University of Virginia Library

Ragozin, Zenaïde A. "Pushkin and His Work." Cosmopolitan 28 (Jan. 1900): 307-314.

IT may be a long time yet before Russian poetry is anything more than a word to the great bulk of the English-reading public, and the name of Kalidâsa or Firdûsi would convey to the average mind a far more definite impression than the name of Maïkof, Polonsky or Nekràssof—because every one who is at all on familiar terms with books has met at least the names of the Hindoo and the Persian poet, while it is absolutely certain that not one in a thousand habitual readers, or even students of literature, ever comes across those of the Russians. Yet one name there is, which has pierced through the barrier raised by race difference and an exceedingly difficult language, and is at least as familiar to English and American ears as those of the two Orientals: the name of Pushkin, the centennial anniversary of whose birth was celebrated last year all over Russia.

There is in this a certain unconscious justice; in this sense, that if ever there was a representative national writer, who absorbed all the vital sap of his native soil, who embodied all the elements of which his nation was composed, and reflected every side and aspect of that nation's life, that writer was Pushkin. He even enacted in his own person, in the brief thirty-seven years of his life, the process of evolution through which his country has passed within this century. He was born the Russia of the end of the eighteenth century; he died the Russia of to-day.

There are many currents in Russian thought: the philosophical, the cosmopolitan, the patriotic, the conservative, the opposition (the latter embodied in what is called "denunciatory literature"); to gain a knowledge of all, and from them to form a faithful picture of the country's spiritual and material life, one would have to read the several writers, each of whom represents some particular fraction of the whole. But if ever the complete works of Pushkin are presented in a worthy translation, a thorough study of them will bring before the reader Russia "in her habit as she lives"—with her greatness and her faults, her large-hearted lovableness and her foibles, her passionate patriotism and as passionate protest—the "large and liberal discontent" which William Watson counts among "the things that are more excellent"— her pregnant possibilities and all-embracing humanity. Yes, Pushkin is Russia, all Russia, the national poet in the widest sense, as was strikingly shown during his centennial when each of the numerous political and intellectual fractions, from the highest official circles to the "reddest" radical cliques, claimed him for its own and could support its claim from passages in his works and in his life.

And yet he was, ethnologically, not all Russian. He had, on his mother's side, a generous admixture of foreign blood—African blood. His great-grandfather, Abraham (Ibrahim) Petrovitch Hannibal, was a full-blood Abyssinian princeling who had been stolen in infancy by slave dealers and brought to Constantinople. The Russian ambassador saw him there in a pasha's household, and was so delighted with the child's pretty antics that the pasha gave him the boy to take home. The ambassador, in turn, presented little Ibrahim to his imperial master, Peter the Great, who took a great fancy to him, stood godfather at his baptism, and kept him about his person. Always bright, the boy now developed exceptional cleverness, and Peter, who was not the man to neglect any intellectual promise, had him carefully taught under his own eyes. In 1716 he took young Ibrahim with him on his European journey, and left him in Paris to complete his education with several other young noblemen, under the surveillance of the Russian legation. There he was petted and lionized and had altogether such a good time that he could with difficulty be prevailed upon to return to Petersburg; in fact, it was only a personal appeal from Peter to his godson's good feeling and affection which brought him back post-haste, at the cost of much regret and even heartache. After Peter's death he joined the party opposed to the tyranny of the

all-powerful favorite, Prince Menshikof, and was removed to Siberia, on garrison duty which amounted to polite exile, but was promptly called back when his benefactor's daughter Elizabeth ascended the throne. He then rose from grade to grade at court and in the army until he retired to his estates in the rank of general-en-chef. He died, at a very advanced age, in 1781. His eldest son distinguished himself in the naval war against Turkey under Orlof, and founded the city of Kherson. His granddaughter Nadejda was Pushkin's mother.

