Pushkin's Political Views as a Problem of Poetics.

Abstract

Pushkin's works are filled with political figures, events and issues, yet studies of his political views undertaken by literary scholars suffer from partisanship, making them more a revelation of their author's politics than a literary study. There remains the need to examine Pushkin's political thought as it appears in the poet's art. Our inquiry begins with Pushkin's use of the traditional civic genres such as political lyrics, panegyric poetry and satire and shows that, while the poet owes much to the neo-classical tradition, he develops these genres in a new way. While politics is clearly not Pushkin's first concern, it still plays a large role in these works. Basic to the inquiry into the problem of politics and poetry is the relationship between the poet and civilization. In Cygany and the Ovid lyrics Pushkin investigates the kind of natural freedom found far from civilization, and thus far from cities and their obligations. For a variety of reasons Pushkin finds this freedom unsatisfactory. The poet must make an accommodation with civilization. He needs the city. Pushkin's views on censorship reveal his concern with the regime of the city. They also point toward the poet's art of writing as a means of combining social responsibility with free expression, an issue openly debated in Boris Godunov. The poet's supreme political poetry is an assertion of his political wisdom. Pushkin's portrait of Peter the Great in Poltava and Mednyj Vsadnik brings the poet and the great monarch into direct contrast. Pushkin even makes Peter more of a poet so that the contrast between their respective achievements will be obvious. Paradoxically, the poet's political intention leads him to a perspective that transcends politics, yet without diminishing the importance of political issues or of political inquiry in his works.