Pushkin
Subtitle: A Biography
Edition: 1st Ecco Ed edition
Publisher: Ecco Press
Published: April 1999
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 309
ISBN-13: 9780880016742
Subjects: Biography & Autobiography; Literary studies: general; Poetry texts & anthologies; Russian Poetry; General; Biography / Autobiography; Russian; Biography/Autobiography; Former Soviet Union, USSR (Europe); Historical - General; Literary; Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich; Biography; Russian poets; 1799-1837; 19th century; Poets, Russian; Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich,
Description: Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin's preeminence as the father of Russian literature is undisputed. Lyric poet, writer of ironic fairy tales, and the author of the verse novel Evgeny Onegin, Pushkin led a life as dramatic as any story he invented, filled with political censorship, unrequited love, dramatic duels, but most of all, brilliant artistic intensity. Elaine Feinstein's discerning new biography reveals a man of reckless ebullience whose unruly behavior concealed an enduring loneliness.

Born in 1799, the child of a feckless aristocrat and a descendant of the African slave who became a favorite of Peter the Great, Pushkin described his loveless childhood as intolerable. His perception of himself as ugly derived from features inherited from his black great-grandfather; nevertheless, he pursued love affairs with some of the most beautiful women of his time.

When he was only twenty-one, his liberal poems led to banishment in southern Russia where, isolated and bored, he began to write feverishly. In his thirties, Pushkin's marriage to the seventeen-year-old beauty Natalya Goncharova brought him unexpected solace, but it was Natalya's flirtation with the Frenchman d'Anthes that led to the duel in which Pushkin lost his life.