THE WORKS OF.

ALEXANDER PUSHKIN.

ALEXANDER PUSHKIN.

The Poetry.

Baumanskaya Ulitsa, Moscow, Pushkin's birthplace A memorial bust marking Pushkin's birthplace; the house has been demolished and a school now stands in its place.

Pushkin's father, Sergei Lvovich Pushkin (17671848), was from a distinguished family of the Russian nobility, tracing its ancestry back to the 12th century.

Pushkin's mother, Nadezhda Ossipovna Gannibal (17751836), was descended from German and Scandinavian nobility.

SHORT POEMS.

Translated by Charles Edward Turner, George Borrow and Ivan Panin Universally revered as the greatest of all the Russian poets and the founder of his country's modern literature, Pushkin was born into the nobility in Moscow in 1799. Although destined to have a tragically short life, Pushkin had published his first poem at the age of fifteen and he was already widely recognised as being a poetic genius at the time of his graduation from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum.

For much of his literary career, Pushkin was censored under the strict surveillance of the Tsar's political police and he was often unable to publish his works. His political poems led to an interrogation by the Petersburg governor-general and the great poet even endured exile to his mother's rural estate in Mikhailovskoe from 1824 to 1826.

Pushkin is celebrated for having developed a highly nuanced level of language that went on to influence the course of Russia literature. He is also credited for augmenting the Russian lexicon, much like how Shakespeare influenced the English language. Pushkin's fashioning of new words, his use of rich vocabulary and his highly sensitive handling of style all laid the foundations for what we now consider to be modern Russian literature. In spite of his brief life, Pushkin bequeathed to posterity works of almost every literary genre, spanning lyric poetry, narrative poetry, unfinished novels, short stories, plays, critical essays and literary epistles.

In this section, readers can explore a selection of some of the poet's finest lyrical poems, including To K -- , now widely regarded as being the most famous Russian poem. Pushkin's short poems feature a large variety of themes, with personal, humorous and political works, as well as some of the most beauty love poetry ever written.

The Epiphany Cathedral, Moscow, where Pushkin was christened Pushkin, c.1801.

TO -- (KERN).

This poem was written in July 1825 and dedicated to Anna Petrovna Kern (1800-1879). It has the distinction of being labelled the most famous poem in the Russian language. This anonymous translation is followed by the original Russian text and then a comparison of the two texts.

I still recall the marvellous moment:

When you appeared before my gaze

Like a ghost, like a fleeting spirit,

Like soul of the purest grace.

In torturing fruitless melancholy,

In vanity and loud chaos

I've always heard your gentle voice

And glimpsed your features in my dreams.

As years passed and winds scattered

My long-past hopes, and in those days,

I lacked your voice's divine spell

And the bless'd features of your face.

Held in darkness and separation,

My days dragged in strife.

Lacking faith and inspiration,

Lacking tears and love and life.

But the time arrives; my soul awakens,

And again you appear before me

Like a ghost, like a fleeting spirit,

Like the soul of purest grace.

Again my heart beats in rapture,

Again everything awakens:

My long-past faith and inspiration,

And the tears and life and love.

1825.

Anna Petrovna Kern (1800-1879), a socialite, memoirist and the poet's married lover ***