Mixed-race Pushkin: racial ambiguity and “The Lady Peasant”

Abstract

ABSTRACT The concept of racial ambiguity, or the quality of challenging existing racial categories, helps us understand Aleksandr Pushkin, a Russian poet of partially African descent famously known as “protean.” According to memoirs about the poet, in his own lifetime Pushkin’s African heritage did not prevent him from being categorized as Russian, but it distinguished him from his peers. Moreover, as a light-skinned mixed-race individual, Pushkin challenged reigning notions of Africanness. Pushkin did not fit perfectly into the categories of either “Russian” or “African.” This ambiguity is reflected both in memoirs about the poet and in Pushkin’s story “The Lady Peasant” (1831), whose heroine adopts different identities over the course of the text. While she crosses class rather than racial boundaries, the story’s broader, intertextual context and Pushkin’s focus on her dark skin suggest that race informs her performance. This paper thus suggests that we can better understand the writer’s treatment of shifting identities when we think of Pushkin not just as racially marked (as African or Black) but as racially ambiguous.