Pushkin's father belonged to the old noblesse. One of his ancestors played a prominent part in the reign of Ivan IV. (the Terrible), and in the eventful inter-regnum and civil wars which ended in the election of Michael Romanof to the throne. He was an aristocrat of a type produced by the complex influences of a court presided over by the imperial philosopher and philanthropist who, by her genius and personal charm, achieved the incredible feat of reconciling a craze for Rousseau, Voltaire and the Encyclopedists with the most loyal absolutism. Catherine II. loved Russia with a patriotic fervor, and a rare appreciation of the national character, to which her private correspondence alone would bear sufficient witness. Her enthusiasm for the language of her adopted country was almost prophetic, for in her time it was only beginning to unfold its literary possibilities; it was reserved for our poet to bring out all its richness and flexibility, all the music of its infinite variety. Yet one of the most direct effects of her influence upon her immediate surroundings—the court, and thence upon the ruling minority known as "society"—was to complete what had been begun by Peter's foreign importations and continued by his daughter Elizabeth's French predilections, i.e., to denationalize, to a certain extent and superficially only, the upper ten thousand, to estrange them from their own people, and to give them an artificial veneer of French culture which only the tenacity of ineradicable race qualities prevented from going deep enough to vitiate the vital spring of nationality. The most dangerous symptom of this disease was a contempt for all things native and for the intelligence of the masses—in other words, for all who did not speak French words, think French thoughts and wear French dress.

Such was the atmosphere in which little Alexander grew and developed—very much at his own sweet will; for his mother—a clever, cold, worldly woman—was not fond of him, finding him unsociable and undemonstrative. She did not conceal her preference for his sister Olga and his brother Leo, and it does credit to all the children that their mutual affection was not impaired by these unnatural conditions. Alexander's loving, ardent nature might have suffered, but he had a haven of refuge in the room of his grandmother Hannibal. Thither he fled from the persecutions of the French governesses who were the bane of his existence, and once ensconced in the old lady's huge workbasket he was inviolable.

His other good fairy was his peasant nurse, Arina Rodiónovna, to whom Russia owes a monument by the side of her nursling's. But the time of her saving influence was yet to come. Just now the boy made his headquarters in his father's library, with the result that, at eleven, "he knew French literature by heart," as his brother said later with only pardonable exaggeration, and was beginning to try his hand at clever little poems—vers d'occasion—and even a bit of comedy inspired by Molière, an author in whom his father especially delighted and whose works he frequently read to his family with masterly elocution.

Alexander was twelve years old when the school question came up, and he barely escaped being sent to the Jesuit College, a fashionable and high-toned institution very popular at the time among the Petersburg aristocracy. It was through the efforts and influence of a patriotic friend of the family. A. F. Tourguénief, that he was received instead into the newly opened Lyceum at Tsárskoyé-Selò. Here the boy found most favorable conditions for the free development of his character. The hitherto repressed genial side of his nature expanded and blossomed out in the atmosphere of warm-hearted comradeship, which in some cases matured into serious, lifelong friendships. The Lyceum, a very exclusive,

aristocratic institution, was conducted on exceptionally liberal lines, possibly too liberal in some ways. A rather dangerous margin of liberty was left to the young fellows, and it was not strange that they should be wild. Pushkin's particular set was not the soberest, but it was the most talented, enthusiastic and generous. His popularity, however, was not limited to a few; he soon became the poet-laureate of the school. At first he was nicknamed "the Frenchman"; but the general spirit of the place was rather more Russian than his environment at home had been, and he was gradually drawn into using his native language. The artist's creative chord was touched, and we have sundry short poems of this early period, written for special festive occasions, which are little gems. His fame, indeed, spread far beyond the Lyceum walls, and the best literary men of the time began to expect great things of him. The regular studies did not fare so well. The masters, while loving and admiring him, were compelled to mark him down as indolent and careless, and he was graduated the nineteenth on the list.

This poor showing, however, does not seem to have greatly affected him, nor did it prevent his being the hero of his class, the pride of both faculty and students. For he was, of course, the poet of the occasion, and the poem, "Reminiscences of Tsárskoyé-Selò," which he delivered from the platform before the most select, the most representative audience which court and city could have mustered, was a strangely mature production—a loving retrospect on the boundary-line between the beautiful dreamland which school had been to him and his chosen circle of friends, and the mysterious reality beyond, the whole instinct with that prophetic sadness which all true poets have known in the very flush of youthful spirits and joyousness. The young poet knew that among the audience sat Derjávin, the eagle of the preceding literary era, the creator of the Russian ode, to whom the great Catherine had been "Felicia," as Elizabeth had been "Gloriana" to Spenser, and the consciousness almost robbed Pushkin of his voice, especially when he addressed the aged poet with his last strophe, which as a homage to "Russia's inspired bard." Derjávin, making his way through the congratulating throng, stood before his youthful successor with markedly inclined head, in reverential attitude, about to bestow on him a warm embrace. This was too much for the emotional boy of sixteen, and— he ran away. That same day Pushkin's father was present at a dinner given by Count Razumofsky, Minister of Public Instruction, and Alexander's quick talent, present success and future promise formed the main theme of conversation. Derjávin was present, and, as was his wont, silent, if not glum. But when the Minister, courteously addressing Pushkin, said, "And yet, I should like to train your son for prose work," the old lion growled, "Let the boy alone; he is a poet." This was his consecration.

