The East in Pushkin’s Lyrics of 1824–1825: Country Estate Contexts

This article attempts to explain why Alexander Pushkin, who arrived at his ancestral estate of Mikhailovskoye in 1824 and found himself in the heart of Russian life, turned his attention to the East. Indeed, the first major work that Pushkin wrote in the very first year of his exile in Mikhailovskoye was his lyrical cycle Imitations of the Quran. He dedicated this work to his neighbor in Trigorskoye, Praskovya Alexandrovna Osipova (Osipova-Vulf). The reasons for this dedication traditionally have two explanations: Pushkin’s reading of the Quran text translated by D. I. Verevkin in the Trigorskoye library, as well as the assistance provided by Osipova during Pushkin’s difficult time of conflict with his father, who agreed to monitor his son. The article suggests that this autobiographical subtext not only accompanied the work on the cycle, which is quite obvious, but also was hidden or encoded in seemingly unrelated poems that imitate the sacred text of Muslims. In parallel, the article raises the question of how Orientalism, which became fashionable in literature and architecture in the late 18th century, also affected the everyday life of the Russian country estate, and how a kind of game in the East marked Russian country estate life.