"Scorn Not the Sonnet": Pushkin and Wordsworth

Abstract

In 1831, when Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837) asked friend to have St. Petersburg bookseller send me Crabbe, Wodsworth [sic], Southey, and Schakspear [sic] (Shaw, 2:482), he had already read Wordsworth, with sympathetic comprehension, during previous year he had written sonnet closely modeled on one of Wordsworth's. Pushkin's three sonnets--four, if Elegy in seven rhymed iambic pentameter couplets included--were written in 1830. Though not line-by-line translation of Wordsworth's not sonnet; Critic, you have one sonnet parallels it throughout, even using first line as subtitle. Pushkin first encountered Wordsworth's sonnet in pirated 1828 Paris edition of his Poetical Works published by John Anthony and William Galignani, presumably based on first English collected edition of 1827, in which not Sonnet first appeared. (Pushkin also had in his library Paris editions in English of, e. g., Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats; Crabbe; Hazlitt; Washington Irving; Thomas Moore; Walter Scott; and Southey [Wolff, 495, 497, 503, 504, 510, 517, 518].) Wordsworth ruefully acknowledged that Galignani pirated edition, which follows, is printed with admirable accuracy, I have not noticed single error that I am not myself answerable for (Moorman, 550 note): Scorn not Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours;--with this Key Shakspeare unlocked his heart; melody Of this small Lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; A thousand times this Pipe did Tasso sound; Camoens soothed with it an Exile's grief; The Sonnet glittered gay myrtle Leaf Amid cypress with which Dante crowned His visionary brow: glow-worm Lamp, It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land To struggle through dark ways; and, when damp Fell round path of Milton, in his hand The Thing became Trumpet; whence he blew Soul-animating strains--alas, too few! (Wordsworth, 119) In 1803, English Annual Review had dismissed sonnets as at best ... but stiff difficult trifles, and surely more remote from simplicity which they often affect than any other class of poems in our language (Havens, 521-22). In this sonnet Wordsworth refutes such critics, along with Samuel Johnson, who characterized Milton as a genius who never learned art of doing little things with grace (Hill, 4:305). Similarly, in 1793, George Steevens, rejected sonnets from his edition of William Shakespeare because, he said, strongest act of Parliament that could be framed, would fail to compel readers into their service (Havens, 48081). And dismissing sonnets of Edmund Spenser in 1798, Nathan Drake wrote, the critic will recognise many of trifling conceits of Italian, but find little to recompense trouble of research (Havens, 481). In not sonnet Wordsworth regards form as vehicle either or private themes. Milton him exemplifies public sonneteer, while private themes preoccupy other poets he lists, all of whom drew solace from sonnet as either exiles or lovers (or both) (Johnson, 39). His omitting great French sonnet writers, Du Bellay, Marot, or Ronsard, would be inexplicable except that, as William Hazlitt noted in The Spirit of Age, Wordsworth condemns all French writers (as well of poetry as prose) in lump (Howe, 11:93). Wordsworth himself, in his sonnet Great men [Milton and some of his contemporaries] have been among us ..., says, ... France, 'tis strange, Hath brought forth no such souls as we had then. No master spirit, no determined road; But equally want of books and men! (De Selincourt & Darbishire, 3:116-17) Still, in his vindication of sonnet Wordsworth, he marshalled distinguished array of continental poets, Petrarch, Tasso, Camoes, and Dante, alongside British Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, last revered by Wordsworth as preeminent creator of sonnets springing from the strife/That animates scenes of life (Wordsworth, 125). …