Poet · 1799 – 1837
Alexander Pushkin
Key Takeaways
- Pushkin is considered the founder of modern Russian literature.
- His verse novel Eugene Onegin is a cornerstone of Russian culture.
- He shaped the modern Russian literary language.
- He died at 37 from wounds suffered in a duel.
To Russians, Alexander Pushkin is the beginning of everything in their literature. The poet who shaped the modern Russian language, he is revered almost as a national saint of letters.
The founder of Russian literature
Pushkin took a Russian literary culture still in the shadow of French and German models and made it gloriously its own. His verse novel Eugene Onegin — the tale of a jaded aristocrat and the woman he spurns — became a cornerstone of Russian culture, while works like Boris Godunov and The Bronze Horseman ranged across history and myth.
A short, brilliant life
Descended on one side from an African brought to the court of Peter the Great, Pushkin lived as boldly as he wrote, dying at 37 from wounds in a duel. Every later master — Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov — looked back to this poet of the modern era as the source from which they all flowed.
Influence
Pushkin forged the modern Russian literary language and the forms his successors would master, making him the fountainhead of one of the world's great literatures.
Legacy
Revered in Russia almost as a national saint of letters, he is the writer to whom all later Russian literature traces its origin.
Major Works
- Eugene Onegin
- Boris Godunov
- The Bronze Horseman
Connections
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Alexander Pushkin?
Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) was a Russian poet and writer regarded as the founder of modern Russian literature, author of Eugene Onegin.
What is Eugene Onegin?
Eugene Onegin is Pushkin's novel in verse about a bored aristocrat and the woman he carelessly rejects, a foundational work of Russian literature and later a famous opera.
Citations & Sources
People Like Alexander
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy
92Leo Tolstoy was a Russian novelist and moral philosopher whose epics War and Peace and Anna Karenina rank among the greatest works of fiction, and whose later doctrine of nonviolence influenced Gandhi and King.
Why A later giant of Russian literature who built on the foundation Pushkin laid.
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
91Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist whose psychologically penetrating works, including Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, probe faith, guilt, and freedom and helped shape modern existential thought.
Why A successor who hailed Pushkin as the supreme expression of the Russian spirit.
Anton Chekhov
81Anton Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer — and a practising physician — widely regarded as among the greatest masters of both the short story and modern drama, whose plays like The Cherry Orchard transformed the theatre.
Why A later master of Russian letters working in the tradition Pushkin founded.
Miguel de Cervantes
91Miguel de Cervantes was a Spanish writer whose novel Don Quixote is widely regarded as the first modern novel and one of the greatest works in world literature.
Why Also a novelist & playwright · Comparable historical impact
Rudyard Kipling
79Rudyard Kipling was a British writer and poet, author of The Jungle Book and the poem "If—", who became the first English-language winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, though his association with British imperialism has made his legacy contested.
Why Also a poet & novelist · Active in the same era
T. S. Eliot
80T. S. Eliot was an American-British poet, critic and playwright, a towering figure of literary modernism whose poem The Waste Land redefined 20th-century poetry and who won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Why Also a poet & playwright · Active in the same era