Pushkin, Father Of The Russian Short Story Essay, Research Paper

Pushkin, the Father of Russian Short Story The story, or novella, as a literary genre has a relatively shorter history in Russianthan in some of the countries of the West, but within the short span there is enoughrichness and variety to make a representative selection rather difficult. Historicallyspeaking, Aleksandr Pushkin s works are justifiably pegged as the true starting point ofthe short story in Russian literature. Pushkin is, generally speaking, the fountainhead andthe epitome of modern Russian literature. While a great many Russians may still argueabout the merits of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, or of Gogol and Turgenev, they arepractically at one in looking upon Pushkin as the national genius of Russia. For most Russians, Pushkin holds the same relative place in their literature as doesDante in the Italian, Shakespeare in the English, and Goethe in the German. Some will saythat while Russian literature has produced several great writers, it can boast of only threegreat phenomena: Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. To the present-day reader, especially in the West, Pushkin s stories may appear toosimple, too anecdotal. It is this naked simplicity that Pushkin valued above all in the artof prose narrative. For example, Pushkin s works contain a great deal of reminiscing, anelement that almost all readers can relate to. The entire story The Postmaster is one longnarrative about an experience with a postmaster and his daughter. In Queen of Spades,

the character Tomsky uses the tale of his grandmother to demonstrate his own experienceswith gambling. That same evening my grandmother went to Versailles…she chose three cards andplayed them one after the other: all three won sonika and my grandmother recoveredevery farthing that she lad lost. Pushkin as a prose writer had some direct influence on Russian literature. Of thewriters closest to him in time, Gogol stood a great deal apart from him in manner andstyle, while Turgenev who in a general way, owed a great deal to him, wrote a much morepoetic, emotionally saturated prose. (This could be why Turgenev is considered to beboth a romantic and realist.) Turgenev s Sketches from a Hunter s Album showcasessome of the lyrical writings that depict the life of Russian peasantry. In Khor andKalinych, Turgenev discusses in great detail the village that the story is set in. Hedescribes that stature of the houses that are in the villages and the softness of the naturesurrounding the characters in the story. We drank down the warm transparent mead like spring water and fell asleep tothe monotone humming of the bees and the leaves talkative rustling. Many other writers, such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, are of the more of the age ofrealism, as opposed to Pushkin s simplicity and precision, sort of child-like and fantastical. It is obvious that Pushkin s softer style has influenced many contemporary authorstowards paying greater attention to lyricism in their literary works.