Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is Russia's greatest poet, a ‘ founding father’ of modern Russian literature, and a major figure in world literature. His poetry and prose changed the course of Russian culture, and his works inspired operas by Musorgsky and Tchaikovsky (as well as Peter Shaffer's Amadeus). This book's title refers to Pushkin's capacity to transform philosophical and aesthetic ideas into poetry. Arguing that Pushkin's poetry has often been misunderstood as transparently simple, this book traces the interrelation between his writing and the influences of English and European litera ... More

Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is Russia's greatest poet, a ‘ founding father’ of modern Russian literature, and a major figure in world literature. His poetry and prose changed the course of Russian culture, and his works inspired operas by Musorgsky and Tchaikovsky (as well as Peter Shaffer's Amadeus). This book's title refers to Pushkin's capacity to transform philosophical and aesthetic ideas into poetry. Arguing that Pushkin's poetry has often been misunderstood as transparently simple, this book traces the interrelation between his writing and the influences of English and European literature and cultural movements on his understanding of the creative process and the aims of art. The book approaches Pushkin's poetic texts through the history of ideas, and argues that in his poetry the clashes that matter are not about stylistic innovation and genre, as has often been suggested. Instead, the poems are shown to articulate a range of positions on key topics of the period, including the meaning of originality, the imagination, the status of the poet, the role of commercial success, the definition of genius, representation of nature, the definition of the hero, and the immortality of the soul. The book addresses how theories of inspiration informed Pushkin's thinking about classicism and Romanticism in the 1820s and 1830s. It looks at the intersection of Pushkin's knowledge of important ideas and artistic trends with poems about the creative imagination, psychology, sex and the body, heroism and the ethical life, and death.