Two hundred twenty-two years ago, a great Russian poet, novelist and playwright was born. His name is Alexander Pushkin. The year 2021 has given us a great deal of misery, the menace of the pandemic caused by Covid in many forms and guises has taken several victims, some of them close to us. 2022 is on the horizon, it is therefore a good time to cheer a man of such heightened romanticism, Alexander Pushkin was born 222 years ago in the Russian empire and now on the eve of 2022, even those numbers are imbued with romance.
I first came across Alexander Pushkin as a magnificent statue at the seaport of Odessa, at the height of the unprecedented political upheaval and utter chaos in the Soviet Union, the much hated and much adored “perestroika”. Pushkin, I noticed stayed at Odessa only for a year (1833-34) but he turned legendary there, fell in love with the local princess and wrote some of the must heart-wrenching poetry, with a panache of extreme melancholy, simmering in deep nostalgic romance, typical of Russia. Or shall we say, a style created by Pushkin which never got erased from Russian history of poetry, only went deeper.
The style turned almost timeless with a growing reputation driven by its intrinsic relentless force of charm and beauty. He was brilliant but not at all Joyceian; his romanticism was always destined to end with tragedy. To me it is not surprising that he had to be killed in a duel by his wife’s alleged lover at the extraordinarily early age of 37. Alexander Pushkin was a tragic hero even in death.
As Alexander Tvarovsky mentioned on the 125th anniversary of Pushkin’s death: “His image fills our imagination, for he is the soul of our people…” Pushkin enjoyed indisputable recognition amongst the contemporary aristocratic elite and enormous popularity among the highest to the lowest in the society. Pushkin was nobody’s flunky, and he serenely goes above even the highly-strung Dostoyevsky.
“And long the people yet will honour me / Because my tyre was tuned to loving kindness / And, in a cruel Age, I sang of Liberty / And mercy begged of Justice in her blindness”. The “cruel age” of our planet has turned even more cruel, we have learnt to kill, massacre thousands and millions of our brothers and sisters for some trivial reasons. Wars have broken out, and at the end we don’t quite fathom any rationality and certainly with no “loving kindness”. Where is Pushkin’s “loving kindness” in our contemporary world of wicked, ruthless,carefully measured, sincere unkindness and fearful indifference where “love” has turned digital as a mere computer analog.
Pushkin of course had in his genius, a “magic”, his legendary skill is merely a product of his rather natural “magic”. His intense sense of love is always laced with the pain and endless sadness, “I loved you, and that love, to die refusing, /May still – who knows! Be smouldering in my breast/ Pray be not pained ~believe me, of my choosing/ I’d never have you troubled or distressed. / I loved you mutely, hopelessly and truly, /With shy yet fervent tenderness aglow/……Pushkin here is not the aggressive lover that Michelangelo was but tender, almost apologetic with “the smouldering in my breast”, not bursting, just smouldering.
To me, the most nihilistically romantic poetry of Pushkin, very dear to me, is the following ~ “What means my name to you?……. Twill die /As does the melancholy rumour / Of distant waves or, of a summer, / the forest’s hushed nocturnal sigh. Found on a fading album page / Dim with it seem and enigmatic, / Like words traced on a tomb, a relic / of some long dead and vanishing age.
The beauty of the words soaked with an almost existential agony ~ “what’s in my name?…Long since forgot/ Erased by new, tempestuous passion, / Of tenderness ‘twill leave you not / The lingering and sweet impression……And say, “He still remembers me / His heart alone still pays me homage”. That poem reminds me of “Vaisnab Padabali” of Bengal, the eternal love of Radha Devi for Krishna ~ “the forest’s hushed nocturnal sigh” when Krishna did not show up in “Nidhuban” at Brindaban ~ the “trees” with hushed nocturnal sigh……”. Russians had always an oriental component in their personal lives, I thought and that is to do with a sense of tragic melancholia. But the world and its affairs are melancholic.
In Russia, and in the rest of the former Soviet Union, the political system changed with time; Tsar Nicolas II onwards, Russia has gone through horrific wrench. Years and years ago, France experienced the revolution; communism came and disappeared. Even in oppressive China there is the new flavour of Chinese Capitalism ~ the old capitalists like the US and Europe are sweating it out to maintain status quo but Pushkin, at least to me, is beyond time, beyond the passing phase of political hysteria, or even politics of brawn.
Pushkin says: “Hail, muses! Hail reason! In song let us praise them! Thou, bright sun of genius, shine on! Like this ancient lamp that grows dinner And fades with the coming of dawn, So false wisdom pales at the first flash and glimmer of true wisdom’s ne’er ~ fading light’. Live, radiant day! Perish, darkness and night!” Those lines are timeless. Hundred years from now, when the whole world would be suffering from acute carbon menace if we do not take drastic measures now, Pushkin’s incredible prophecy “Live, radiant day! Perish, darkness and night” ~ will be shining like the pole star to guide us. I salute thee!
(The writer is former Director, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics & Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre)