. Does the poet have a social mission to perform? Can the criteria of utilitarianism be applied to his work? Does poetic art have laws of its own, purely esthetic laws, independent of any message that may be propagated? What about art for art's sake? Is the poet answerable to himself alone for what he writes? And how does the poet fit into the outside world of society? A fair number of Pushkin's finest lyrics are attempts to deal with one or the other aspect of this broad problem. Over the years, as will be seen in the following pages, his answers were not entirely consistent, or, more precisely, there occurred shifts in his emphasis, dictated by his own circumstances and moods. In "The Prophet" (1826), perhaps the best known of all his short poems, the poet's role is seen as a highly dynamic one. Endowed through inspiration with an understanding of life's essence, the poet is charged to go forth like a biblical prophet and transform the heart of man:

With fainting soul athirst for Grace,
I wandered in a desert place,
And at the crossing of the ways
I saw the sixfold Seraph blaze;
He touched mine eyes with fingers light
As sleep that cometh in the night:
And like a frighted eagle's eyes,
They opened wide with prophecies.
He touched mine ears, and they were drowned
With tumult and a roaring sound:
I heard convulsion in the sky,
And flights of angel hosts on high,
And beasts that move beneath the sea,
And the sap creeping in the tree.
And bending to my mouth he wrung
From out of it my sinful tongue,
And all its lies and idle rust,
And 'twixt my lips a-perishing
A subtle serpent's forked sting
With right hand wet with blood he thrust.
And with his sword my breast he cleft,
My quaking heart thereout he reft,
And in the yawning of my breast
A coal of living fire he pressed.
Then in the desert I lay dead,
And God called unto me and said:
"Arise, and let My voice be heard,
Charged with My Will go forth and span
The land and sea, and let My Word
Lay waste with fire the heart of man."⁶

"The Prophet" was written in the late summer of 1826. At that time the sentencing of the Decembrists (five hanged and many exiled to Siberia) must have loomed large and fresh in the poet's mind. His very use of biblical style and imagery (see Isaiah 6) is in conformity with a Decembrist poetic tradition which depicted the Old Testament poet-prophet as scourging injustice and tyranny. This is not to impose on "The Prophet," as some have sought to do, a narrowly political message. This poem lends itself rather to a broader, more general, almost philosophical interpretation. It has its roots in the distinction—already noted and a constantly recurring theme in Pushkin's work—between the poet in moments of inspiration and the poet reduced to mediocrity by the toils and snares of everyday petty preoccupations. The poet's superior wisdom and loftier view is granted him by virtue of his inspiration. This concept would appear to have something in common with the pantheism of Schelling which commanded support among Moscow intellectuals at that time. True, "The Prophet" reflects a basically Romantic view of the role of the poet. But Schelling's ideas on life and art were in essence alien to Pushkin's earthy outlook. Just as it is a mistake to see "The Prophet" in narrowly political terms, so also it would be wrong to read into this poem either Schellingian "otherworldliness" or any specifically religious appeal. The poet's inspiration is the foundation and keynote of the poem. With all this, "The Prophet" remains a challenging call to the poet to maintain the integrity of his vision and to speak out loud and clean on the side of truth and justice.⁷

The failure of the Decembrist uprising had important repercussions for Pushkin's political thinking. A nascent political skepticism was, as noted above, already apparent some time before December 14, 1825—in the short and bitter poem in which Pushkin likens himself to the sower in the New Testament parable, and in "To the Sea." After December 14 it was obvious to Pushkin and to others that the liberal cause had been defeated and that Nicholas I intended to rule with a firm hand. The poet's reaction was not, however, one of simple resignation. His interest in Russian history, exemplified in his work Boris Godunov, which was completed about a month before the Decembrist debacle, had been growing. He was beginning to ask himself the question, which was to preoccupy so many Russian minds in the nineteenth century, as to whether the Russian path of historical development had necessarily to follow along lines observed in other countries, particularly West European, or whether peculiarly Russian conditions might not demand peculiarly Russian solutions.

