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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2007

Andrew Kahn
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

Alexander Pushkin changed the course of Russian literature. Ceaselessly experimental, he is the author of the greatest body of lyric poetry in the language; a remarkable novelist in verse, and a pioneer of Russian prose fiction; an innovator in psychological and historical drama; and an amateur historian of serious purpose. Pushkin’s protean talent was legendary in his own lifetime. Both contemporary and later readers invoke the names of Shakespeare and Mozart to convey the impact of his artistic genius and the seeming effortlessness of his creative imagination. Russian writers of every generation, from Fedor Dostoevsky to Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Brodsky, turn back to Pushkin, making him an interlocutor and acknowledging his presence as a continuous creative force. At the same time, he remains for Russians the indispensable writer, a genuinely popular classic, a cultural icon, a biographical obsession.

Underlying the protean diversity are unifying patterns of thought and theme. The interconnections between different types in Pushkin’s creation bear witness to his impulse to refract historical, philosophical, psychological and autobiographical interests through multiple literary forms. This multiplicity of literary expression captures the essential mobility of Pushkin’s thinking which preferred play and openness to definitive answers, and irony and ambiguity to didacticism, in the certain knowledge that these were the hallmarks of a free mind and in their own right anti-authoritarian.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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  • Introduction
  • Edited by Andrew Kahn, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Pushkin
  • Online publication: 28 March 2007
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521843677.001
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  • Introduction
  • Edited by Andrew Kahn, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Pushkin
  • Online publication: 28 March 2007
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521843677.001
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Edited by Andrew Kahn, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Pushkin
  • Online publication: 28 March 2007
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521843677.001
Available formats
×