36 Facts About Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Pushkin is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature.

Alexander Pushkin was freed by the Russian Emperor and raised in the Emperor's court household as his godson.

Alexander Pushkin published his first poem at the age of 15, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum.

Alexander Pushkin was the daughter of Ossip Abramovich Gannibal and his wife, Maria Alekseyevna Pushkina.

Ossip Abramovich Gannibal's father, Alexander Pushkin's great-grandfather, was Abram Petrovich Gannibal, an African page kidnapped to Constantinople as a gift to the Ottoman Sultan and later transferred to Russia as a gift for Peter the Great.

Alexander Pushkin became acquainted with the Russian language through communication with household serfs and his nanny, Arina Rodionovna, whom he loved dearly and to whom he was more attached than to his own mother.

Alexander Pushkin published his first poem at the age of 15.

Alexander Pushkin immersed himself in the thought of the French Enlightenment, to which he would remain permanently indebted throughout his life, especially Voltaire, whom he described as "the first to follow the new road, and to bring the lamp of philosophy into the dark archives of history".

Alexander Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform, and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals.

Alexander Pushkin went to the Caucasus and to Crimea and then to Kamianka and Chisinau in Bessarabia, where he became a Freemason.

Alexander Pushkin joined the Filiki Eteria, a secret organization whose purpose was to overthrow Ottoman rule in Greece and establish an independent Greek state.

Alexander Pushkin was inspired by the Greek Revolution and when the war against the Ottoman Empire broke out, he kept a diary recording the events of the national uprising.

Alexander Pushkin stayed in Chisinau until 1823 and wrote two Romantic poems, which brought him acclaim: The Captive of the Caucasus and The Fountain of Bakhchisaray.

In 1823, Alexander Pushkin moved to Odessa, where he again clashed with the government, which sent him into exile on his mother's rural estate of Mikhailovskoye, near Pskov, from 1824 to 1826.

In Mikhaylovskoye, Alexander Pushkin wrote nostalgic love poems which he dedicated to Elizaveta Vorontsova, wife of Malorossia's General-Governor.

Alexander Pushkin applied for permission for the journey, but received negative response from Nicholas I, on 17 January 1830.

Around 1828, Alexander Pushkin met Natalia Goncharova, then 16 years old and one of the most talked-about beauties of Moscow.

In 1831, during the period of Alexander Pushkin's growing literary influence, he met one of Russia's other great early writers, Nikolai Gogol.

On 26 January of 1837, Alexander Pushkin sent a "highly insulting letter" to Gekkern.

Alexander Pushkin received the formal challenge to a duel through his sister-in-law, Ekaterina Gekkerna, approved by d'Anthes, on the same day through the attache of the French Embassy, Viscount d'Archiac.

Alexander Pushkin asked Arthur Magenis, then attache to the British Consulate-General in Saint Petersburg, to be his second.

Alexander Pushkin himself preferred his verse novel Eugene Onegin, which he wrote over the course of his life and which, starting a tradition of great Russian novels, follows a few central characters but varies widely in tone and focus.

Alexander Pushkin wrote "The Queen of Spades", a short story frequently anthologized in English translation.

Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila is the earliest important Alexander Pushkin-inspired opera, and a landmark in the tradition of Russian music.

Alexander Pushkin is considered by many to be the central representative of Romanticism in Russian literature although he was not unequivocally known as a Romantic.

Alexander Pushkin is seen as having originated the highly nuanced level of language which characterizes Russian literature after him, and he is credited with substantially augmenting the Russian lexicon.

Alexander Pushkin's accomplishments set new records for development of the Russian language and culture.

Alexander Pushkin became the father of Russian literature in the 19th century, marking the highest achievements of the 18th century and the beginning of literary process of the 19th century.

Alexander Pushkin introduced Russia to all the European literary genres as well as a great number of West European writers.

Alexander Pushkin brought natural speech and foreign influences to create modern poetic Russian.

Alexander Pushkin's idiom combined all the contemporaneous elements of Russian with all he had learned from Derzhavin, Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Karamzin and Krylov:.

Alexander Pushkin inspired the folk tales and genre pieces of other authors: Leskov, Yesenin and Gorky.

Alexander Pushkin was analysed by Nikolai Gogol, his successor and pupil, and the great Russian critic Vissarion Belinsky, who produced the fullest and deepest critical study of Alexander Pushkin's work, which still retains much of its relevance.

Alexander Pushkin's room while he was a student at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum.

The vest Alexander Pushkin wore during his fatal duel in 1837.

Monument to Aleksandr Alexander Pushkin located in Alexander Pushkin Park in Mexico City.