More specifically, Pushkin was conversant with the views of the Russian writer and historian, Karamzin, whose conservatism found its justification in the indisputable fact that progress and enlightenment had come to Russia not through the efforts of society or the people, but as a result of deliberate measures imposed by Russia's autocratic rulers, in particular Peter the Great. Add to this general line of speculation the gratitude Pushkin felt owing to his reprieve from exile, and it is not difficult to understand how Pushkin came to hope—and he was not alone in this hope—that, notwithstanding the brutal suppression of the Decembrist revolt, rational reforms would be forthcoming. But, these reforms would be introduced from above, as indeed the Tsar appears to have carefully stipulated in the September 8 interview in expressing to Pushkin his concern for the welfare of the Russian people. It is also understandable how Pushkin at times tended to draw a parallel between Nicholas I and Peter the Great. "Stanzas," written in December 1826, at the outset of Nicholas' reign and shortly after the poet's reprieve, conveys Pushkin's initial optimism:

In hope of happy days, renown,
With confidence I gaze ahead:
The start of Peter's glorious reign
Was marred by risings crushed with blood.

But he with truth won minds and hearts,
With learning tamed the savage breast,
Let Dolgoruky speak his mind,
Saw not rebellion in his words.

Boldly, with autocratic hand,
He sowed the seeds of knowledge far
And wide throughout his native land:
Russia's proud destiny he knew.

Now scholar and now man of war,
Now carpenter, now mariner,
His mind and hand encompassed all;
A sovereign, he asked no rest.

His the proud line from which you stem;
Be proud, and follow in his steps:
Like him, work tirelessly, be firm,
Nor harbor rancor for what's past.

These noble sentiments bear testimony to Pushkin's delusions as to the amount of influence a poet's voice might be expected to have on his imperial master. The poem is also an appeal for clemency for the exiled Decembrists. Furthermore, as already noted, the poet's optimism was shared by others at the time. Yet this poem marks the beginning of a problem which was to plague Pushkin increasingly: it was widely regarded, even by some of the poet's friends, as a betrayal of his former convictions and an attempt to flatter the Tsar. It was, in fact, a compulsion to rebut charges of sycophancy which prompted Pushkin to write in 1828 a thirty-two line poem, "To My Friends," which begins:

No flatterer I when to the Tsar
I freely write a poem of praise:
I speak sincerely, unrestrained,
I speak the language of the heart.

Pushkin goes on to say that he feels a genuine warm affection for his Tsar, who has returned him from exile and "liberated my thoughts." The real flatterers are those who would counsel the Tsar to repress a natural instinct for mercy, to despise the people, and to distrust enlightenment as the seed of depravity and rebellion. He concludes:

Woe to the land where round the throne
Only the slaves and flatterers stand,
And where the poet, heaven's elect.
Stays silent, with his eyes cast down.

"To My Friends" was submitted to Nicholas I, who caused to be conveyed to Pushkin his satisfaction, together with his wish that the poem not be published.

Pushkin's position with regard to the Decembrists, if not a particularly comfortable one, was natural enough. Pushkin was, of course, shocked and despondent. Many of the Decembrists had been his friends. But there was absolutely nothing he could do to help them now. He had been lucky not to be involved himself. He had himself asked the Tsar for pardon. He had made, roughly speaking, his peace with the regime. Sympathy with the exiles' sufferings, the exhortation to bear adversity with courage, and hope for the future was all that he or anyone else could offer. In January 1827 he handed to one of the Decembrist wives, who was leaving Moscow to join her husband in exile, his "Message to Siberia":

In the depths of your Siberian mines
Preserve your courage, patience, pride;
Your toil, your burden's not in vain,
Your noble vision shall not fail.

True sister of misfortune, hope
Shall in your gloomy dungeons keep
Your spirits high and bring you cheer,
Your long-awaited day will come:

The call of friendship and of love
Will penetrate your gloomy bars,
As my free voice now reaches you
Within your dark and somber lairs.

The heavy chains shall fall away,
Your prisons crumble—and in joy
Freedom shall greet you at the gate,
And brothers hand to you the sword.

