For Alexander Pushkin, lockdown was liberating
The poet’s spell in isolation because of cholera in 1830 was the most productive period in his life
BY THE END of the summer of 1830 Alexander Pushkin was in a state of anguish and spleen. The news of cholera spreading from Asia into Russia was the least of his worries. His engagement was on the brink of breaking down, his finances were under strain and his ambivalent relationship with the tsar was becoming untenable.
Nicholas I, a humourless and ruthless autocrat, had begun his reign by executing five aristocrats who had led the Decembrist uprising against him in 1825; another 120 conspirators were exiled to the far reaches of the Russian empire. Many were close friends of Pushkin. He had himself been exiled to his mother’s estate a year earlier on account of his atheistic ideas. Had he been in St Petersburg he would have been among the rebels, he candidly acknowledged when summoned to meet the tsar.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline "Rapture on the battleground"
Culture June 6th 2020
- For Alexander Pushkin, lockdown was liberating
- Are humans innately good? Rutger Bregman thinks so
- The first big art show of the covid era is a vision of the future
- Jane Eyre, like many people, is at her best alone
- For Hayao Miyazaki, flight is a metaphor for freedom
- The family unit has shaped people’s experience of covid-19
From the June 6th 2020 edition
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