The following four years of Alexander's life may be summed up in three words: study, writing, society life. Equally eager, equally indefatigable, in all, he spent himself so recklessly that, before he was twenty-one, he had twice worked and danced himself into brain-fever. Society always exercised a fascinating—and in the end, alas! fatal-influence over him. This was an exciting time, too, with many serious, and even dangerous, elements seething and fermenting under the frivolous surface. There were other things than society gossip and love-making going on under cover of all the banqueting and dancing, and the young men who feasted most wildly and danced most assiduously were those whom, five years later, the ill-advised, ill-fated outbreak of the 14th of December sent to the gallows or the mines, or, at the best, into Siberian exile. For it is well known that only the flower of the capital's aristocracy was concerned in the conspiracy ostensibly directed against the accession of Nicholas I. And they were, most of them, Pushkin's intimates. It was impossible, with his impulsive nature and facile pen, that he should not become implicated, and there were verses of his, written between two cups of champagne and circulated in manuscript copies, which of course found their way into the Emperor's hands and sorely puzzled him as to what he should do with the author.

Nicholas was proud of Russian talent and honestly desirous of furthering the

progress of Russian literature, to the extent of stretching important points in its favor. Thus, when Karamzén undertook his colossal work, "The History of the Russian Empire," he was granted access to the most secret state archives and exempted from the control of the Censor's office. In young Pushkin's case the Emperor was naturally inclined to leniency, and the poet's friends fought a battle half won already when they interceded in his favor. Karamzén undertook to give him a parental talking-to and obtained from him the promise that he would not again swamp Russia with subversive poetry. So, instead of being sent to some Siberian city or to a remote monastery, he was given some good advice and one thousand roubles traveling money, and ordered to Ekaterinoslav in the south of Russia, there to join the staff of Governor Inzof, one of the wisest and kindest old generals in the service, who received him with open arms, settled him in his own house to keep him out of harm's way, and treated him altogether as a son.

Although Pushkin appreciated this kindness and became warmly attached to his gentle mentor, he was not happy. Moody and restless, he often gave the old general, who was in a way responsible for him, a good deal of anxiety. The poet's health broke down again; he was sent on a trip to the Caucasus and the Crimea, in the company of a friendly and reliable family. His letters betray low spirits, at times even temper; but there is no trace of either in the wonderful poems—"The Captive of the Caucasus" and "The Fountain of Baktchi-Sarae"—for which inspiration was supplied by the magnificent scenery and the romantic memories of those semi-Eastern countries.

So much traveling, if anything, increased the spirit of restlessness which would not suffer Pushkin to settle down contentedly. He was seized with a violent longing for the sea, and with some difficulty persuaded General Inzof to transfer him to Odessa. On the way thither he stumbled on some encamped gipsies and wandered off with them, making himself perfectly at home and a great favorite. To this whim we owe a charming poem, "The Gipsies," somewhat in the Byronian vein.

Odessa was the most European of Russian cities after St. Petersburg. There he found again a brilliant society, Italian opera, and was delighted. But not for long. The Governor, Count Vorontsof, was kind, but—wanted him to work, setting him various official tasks. The poet grew restless, and, it must be confessed, tried his chief's patience almost beyond endurance. The south was visited that year with the locust plague, and Vorontsof sent Pushkin as special commissioner to study the plague on the spot and report on the damage done, possible remedies, et cetera, et cetera. The report came in due time; it read as follows:—

No one will blame Vorontsof for urgently requesting to be relieved of such a subordinate.

