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February 11, 2001 Issue 
Pushkin by Henri Troyat The Russian Poet and Aristocrat with African Blood It is said that as we grow older we return time and again to the positive moments of our younger days. And so with my return to Russian literature, a fixture in my adolescence and in my undergraduate days that had a profound influence on shaping my beliefs and outlook on life. "Pushkin", a biography of the poet by Henri Troyat, published in English in 1970, may not be the definitive work of his life, but is certainly the most evocative account of it. Alexander Pushkin is the greatest and most revered Russian writer. He is to the Russians what Shakespeare is to the English and Goethe to Germans. It is Pushkin who single-handedly created Russian literature by capturing the Russian ethos and life of the times in which he lived. His literary and poetic genius comes through even in translations. Pushkin's life was hyperbolic. He was born in 1799 to a family of the lesser, but ancient Russian nobility. His maternal great grandfather was Abraham Hannibal, the fabled Negro in the court of Peter the Great. Pushkin inherited his great grandfather's Negroid features, which only added to his aura and enigmatic appeal. Abraham Hannibal was born an Abyssinian prince in what is now Eritrea and after a sojourn as a hostage of the Turks, ended up in the court of Peter the Great. Peter became his godfather and later sent him to Paris to study in the Military Academy where Hannibal became the darling of the Parisian haut ton. Upon his return to Russia, he married a beautiful girl in spite of her protests and shortly after became embroiled in convoluted divorce, adultery and bigamy lawsuits. He had eleven children with his second wife, one of whom, Osip Abramovich married Marya Pushkin. Like his father, Osip too was a profligate philanderer. He abandoned his wife shortly after their daughter was born. It is this daughter, Nadezhda, who married a distant relative on her mother's side, another Pushkin, who became the poet's mother. Alexander grew up in a cultivated environment. His parents hobnobbed with the literati and artistes of the times and his father and uncle wrote verses of minor repute. Although French was the preferred language of the Russian nobility, under the influence of his nanny, a former serf, Pushkin developed deep knowledge of and uncommon passion for his native Russian. Even as a youth, Pushkin wrote with ease perfect and resonant verses in French and in Russian. And as any proper early nineteenth century Russian aristocrat, he fell in love with all the society beauties, led the life of a rake and poured his liberal political views in incendiary verses. Because of that, he was often exiled and was never free from the censors and police surveillance. After Napoleon's defeat Russia acquired a reputation as a European force, but from Home Unavailable remained a backward feudal stronghold. The Czar was the absolute autocrat and serfs worked the vast estates of the Russian nobles and landed gentry. Their wealth was measured by the number of souls, i.e., serfs, they owned. In December of 1825 a group of young Russians aristocrats revolted, demanding political and social reforms. The revolt was crushed mercilessly and the Decembrists, as these young nobles came to be known, were either executed or exiled to Siberia. Pushkin escaped the fate of his close friends because he did not actually take part in the rebellion. The new czar, Nicholas I, pardoned Pushkin and became his personal censor. After his pardon Pushkin resumed his Don Juan practices. He fell in love, irrevocably this time, with the stunning beauty Natalya Goncharova, whom he married after a torturous two-year wait that included a self-imposed romantic exile to the Caucasus. Natalya was beautiful, brainless and extravagant. Her frivolity and social involvement grew as the Pushkin household increased with children. Echoing anyone of Pushkin stories, from "Eugene Onegin" to "The Captain's Daughter" and the Queen of Spades", rumors that his wife was involved in an affair, led to a duel, which caused the poet death in January 1837. As we celebrate Black History Month today, I look at the poet distinct African features and muse on the vagaries of racial attitudes. For while Pushkin led the rakish life of a typical Russian aristocrat and slew Russian society with his genius, in the United States, people just like him, with African blood, suffered racial prejudice. As if by divine justice, a Pushkin granddaughter married the grandson of Czar Nicholas I, Pushkin nemesis. And thus, a woman with African blood became a Romanov grand duchess. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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