The Life of Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian 19th century who has often been considered his country’s greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Alexander Pushkin blended Old Slavonic with vernacular Russian into a rich, melodic language. He was the first to use everyday speech in his poetry (Lakhostskii 50).

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born in Moscow on May 26,1799 into a cultured but poor aristocratic family (Lakhostskii 25). On his father’s side he was a descendant of an ancient noble family and on his mother’s side he was a great-great grandson of a black Abyssinian, Gannibal, who served under Peter the Great. Pushkin took great pride in his black ancestry and noble heritage. Throughout his childhood the future poet was entrusted to nursemaids, French tutors and governesses. He learned Russian from household serfs and from his nanny, Arina Rodionovna (Lavrin 61). Pushkin started to write poems from an early age. His first published poem was written when he was only 14.

In 1811 he was selected to be among the thirty students in the first class at the Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo. He attended the Lyceum from 1811 to 1817 and received the best education available to Russia at

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Between 1817 and 1820 he reflected liberal views in revolutionary poems such as his, ode “Freedom”, “The Village”, and a number of other poems on Alexander I and his minister Arakcheev (Lavrin 89).

Pushkin spent the years from 1826 to his marriage in 1831 largely in search of a wife. He was warmly received in literary circles: in circles of Guard-style lovers of wine, women, and song and in groups where political liberals debated reforms and constitutions. Pushkina loved the attention, which her beauty attracted in the highest society; she was fond of "coquetting" and of being surrounded by admirers, who included the Tsar himself. Pushkin died two days later, on January 29 (Mirsky 278). It was based on Russian folk-tales, which his grandmother had told him-in French (Mirsky 101). He became associated with members of a radical movement who participated later in the Decembrist uprising in 1825.

With the aid of influential friends, he was transferred in July 1823 to Odessa, where he engaged in theatre going, social outings, and love affairs with two married women. After almost three years in Kishinev, he wrote his first Bryonic verse tales,” The Prisoner of the Caucasus” (1820-21), “ The Bandit Brothers” (1820-22), and “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray”(1821-23). ” The next two years, from August 1824 to August 1826 he spent at Mikhaylovskoe in exile under surveillance (Mirsky 189). " A duel with d'Anthes took place on January 27, 1837.

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Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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