But the alarming revolutionary ideas bruited from France, and the Napoleonic campaign against Russia, caused a powerful revulsion of feeling toward Germany and away from France. In Germany, however, Young Russia met the same humanistic tendencies and passion for free thought with which France had been gradually impregnating the empire of the Slavs. Add to this the influence of Byron’s poetry, now stirring Europe, and we have the external forces which drove Russia to look at her own self with honest eyes—forces which at length found their literary climax in Pushkin’s giving to his native land a literature which was of the Russians, for the Russians, and by a Russian—a literature born of the Russian spirit, breathing her ideals, speaking her marvellously expressive tongue in new combinations of beauty, and set against a background of her soil and her cities.
A further remarkable influence was operating to prepare both Russia and Pushkin for the work of new creation: in the hands of Zhukovski and others who immediately preceded our author, the Russian language began suddenly to assume a flexibility and richness which, as I have intimated, were destined to be still more greatly enlarged by the gifts of Pushkin.
The author-to-be wasted no time beginning his career. Even at the age of ten, while an unstudious but omnivorously reading school-boy, he made deft imitations of French verse and the French drama, while at twelve he knew four or five languages and was reading Rousseau, Voltaire, and Molière with avidity. At this age the lad became a pupil in the College Tsarskoïé-Siélo, in 1811, the year of its founding by Alexander I. But while he absorbed enough to cause his wild genius to flourish, he was incorrigible, and always in hot-water—except among his comrades, by whom his dash, impudence, and wit made him to be both admired and feared.
When Pushkin was only fifteen, the European Messenger published anonymously a series of clever but obscene Russian verses in the style of Ossian and Parny. The name of the author soon leaked out, however, and when the following year the boy read on a public speech-day a suitable poem entitled “Recollections of Tsarskoïé-Siélo,” he was hailed as a gifted poet. The poetic form was miraculous—the thought, just about what a precocious lad could produce.
In 1817 Pushkin was graduated, and entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At once he was lionized by literary society, and became the leader of a brilliant but rakish clique—the story of their escapades would read like a tenderloin police-docket. At length, in 1820, the year when “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” his first great poem, was published, he committed some folly too outrageous to be condoned—probably an especially licentious expression in verse—and was banished to South Russia, where, wandering among the Caucasus ranges which color all his later work, and living near the romantic Black Sea, he remained for several years; until, in 1824, his banishment was commuted to confinement to his father’s estates. In a literary way this date marks the beginning of his new era, for he now began to bring into final form the master-poem, “Eugene Onyegin,” on which he had been working for several years—of which more presently.
Some—why, I cannot conceive—have attributed Pushkin’s ungovernable disposition to the mixed blood that flowed in his veins, as was the case with the elder Dumas. Pushkin’s maternal great-grandfather was that Abram Hannibal, “Peter the Great’s Arab favorite,” who was really an Abyssinian slave. The African youth was educated in France by his royal master and godfather, later admitted to his friendship, and eventually married to a Russian lady. Their son became a great Russian general. The poet himself bore unmistakable marks of his ancestry in his short curly hair and thick, sensuous lips, though his eyes were blue, his skin fair, and his hair light in hue.
During these earlier years of his short life, Pushkin was profoundly influenced by Byron, and even was willing to be called “the Russian Byron.” Indeed, his license-loving and liberty-adoring nature was quite like that of his English model. This influence is seen not only in his poetic methods, but in his teachings and in his themes. The poem “Poltava,” published in 1829, takes Mazeppa for its hero, and his poetic masterpiece, “Eugene Onyegin,” published in 1828, is really Don-Juanesque. Nor is it difficult to trace other evidences of this frankly admiring spirit.
Singularly enough, “Eugene Onyegin” (which Tschaikovsky has made the subject of an opera) is at once in the style of Byron (somewhat resembling his “Beppo”), while in theme, locale, and handling it throws off the trammels of Byronism, and indeed all foreignism, and becomes the first really great work of modern Russian literature. Whatever the original debt Pushkin owed to the author of “Don Juan,” in this and later work he strikes out with all the self-confidence and attainment of an original genius. So tender, so pathetic, yet so humorous, so full of human understanding, so informed with the spirit of contemporary Russian society, is this remarkable work, that its author achieved immortality in its writing. Thus did the years of exile on the paternal manor bear notable fruit.
Because this creation sets so lasting an initial mark, by establishing Russian literature upon a basis of art, it seems worth while to recite its argument here in full.
Eugene Onyegin is a “Byronic young society man,” who is recalled to the country from his city dissipations by his father’s death. Here he lives, for a long time avoiding all contact with his less cultivated neighbors. A young poet, Vladimir Lensky, the son of one of these manorial families, returns from abroad, and a congenial friendship springs up between the young men. Lensky, who is betrothed to Olga Larin, persuades Onyegin to call upon her family with him. Tatyana, Olga’s elder sister, at once falls in love with Onyegin, and writes him a letter of frank avowal—one of the most famous passages of the drama. But Onyegin gently turns her aside by assuming the rôle of a fatherly adviser, and the incident remains unknown to all except themselves and Tatyana’s old nurse. Soon afterwards, Lensky induces Onyegin to go to the Larins’ on the occasion of Tatyana’s name-day festival. For the sake of preventing gossip in a district given over to small talk, Onyegin yields and goes. At table, by the innocent scheming of her family, he is placed opposite to Tatyana, and finds the situation so embarrassing that he determines to revenge himself on the innocent Lensky by flirting with Olga, who is shortly to become Lensky’s wife. During the evening, Olga, pretty but weak-natured, accepts Onyegin’s attentions with such interest that Lensky challenges him. Heart-sick at the results of his momentary unjust anger, Onyegin would gladly apologize, were it not that Lensky has chosen as his representative an old fire-eater and tattler who would misrepresent his motives and perhaps compromise Tatyana. Therefore, he accepts—and Lensky falls. Onyegin then goes off on his travels. Olga soon consoles herself with a handsome officer, and after their marriage goes with him to his regiment. Tatyana, however, who is of a reserved, intense character, pines, refuses all offers of marriage, and, by the advice of friends, is finally taken to Moscow for the winter. There, as a wall-flower at her first ball, she captivates a prince from St. Petersburg—a distinguished and socially important general. She follows her parents’ wishes and marries him. When Onyegin returns to the capital a few years later, he finds, to his great astonishment, “that the little country girl whom he has patronized, rejected, almost scorned, is one of the great ladies of the court and society.” He falls madly in love with her, in his turn, but she gives him not the slightest sign of friendship. Driven to despair by this coldness, he writes her three letters, but she does not reply. Then, entering her boudoir unexpectedly, through the carelessness of her servants, he finds her in tears, reading his letter. He again avows his love. She is obliged to confess that she loves him still, but finally makes him understand that she will be true to her kind and high-minded husband. Thus the drama ends.