Author: PUSHKIN, Alexander
Biography:
PUSHKIN, Alexander (1799-1837: EB)
When George Borrow (q.v.) as an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society spent the years 1833-35 at St. Petersburg in Russia and published his two collections of translations there, Alexander Pushkin already had a well-established literary reputation. Borrow’s was the first book-length translation of any of Pushkin’s works into English. The young poet, however, had not much longer to live. He was born on 6 June 1799 into a noble family in Moscow, one of three children of Major Sergei Lvovich Pushkin and his wife Nadezhda Ossipovna Gannibal. His first language was French but he heard Russian from the servants; he also read widely in English. At home he had tutors before going to the Lyceum at Tsarskoye Selo, a town outside St. Petersburg that has since been renamed Pushkin. He published his first poem as a schoolboy. In St. Petersburg, where he worked in the Foreign Office, he developed political sympathies with the rebel Decembrists and became a mouthpiece for their views. He was therefore sent into exile from 1820 to 1826—eventually, to one of his mother’s remote estates—but was allowed to return to Moscow after the failure of the Decembrist rebellion. The period of exile was productive for him as a writer. Besides short lyric or political poems, he published histories, plays (Boris Godunov, 1831), prose tales, and verse narratives (Eugene Onegin, 1833). In 1831 he married Natalia Goncharova at St.Petersburg; they had four children. He died on 29 Jan. 1837 following injuries sustained in a duel with her alleged lover, her sister’s husband, the French soldier Baron Georges d’Anthès. The British press reported “the melancholy death of the great Russian poet.” (EB 12 Feb. 2025; Wikipedia 12 Feb. 1835; Globe 18 May 1837) HJ