PUSHKIN AND CHINA

Abstract

The literary heritage of Alexander Pushkin is well known to a wide range of readers. A line in a letter to Count A. Benckendorff, written in January 1830 and in which Pushkin asks permission to let him go to China, attracts attention. The purpose of the article is to try to find out what reasons prompted Pushkin to make such a request. It is essential to understand the age during which the poet lived. The fascination with Chinese culture came to Russia from France, which significantly impacted Russia’s life in the 18th–19th centuries. Chinese goods, the so-called Chinese rarities, began to appear in Russia even during Peter I’s reign, who often gave orders to buy them for the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera. Exotic things from China were delivered to St. Petersburg by caravans from Beijing through Siberia and the Urals or by sea on ships of the East India Company through Western Europe. Empress Catherine II set the fashion for interiors in the Chinese style: the Chinese Palace (1762–1768) appeared in Oranienbaum; Chinese buildings, the largest complex of buildings in the Chinese style, appeared in Tsarskoe Selo. There, in Tsarskoe Selo, in 1811, Emperor Alexander I established the Imperial Lyceum, in which Alexander Pushkin studied, and where, undoubtedly, the poet’s first encounter with the Middle Kingdom occurred. At this time, Russian periodicals also paid much attention to China. In them, articles about the trade of Europeans in China, about porcelain and silk factories, as well as about the wisdom of Chinese rulers and moral instructions for posterity began to be published. Pushkin read a lot and could not have been unaware of these publications. The acquaintance of Pushkin with monk Father Iakinf (N. Bichurin), an outstanding Russian sinologist, had a significant influence on the poet. Father Iakinf was appointed the Head of the ecclesiastic mission in Beijing in 1807 and lived there until 1821. As the examination of Pushkin’s library shows, the poet had Bichurin’s books about China. Also, he read Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s book The General History of China in the Russian translation known at that time. As the study shows, Pushkin was interested in China and was going to visit it; however, fate had its own plans.