Alexander Pushkin
(1799-1837)

While African American literature did not flower until the mid-nineteenth Century, individual Africans in countries other than African countries made valuable contributions to the literature of their respective adopted countries. There were Jacques E. J. Captein in Holland, Juan Latino in Spain, Alexandre Dumas, pere, in France, and Alexander Pushkin in Russia, whose writing skill brought them to public notice. The latter was the first of Russia's writers of world stature, according to the Editors of Time-Life Books.

Alexander Pushkin was born May 26th, 1799. He was the son of a family of nobility. On his father's side, he was the descendent of one of the oldest lines of Russian nobility. On his mother's side, he was related to Abraham Petrovich Hannibal, a pure Songhaian who had been kidnapped from Songhai,(West Africa), brought to Constantinople and sent as a gift to Peter the Great.

Between 1811 and 1817 he attended a special school for children of nobility. Pushkin was indifferent to most subjects, but he performed brilliantly in French and Russian literature. He wrote about 130 poems during this period.

Pushkin was exiled to the south of Russia because of his political sentiments

and the boldness he expressed in his poems. His "Ode to Liberty" contained a politically sensitive reference to the father of Czar Alexander I. He left and did not return for six years, glad to be free of the artificialities of life in the capital. Always short of money he began to write to earn extra money. He fell in love with a woman who inspired some of his best poems such as "Night" and "Beneath the Blue Sky of Her Native Land."

At the end of his exile in 1826, Pushkin was received by the new Czar, Nicholas I. Pushkin was charmed by his reasonableness and kindness. However he was placed under what is called a "privileged tyranny" in which the Czar himself would censor his works.

After 1830 Pushkin wrote less poetry. His poem "The Bronze Horseman" was considered his greatest work. Many of Pushkin's works provided the bases for operas.

In January of 1837 Pushkin provoked to a duel by a man who longed for his wife. Pushkin was seriously wounded and died several days later. He will always be remembered because of the many parks, streets and buildings named in his honor in Russia's major cities, and statues erected in his honor.