Pushkin's return from exile brought obvious blessings. It ended his enforced isolation and reopened to him the pleasures of companionship and society. At the same time it complicated immeasurably his emotional life. Not only had the Decembrist affair left him with a feeling of unease, but it had removed from Moscow and Petersburg a goodly number of former friends, whose very names could now be mentioned only with caution. The reader is already familiar with other aspects of Pushkin's situation in the bachelor years following his reprieve. The freedom granted by the Tsar on September 8, 1826, was proving to be, at best, only partial. There were the constant pinpricks of Benkendorf's Third Section, and there was the grave threat of the Gavriiliada incident. In general, it soon became impossible to substantiate Pushkin's contention that the Tsar had "liberated my thought." But the most serious threat to Pushkin's peace of mind lay within him. By Pushkin's own admission, the dissipations of his early Petersburg years (1817-20) had brought him more distress than happiness. Now he was again exposed to similar temptations: his gambling was nearcompulsive and costly. The companionship of men and the attractions of women were time-consuming, as was also his emotional need to cut a figure in society. If these types of distraction caused distress in 1817-20, when Pushkin's age might have seemed to justify the sowing of wild oats, it is not difficult to understand their more serious effects on a man who was now approaching thirty and felt that his youth, which he regarded as largely misguided and misspent, was slipping out from under him. He was afflicted by a sense of aimlessness: he seemed to have no niche and no purpose; either life in general was a futile exercise, or his own individual life had gone astray. Benkendorf's supervision and Pushkin's own weaknesses formed a ring of encirclement from which it was difficult to break free.

Such were, loosely speaking, the circumstances which provided the backdrop for some of Pushkin's finest mature lyrics. One particular aspect of a more general unease has to do with the problem, already mentioned, of the position of the poet in society. In "The Poet" (1827) Pushkin makes the distinction—referred to above—between the poet inspired and the poet immersed in the trivialities of everyday living:

Until Apollo summons him
Unto the sacred sacrifice,
Weakly the poet gives his heed
To life's vain cares and futile round;
And silent is his sacred lyre;
Cold and unfeeling sleeps his soul,
And 'mid the worthless of this world
More worthless still, perchance, is he.

But once Apollo's call divine
Reaches the poet's eager ear,
Like an eagle roused and taking wing,
The poet wakened soars in flight.
An alien to the world's vain joys,
And shunning man's society,
Before the idols of the crowd
He proudly keeps his head unbowed;
Austere and wild, the poet flees,
Yes, filled with strange alarms and sounds
Flees to the shore, the lonely waves,
Flees to the pathless, soughing woods.

In "The Poet and the Throng" (1828) Pushkin vehemently denies any obligation on the part of the poet to feed neatly packaged moral truths to the public. He concludes with the following quatrain:

Not for life's tumult and alarms,
Nor for life's struggle, nor for gain,
No, we were born for inspiration,
For prayer, and for harmonious sound.

The poor reception accorded to his Poltava and, in general, a feeling of being harassed by his critics caused Pushkin to emphasize increasingly the poet's independence. In "To the Poet" (1830) he insists that the poet pay no heed to the praise or foolish abuse of the public; he must go his own way without expecting any reward; he is his own "highest judge," answerable only to himself. Pushkin's poetry in the last five or six years of his life met with less and less understanding from the public, and the feeling of disaffection expressed in "To the Poet" was to become a more or less stable part of his attitude.

The disquiet which began to oppress Pushkin after his return from exile was both general and specific. Anxiety over the consequences which could have ensued from the Gavriiliada investigation is expressed in "Foreboding" (1828):

Once again above my head
The calm sky fills with clouds of bane
And envious fate with evil tread
Stalks my footsteps once again.
Can I still my fate deride?
Shall I still to fate oppose
The staunchness of my youthful pride
Unbowed before her sternest blows?

Bruised, battered by Life's cruel wind,
The storm, indifferent, I await;

Perhaps, saved even now, I'll find
Some port of refuge from my fate.
But parting's dread hour—I feel 'tis true—
Looms near, forbidding, merciless,
For the last time I haste to you,
And your hand, my angel, press.

