Marriage to a Flirt Got Her Hubby Killed
Alexander Pushkin (1799 – 1837), Russia’s greatest poet, was also an outstanding novelist, short story writer, playwright, and dramatist. He pretty much founded modern Russian literature. He addressed conflicts between personal happiness and duty, and loners’ rebellion against the system. His writings teemed with vigorous life-affirming themes such as the triumph of human decency over oppression, and of reason over narrow minded prejudice. A born aristocrat, Pushkin descended from Abram Gannibal, an African kidnapped and sold into slavery as a child, who ended up in Istanbul. From there, he was taken to Russia and presented as a gift to Tsar Peter the Great. He adopted Gannibal and raised him as his godson. He rose to prominence as a general and courtier in the reign of Peter’s daughter Elizabeth. Gannibal led an extraordinary life, which was described in Pushkin’s biographical novel The Negro of Peter the Great.
Precocious, Pushkin published his first poem at age fifteen while a student at the elite Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. While still at the Lyceum, he began his first major work, the romantic poem Ruslan and Ludmilla. It used folkloric Russian themes of an epic hero overcoming numerous obstacles to rescue his bride. Pushkin flouted accepted genre rules, rejected the traditional Russian style of classic poetry, and broke barriers against the use of colloquial speech in verse. It was violently attacked, but it brought Pushkin fame and cemented his place as an innovator. Sadly, he didn’t enjoy success for long: his marriage to a flirt got him killed. Pushkin’s life was cut tragically short, as seen below, at the hand of his slimy brother in law, Georges d’Anthes, a French officer in Russian service.