ALEXANDER PUSHKIN: A SHINING GENIUS OF POETRY

The year 1799. An entry was made in the book of births, marriages and deaths of the Twelfth Day Church in Moscow. It read, "27th May, Sergiy Pushkin, a college registering clerk, tenant of Ivan Skvortsov.... hereby registers the birth of his son Alexander. Baptized on the eighth day in June..."

Without anybody knowing it, this entry proclaimed to the world the appearance under the sun of a person destined to become an outstanding man of letters, the founder of a new Russian literature, the creator of the Russian literary language.

Alexander Pushkin's father belonged to an old aristocratic dynasty, once prosperous but eventually reduced to a gradual decline. He was sufficiently educated for his time and wrote poems. His house was visited by well-known writers. There were often lively creative discussions to which little Sasha gave an interested ear. His uncle was a popular poet who helped his nephew develop an interest in literature.

His mother was the granddaughter of Hannibal, an Abyssinian whom Peter I had brought from Turkey. A son of an Ethiopian prince, Hannibal was a small boy when he had been captured, eventually to become a friend and follower of the Russian czar, and a reputed military engineer (Pushkin later portrayed him in his novel, The Ethiopian of Peter the Great).

The Pushkins entrusted the education of their children to French private tutors of both sexes. Alexander, however, was most influenced by his nurse Arina - an ordinary Russian village woman-who opened before the boy's eager eyes the wonderworld of Russian folk tales and awakened in him a love of folk poetry.

Beginning at age 7, Pushkin usually spent summers in Zakharovo, a village near Moscow where his grandmother had her estate. There, he took every opportunity -of which there were plenty -to have a closer look at the common folk, get acquainted with their daily life and learn to understand folk songs and the vernacular.

Pushkin's extremely abundant creative life was preceded by a period of "accumulation the stockpiling of impressions and knowledge. At 8, he could read and write and indulged in writing small comedies and epigrams about his teachers.

In 1811, a lycee was opened in Tsarskoe Selo, not far form St. Petersburg. It was a private college for young sons of the privileged nobility and specialized in cultivating literary tastes and inclinations.

On January 8, 1815, young Pushkin recited during examinations his poems under the general title Reminiscences in Tsarskoe Selo, dedicated to the occasion. He had written them under the fresh impressions of the Patriotic War against Napoleon (1812), when the victorious Russian troops had cleared the country of the invaders and unfurled their banners on the streets and squares of conquered Paris, while Moscow had been still in smoking ruins.

Reminiscences were about ones love for ones Motherland, a keen interest in its past and the link between that past and the present. Some time after graduation from the lycee, Pushkin found himself lost in deep thoughts about the destiny of his country. He understood that the true life of its multimillion people was not in the noisy celebrations of the victory over Napoleon or in royal banquets. What was more, he could hear his people groan in shackles and saw their ardent desire to be free. It was then Liberty became the poet's Muse. He wrote the ode Freedom, calling on the "fallen slaves" to rise against the "tyrants of this world," and a number of other inciting freedom-loving poems.

His writings were copied and spread all he country, which caused the government serious concern, the more so that his verse stirred and inspired all those at variance with the autocratic regime.

Czar Alexander I decided to exile Pushkin to Siberia or the Monastery of Solovki. The poet's influential friends Karamzin and Zhukovsky pulled a lot of strings to have the Russian ruler change the place of exile for the Ukraine. The poet was sent to Yekaterinoslav (currently Dnipropetrovsk) under the pretext of being transferred to a different place of work.

That was Pushkin's first - but, alas, not the last - exile.

A man of humanistic thinking and profound patriotism, Pushkin was- unable to reconcile himself to slavery and arbitrary rule. Living in Russia was suffocating.

On December 14, 1825, the most advanced and educated part of Russian aristocracy publicly protested against autocratic despotism and serfdom. This event went down in history as the Decembrist uprising.

Pushkin belonged to the same aristocratic circles which gave Russia the Deceinbrists the first Russian revolutionaries. He wasn't merely a witness to those social developments. He was their participant, he glorified them in his verse, he was a powerful moral inspirer of the Decembrist exploit.

His political lyrics made a tremendous impact on the liberation movement in Russia. That was why the czarist government hated and persecuted the poet.

Pushkin went through a lot exile, severe censorship, slander, humiliation, blackmail, denunciation and the offending "appointment" as a gentleman of the emperor's bedchamber. Still, nothing was capable of crushing the poet's will. His was the voice of the people. As a poet and citizen, Pushkin all his life was true to the freedom-loving ideals of his youth.

