Poetry by Aleksandr Pushkin: Eugene Onegin, the Bronze Horseman, Ruslan and Ludmila, the Gypsies, Poltava

by Alexander Pushkin

Genres: Classics

70 pages, Paperback

Published May 4, 2010

About the author

Works of Russian writer Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin include the verse novel Eugene Onegin (1831), the play Boris Godunov (1831), and many narrative and lyrical poems and short stories.

See also:
Russian: Александр Сергеевич Пушкин
French: Alexandre Pouchkine
Norwegian: Aleksander Pusjkin
Spanish:Aleksandr Pushkin

People consider this author the greatest poet and the founder of modern literature. Pushkin pioneered the use of vernacular speech in his poems, creating a style of storytelling—mixing drama, romance, and satire—associated ever with greatly influential later literature.

Pushkin published his first poem at the age of 15 years in 1814, and the literary establishment widely recognized him before the time of his graduation from the imperial lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo. Social reform gradually committed Pushkin, who emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals and in the early 1820s clashed with the government, which sent him into exile in southern Russia. Under the strict surveillance of government censors and unable to travel or publish at will, he wrote his most famous drama but ably published it not until years later. People published his verse serially from 1825 to 1832.

Pushkin and his wife Natalya Goncharova, whom he married in 1831, later became regulars of court society. In 1837, while falling into ever greater debt amidst rumors that his wife started conducting a scandalous affair, Pushkin challenged her alleged lover, Georges d'Anthès, to a duel. Pushkin was mortally wounded and died two days later.

Because of his liberal political views and influence on generations of Russian rebels, Pushkin was portrayed by Bolsheviks as an opponent to bourgeois literature and culture and a predecessor of Soviet literature and poetry. Tsarskoe Selo was renamed after him.

Reviews

[Nour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poltava, which is a rebuke by Pushkin against Byron’s Mazeppa, starts out historiographically but then turns into a drama that vilifies Byron’s hero. Both writers are excellent, Ill however always love Byron more because of the romanticism in his writings, leading to a more fictionalised story in his poems, as opposed to the more realistic writing of Pushkin.

[Akica · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Gypsies is a tale about search for freedom in yourself but never letting others have that same freedom and how that makes such a tragic story.

[Hayley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classic Russian poetic literature. Pushkin had so much potential; it truly is a shame that he died so young. But anyway, I love the story within "The Bronze Horseman" and how it draws a parallel to the injustice comitted by Peter the Great in driving the Russian people into cultural oppression - forcing them to adopt "orthodox" beliefs and behaviors. If we have not our culture as a nation, our identity as individuals, this is death in and of itself.

[Harold Crowder]

Only The Bronze Horseman by Pushkin.