Pushkin’s poem “Autumn (A Fragment),” examines human attitudes toward seasons by rejecting common characteristics associated with them. One aspect of particular interest is the narrators apparent disdain for spring. In the second stanza, the narrator describes himself as “bored with nature’s thaw” and rendered “ill” by the advent of spring (10-11). While spring is commonly associated with ideas of rebirth, youth, and vitality, the narrator rejects this notion and instead assigns these characteristics to other seasons. In the eighth stanza, for example, the narrator describes how with the return of autumn he is “young again… and full of life once more,” which is in stark contrast to the traditional thought of autumn as the final chapter in the natural lifecycle before the dead of winter (62-63).

In the ninth and tenth stanzas, the narrator again plays with traditional seasonal characteristics by describing his intellectual creations in relation to agricultural production. By late autumn and early winter, he describes how he is allowed to “nourish in [his] soul[‘s] expansive dreams” and “bring forth at last the fruit of free creation… the harvest of [his] dreams” (71,78,80). Pushkin’s use of “fruit” and “harvest” allude directly to agriculture and bounty from the land, but it is to some extent surprising that he uses these words while describing creation during late fall and winter, when the agricultural harvest has long passed.

While these terms create a stronger bond between intellectual creation and products of the natural environment, the narrator points to the rift between humans and the natural environment not only by the seasonal misalignment of when intellectual vs agricultural harvest occurs, but also through a comparison to other natural occurrences. In the third stanza, the narrator asserts that “[t]he bear himself must hate so long a sojourn in a cooped-up place,” which presents itself in contrast to the narrator’s love for both autumn and winter (21-22). As the natural environment’s vitality begins to wane throughout autumn and winter (exemplified by the bear going into hibernation), the narrator to the contrary becomes invigorated and reaps the products of his intellect. The narrator may simply be describing the attitude of a writer who relishes in the calmness of autumn and winter, but his view of the natural environment through the seasons may reveal what the writer sees in the environment that the common person fails to see.