Russian literature. A short introduction

Chapter 3

‘Tidings of me will go out over all great Rus’

Pushkin and the Russian literary canon

He embraced the entire world with his soul, both East and West. (Vera Panova, A Writer’s Notes, 1972)

The idea that his writings would be his ‘monument’ was not something that Pushkin regarded merely as a soothing fantasy in the midst of unbearable isolation. It was also something that he tried to ensure in a practical way. He was one of the first Russian writers to assemble his scattered publications into a Collected Works, whose content and layout he planned carefully, revising some of his early poems for inclusion. In Russia, such care over the dissemination of one’s poems was decidedly new. Until the late seventeenth century, textual production was dominated by the Orthodox Church, and writers fulfilled much the same function as icon-painters. Many texts (for example, prayers) circulated anonymously, and authors had no control over copying procedures or over the use of their materials in compilations. It was the saintliness or theological expertise of writers that gave their work value, even if rhetorical force played a part in establishing this. Things did not change immediately with the introduction of print in the seventeenth century, given that the new technology was at first used for the production of religious books. Once a secular print culture did come