Dostoevsky, Pushkin, and the Pushkin Speech
Pushkin Biography
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is often considered to be Russia’s national poet and the originator of the idea of the Russian author’s elevated status not just as a writer but as a prophet and spiritual guide for Russia (Davidson 509). He wrote short stories, plays, poetry, and novels, including Evgeni Onegin, a novel in verse, one of his best-known works. Pushkin was exiled and strictly censored at various points in his life and had ties with the Decembrist Revolt (Lednicki 378), an attempted uprising against the Tsar in 1825. He was ultimately killed in a duel in 1837 at age 37.
Pushkin’s Influence on Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky was a fan of Pushkin’s work from a young age. As Frank writes in his biography of Dostoevsky, “Pushkin dominates Dostoevsky’s literary life from beginning to end” (65). Pushkin was killed in a duel when Dostoevsky was 16; his death had a profound impact on a teenage Dostoevsky, and when he first heard about his death, he reacted by saying that “if he were not already wearing mourning for his mother, he would have wished to do so for Pushkin” (Frank 64-65). While many of Dostoevsky’s early works followed more obviously in the literary tradition of Gogol, Dostoevsky revered Pushkin as a poet and prophet. This interpretation later “enabled him to assume the prophetic mantle that he chose to confer upon the poet” (Davidson 509) as evidenced by his 1880 speech. Pushkin’s influence was paramount in developing Dostoevsky’s idea of the unique role of the Russian writer.
Dostoevsky’s Pushkin Speech
Only a year before Dostoevsky’s death in 1881, he gave his famed “Pushkin Speech” at the Pushkin Celebration of 1880. In an impassioned speech that was received with overwhelming positivity (Frank 830), he praised Pushkin as Russia’s national poet. The Pushkin Festival was fraught with political tension and turmoil (Frank 813). Other invited speakers included Ivan Turgenev, a prominent Russian writer who Dostoevsky described shortly before the event as someone “who is absolutely turning into a personal enemy of mine” (Frank 814). A common interpretation of the speech is that it was not only about Pushkin, but about Dostoevsky himself as well (Cassedy 80). Dostoevsky made his intentions for the festival clear, writing that “I have prepared my speech about Pushkin, and precisely in the most extreme spirit of my (that is our, I make bold to thus express myself) convictions” (Frank 498).
Dostoevsky began by quoting Gogol’s words on Pushkin: “Pushkin is an extraordinary phenomenon, and perhaps the only manifestation of the Russian spirit,” before going further than those before him by saying “I will add from myself: and prophetic” (Davidson 527). Throughout the rest of the speech, Dostoevsky expands on Pushkin’s prophetic status as a unique manifestation of the Russian spirit and how “Russia’s national mission is validated in terms of its literary “incarnation” in Pushkin” (Davidson 528). He ends the speech by speculating on Pushkin’s potential successor to the title of prophet; by this point the crowd was firmly on his side and responded rapturously, spontaneously conferring upon Dostoevsky that title by chanting “Prophet, prophet” (Davidson 530).
References
- Cassedy, Steven. Dostoevsky's Religion. Stanford University Press, 2005.
- Davidson, Pamela. “The Validation of the Writer’s Prophetic Status in the Russian Literary Tradition: From Pushkin and Iazykov through Gogol to Dostoevsky.” The Russian Review, vol. 62, no. 4, [Wiley, Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review], 2003, pp. 508–36, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3664788.
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor. “Pushkin Speech.” A Writer’s Diary, Volume 14, Chapter 2, August 1880. Sobr. soch., https://rvb.ru/dostoevski/01text/vol14/02journal_80/331.htm.
- Frank, Joseph. Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400833412.
- Lednicki, Wacław. “Pushkin, Tyutchev, Mickiewicz and the Decembrists: Legend and Facts.” The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 29, no. 73, Modern Humanities Research Association, 1951, pp. 375–401, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4204246.