Serene and gentle at the last.
Angel, bid a quiet farewell;
Let eyes uplifted or downcast
Tenderly your sorrow tell.
And your memory inside
For me the heart's lone flight will wage,
Replace the hope, the strength, the pride,
The daring of my youthful age.

The woman from whom Pushkin seeks courage in this poem is A. A Olenina, whom Pushkin was at the time courting with a view to marriage, but by whom he was rejected.

As we know, it was Natalia Nikolaevna Goncharova to whom Pushkin was eventually to become engaged and then married. His attitude to marriage and to his fiancée was extremely complicated psychologically. On the one hand, there was the hope of genuine happiness and spiritual rejuvenation; on a less ambitious level, there was the desire to organize his life on a firmer, more stable, more conventional footing. On the other hand, there were his grave misgivings and his doubts as to whether happiness could ever be his. At times he cast reluctant, at times nostalgic backward glances at his past and thought of the women he had once known and loved, still loved perhaps; and there was the sorrowful feeling that his youth now lay behind him. This stock-taking and the knowledge of the imminent change in his way of life gave rise to some of his most moving lyrics. "Remembrance" was written in 1828:

When the loud day for men who sow and reap Grows still, and on the silence of the town
The unsubstantial 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.⁸

The pangs of remorse revealed in this poem were (as the unpublished continuation indicates) connected in the poet's mind with memories of past idleness and dissipation, of false friends, and of two women, now both dead, the remembrance of whom inspires in him—why, is not clear—feelings of guilt.

The realization that the time had come to adjust to a less exhilarating, more sober, and responsible way of life was not always expressed in the somber tones of "Remembrance." In a delightful verse epistle to Yazykov (1828), a fellow poet, Pushkin regrets that he is unable to join Yazykov and a mutual friend, N. D. Kiselev, in Derpt. His debts, incurred mainly by gambling, keep him in Petersburg:

For long I've wished to join you in
That German town whose praise you've sung,
To drink with you, as poets drink,
The wine whose praise you've also sung….
Oh youth, brave, carefree days of youth!
I watch your passing with regret.
In youth, when to my ears in debt,
I'd give my creditors the slip,
Take to my heels, go any place;
But now I go to importune
My debtors who are far from prompt,
And staid and prudent how I curse
The heavy weight of debt and age!
Farewell, dear bard! Make merry, feast,
May Venus, Phoebus bring you cheer,
Heed not the pomp, conceit of rank,
Heed not your debtors' honied words,
Nor pay your debts: this is, you know,
A Russian noble's inborn right.

The lighthearted touch of the Yazykov epistle is, however, not characteristic of this period. The following short, famous poem (1828) reads like an act of painful renunciation:

I loved you once: love even now, maybe,
Love's embers still within my heart remain;
But trouble not; no, think no more of me;
I would not cause you sorrow, bring you pain.
I loved in silence, without hope, design;
Now shy, now jealous, torn by deep distress;
So tender and sincere a love was mine:
God grant some other love you no whit less.⁹

The sense of aimlessness and frustration which afflicted Pushkin at the time, produced moments in which the thought of death amounted almost to an obsession. There exists no more famous illustration of this mood than the following poem written in 1829, which was a far from happy year:

When'er I walk on noisy streets,
Or watch the crowd that throngs the church,
Or sit and feast with reckless youth,
Then to my mind come brooding thoughts.

I think: the years will swiftly pass
And, many though we now may be,
The grave's eternal vaults await,
And someone's hour is now at hand.

I see, perchance, a lonely oak,
I think: this forest patriarch will
Outlast my petty span as he
Outlasted those who went before.

A dear, sweet infant I caress,
At once I think: farewell! farewell!
To you my place on earth I yield:
For you shall bloom, while I decay.

To every day and hour I bid
Farewell and speed them on their way,
Wondering which day shall prove to be
The anniversary of my death.

And where will fate send death to me?
In battle, travel, on the sea?
Or will a neighboring vale receive
Me when I turn to earth's cold dust?

And though the unfeeling body knows
Not where it's laid, where it decays,
Still I would rather take my rest
Near places which I once held dear.

And at the entrance of the grave
May youthful life laugh, romp and play,
And may unheeding nature there
With everlasting beauty shine.

The productive autumn of 1830, when a cholera epidemic confined Pushkin to the Boldino estate, was shot through with nostalgic moods. Ekaterina Vorontsova, the wife of the governor-general of Odessa, has been one woman to leave a profound and lasting impression on the poet. It was with her in mind that on October 5 of that year he wrote "Farewell":

For the last time I dare embrace
In thought your image dear to me,
To have my heart relive its dream
And with despondent, shy desire
To recollect once more your love.

The changing years pass swiftly by,
Bring change to all, bring change to us,
And for your poet you are now
Cloaked in sepulchral shade, while he—
For you—has vanished from the scene.

And yet accept, my distant friend,
A farewell greeting of my heart,
Just as some widowed wife might do,
Or friend embracing silent friend
Before the prison door is closed.¹⁰

His "Elegy," written one month earlier on September 8, professes a desire to live and experience, but the mood is clouded and somber, the fragile pleasures and fleeting moments of inspiration he anticipates are outweighed by ominous forebodings, even the love he still hopes for will be flawed with the sadness of decline:

The extinguished merriment of madcap years
Weighs on me like a hangover's dull ache.
But—as with wine—the sadness of past days,
With age its strength increases in the soul.
My path is dark. The future's troubled sea
Holds little for me, mostly sorrow, toil.
But no, my friends, I do not wish to die;
I wish to live that I may think and suffer;
And I know too that pleasures will be mine.
Amid my troubles and my tribulation:
At times again the Muses will delight,
Creation's work will cause my tears to flow;
Perhaps once more my waning star will shine
Beneath the fleeting, farewell smile of Love.

One outgrowth of the increasingly tragic view of life expressed in Pushkin's lyrics at this time was a more devotional frame of mind. Pushkin was still capable of the irreverence of his Gavriiliada days. But more characteristic of the period around 1830 is a newfound respect for purity and sanctity. This is not, in the narrow sense, a religious feeling. It is, as always with Pushkin, partly esthetic, but it is also partly ethical in its aspiration for something pure and unchanging. A famous poem (1829) describes a poor knight who, after seeing an image of the Virgin Mary, will no longer look upon women or speak to them, but spends entire nights weeping before the image of the Virgin. Returning from Palestine, where he has fought bravely as a crusader, the knight secludes himself in his remote castle: "Still adoring, grieving ever, / And unshriven there he died." The Devil wishes to claim his soul, since the knight had neither prayed to God nor observed the fasts, and had adored unseemingly the Mother of Christ, but the Virgin intercedes and admits "her paladin" to heaven. Among other stimuli contributing to the makeup of this poem there is undoubtedly an underlying eroticism.

The same sublimated eroticism is clearly evident in Pushkin's "Madonna" (1830). In this poem, inspired by a painting of the Madonna and Child, as a letter written to his fiancée on July 30 of that year confirms, the Madonna of the poem is linked in the poet's emotions with the image of Natalia Nikolaevna.

The poet's marriage in February 1831 coincided with an abrupt change in his lyric output. Compared with the highly productive 1827-30 period, 1831 was a lean year: of only five lyrics with serious pretensions, three are devoted to patriotic themes and reflect both Pushkin's support of Russia against Poland and his temporarily improved relationship with Nicholas I. Nor in the years that remained (1832-36) was Pushkin ever again to achieve that high level of productivity which characterizes his last bachelor period. Undoubtedly the social round interfered with his work and almost certainly, there were poems of a highly intimate nature which did not survive. Then, too, Pushkin was in his last years directing his efforts more and more to prose. But it is also reasonable to assume that Pushkin's pleasures and anxieties as a married man did not lend themselves as well by their very nature to lyric expression as had been the case in the 1827-30 period. An opposition as simple as that between happiness and unhappiness is not here involved—Pushkin was never very happy for very long. Nor should it be implied that unhappiness is the essential stuff of good poetry. It is, rather, that the problems which beset Pushkin in 1827-30, though very much his own, are also universal problems which inevitably beset grown thinking men. And it is this that makes this period, judged on quality and quantity, a highwater mark in his career as a lyric poet. After Pushkin's marriage, either these problems were less often in the foreground of his mind, or he felt inhibitions about writing about them—and certainly about publishing. Yet the less abundant poetry written in 1832-36, where it deals with the poet's intimate emotional life, reveals no falling-off of his powers. The relatively few personal poems of these years must rank among his finest.

One interesting illustration of the difficulties that can beset the married lyric poet is a small poem almost certainly inspired by Pushkin's wife, published posthumously, of uncertain date, but probably written early in his marriage:

Abandon's pleasures are not dear to me,
Frenzy, voluptuous rapture, ecstasy,
The young Bacchante who with groans and cries
Writhes in my grasp and with hot ardor tries
Her burning touch, her biting lips to lend
To haste the shudd'ring instant of the end.

How far more sweet the meekness of your kiss;
With you I know O what tormented bliss,
When yielding to long prayers, you tenderly
And without rapture give yourself to me.
Modestly cold, to my elation's cry
Heedless of all, you scarcely make reply
Then passion wakes, burns, blazes hotter, till—
You share at last my flame—against your will.¹¹

Whenever Pushkin did permit himself to vent his personal feelings during the last years, the tragic impasse into which his married and social life had plunged him, is revealed with an appalling starkness. In one poem, written in 1833 or later, Pushkin—the epitome of intellectual sanity, balance, and restraint—is seen toying with the temptation of madness:

God grant that I not lose my mind.
Better the beggar's staff and pouch; Or better hunger, toil.
I do not mean that reason I
Now hold so dear; nor that with it I'd not be glad to part.

If only they would leave me free,
How swiftly, gaily would I flee Into the darkling woods!
I'd sing, delirious, possessed,
And lose myself enraptured in Chaotic, wondrous dreams.

And I would harken to the waves,
And I would gaze, in happiness, Up in the empty skies;
And I would be so strong and free
Like to a whirlwind cutting swathes Through fields and forest trees.

But here's the rub: if you go mad,
Then men will fear you like the plague, And, fearing, lock you up,
And they'll attach you with a chain,
And come and through the cage's bars Torment you like some beast.

And so by night I would not hear,
Not hear the nightingale's clear voice, The rustling of the trees—
I'd hear my comrades' shouts and cries,
The cursing of the nighttime guards, And shrieks and sounds of chains.

… An unpublished excerpt, written probably in June 1834, reflects the poet's extreme weariness with the life of the capital and his longing to retire to the country. This excerpt is clearly an appeal to his wife:

'Tis time, my friend, 'tis time! the heart has need of peace—
Days follow swiftly days, and each hour bears away
Some fraction of our being—while we all unawares,
Imagining we live, in life we are in death.

Happiness none knows—but calm, and freedom: these can be.
An enviable lot has long since been my dream,
Long since, a weary slave, I've contemplated flight
To some far-off abode of work and simple joys.

The manuscript contains Pushkin's plan for this unrevised and apparently unfinished excerpt: "Youth has no need of an at home [in English], mature age feels horror at its own isolation. Happy the man who finds a woman to share his life—he should make for home. Oh, shall I soon transfer my Penates to the country—fields, garden, peasants, books; poetic labors—family, love etc.—religion, death."¹²

But for Pushkin there was to be no escape. A visit to Mikhaylovskoe in September 1835, did not bring the hoped-for relief. In a somber poem Pushkin laments that his nurse, Arina Rodionovna, is now dead. He notes that young pines are beginning to grow up near the three tall pines he so often rode by. He himself will not live to see the young ones fully grown, but he hopes that his grandchild may see them and remember him.