One could compare the emergence of Pushkin amongst the literature of the past century to the appearance of the sun, dispersing heavy rain clouds and lending festive brightness to a gray day.

He was the author of the first realistic novel of manners in verse - Eugene Onegin - and the first historical folk novel, also in verse, Boris Godunov. His lyrics are strikingly poetic and their unmatched finesse reflects the entire splendor of the Russian tongue. His poems, his Small Tragedies present a whole gallery of images, created with the unmistakable touch of genius.

As generations change one another, people understand with increasing clarity the essence of Pushkin's creations - humanism, civic inspiration, all-embracing perception of life, singular aesthetic perfection in lyrics and other poems, his wonderful dramas and crystal-clear thoughtful prose.

Pushkin was the first to bring forth many far reaching problems of the Russian literature of the 19th century, such as people as the moving force in history and the relationships between an individual and society and between an individual and the State. In Small Tragedies and his lyrics, Pushkin applied the basic aspects of human existence love, creativeness and death.

More than anything else, the poet wanted to perpetuate in his works the history of the Russian nation, its movements and its attitude toward the general development of humanity. He was especially interested in following the destinies of peoples in Europe, the destinies of those fighting for the freedom of Spain and Greece, the Italian Carbonari and their French followers.

"Rise up, oh Greece, rise up!
With reason did Vu strain your strength,
With reason did the battles shake
Olympus, the Pindus and Thermopylae."

It was clear to him that only struggle could bring people victory. There was another, specifically Russian sentiment added to his impassioned interest in the revolutionary events in Europe. Sympathy for all nations fighting against tyranny, violence and oppression of the human personality.

In publicistic articles, written in the last years of his life, Pushkin issued a death verdict to inhuman, exploitative British capitalism. The poet commented with as much indignation on the extermination of old Indian tribes and on slavery in America.

"Amazed, people saw democracy in all of its repulsive cynicism, cruel prejudices and unbearable tyranny. Everything noble and selfless, everything elevating human spirit is suppressed by irreconcilable egotism and thirst for comfort;.... black slavery amidst literacy and liberty.... greed and envy on the part of the constituency; humbleness and servility on the part of the land stewards; talent, forced to voluntary ostracism out of respect to equality; a rich man dressed in rags, lest he should offend the haughty poor out in the street, whom he secretly despises - such is the picture of the American states."

A world of petty trading, selfishness, longing for personal power and continuous fortune-hunting - a world of new, bourgeois relationships which started to proclaim itself in the West with such cynicism already in Pushkin's time was opposed to, in the poet's writings, by a world of his own, a world of the greatest of humanists, a man so full of vitality who nourished his belief in a better future from his own profound patriotism, from his close ties with his people. At that period of reactionary darkness hanging over Europe, the poet sang glory to the ever bright sun of freedom, the immortal sun of human wisdom. Pushkin firmly believed in the triumph of the forces of this sun over darkness.

"Down with darkness, long live the sun!"

With his soul and talent, Pushkin found it hard to exist in the world around him. Yet, he retained a great degree of cheerfulness and mustered tremendous moral courage. He strove to find out about the sources and understand the reasons of the tragic condition of nations -in the first place, that of his own people. The poet was quite realistic when he wrote in A Village how

"gentry wild, bereft of heart, bereft of law,
Used force and whips to make their own
The tiller's fruits of work, his property,
his time...
Here, man is doomed to suffer in his yoke
until his death..".

That was how the poet saw reality in his youth. Later, he understood, with even greater clarity, why the common folk "keeps silent" (Boris Godunov), while its leaders are being changed, why this folk never takes part in bloody coups d etat which bring it nothing but another form of oppression. He understood how right people had been in rallying round Pugachev to wage an armed struggle against their oppressors (The Captain's Daughter).

His awareness of all this enabled Plushkin to write the following lines - something only a great poet, believing in the strength and genuineness of his relationships with his people, could write:

"I've built myself a monument
That can't be built with hands.
My kin won't let the path to it
Get overgrown with weeds,"

Pushkin's literary genius harmoniously combined with the brilliance of his intellect and the beauty of his spirit. Inherent in him were that profound universality and that quick responsiveness to all things affecting humanity in different historical epochs which are found in only the most outstanding and exceptional personalities.

As a poet, he could, and did, reach such summits not only thanks to his inborn gift, but also because he turned out to be one of the most educated persons of his time. He was excellently versed in fiction literature of all countries, nations and periods. He was knowledgeable of different spheres in science and the scope of his intellectual interests was truly boundless. His private library boasted a variety of world authors, including works on history, linguistics, folklore, natural sciences, political economy and philosophy. He knew a number of foreign languages and took an interest in Hebrew, Arabic and Turkish. Specialists in philotogy were stunned by his expertise in linguistics and reputed historians spoke highly of Pushkin's studies in this science.

