Pushkin's Narratives and the Hex of Darkness

Abstract

Among the great poets of the world Pushkin was the first to express with such power and passion the eternal opposition of the cultivated and the primitive man.D. S. MerezhkovksiiI would like to begin this investigation of Pushkinian thematics with a fable, or better perhaps, a parable of my own making.Once upon a time in the land of Rus’ there lived two brothers. And although they were sired by a noble father and reared as befits the sons of a nobleman, they differed from each other as the day differs from the night, for the elder brother was tall and fairhaired and born of a Russian princess, while the younger brother was swarthy, small, and the bastard son of a dark-skinned barbarian maiden.As the boys grew up, to these bodily differences were added spiritual ones. For the elder brother was a dutiful son, who honored his parents and heeded his teachers and obeyed the laws of the land. After coming of age he traveled to the capital city and learned the ways of the imperial court and found favor in the eyes of the tsar.