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espect to equality; a rich man dressed in rags, lest he should offend the haughty poor
out in the street, whom he secretly despises - such is the picture of the American
states."
A world of petty trading, selfishness, longing for personal power and continuous
fortune-hunting - a world of new, bourgeois relationships which started to proclaim
itself in the West with such cynicism already in Pushkin's time was opposed to, in the
poet's writings, by a world of his own, a world of the greatest of humanists, a man so
full of vitality who nourished his belief in a better future from his own profound
patriotism, from his close ties with his people. At that period of reactionary darkness
hanging over Europe, the poet sang glory to the ever bright sun of freedom, the
immortal sun of human wisdom. Pushkin firmly believed in the triumph of the forces
of this sun over darkness.
"Down with darkness, long live the sun!"
With his soul and talent, Pushkin found it hard to exist in the world around him. Yet, he
retained a great degree of cheerfulness and mustered tremendous moral courage. He
strove to find out about the sources and understand the reasons of the tragic condition
of nations -in the first place, that of his own people. The poet was quite realistic when
he wrote in A Village how
"gentry wild, bereft of heart, bereft of law,
Used force and whips to make their own
The tiller's fruits of work, his property,
his time...
Here, man is doomed to suffer in his yoke
until his death..".
That was how the poet saw reality in his youth. Later, he understood, with even greater
clarity, why the common folk "keeps silent" (Boris Godunov), while its leaders are being
changed, why this folk never takes part in bloody coups d etat which bring it nothing
but another form of oppression. He understood how right people had been in rallying
round Pugachev to wage an armed struggle against their oppressors (The Captain's
Daughter).
His awareness of all this enabled Plushkin to write the following lines - something only
a great poet, believing in the strength and genuineness of his relationships with his
people, could write:
"I've built myself a monument
That can't be built with hands.
My kin won't let the path to it
Get overgrown with weeds,"