Facts about Alexander Pushkin
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Pushkin's 1825 historical drama Boris Godunov, written during his exile, pioneered the use of vernacular Russian language in serious theatrical works and challenged the rigid neoclassical conventions that dominated the Russian stage.
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Twelve years of exile from Moscow and St. Petersburg, imposed after Pushkin's early radical poems reached the Tsar, forced the poet to write some of his greatest works in provincial isolation during the 1820s.
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Pushkin's first published work, the poem To a Friend, appeared in 1814 when he was just 15 years old and still a student at the Imperial Lycée in Tsarskoye Selo.
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Pushkin's 1836 literary journal The Contemporary, which he founded and edited, published 4 issues before his death and featured works by Russia's leading writers of the era.
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Pushkin wrote over 800 poems, 5 major plays, and numerous prose works before his death at 37, establishing the foundation of modern Russian literature.
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Pushkin served as a Russian Imperial Army officer and diplomat, holding the rank of Collegiate Registrar while simultaneously establishing himself as Russia's preeminent literary figure during the 1820s and 1830s.
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Pushkin's African great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, was an enslaved nobleman from Ethiopia who became a Russian general and inspired the poet's unfinished novel The Moor of Peter the Great.
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Eugene Onegin, Pushkin's 1833 novel in verse, revolutionized Russian literature by blending poetry with prose narrative across 389 stanzas in a unique structure he invented.
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Pushkin's 1820 romantic narrative poem The Prisoner of the Caucasus made him famous across Russia at age 23, establishing his reputation as the nation's leading poet.
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In 1837, Pushkin died from wounds sustained in a duel with Georges d'Anthès over his wife Natalya, at age 37.