Pushkin in Life

Vikenty Veresaev — a remarkable Russian writer, translator, and literary scholar. He is known not only for his artistic prose but also for his literary studies and translations of ancient poets. One of his most famous books — «Pushkin in Life» — has the subtitle «A Systematic Collection of Authentic Testimonies». V. V. Veresaev essentially opened a new genre — biography-chronicle. Using the technique of montage, he constructed the narrative from documentary materials: memories, letters, notes, comments from people who knew the poet — relatives, friends, and acquaintances. As a result, Veresaev managed to create a text free from authorial comments and evaluations, and from the authentic testimonies of contemporaries, a surprisingly vivid and cohesive image of Pushkin emerged. The first publication of this book (1926–1927) sparked sharp controversy in the press: the «living» Pushkin presented by Veresaev did not fit the ideological standards. Nevertheless, the book proved to be very in demand: it has been reissued multiple times, and even now, almost a hundred years after its appearance, it has not lost its relevance.