The greatest Russian poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born in Moscow on 26 May 1799 and died on 29 January 1837 in St. Petersburg. He was not only the poet, but also dramatist, novelist and writer of short stories.
The poet’s father came from an aristocratic family; on the mother’s side he had African ancestors. Pushkin grew up in a well-educated family. When he was twelve he was sent to school named ‘Imperial Lyceum of Tsarskoye Selo’ and soon started to write romantic poems.
Being adult Pushkin became politically active person, he supported the Decembrist revolt of 1825 and wrote political poems. For that he had to spend in exile six years of his life. Being exiled, he wrote about life of simple Russian people, about history and traditions of his country.
After returning from exile he had to be very careful in his writing and not to say anything bad about the country rulers. But still the works of this period were great.
n 1831 he got married and had to spend a lot of his time in society at court. Pushkin wrote more and more prose works. In 1837 he was killed in a duel defending his wife’s honor.
The most famous works of Alexander Pushkin are ‘Yevgeny Onegin’, ‘Boris Godunov’, ‘The Captain’s Daughter’, ‘The Queen of Spades’, ‘Ruslan and Ludmila’ and many others.
Pushkin started the great tradition of Russian literature. He wrote his works the way no one else had done before – using the current language, Russian language as it was spoken instead of using style of old church books. His style had enormous influence on other Russian writers, some of his poems and stories were set to music by Russian composers.