Rethinking Pushkin, or the Balkan Aftertaste of Russian Romanticism
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ABSTRACT
There was a fierce controversy in Russian literary studies as to whether it is justified to speak of a romantic discourse in Pushkin’s poetry in the early 1920s (1819–1824) and what caused it, provided that there was no major social cataclysm to unleash the relevant conceptual direction in literature. It missed something particularly important: the Greek uprising of 1821, echoed among all Balkan nations, and the increased fascination with Byron’s rebellious poems (a kind of “import” of Byronism) demonstrated by the first poet of Russia. How the ideas of “Megali Idea” and “Eteria” reflect on the strengthening of the Greek (rebellious) theme and the appearance of the Bulgarian hero in Pushkin’s work, and in a sense provoke the Decembrist revolt in late 1825, will be discussed with examples from his lyric poetry and prose, outlining an overall paradigm in the poet’s existential turn and his attitude to freedom.
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