Pushkin [Paperback]

For the English-speaking reader, it's hard to comprehend the massive esteem in which Pushkin is held in his native Russia. While lip service is paid to his literary greatness on these shores, he is probably better known as the source of opera libretti (such as Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin) than for his actual writings, which is a great shame. TJ Binyon's remarkable Pushkin: A Biography should, hopefully, do something to redress the balance.

This is a model of its kind: a biography that carefully and assiduously marshals the facts about its fascinating protagonist, but refuses to push the reader into easy judgments. It is a celebration of a remarkable man. From Pushkin's early days as a combative anti-establishment rebel to the heights of his fame and success, Binyon relates (in elegant and balanced prose) the crucial events that formed the writer's genius. The colourful era of Russia in the 19th century is, of course, brought to life with evocative detail (Binyon is a Russian specialist, and his authority in this field knows few peers).

But the book is as much a biography of an era as it is of its charismatic subject. Pushkin's violent death was enshrouded in controversy (rather like that of Tchaikovsky, who famously set Pushkin's texts to music), and the cocktail of sex, jealousy and madness that precipitated his death from a bullet wound to the genitals is handled with trenchant skill. The final effect of all great biographies of writers should be to send the reader back to the work, and within the first few chapters of Binyon's sweeping and fastidious study, that is exactly the effect created here. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘Only a biographer of the first rank could show how the poet’s brilliant spirit was extinguished, not just by a regime, but by elements in that regime that to some extent reflected his own personality. That is true tragedy, and that is Russia.’ George Walden, Sunday Telegraph

‘A weighty biography in every sense, Binyon’s book is poignant, brisk and at times downright funny: the best possible tribute to the changeable and elusively fascinating character of its subject.’ Catriona Kelly, Guardian

’A grippingly entertaining and magnificently authoritative account of the poet’s life, which is, almost unbelievably, the first to appear in any language since 1937.’ Alan Marshall, Daily Telegraph

‘In T.J Binyon [Pushkin] has finally found the biographer he deserves. Here in all its splendour is his rebellious, flamboyant personality and his world of tenuous finance, imperial balls and sexual adventure… Pushkin remains immortal and he certainly lives again in this book.’ Simon Sebag Montefiore, Mail on Sunday

‘Binyon’s Life gives a marvellously clear sense of the man Pushkin might have been to meet: alternately belligerent and sweet, physically small. On the matter of Pushkin’s politics, Binyon is excellent.’ Ian Thomson, Independent on Sunday

‘Scrupulously researched, lucidly and ojectively written, with an admirable lightness of touch and a good dose of dry humour’. (Economist)

‘Readable, perceptive and witty… a valuable achievement.’ Jonathan Sumption, Spectator

"Binyon's documentation is scrupulous...his penetrating scholarship and calm sympathy serve Pushkin the man very well" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"Scrupulously researched, lucidly and objectively written with an admirable lightness of touch and good dose of dry humour...gripping ....an impressive work" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"reading this book is like breathing clean air, unpoluted by loaded or emotive commentary. A biographer of the first rank" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A major biography of one of literature’s most romantic and enigmatic figures, published in hardback to great acclaim: ‘one of the great biographies of recent times’ (Sunday Telegraph).

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin is indisputably Russia’s greatest poet – the nearest Russian equivalent to Shakespeare – and his brief life was as turbulent and dramatic as anything in his work. T.J Binyon’s biography of this brilliant and rebellious figure is ‘a remarkable achievement’ and its publication ‘a real event’ (Catriona Kelly, Guardian).

‘No other work on Pushkin on the same scale, and with the same grasp of atmosphere and detail, exists in English… And Pushkin is well worth writing about… he was a remarkable man, a man of action as well as a poet, and he lived a remarkable life, dying in a duel at the age of thirty-seven.’ (John Bayley, Literary Review)

Among the delights of this beautifully illustrated and lavishly produced book are the ‘caricatures of venal old men with popping eyes and side-whiskers, society beauties with long necks and empire curls and, most touchingly, images of his “cross-eyed madonna” Natalya’ (Rachel Polonsky, Evening Standard).

