И время и место

So, against this background of Lyceum comradeship and shared experience how did the mercurial schoolboy begin to become, to quote Nabokov, “Russia’s most essential and most European” writer, “the greatest poet of his time (and perhaps of all time, excepting Shakespeare)”?⁸ Perhaps the first thing that alerts us to the youngster’s potential uniqueness is his receptiveness to the creative impulse, to the way that sound and sense suddenly come together in his consciousness and then are born into (zarozhdenie tvorchestva) something altogether different and mesmerizing.⁹ Pushkin, let us recall, has forever been associated with “harmonious sounds” (garmonicheskie zvuki, which subsequent scholars have duly linked to the influences of Batiushkov and Zhukovskii) and a free, unfettered intonation (intonatsiia). But even here the freedom with which he is able to say something seems in excess of anything he could have learned from respected older contemporaries. This is how he presents the onset of the rhyming urge in “To My Aristarchus” (Moemu Aristarkhu, 1815):

Сижу ли с добрыми друзьями,
Лежу ль в постеле пуховой,
Брожу ль над тихими водами
В дубраве темной и глухой,
Задумаюсь – взмахну руками,
На рифмах вдруг заговорю…

(1,153)

[I can be sitting with good friends,
Or lying in a feather bed,
Or wandering near quiet waters
In an oak grove dark and deserted,
When I fall to musing, wave my arms,
And suddenly start to speak in rhyme…]

The process comes over the speaker unbidden, and this very unbidden quality is signaled by the simplicity and parallelism/internal order of the utterance (i.e. it is natural, organic): the three imperfective verbs (“sizhu,” “lezhu,” “brozhu”) followed by three locative constructions denoting uninterrupted activity are then broken into by the three perfective verbs (“zadumaius,” “vzmakhnu,” “zagovoriu”) betokening a change in status. That the initiation of the verbal rush is preceded by a physical gesture (“vzmakhnu rukami”) reinforces the seemingly spontaneous, almost “metabolic” character of the shift to creative activity. And so it will be Pushkins entire poetic career. Examples are too numerous to list here, hence we will limit ourselves to the following excerpt from the great meditative poem,“Osen (Otryvok)” (Autumn [AFragment], 1833):

X
…
Душа стесняется лирическим волненьем,
Трепещет и звучит,

и ищет, как во сне,Излиться наконец свободным проявленьем —
…

XI

И мысли в голове волнуются в отваге,
И рифмы легкие навстречу им бегут,
И пальцы просятся к перу, перо к бумаге,
Минута – и стихи свободно потекут.
…

XII

…Куда ж нам плыть?…….
……………………………
……………………………
(III, 321; my emphasis)

X

The soul is overwhelmed by lyrical agitation,
It trembles and sounds aloud, and seeks, as in a dream,
To pour itself out at last in a free display —
…

XI

And thoughts in one’s head surge in brave agitation,
And light rhymes go out to meet them,
And one’s fingers ask for the pen, the pen for paper,
Wait a minute and verses begin to flow freely.
…

XII

.. Where shall we sail?…….
……………………………..
……………………………..

Once again Pushkin aligns the lyrical urge, the need to express the harmony accumulating within, with something physical, concrete – the fingers reaching out for the pen and the pen seeking the paper.