Premium Only Content

Classics of Russian Literature | St. Petersburg Glorified and Death Embraced (Lecture 7)
Lecture 7: Pushkin was well aware that Russian greatness and power were built on the suffering and labor of tens of millions of serfs and lower-class, urban serving people. In his narrative poem The Bronze Horseman, he contrasts the most famous invocation to the beauty of St. Petersburg—known as well by Russians as we know Hamlet’s “To be or not to be”—with the misery of those who live and perish under the yoke of Russia’s imperial establishment. Later, not long before his death, he erects his own monument, “not touchable by human hands,” to be admired by countless future Russian generations. In 1837, Pushkin, who felt he had to live in Russian high society, perished from a blow brought about by the Byzantine turnings of that same society. A French officer serving in the Russian army, Georges d’Anthès, virtually stalked Pushkin’s beautiful wife, Natalia. Pushkin’s enraged reactions, and a nasty anonymous letter, led to a duel that ended with a bullet in the poet’s abdomen and a hideously painful deatha death that Russia mourns to this very day.
Suggested Reading:
John Bayley, Pushkin: A Comparative Commentary.
Ilya Kutik, Writing as ExorcismThe Personal Codes of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol.
Aleksandr Pushkin, The Bronze Horseman in Pushkin Threefold, poems translated by Walter Arndt.
-
30:05
The Great Courses
1 month agoDecisive Battles of World History | 1942 Stalingrad - Hitler's Ambitions Crushed (Lecture 35)
160 -
2:42:48
The Quartering
7 hours agoToday's News Chat & Act 2 Of Expedition 33
70.3K4 -
7:42:53
SpartakusLIVE
8 hours agoMonday MOTIVATION || Games w/ the BOYS into the NIGHT
63.1K1 -
3:16:02
Barry Cunningham
8 hours agoNEWS ON THE PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT AND IT'S A MOVIE NIGHT!
95.5K57 -
2:00:32
Glenn Greenwald
10 hours agoWorld Finally Horrified by Israel's Atrocities in Gaza; Mass Starvation Expert Warns of Spiraling Crisis in Gaza; AOC Votes to Fund Israel's Iron Dome | SYSTEM UPDATE #489
99.4K145 -
LIVE
Spartan
7 hours agoSpartan - Pro Halo Player for OMiT | Scrims vs OMiT Black
532 watching -
2:47:11
crgoodw1n
6 hours agoMonday stream Pt.2! Max Traders are almost here!
26.2K1 -
1:28:30
Gurk
5 hours ago $0.58 earnedMLB CO OP
29.1K -
1:46:27
Tim Pool
14 hours agoSin Frontera: The End of Illegal Immigration
203K70 -
3:42:40
VapinGamers
6 hours ago $1.75 earnedDestiny 2 - Edge of Fate Legendary Run and AD Testing RTMP Pass Thru - !rumbot !music
23.8K3