Pushkin

On this day in 1880, shortly before he died, Fyodor Dostoevsky gave his famous Alexander Pushkin speech at the unveiling of the Pushkin monument in Moscow. Dostoevsky delivered his speech on the last of the three days of celebration. Turgeniev had spoken on the previous evening, and in spite of his eminence had been coolly received. His assessment of Pushkin had been too detached for the taste of his emotional audience. Dostoevsky, in contrast, gripped everybody from the start with his fervour.

"Pushkin is an extraordinary phenomenon, and, perhaps, the unique phenomenon of the Russian spirit, said Gogol. I will add, ‘and a prophetic phenomenon.’ Yes, in his appearing there is contained for all us Russians, something incontestably prophetic. Pushkin arrives exactly at the beginning of our true selfconsciousness, which had only just begun to exist a whole century after Peter’s reforms, and Pushkin’s coming mightily aids us in our dark way by a new guiding light. In this sense Pushkin is a presage and a prophecy.."