The poet in May, 1824, was ordered home, to his parents' estate of Mikháïlofskoyé in the government of Pskof (a couple of days from Petersburg; now, by rail, a few hours), and was placed under his own father's surveillance. The old gentleman was not overmuch pleased to have the custody of his wayward son, and did not make things very easy for him. Yet the two years of his forced retirement were probably the most fruitful and altogether beneficial of Pushkin's career. In this peaceful retreat, with his time all his own, with all his faculties well centered and in healthy working order, free from the disturbing claims and influences of social life, once for all he "found himself," to use a truly profound German expression. In this work of moral recuperation his main help and solace was the companionship of his old peasant nurse, Arina Rodiónovna. She was a superior woman, without being in the least aware of it, of a rural type which is fast dying out—if not already dead—in all countries: an inexhaustible mine of folk-lore. In his early boyhood, surfeited with the cold artificialities of the late and contemporary French school, Pushkin had unconsciously enjoyed his nurse's songs and stories as a drink from a pure, cold spring, and in the Lyceum days he had begun his fantastic tale, "Ruslán

and Ludmila," on folk-lore motives from the national heroic-ballad cycle. Now he turned to her consciously to draw through her the unalloyed vigor of his native soil, the uncorrupted national spirit, the undiluted richness, raciness and grace of his native language—in short, as he said himself, to get rid of the last vestige of what he called his "confounded French education."

The external routine of Pushkin's life at Mikháïlofskoyé was that of any society man from the capital thrown for a time on the resources of nature and a country neighborhood, as described with masterly vividness in his novel (in verse), "Eugene Oniégin." But many hours of each day were given to work in his own plain sitting-room, where he mostly spent his evenings in the company of his old nurse, always as eager to listen as she was willing to talk. The folk-tales which Pushkin put into verse directly from her words, preserving with marvelous tact the characteristic turns and epic forms of the narrative, are among the most charming productions of his lighter vein.

Thus the terrible year 1825 came and went. Pushkin, in his position of semi-exile, was spared many perplexities, many temptations. That he could not have kept out of the trouble had he been entirely at liberty, he freely admitted to the Emperor himself in a confidential audience to which he was summoned by imperial order in September, 1826. Nicholas was gracious.

"Pushkin," he suddenly asked, at the end of a long talk, "should you have taken part in the 14th of December if you had been in Petersburg?"

"Most undoubtedly I should, sire," promptly replied the poet. "All my friends were in it, and I could not have kept away. Only absence saved me, for which I thank God."

"Well," said the Emperor, "you have had enough fooling. I hope that you will be sensible after this, and that we shall not quarrel any more. You shall send me all you write; I myself will be your censor."

From this day to that of the poet's premature death Nicholas never wavered in his kindly disposition, to which he gave expression openly on more than one occasion, although there were petty jealousies enough at work, always on hand with slanderous insinuations—the usual thing, never absent at any court.

It might have been better for Pushkin in every way could he have kept away from court circles and so-called society life generally. But that life with its luxurious setting appealed to the beauty-loving and excitable side of his poet's nature, and he never could resist its glamour. His marriage in 1830 with an extremely beautiful but rather shallow-minded and pleasure-loving young girl, Natalie Gontcharóf, only drew him deeper into the vortex, from which no escape was possible thereafter. His wife's tastes, and partly his own, necessitated a style of living far beyond his means, and the pressure of debt and various entanglements made itself felt from year to year, even though the very considerable income from his writings, added to his own fortune, should have afforded him a more than comfortable competency. But he was, of course, an indifferent business man. His estates were ill managed and yielded irregular returns. Add to all this occasional losses at the card-table—an inevitable standing feature of Russian high life at that time, and much later, too—and it will be seen that our poet had more than his share of those petty, nagging material cares which were so particularly distasteful to him.

About this time, too, a change was taking place in his heretofore open and genial nature. The criticism with which each of his forthcoming works was met, upset and irritated him. For it was ignorant, or at least incompetent, criticism. The trouble was that there could be no critics for him. His most important works were appearing in quick succession just in these years and— they puzzled their readers. He was innovating, creating, in every direction, and the editors of the critical departments in the contemporary magazines, with the best will, handled him either roughly or awkwardly, because they had no standards by which to judge him: he was creating the standards. He had to educate a generation capable of criticising him, and it may be asserted that it is only the great men who may be called his spiritual posterity—the great modern Russian writers—who have grown up to the task. He

felt that he was misapprehended or not understood at all. Modest as all true genius is, he was at first staggered; in a moment of despondency he went so far as to write (in a letter to a friend): "Perhaps, after all, innovations are unnecessary." But the weakness was momentary; the rebound of self-consciousness prompt and vigorous. The genius in him asserted its supreme rights, its inviolable majesty. He knew he was right, though he could have given no reason—he never was good at arguing. The revulsion was complete and final, and left him a sterner, more unbending man than he had been naturally inclined to be. It was when he had arrived at this last phase of his intellectual development that he wrote a brief and pithy profession of faith of which the following claims at least to be a true rendering:—

