The last duel

30.01.2021.

I love the poetry of Pushkin, the great Russian poet. Reading historical stories, I learned about the last moments of his life.

In the first half of the 19th century, duels were a common way of resolving conflicts caused by the injury of parts among Russian nobles. Verbal outbursts, insulting letters and scathing epigrams that would have passed without an apology from the provocative party were resolved by a duel.

We find artistic evidence of the duels there in the works of Russian classics, primarily Turgenev and Pushkin himself.

It is generally known that Alexander Pushkin was killed in a duel with Dantes, a French nobleman who allegedly courted Pushkin's wife, the beauty of St. Petersburg's high circles, Natalia.

It was not the first time for a Russian poet to go out for a duel. There are as many as twenty-nine troubles that Pushkin got into, which resulted in duels that were held and avoided.

It is interesting that Pushkin came to one of them with a hat full of cherries, which he ate in cold blood while the opponent aimed at him. This vivid event from life, artistically transformed, is mentioned in Pushkin's short story Bullet.

Pushkin had trouble with both Russian self-willed tsars, under whose rule he created his immortal verses. With his extremely open poems about freedom, and the support of progressive movements in Russia from the beginning of the 19th century, he deservedly gained the voice of the enemy of their absolutism and predestined himself for the difficult fate of a lonely exile.

The history of hostility and, as it will be shown, the fatefully strained relationship between the poet and the rulers begins long before Dante's murderous bullet.Thanks to the connections of his father and uncle, Pushkin was enrolled in the newly founded and prestigious lyceum in 1811, which was located in an abandoned part of the Tsarskoe Selo castle, not far from St. Petersburg. There, young nobles were educated and prepared for high state positions.

At the time of strong historical upheavals, Napoleon's conquests and the movement for the liberation of enslaved European peoples, the poet and his comrades from the lyceum were preoccupied with revolutionary and anti-absolutist ideas.

Pushkin started publishing very early and his songs resonated. He came into conflict with Alexander I because of his political songs.Pushkin's exile to the south of Russia followed. From Ekaterinoslav it reaches the Caucasus, from the Caucasus to the Crimea, and then to Chisinau.

All this time, Pushkin was surrounded by spies who provided the tsar's officials with information about his movements and activities. About Pushkin's life during this period, Viktor Shklovsky states:

Pushkin was able to find moments of happiness in the accident, he took everything from the life that was assigned to him, but he lived very hard and that can be seen in his fantasies about escape.

There is no doubt that the temperamental and ambitious Pushkin voluntarily challenged Dantes to a fatal duel. However, at the court of Nicholas I for a long time before, and especially before him, there was a suffocating atmosphere of intrigue, gossip, conspiracy against the disobedient poet. So, among Russian writers and literary historians, the opinion was established that the duel was rigged.

The duel took place on January 27, 1837 , and Pushkin died two days later as a result of injuries.

Pushkin was hit in the stomach and then he could not be helped. The doctors were helpless. He was in hellish pain.He was visited by all his friends. Viazemski, Turgenev, Jurkovski, and many others, all shocked.Pushkin demanded that Natalia not be allowed to see him so that she would not watch him suffer, and she slowly went mad.Her eyes were restless, her hair uncombed, her face pale, thin. She realized the consequences of her frivolity. The queen of the dance was now a disappointed woman, who too late realized the values ​​of the man who had suffered for her for so long and died for her.Pushkin was close to death, but he still wanted to justify Natalia. He knew the cruelty of society, he knew how much he would suffer after his death. He said: "My wife ... she is not to blame for my death. This is just my thing."He was still conscious when the emperor's letter was brought to him. He read it ... but no one ever found out what Nicholas I had written. The emperor ordered his letter returned. What did the aristocrat write to this man in the last moments that he could never understand?That is one of the secrets that history will never explain.

Natalija wanted to believe that her husband would recover ... now she loved him very much. He repeated: "You have to forget. Go and spend two years in the countryside. After that, marry the right man."

The pain was becoming so terrible and Pushkin was screaming that it could be heard even on the street. The agony lasted for two days and he died on the morning of January 29.Excitement gripped the whole of Russia and the government banned any manifestation of sympathy.The funeral was held in another church.That night, on a sleigh, accompanied by only one gendarme, the coffin of the great Russian poet was transported to the cemetery in Svyatogorsk.Natalia said in despair: "I killed my husband. I am to blame for his death. I swear to God that my soul and heart are pure."

She fulfilled his wish and withdrew to the village. Later she married an officer. An unusual thing: when she died in 1863, the entire imperial court was at the funeral of the ,,woman who killed Pushkin."

The French nobleman Dantes was expelled to France by the imperial order. He was sorry, his conscience tormented him and he never forgot ...

… Verses, verses, verses. It is the food of the soul. Do you know how I have fun. I write notes until lunch, I have lunch late, I ride after lunch, I listen to fairy tales in the evening - and thus I make up for the shortcomings of my damn upbringing. How wonderful those fairy tales are! Every poem is! …He wrote this to his brother while he was in Mihajlovski, where he was expelled by the authorities.In Mihajlovski, he completed the poem Gypsies, wrote the play Boris Godunov, and two chapters by Evgeny Onegin.

Source of my history book. Pictures taken from google.