As early as 1824, in his poem "To the Sea," Pushkin had expressed some doubt as to the relationship between different forms of government and the true happiness of the individual. "Man's fate is everywhere the same," he had written. Now in 1836 he restates this thesis more explicitly in his poem "From Pindemonte." The poem, translated here only in part, gives also a clear picture of the sense of confinement and imprisonment which had taken hold of Pushkin, of the desperate need for the independence of mind and body which he craved in vain, and of those things which in his despair he treasured most and identified most closely with happiness:

I set not too much store by those high-sounding rights
Proclaimed so loud by some, which dazzle some men's minds….
For these, I understand, are words, words, words, no more …
Dependence on a tsar or on the people's will:
It's one and the same thing. These are not rights. To have
To give account to none; to seek how best to serve
And please oneself alone; neither for power nor pomp
To bend the neck or compromise one's plans;
As one's own fancy bids, to wander here and there,
Gaze on the sacred gifts, the beauty Nature gives,
And wonder at the fruits of art and inspiration
With trembling joy, delight, enraptured adoration,
These things are happiness and freedom's rights …

Beset by marital problems, at odds with society in which he was cutting an even sadder figure, and suffering from a neglect of his literary genius—which made him feel that as a writer he was regarded as having outlived his days of glory—the poet, through much of 1836, is plagued by a foreboding of imminent doom. A poem, written for the October 19, 1836 lycée anniversary, begins:

There was a time: 'twas then our youthful feast
Shone, noisy, gay and garlanded with rose,
The clink of glasses mingled with our songs….
This is no longer so: our rakish feast,
Like us, has with the years now run its course,
It has grown tamer, quieter and more staid,
The toasts and clinking glasses ring less loud,
Less playfully the conversation flows,
Some seats are empty, sadder now we sit,
More rarely 'mid the songs is laughter heard,
More often now we sigh, and silence keep….

What may be called Pushkin's final will and testament is a poem entitled "Monument" (1836). This poem is Pushkin's contribution to a longstanding literary tradition which, including in Russia Dershavin and Lomonosov, extends back to Horace's Exegi monumentum. The poem presents a sort of balance sheet of the poet's past achievements. It is born of that sadness caused, as noted above, by the lack of recognition accorded to his work during the 1830's—a lack of recognition which, added to his personal tribulations, and compounded by the journalistic polemics directed against him, embittered his last years. It is also the poet's last assertion of his freedom and independence.

I've raised a monument no human hands could build
The path that leads to it can ne'er be overgrown,
Its head, unbowed, untamed, stands higher from the ground Than Alexander's column stands.
Not all of me shall die: in verses shall my soul
Outlive my mortal dust and shall escape decay—
And I shall be renowned so long as on this earth One single poet is alive.
My hallowed fame shall spread through Russia's mighty land,
And each and every tribe shall venerate my name:
The proud Slav and the Finn, the still untamed Tungus,
The Kalmuk, dweller of the steppe.

Long after this my name shall warm the people's heart,
Because my lyre has sung of feelings good and kind
And in my cruel age I sang blessed freedom's praise And for the fallen mercy begged.

Be thou obedient, Muse, to the command of God!
Not fearing hurt nor wrong, seeking no laurel crown,
Remain indifferent to calumny and praise, And do not quarrel with the fool.

Undoubtedly, Pushkin was right in predicting his own lasting fame. He was right, too, in the sense of timing which prompted him to write this poem—concealing beneath its traditional surface a mass of suffering—six months before his death.¹³

What, in conclusion, can be said of the best of Pushkin's lyric poetry? The sounds—in translation—elude us. Those to whom the privilege of reading Pushkin in the original is denied must take on faith that the sound patterns in his lyrics, though seldom obtrusive, are not only beautiful but also functional in that they harmonize with and contribute to the sense. The same must also be said, specifically, of the rhymes which play an important part in most of the lyrics—not merely as embellishments or line-markers but also as structural factors which shape the syntax and point up the thought, to which they are subordinated.

