Poems: With Introduction and NotesPushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich
General
Poems: With Introduction and Notes
Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich
Russian poetry -- Translations into English
No! not all of me shall die! my soul in hallowed lyre
Shall my dust survive, and escape destruction--
And famous be I shall, as long as on earth sublunar
One bard at least living shall remain.
"My name will travel over the whole of Russia great
And there pronounce my name shall every living tongue:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And long to the nation I shall be dear."
Observe here the native nobility of the man. There is a heroic
consciousness of his own worth which puts to shame all gabble of
conceit and of self-consciousness being a vice, being immodest. Here
too, Emerson sets fine example in not hesitating to speak of his
own essays on Love and Friendship as "those fine lyric strains,"
needing some balance by coarser tones on Prudence and the like. This
is the same heroic consciousness of one's own worth which makes a
Socrates propose as true reward for his services to the State, free
entertainment at the Prytaneum. This is the same manliness which in
a Napoleon rebukes the genealogy-monger who makes him descend from
Charlemagne, with the remark, "I am my own pedigree." This, in fine, is
the same manliness which made Jesus declare boldly, "I am the Way, I am
the Life, I am the Light," regardless of the danger that the "Jerusalem
Advertiser" and the "Zion Nation" might brand him as "deliciously
conceited." This recognition of one's own worth is at bottom the
highest reverence before God; inasmuch as I esteem myself, not because
of my body, which I have in common with the brutes, but because of my
spirit, which I have in common with God; and wise men have ever sung,
on hearing their own merit extolled, Not unto us, not unto us! There is
no merit in the matter; the God is either there or he is not....
7. Pushkin, then, even with this in view, is not so much a conscious
will, as an unconscious voice. He is not so much an individual singer,
as a strain from the music of the spheres; and he is a person, an
original voice, only in so far as he has hitched his wagon to a star.
In his abandonment is his greatness; in his self-destruction, his
strength.
"The bidding of God, O Muse, obey.
Fear not insult, ask not crown:
Praise and blame take with indifference
And dispute not with the fool!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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