Binyon ‘knows almost everything there is to know about Pushkin. He scrupulously chronicles his life in all its disorder, from his years at the Lycee through exile in the Crimea, Bessarabia and Odessa, for writing liberal verses, and on to the publication of Eugene Onegin and, eventually, after much wrangling with the censor, Boris Godunov’ (Julian Evans, New Statesman) and in this, ‘Binyon is unbeatable’(Clive James, TLS).

PUSHKIN won the BBC FOUR SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2003. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Pushkin is Russia’s national poet, its Shakespeare or its Dante. So I was astounded to discover, when looking for a subject, that there is no standard biography in Russian, and that no full-length life had been written in English since 1937. Yet he is a biographer’s dream: a figure comparable to Byron and Mozart rolled into one. He had a short life (always an attraction for the biographer), but a turbulent one, ending with his death in a duel at the age of thirty-seven. He lived, too, through exciting times: Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812; the Decembrist revolt of 1825; and wars with Persia, Turkey and Poland. And he was, of course, a sublime poet, whose best works—the novel in verse Eugene Onegin, the narrative poem The Bronze Horseman—are classics, not only of Russian, but also of world literature.

There, are, I’m afraid, no spectacular new revelations about Pushkin’s life in my biography. But a number of traditional myths are exploded, and I have tried, above all, to get away from the idealised figure he has become. My Pushkin is a very human character, with as many faults as most of us. At times I found it difficult to preserve the objectivity proper to a biographer. He can at times—particularly in his letters to his wife—be extraordinarily charming. And, during the final period of his life, as the clouds above him grew ever darker, as he got further and further into debt, and the emotional and psychological pressures on him became ever greater, it was impossible—especially in foreknowledge of his fate—not to feel a deep and passionate involvement with his life. I can only hope that readers might have the same experience.
T.J. Binyon --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Pushkin is our all', exclaimed poet and critic Apollon Grigorev in 1854. His famous remark is perhaps the best expression of Pushkin's significance, not merely for Russian literature and culture, but for the Russian ethos generally, and for Russia as a whole. His sentiments echoed those of Gogol, who described Pushkin as 'an extraordinary and perhaps unique manifestation of the Russian spirit.'

Born in Moscow in 1799, Pushkin was expelled from St. Petersburg at the age of twenty as a result of his satirical writings. He remained in internal exile, under the supervision of the Emperor, for the next seven years, and throughout his life he continued to excite official disapproval for his political and religious beliefs – and many love affairs. In 1831, despite mounting debts from his gambling and an uncertain income, he married the eighteen-year-old Natalya Goncharova who soon became recognised as one of the most beautiful women of St. Petersburg society. The attentions paid to her by a Guards officer, the French émigré d'Anthes, roused Pushkin to fury. In the subsequent duel, fought on 27 January 1837, Pushkin was fatally injured. He died in agony two days later.

Pushkin is, indisputably, Russia's greatest poet. His vital, passionate poetry changed literature forever. The author of a large body of magnificent lyrics, amazingly diverse in theme and treatment, he also composed a number of great narrative poems – 'Ruslan and Lyudmila', 'The Gypsies', 'Poltava' and 'The Bronze Horseman' – an extraordinary work, which vies with his novel in verse, 'Eugene Onegin', for the title of his masterpiece.

But Pushkin's brief life was more dramatic and turbulent than the figures of his literary imagination. With a childhood coloured by Russia's painful defeat of Napoleon, he was very much a product of his own time and noble background. A brilliant but rebellious figure, he was capable of writing exquisite love lyrics one minute, and epigrams of shocking crudity the next. He reformed Russian poetic language: in his hands it became a powerful, yet flexible instrument, with a diapason stretching from the solemnly archaic to the cadences of everyday speech.

Since his death, Pushkin has attained a mythical status. The aim of T.J. Binyon's scholarly and multi-layered biography is to free the complex and interesting figure of Pushkin the man from the heroic simplicity of Pushkin the myth. Binyon's biography is the first full-length and authoritative account of Pushkin's life and times since 1937, and it bristles with the poet's energy and talent. In these pages Pushkin the poet lives again, and captures our hearts once more. Binyon tells his story with perfectly-judged pace, elegant wit, exacting scholarship and deep compassion. Pushkin himself could not have wished for a better biographer.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

T.J. Binyon lectures in Russian literature at Wadham College, Oxford.