It is important to note that when Alexander Pushkin wrote “To Chaadaev”, he was all of 19 years old. Ah, 19! What an age! The milksop brutalities of adolescence fight for their right to the body and soul, while, meanwhile, the life of the mind adds signatures to its petition, humbly submitted but forcefully composed. Tonight many of us will see Doctor Chomsky speak, and as we leave the hall the air will crackle with the most mixed of messages-thoughts of power and freedom will mix with a strange energy, a longing…but I digress. I don’t want to project. Rather, I note these things because, in this work of the young Pushkin, we many of these energies channeled into crosscurrents that will provide a ‘hard and fast’ glimpse into what made Romanticism tick.

The first few lines of the poem seem to indicate that earthly cares of youth, placid youth, has faded- “Love, hope, [our] private (or quiet) fame” has been banished, lies and illusions have ceased to pamper the poet and his generation (nedolgo nezhil nas obman). The enjoyments of Youth are replaced by a different sort of passion-that for freedom, escape from under the yoke of repression. The narrative, at first glance, appears simple: the poet abandons (or is abandoned by) the pursuits of careless youth, and the transition from adolescence into adulthood is a process of politicization…

I believe, however, that this interpretation is too simple. Freedom from tyranny and one-man rule (samovlastie) is oddly personal: Pushkin calls not for social revolution, but rather for intellectual and erotic self-actualization. On the ruins of tyranny the poet and his generation will write their names-the end of the old order is the path to the immortality of the self. The fatherland calls to duty, and beckons to the soul. Liberty appears not as the grey maiden, holding scales- she is the unspoken desire, yearned for as a “young lover” waits for the promised meeting (kak zhdyot lyubovnik molodoi minuty vernovo svidaniya). Russia rises from sleep, the national spirit is aroused.

This poem reminded me quite a bit of Wordsworth, another pillar of Romanticism- like Pushkin, the English poet’s youth is permeated by charged crosscurrents-the blossoming into manhood, the promise of the French revolution, etc. For our purposes, Pushkin leads us towards a rudimentary mock-up of ‘Romanticism’-the national-political overlaid onto (and at times, overcome by) the erotic and intellectual energies of the self.