Zhukovski was one of those timid spirits which are born to be satellites, even though they rise before the sun in the pale dawn; but they only shine with reflected light, and their lustre becomes wholly absorbed in the rays of the rising luminary which replaces them.
I.
To realize the importance of the part the poets of this period were destined to play, we must remember what a very small part of the population of this vast country could be called the educated class. At the beginning of the century, the education of the Muscovite aristocracy was confided entirely to the Jesuits, who had been powerfully supported by the Emperor Paul. In 1811, Alexander I. replaced these foreign educators by native Russians, and founded the Lyceum of Tsarskoe-Selo, after the model of the Paris Lyceums.
Students were admitted according to birth and merit only. Pushkin and Gortchakof were the two who most distinguished themselves. The course of study was rather superficial. The students were on intimate terms with the soldiers of the Imperial Guard, and quartered in the imperial palace with them. Politics, patriotism, poetry, all together fomented an agitation, which ended with the conspiracy of December, 1825.
Pushkin was at once recognized as a master in this wild throng, and was already famous as a poet. The old Derzhavin cast his own mantle upon Pushkin’s shoulders and pronounced him his heir. Pushkin possessed the gift of pleasing; but to understand his genius, we must not lose sight of his origin. His maternal grandfather was an Abyssinian negro, who had been a slave in the Seraglio of Constantinople, was stolen and carried to Russia by a corsair, and adopted by Peter the Great, who made him a general, and gave him in marriage to a noble lady of the court. The poet inherited some of his grandfather’s features; his thick lips, white teeth, and crisp curly hair. This drop of African blood, falling amid Arctic snows, may account for the strong contrasts and exaggerations of his poetic nature, which was a remarkable union of impetuosity and melancholy.
His youth was passed in a wild whirl of pleasure and excess. He incurred while still young the imperial anger, by having written some insolent verses, as well as by committing some foolish pranks with some of the saints’ images; and was banished for a time to the borders of the Black Sea, where, enchanted by the delicious climate and scenery, his genius developed rapidly.
He returned not much the wiser, but with his genius fully matured at the age of twenty-five. For a few short years following his return, he produced his greatest masterpieces with astonishing rapidity, and died at thirty-seven in a duel, the victim of an obscure intrigue. He had married a very beautiful woman, who was the innocent cause of his death. Lending an ear to certain calumnies concerning her, he became furiously jealous, and fought the fatal duel with an officer of the Russian guard.
While we lament his sad fate, we can but reflect that the approach of age brings sadness with it, and most of all to a poet. He died young, in the prime of life and in the plenitude of his powers, giving promise of future possible masterpieces, with which we always credit such geniuses.
It is impossible to judge of this man’s works from a review of his character. Though his heart was torn by the stormiest passions, he possessed an intellect of the highest order, truly classic in the best sense of the word. When his talent became fully matured, form took possession of him rather than color. In his best poems, intellect presides over sentiment, and the soul of the artist is laid bare.
To attempt to quote, to translate his precious words, would be a hopeless task. He himself said: “In my opinion, there is nothing more difficult, I might say impossible, than to translate Russian poetry into French; concise as our language is, we can never be concise enough.”