Pushkin

[Alexandra Smith]

Dear Evgeny,

Your suggestion that "maybe Pushkin's Aleko was somehow evoked by this Aleko
Grekulov" sounds interesting. If you could find some evidence, it  
would add another layer to the image created by Pushkin's imagination.  
It seems that Pushkin was inspired by different things, including his  
stay with gypsies for a short period.
Pushkin's character has some autobiographical overtones,too. Thus, for  
example, Druznikov notes in his book "izgnannik samovol'nyi" that the  
gypsies whom Pushkin befriended in Moldavia called him Aleko (it was a  
shortened version of Pushkin's name Aleksandr).  
(http://lib.ru/PROZA/DRUZHNIKOV/p1_izgnannik.txt)
The long poem "Tsygany" was written in 1824: albeit it was started  
during his exile in the south, it was finished in Mikhailovskoe in  
October 1824.  Several sources suggest that Pushkin also wrote Aleko's  
monologue while looking after his baby son, but this part was not  
included in the latest version of his poem.It's obvious that it  
conceals a self-fashioning of himself as Aleko.
   A. Gessen (in his book Zhizn' poet) suggests that Pushkin's  
Zemphira's song "Staryi mush, groznyi mush" is a loose translation of  
the gypsy song he heard at a party in E.K. Varfolomei's house.  
Viacheslav Ivanov's article on Pushkin's long poem "Tsygany" talks  
about other sources used for this song and about the influence of  
Byron's and François-René de Chateaubriand's works on Pushkin's poem:  
http://www.rvb.ru/ivanov/1_critical/1_brussels/vol4/01text/02papers/4_165.htm

John Clare's poems about gypsies might have been also known to  
Pushkin, especially The Gypsy Camp (1819-20). Pushkin's short poem  
"Tsygany" has a subtitle "From English poetry".


With best wishes,
Alexandra









-- 
Alexandra Smith (PhD, University of London)
Reader in Russian Studies
Department of European Languages and Cultures
School of  Languages, Literatures and Cultures
The University of Edinburgh
David Hume Tower
George Square
Edinburgh EH8 9JX
UK

tel. +44-(0)131-6511381
fax: +44- (0)0131 651 1311
e-mail: Alexandra.Smith at ed.ac.uk


Quoting Evgeny Steiner <es9 at SOAS.AC.UK> on Fri, 21 Sep 2maybe  
Pushkin's Aleko was somehow evoked by this Aleko
> Grekulov? (I myself take this hypothesis cum grano salis - but why  
> not?)012 13:44:32 +0100:


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