The Meaning of Genius in Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri

Abstract

A. Pushkin published a play entitled Mozart and Salieri five years after Salieri, a court musician in Vienna, died after suffering from senile dementia. Through the agony of Salieri contained in the rumor that Salieri poisoned Mozart, Pushkin described the meaning of art creation in the play, which is a work of art. Pushkin connected the attributes of artists, who are the creator of works, to the discussions about the genius, that has been widely spread at that time. Creation resembles the attributes of God, who creates a world that has never existed before. Therefore, the issue of genius having inspiration had been a major theme always contemplated by authors. Play is a genre that can clearly contain authors` agony over creation because artists firsthand appear in the play as characters. In addition, audiences can vividly see the scenes where different attitudes of creation oppose each other while firsthand listening to the agonies of the artists that appeared on the stage. The play Mozart and Salieri, which implemented the issue of binary opposition such as genius vs. ordinary person and inspiration vs. craftsmanship with real persons per se instead of abstract concepts, enables the audiences to see the issue differently as a large theme, the interaction between creation and humans. Pushkin`s concept of genius can be more concretely understood through the explanation about genius and arts mentioned by Kant in the Critique of Judgment. In this play, Pushkin has an insight into the nature of humans, who are the creators of arts while making Salieri and Mozart oppose each other in the dimension of the notion of genius and the truth behind the notion.