Russian literature: 225th birthday of Pushkin: What helps against frustration and anger

This year is a Pushkin year. Especially in Russia, where the poet’s 225th birthday is the occasion for many festivities. In this country you hardly notice anything about it. The Russian attack on Ukraine is also blamed on Russian culture. In Ukraine, which was part of the Tsarist Empire as well as the Soviet Union, war is being declared against the memory of a common culture. Monuments are being torn down, including those of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, who was known to be Russia’s most famous poet.

He wrote over 700 poems and a wealth of short stories, dramas and short stories in his short creative period. More than 800 letters were written by him. Every child in his homeland knows the fairy tales that he adapted. The German book market is currently not taking any notice of Pushkin. But there is some of his work on the market, even if it is antiquarian. The only “new” thing is a volume from 2022 that could be read against the backdrop of Corona: “Pushkin in Quarantine.” Featuring many of the poet’s hand drawings, it illuminates an interesting episode from his life: very productive and at the same time full of restlessness.

There were economic reasons why Pushkin set off for the village of Boldino in the Nizhny Novgorod governorate in August 1830 (the carriage ride took three days). Constantly in financial trouble, he was under pressure from his future mother-in-law. Although he was able to get engaged to his beloved Natalia Goncharova, her family was impoverished and tried to extort money from him. Although his father was a miser, he promised him a country estate with 200 “souls.” Pushkin went there to have the property registered in his name. At that time he didn’t know anything about a cholera outbreak.

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He set out on August 28th, 1830, and on September 9th the first illnesses appeared near Boldino. The poet is not afraid of infection. What depresses and angers him is the compulsion. He wants to make his way to Moscow, but the city is cordoned off. Not even mail arrives from there. The worries about his Natalja are all the greater. “So, you’re in the country, well protected from cholera?” he writes to her. “Send me your address and your health bulletin.”

Cholera becomes his “plague,” which he manages to make productive for himself. »He writes three at once Belkin’s storiesstarting from The coffin maker. Also a whole series of poems; They were also an important source of income for Pushkin during those difficult times. And he closes his verse novel Jewgeni Onegin from, at least the chapter that should be at the end, even if there are more in his imagination Onegin-Chapter moving,” writes Rosemarie Tietze. The way she not only translated the texts for this small volume, but also commented on them, is a great asset.

As much as Pushkin was annoyed by the forced seclusion, it was good for his writing. The stories “The Blizzard”, “The Shot” and “The Stationmaster” are created. Also two dramas: “The Stingy Knight” and “Mozart and Salieri”.

“Madam Natalia Nikolayevna, I can’t argue in French, so allow me to address you in Russian…” The editor tells us that the convention at the time required letters, especially to women, to be written in French. How many quarrels and annoyances surrounded the poet and how even worse things were brewing! On November 29, 1830 he finally set off for Moscow, but he was detained 75 versts from Moscow. After all, people like him have relationships that can help them in such situations.

He arrives in Moscow on December 5th. He is cash-strapped and has to pawn his new asset to have cash in hand. Rosemarie Tietze writes that he gave his mother-in-law 11,000 rubles for the preparations for the wedding, which would then take place on February 18, 1831. Just six years later, on February 10, 1827, he died from his injuries after a duel for his wife’s honor. He was only 37 years old and at the peak of his creativity.

In Boldino, all of this was still a long way off for him. What the book definitely shows: How to best deal with frustration and annoyances – by working. The one-act play “The Feast at the Time of the Plague” is one of the texts that were written in forced seclusion. A cart full of corpses passes by outside, but there is a celebration inside. Grief and defiance mix.

Alexander Pushkin: Pushkin in quarantine. Selected, translated and commented by Rosemarie Tietze. Friedenauer Presse, 115 pages, br., 22 €.

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