"My pen revels in finding
In it the ends of lines.
Exactness of expressions
Through hallowed crystal shines."
Exactness of expression is as important to Pushkin as it was to Pope, just as fearless honesty was the keystone of his personality.
It was at the public examination of the Lyceists in Russian literature in 1815 that he first came before the public eye. Together with other competitors he had to read his work before the old ode-writer D'erjàvin, who was so thrilled by The Reminiscences of the Tsàrskoye Selò that he wanted to rush forward and embrace the young poet.
Jukòvski, then at the height of his fame, would read his verses to Pushkin and rely on his judgment. When in return Pushkin read Ruslàn and Ludmìla, Jukòvski gave the boy his portrait with this inscription: "To the victorious pupil from his conquered teacher."
Such treatment might well be expected to turn the head of the youth, but Pushkin was then, as ever, modest and extremely critical of his own work. He was, as I have said, always searching for hidden genius in others: he it was who first discovered Gogol, and when that Dickens of Russia published Dead Souls and The Inspector-General, the subjects in each case being suggested to him by Pushkin, the poet said delightedly: "The rascal robs me in such a bewitching way that it is impossible to be angry with him."
Pushkin's father declined to allow him to take a commission in the Hussars, and at eighteen the poet obtained a post in the Foreign Office, where he had much leisure, and plunged deeper than ever into the excesses common to his time, with the result that, though he swam, rode, fenced and walked to keep himself fit, twice in his nineteenth and twentieth years he nearly lost his health. Nor did his riotous living prevent him from working hard at his poetry.
In 1820 the long fairy tale Ruslàn and Ludmìla appeared. The nearest approach to it in England is Hero and Leander—sensuous yet cold. Everywhere it was read, copied out and learnt by heart by tradesman and noble alike. The story was founded on the national folklore. A wicked, humped dwarf carries away the only daughter of Prince Vladimir of Kiev from her nuptial bed to his castle: Ruslàn, the bridegroom, and three disappointed lovers give chase. The adventures of the four warriors, Ludmìla's seclusion in the wizard's castle and Ruslàn's ultimate victory by hanging on to the long beard of the dwarf as he flies over seas and forests form the plot of the story.
The method of handling the story was fascinating, and quite new to Russia. It was vigorous, whimsical, absolutely natural and human: it was this last characteristic in particular which captivated the hearts of the whole race. Russia always loves the natural—but she did not yet recognise why it was that Pushkin especially appealed to her: there had been hitherto no realistic school.
No one realised, Pushkin least of all, that Ruslàn and Ludmìla laid the foundation-stone of all future Russian literature.
The two schools then in existence, the pseudo-classical and the romantic, debated savagely as to which category Pushkin belonged. They were unable to grasp the significance of this bubbling over of human fun, this directness of detail; indignation at such ideas as "Ruslàn's tickling with his spear the nostrils of the giant's head," as bringing the national element into poetry at all, and so on, spread fast.