The Great Innovator

Abstract

No poet in Russia had so enviable a lot as Pushkin…. His name had an almost electric quality. Gogol's words have been supported by history, for they are true even today. The very name Pushkin has become a symbol of struggle and hope, of faith in the great mission of Russia; his poetry has been a beacon at all the most critical turning points, and people have turned to it both in the darkest years and in the days of victory. In our minds Pushkin's works and his personality, heroic and tragic, have merged into an indissoluble unity as a standard of the wisdom of life, of fidelity to a chosen path, of moral purity. Pushkin has become a part of the spiritual biography of everyone, has become a constant companion; and we inevitably think of the past, the present, and the future through his poems. We find in them answers to our difficult questions and comfort in our tribulations. Reading Pushkin, we hear his voice. He was the first poet to demolish the artificiality of the authorial voice — in Ruslan and Liud...