Pushkin (Hardcover)

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 is the first purely biographical study rather than literary analysis of the life of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin since 1937. T J Binyon has produced a vivid and scholarly portrait of a creative genius who could write like a maniac when the mood was on him but who was equally distracted by a dissolute existence in the whirling vortex of imperial Russia. The book is beautifully illustrated with family trees, maps and photographs, including a death mask of Pushkin, and there are copious portrait sketches throughout by the poet himself so that we can see his acquaintances, family and friends exactly as he saw them. Meticulously researched details ensure that we are scarcely aware of the biographer's voice but seem to be actually in the room with Pushkin, looking over his shoulder at the piles of manuscripts and the bitten and burnt quill ends strewn about. Described as short, swarthy, ape-like and tending towards belligerence, Pushkin would later sum up his own character, rather unforgivingly, as 'changeable, jealous, susceptible, violent and weak'. Although he was writing poetry by the age of seven, his school career was undistinguished. Appointed to the civil service, his attendance became desultory and his diligence non-existent. Binyon underlines the many contradictions that proliferated in the poet's make-up. A contemporary contrasted Pushkin's social excesses with the 'transcendent superiority' of his writing. He abandoned himself to debauchery, orgies and gambling but he also displayed persistence and fortitude: Eugene Onegin, his extraordinary novel in verse, took him exactly seven years, four months and 17 days to complete. Unfortunately, his first mature poem, 'Liberty: An Ode', was held to be subversive, and he was expelled from the Civil Service and exiled to the country. Bored in the Caucasus, he went out of his way to shock, appearing at a dinner in transparent muslin trousers and no underwear. After six years in what he called 'a provincial slough' he was allowed to return to St Petersburg by Tsar Nicholas I and slipped straight back into the frenetic rounds of gambling, womanizing and aristocratic social life. He gave readings of his play Boris Gudunov and eventually married the 19-year-old Natalya Goncharova. Four children later, his wife was pursued by an obsessed French nobleman called d'Anthes, an episode that would tragically result in Pushkin's sudden death from a duel. Such is the force of the poet's charismatic nature and the excitement of his tumultuous adventures that we are quite stunned by this early departure. But since Binyon made the excellent decision to use his own translations throughout (enabling the poet to speak with a uniform voice), the author's final achievement is to leave readers inspired to further acquaint themselves with the splendour of Pushkin's classic works. (Kirkus UK)