The immediate occasion of this hardening transformation was the unfavorable reception awarded to the best-loved child of his Muse, the work he knew to be most perfect, most mature—his national historical tragedy of "Boris Godunóf." He had written it entirely during those fruitful years at Mikháïlofskoyé, and had kept it six years in his portfolio, shrinking to the last from actual publication. For he knew it was too novel to please the general public, who object to being startled; he felt it to be beyond his contemporaries, with the exception of his own small chosen circle. He foresaw the result; yet, when it came, it hurt him sorely, and, for a time, upset his mental balance.

The great innovation in Pushkin's tragedy was that he did not treat it on the lines of French pseudo-classicism, but on those of the Shakespearean histories. He had been for a time, like all his contemporaries, under the spell of Byron's magnificent poetry and morbid views of life and men. But this influence was dispelled like mist before the morning sun when Shakespeare's glory burst on him. He studied him closely and lovingly; how searchingly and understandingly is shown by many stray bits of criticism scattered through his letters.

"I never read either Calderon or Lope de Vega," Pushkin writes, in a precious letter in which he opens a glimpse into the sanctum of his work, "but what a man is Shakespeare! I cannot get over him. How paltry Byron is by his side—Byron the dramatist, who in all his life understood only one character—his own. . . . To one of his personages he gave his pride, to another his hatred, to a third his moody melancholy. Thus out of one complete, gloomy and powerful character he made several insignificant ones. That is not tragedy. . . . There is another common error. Having conceived a character, everything the author makes him say, even to the most indifferent, becomes distinctive and typical—like the pedants and sailors in Fielding's old novels. A conspirator asks for a glass of water in the manner of a conspirator—and makes himself ridiculous. . . . Now take Shakespeare. He lets his characters speak and act with all the careless naturalness of real life, because he is sure, at the right moment, to make them strike the right note."

To Pushkin's admiration and knowledge of Shakespeare we owe two more productions in two very different veins: a translation, or rather adaptation, under the title of "Angelo," of "Measure for Measure," grave and stern, and wholly worthy of the original; and a story in light, frolicsome verse, a charming bit of fun, which may be called a parody on "Lucretia"—in this way: Pushkin happened to read the tale of the Roman matron's woes while in a particularly jocose mood, and the mad thought struck him, as he laid it down, "What if she had not taken things so tragically, but had simply— boxed Tarquin's ears!" The idea amused him so much that he allowed it to take tangible shape in "Count Noolin," a modern version

of the ancient story, enacted between a young and beautiful chatelaine and a young city Lovelace, bored and idle, her neighbor in the country, with just the dénouement he had imagined.

A list of Pushkin's works would be dry reading. Suffice it to say that his "Eugene Oniégin" may possibly be accounted his greatest work. It is, in the highest sense, a society novel, which can be likened only to Thackeray's "Vanity Fair." It rivals Thackeray's masterpiece in scope, in power and grace, in vividness and depth, and as a wholly representative picture of the time and society it portrays, with an undercurrent of pensiveness and pathos, which belongs to the race, irrespective of time and setting. Add to all this the charm of matchless versification, sprightly, abundant, spontaneous and musical as a mountain spring, and you will have a gem of a water and cut which would be hard to match in any literature.

A historical novel in prose, "The Captain's Daughter," depicting scenes from the terrible peasant uprising under Pugatchóf, in Catherine's reign; a history of the same; journalistic work (critical essays, traveling notes, et cetera); short stories; folk-tales in verse; ballads—there is hardly a literary form of which he has not left at least one specimen: and it is always a perfect one, a model of its kind.