Pushkin's humanism, the realistic and folk character of his creations and the inherent wide range of his internationalist interpretation opened wide horizons before Russian literature and made it known the world over.

Here is a characteristic example. During his southern exile, the poet covered more than a hundred miles of Ukrainian soil. He breathed the fragrant Ukrainian air and lent an enchanted ear to the songs of Ukrainian minstrels-kobzars and lirnyks (lyre players).

Pushkin was quite familiar with Ukrainian folk songs and history. At the lycee he wrote the poem Cossack, an imitation of a Ukrainian folk song which he must have heard from his Ukrainian friends. His private library had several collections of Ukrainian folk songs.

He made notes (unfinished) on Ukrainian history. It is possible to presume that these notes were made in preparation for his projected History of the People of Rus.

Pushkin died at 38, in his prime, literally hunted down by the czar. He passed away without having realized so many of his creative plans, ready to enrich Russian and world culture with so many new accomplishments!

He saw and felt his tormentors close in on him but even when it came to the final showdown, he held himself in a remarkable noble and courageous manner. "I belong to my country and I want my name to stay spotless wherever it is known," he told his friends when they tried to talk him out of the fatal duel which involved his honor.

Czarism never succeeded in subjugating the dissenting and proud poet; neither could it deal with the continuously growing influence of his creations on the hearts and minds of millions. His literary heritage became another inexhaustible source of the development and endowment of the literatures of many nations, including, of course, Ukrainian. Pushkin was a favorite poet of Taras Shevehenko who knew all his works, many by heart. His prose, dramas and verse were in one or another way used by such noted Ukrainian authors as Marko Vovchok, Panas Mymy, Mikhailo Staritsky, Pavlo Hrabovsky, Lesya Ukrainka, etc.

Early in his literary career, Ivan Franko translated into Ukrainian Pushkin's A Crow Flies to a Crow and the ballad Mermaid. In his declining years, the prominent Ukrainian poet bequeathed his readers with the translations of all Pushkin's dramatic works - from Boris Godunov and Small Tragedies to Mermaid. In addition to that, he wrote a critical-biographical survey on the brilliant Russian poet, in the text of which he included his versions of some Pushkin's lyrics.

After the October Revolution, Ukrainian translations of Pushkin were many times published and reprinted as separate collections and selected works. Translations by Maxym Rylsky came as a significant event in the cultural life of the Ukraine. Rylsky wrote in his autobiography that he had fallen deeply and eternally in love with Shevchenko, Pushkin and Mickiekicz in his youth and that these poets were his most revere teachers. In his article Russia's Eternal Love, the well-known Ukrainian poet wrote that Pushkin, this great humanist, "is a man in the loftiest sense of this word," that he is alive even today and is near and dear to all nations, to all creative individuals. In Rylsky's, opinion, the humanness, life assertion and the belief in the strength of wisdom and in the people's happier future that are inherent in Pushkin are especially close to, and needed by, the present generation, as much as Pushkin's internationalism and his Muse who speaks to all peoples.

Another noted Ukrainian poet, Pavlo Tychyna, also regarded Pushkin's poetic writings as an example of supreme quality. To him Pushkin's thoughts "have grown and blossomed like an orchard" and his poetry was "a gigantic fountain with happiness," whose jets "ring with happiness," while feeding their life-giving water to the earth. Tychyna dedicated poems to Pushkin and translated his works - in the first place those which he thought to be especially rich in melodious variations and subtle phonetic techniques (i.e., The Devils, Landslide, A Winter Evening, etc.).

Pushkin was also translated by other prominent Ukrainian men of letters, including Mykola Bazhan, Volodymyr Sosyura, Andriy Nialyshko, Oles Honchar, Natalia Zabila and. many others who felt influenced by the great Russian poet in their own original creations.

Pushkin borrowed everything that was the best from the treasury of his people's spirit and returned this debt to all mankind at a huge interest.
Nowadays, one of humanity's most cherished dreams - which in Pushkin's time was sheer fantasy, but in which the poet ardently believed - about the fraternity and unity of spirit of the entire human race is being translated into actual deeds.

"Then nations, their strife forgotten,
Into one big family will merge."

Indeed, these lines are very close to all the nations struggling with growing resolution to set the planet Earth on the orbit of Peace, Labor and Brotherhood.

NINA KRUTIKOVA, literary critic, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, Ukr.