Pushkin hiding from Cholera and his bride - I Have Evidence

Portrait of Alexander Pushkin (1932)
Pyotr Konchalovsky

After writing my brief post on the fairy tale about the golden fish, I promised to write some more about Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), the very well-known, brilliant poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era. Born in Russia into nobility, but not into wealth, Pushkin was unloved by his mother because he wasn't fair skinned and blonde, like his brother. She neglected Pushkin for the majority of his childhood, while he was raised by a nanny whom he loved dearly as he would his own mother. Pushkin's maternal great-grandfather was an African, kidnapped as a child and brought to Constantinople, a gift for the Ottoman Sultan. The Sultan later gifted the boy to Peter the Great, and thus Abram Petrovich Gannibal made it from an unknown area in Central Africa, bordering Lake Chad (now Cameroon), to Russia. Pushkin's mother was unhappy with how her son looked and abandoned him for a nanny, as she herself sought out to fulfill her "social ambitions"

Although I really want to continue writing about Pushkin's rich biography - and possibly I will, (wink wink wink) - today I wanted to write about how Pushkin spent the most productive Autumn of his writing career in Boldino, quarantining from the cholera pandemic and also hiding from his fiancé, Natalia Goncharova. They met in 1828, when Goncharova was 16 years-old and Pushkin was either 28 or 29. Her family wasn't too keen on consenting to Pushkin's marriage proposal, because of Pushkin's liberal social activism, literary radicalism, and inability to refrain from gambling. Despite all this, they became engaged on May 6, 1830, with wedding invitations and everything! But then, drat! Cholera! 

So Pushkin left his bride in Moscow and took refuge in Boldino, where his father owned an estate. His father had gifted him with part of the Boldino estate as his wedding gift, and Pushkin told his future wife that he was going to Boldino to sort everything out. On September 9, 1830, Pushkin wrote to Goncharova in Moscow:

My dear and cherished Natalia Nikolaevna,

My stay here [at Boldino] may be prolonged by one completely unseen circumstance. I thought that the land my father gave me consists of a private, separate estate, but, as it turns out - it is part of the village with 500 souls, and I will need to divide the property.  [You know, serfs and owning people and all that] I will try to complete this as soon as possible. Also, I am apprehensive of the quarantines that they are beginning to mandate here. [Hm, I wonder why this feels so familiar?] Here, all around us, we have Choléra morbus (a darling lassie). And she might prevent me from leaving for another 20 days!

This is but an extract from Pushkin's letter to his bride, but it is full of love and affection for his future wife and her side of the family back in Moscow. 

Pushkin in Boldino (1949)
A.A. Plastov

THAT SAME DAY, on September 9, 1839, Pushkin sent out another letter from Boldino, this time addressed to St. Petersburg, to his best friend Pyotr Pletnyov. In the first half of his letter, Pushkin tells Pletnyov about how he visited his dying uncle in Moscow. And then, he writes:

You can't even imagine how happy I am to get away from my fiancé, and just sit and write poetry. A wife is different than a fiancé. No comparing them! A wife is a brother. [Uhhhhhh...?] You can write in front of her all you like. A fiancé is worse than the censor Sheglov, [I'm assuming this is the name of whoever was censoring Pushkin's publications, which were under constant review because he kept making jabs at the Tsarist government.] she'll tie my tongue and my hands. . . 

Ah, my dear![Pletnyov] what a lovely place this village is! [Boldino] Imagine: prairies, no neighbors, horseback riding whenever I please, writing at home all day, without anyone interrupting. Oh, I'll have so much prepared for you, prose and poetry. Forgive me, my dear! [This time, I think he means Goncharova, his bride, whom he has abandoned to write.]

And with that I conclude my evidence for the claim that Pushkin was more afraid of his bride than he was of Cholera. 

I translated bits of the full, original letters found in THIS book, which is a lovely book of lots of compiled primary sources - mostly letters sent to and from Pushkin - during his 3 month stay at Boldino. The book also includes some of the works Pushkin wrote while there, as this was his most prolific stay at Boldino. Click the words highlighted in green for more links, and stay tuned for more JUICY Pushkin posts.