The themes and thoughts of Pushkin's lyrics speak largely for themselves. But some further understanding of his outstanding achievement as a lyric poet may be gained by comparing the best poems of his mature years with what he wrote in his youth. When, for example, in his 1816-17 elegies Pushkin speaks of unrequited love, of sorrow, and of death, though he is certainly sincere, one is aware that these are the moods of despair which sometimes beset the very young, moods which respond to the treatment of experience and adjustment, moods also, let it be said, which reflect a literary era. When in his mature work he speaks of such things, he speaks with his own voice, with a freshness, directness, and immediacy that give the impression that such emotions have not been treated in literature ever before. He speaks for himself in such a way that the natural and simple words he uses seem to emanate directly from the specific experiences and impressions of one man—experiences and impressions which could be precisely conveyed in those words alone. At the same time the balance, sense of proportion and self-restraint impart to his writings a universal quality. For Pushkin's writings are characterized—in form as well as content—by that self-restraint in dealing with deeply felt emotion which life demands of all men. Furthermore, this very self-restraint renders intelligible and doubly poignant to others the sufferings and tribulations which motivated Pushkin in writing of himself. And he wrote of things which are the common lot of grown man everywhere, of the limitations which life imposes on each and all, limitations which impart to life a tragic element which cannot be overlooked.

Notes

¹ See also B. P. Gorodetsky, Lirika Pushkina (Moscow-Leningrad, 1962), p. 29, and Gorodetsky, "Lirika," Pushkin: itogi i problemy izucheniya (Moscow-Leningrad, 1966), pp. 408-13.

² "The Demon" was widely interpreted as being a psychological portrait of Alexander Raevsky, a Russian "Byron" and a member of the family which had taken Pushkin to the Caucasus and Crimea in 1820, and introduced him to Byronism.

³ This poem, unpublished during Pushkin's life, was prompted by the failure of the Spanish uprising which was suppressed by French troops.

⁴ For details concerning the composition of this poem see N. Izmailov, "Strofy o Napoleone i Bayrone v stikhotvorenii 'K moryu,"' Pushkin: Vremennik pushkinskoy komissii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1941), VI, 21-29; also N. L. Stepanov, Lirika Pushkina (Moscow, 1959), pp. 310-26.

⁵ "From Pindemonte" (1836), discussed later in this chapter, expresses more plainly the poet's misgivings as to the relationship between different forms of government and the true nature of human freedom and happiness.

⁶ Translated by Maurice Baring, Have You Anything To Declare? (London, 1936: William Heinemann Ltd.), p. 246.

⁷ The views here expressed on the ideas informing "The Prophet" are, in large measure, a condensation of N. L. Stepanov's evaluation. See N. L. Stepanov, op. cit., pp. 347-63.

⁸ Translated by Maurice Baring, op. cit., p. 244.

⁹ The woman to whom these eight lines were addressed remained unknown for many years, and her identity has still not been established with complete certainty. However, convincing evidence points to Karolina Soban'skaya whom Pushkin first met in Kiev or Odessa in 1821 (while on leave from Kishinev) and with whom he again became embroiled in Petersburg after his return from exile. See M. A. Tsyavlovsky, Rukoyu Pushkina (Moscow-Leniningrad, 1935), pp. 179-208. At the same time, it seems probable that Pushkin copied this same poem into the album of A. A. Olenina who in 1828 rejected his marriage proposal; see T. G. Tsiavlovskaya, "Dnevnik Olenina," Pushkin: Issledovaniya i materialy (Moscow-Leningrad, 1958), II, 289-92.

¹⁰ See B. P. Gorodetsky, op. cit., pp. 289ff.

¹¹ The dating of this poem is uncertain. Gorodetsky (p. 359) gives it as January 19, 1830. On the assumption, which I am strongly inclined to accept, that it was addressed to Pushkin's wife, this date would be impossible. His wife's copy was dated 1831, and the poem may not have been written till 1832.

¹²Ak. nauk, III, 517.

¹³ For an excellent study of this poem see M. P. Alekseyev, Stikhotvorenie Pushkina "Ya pamyatnik sebe vozdvig … " (Leningrad, 1967).