The quantity of historical notes, fragmentary material, jottings of all kinds, which was found in his papers, gave heart-breaking evidence that when, at only thirty-seven, on that bleak January morning, he fell in a most unnecessary duel, he was snatched away in the very prime of his powers. It is hardly orthodox to admit the necessity of any duel; but this one surely was most unnecessary, since there was no cause for it but society gossip, which should have been ignored and would then have quickly died out, or found some new pabulum. But it was Pushkin's great misfortune to be extremely sensitive to what people said of him and his, and gossip had been busy for some time with his young wife's innocent, though possibly somewhat imprudent, conduct—and this was his most vulnerable point. He became morose, irritable, entirely unlike his old warm-hearted, genial self.

The man around whom the gossip had centered, Baron d'Anthès-Heckeren, a French officer in the Russian service, married Madame Pushkin's sister. Pushkin's fierce African blood asserted itself in this affair, and the bloodthirsty spirit he showed on the field, insisting on his right to fire once more when already lying on the ground fatally hurt, as well as the regret he expressed at not having killed his adversary, greatly astonished his friends. But the unholy feeling could not be of long duration in so noble a spirit. Even as they were placing him in the carriage, he said: "Just now I thought it would have given me pleasure to kill him. Now I don't care any more." He lingered two days in unspeakable agony, heroically endured, and his one thought was to shield his wife. "Poor girl," he kept repeating, "she suffers for no fault of hers."

Every Russian writer of any account has had occasion to express an opinion of Pushkin and his work. Naturally, a good deal has been said that is unjust, or wide of the mark. At one time it was rather the fashion, among a certain literary and political small fry, to speak of him disparagingly as of a mere society poet, and because, forsooth, he was no partisan, little dreaming that such an accusation against a thinker, a poet, a spirit which looks on the things of this world from its throne among the stars, is highest praise. Gógol, Pushkin's friend and disciple, knew better when he wrote: "Pushkin was given to the world to show it what a poet is—one who is a poet and nothing else—a poet not influenced by any particular time or conditions, not even by his own personal character as a man, but independent of all things." Tourguénief, too, had a word to say which hit the mark: "Pushkin was a central artist, a man who lived at the very core of Russian life." That which is perfectly centered cannot incline to one side or the other. "The core of his nation's life." What a place for a poet! with his ear to its heart, at the source whence spring all the manifold currents which underlie with their steadfast, directing reality the seemingly random play of the waves on the more or less troubled surface! And another great voice now hushed in death, that of Michael Dostoyéfsky, spoke

of Pushkin as one in whose personality and work there was something undoubtedly prophetic of Russia's future destinies, her place among the nations—who first reflected one of our chief national characteristics: the longing for a large, a universal humanity, for a regeneration which should include not our race alone, but all mankind, for a solution of the contradictions and animosities which distract the European nations through the broad tolerance and generous sympathies of the Russian soul. And, even apart from such world-wide aspirations and glimpses of a remote future, was he not a prophet, the man who, at a time when serfdom was considered a natural and necessary, indeed rather benign, institution, could give vent to his indignant feelings in such words as the following:—

[note]

And is not the following an inspired prophecy:—

Less than thirty years later, Pushkin would have been in the front of the laborers for the cause which he was the first to herald. Truly it had been a noble sight for the world!

Simple-minded and modest as Pushkin was in his maturity, he knew his own worth far better than any of his contemporaries could know it; and this his legitimate self-consciousness he recorded, with majestic assurance, without false humility, in the famous lines entitled "A Monument":—

One of the numerous—too-numerous—articles and studies on Pushkin which his centennial anniversary has called forth likens him, the father of modern Russian literature, to a mighty tree, which plunges its roots far into Russia's past, and with its powerful branches supports the entire structure of that literature. The image can be improved upon. Modern Russian literature may be likened to one of the banian forests in India, which are the growth of a single tree. Pushkin is the parent trunk—with its roots in the past and its leafy crown in the blue ether—from which great limbs branch out, which in their turn take root, and each of which—Gógol, Tourguénief, Gontcharòf, Dostoyéfsky, Tolstoy—is a mighty tree. And the numberless smaller shoots and saplings, which form the body of the forest, still live on the same sap, even while absorbing much nourishment directly from the native soil.

And yet, after all, the glory of Russia's national poet but reflects that of Russia herself. For if it is true, as Tourguénief hopefully said, that such a language as the Russian could have been given to none but a great people, it may be said with equal truth that none but a great people could have given a Pushkin to the world.