PUSHKIN AND THE GREEK REVOLUTION

 

Despotic miscreant 

I hate you and your throne! 

Tremble o tyrants of the world ! 

And you, unwakened slaves, listen:  

Be strong, take courage, and revolt! 

 

These are the kind of sentiments, from the poem ‘Ode to Liberty’ that got one into trouble in early nineteenth century Russia. Inspired by the Greek classical past, and especially by the Athenian tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Russia’s most famous poet, the unruly and Byronic Alexander Pushkin, a passionate Philhellene, penned verses urging his fellow Russians to follow suit. Few people know that Dionysios Solomos “Hymn to Liberty” was named in homage to Pushkin's ‘Ode to Liberty,’ nor that in his love and support for the Greek cause, Pushkin was perhaps one of Greece’s most fervent supporters, extolling in his works and inspiring his compatriots to adore, in his own words: “magnificent, classical poetic Greece; Greece, where everything breathes of mythology and heroism.” 

 

“Pushkin must be sent to Siberia,” the Tsar wrote. “He ha[s] flooded Russia with his subversive verses. All the youth know them by heart.” 

 

Things would have turned out badly for Pushkin, had it not been for the fact that upon his graduation from school in 1817, he was given the position of Collegiate Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under none other than Foreign Minister Ioannis Kapodistrias, later to be the first governor of Free Greece. Known in society circles as ‘Aristides the Just,’ Kapodistrias interceded on behalf of his former protégé with the Tsar and instead of exile in the frozen wastes of the Arctic, he arranged for Pushkin to be transferred to the office of General Inzov, in Bessarabia, where he promptly set about seducing his wife. That Kapodistrias deigned to assist his Pushkin in this way was admirable, given that according to some accounts, while in the employ of the great Greek, Pushkin would write lewd poetry alleging that Kapodistrias had a miniscule appendage, reducing Kapodistrias to tears. 

 

Kapodistrias’ observations about Pushkin, contained in a letter to General Inzov are revealing, not only of Pushkin, but also of Kapodistrias’ own philosophy of governance:  

“There is no depths to which this unfortunate young man, just as there is no perfection to which he cannot attain through the transcendent superiority of his talent... While characterised by great qualities of composition and style… [his writing] is full of dangerous principles derived from the contemporary school, or in other words, from that system of anarchy which bad faith calls the System of Human Rights, Liberty and the Independence of Peoples…” 

 

Kishinev, the capital city of Bessarabia, where Pushkin was sent on the eve of the Greek Revolution of 1821, was across the border from the Danubian Principalities where the first uprising would take place. It was also the seat of an influential Greek community and important centre for the Philike Etaireia, the Secret Society that was planning the Revolution. It did not take long for Pushkin to meet such revolutionary luminaries as Prince Alexandros Ypsilantis, who would later be immortalised by Pushkin in his short story “The Shot,” where the hero of Pushkin's story, Silvio, dies in a campaign under command of the sme Ypsilantis. He also met the Prince’s brothers, Michail Soutsos, the hospodar of Moldavia and many other hetairists and to learn of the imminent revolt. Thus he wrote to a friend in early March 1821: 

“One should be aware, that a secret society with the goal of the liberation of Greece… has become widespread.” 

Becoming a firm proponent of the Greek cause, Pushkin was quick to identify the internal contradictions within competing aspirations for Independence:  

“A separate faith, a separate language, independence of book-publishing; on the one hand enlightenment, on the other ignorance.” 

Basking in the heady excitement of the preparations for the Revolution, which was an open secret by now in Bessarabia, Pushkin observed: “The rapture of men’s minds has reached the highest pitch; all thoughts are directed to on theme, the independence of the ancient fatherland…Everyone was talking about Leondias, about Themistocles.”  

Anticipating  the revolt’s outbreak Pushkin excitedly penned the poem ‘War,’ in which he proclaimed: 

“War! The revolt is finally under way; 

The banners of warlike honour are unfurled! 

Blood I behold; I see the feast of vengeance…” 

 

By this time, Pushkin wrote to a friend hinting that he would enlist in Ypsilantis’ army and in the closing lines of ‘War’ expressed his frustration at the Revolution’s delay: 

“But why are the horrors of war-striking delaying? 

Why has not yet the first battle begun to boil?” 

 

Once the Revolution was under way, however, Pushkin remained in Bessarabia, praising his idol Ypsilantis in verse such as these which were added to his epic poem Eugene Onegin: 

 

 “The Pyrenees were shaken furiously, The volcano of Naples was in blazes; 

And the one-armed Prince [Ypsilantis] from Kishinev  

Waved to his friends in Morea.” 

 

In the poem To V. L. Davydov, Pushkin wrote again of his hero: 

“In the mountains and on the banks of Danube  

Our one-armed Prince is rising in revolt.” 

 

Pushkin’s revolutionary fervour attracted the attention of the Tsar who asked Kapodistrias to investigate the effects of the Greek Revolution on the errant poet. It must not have been a difficult task, given that Pushkin was openly penning popular verses such these in his poem “To Ovid” 

 

"Here, filling the air of the northern desert with the sound of my lyre  

I wondered during the days when,  

on the banks of the Danube 

The magnanimous Greek called for freedom." 

 

Yet it was not all macho war-play for Pushkin. He felt deeply the personal cost and anguish of those who were losing their lives or loved ones in the cause of Greek Liberty.  In the poem  

“Faithful Greek woman! Don’t cry! He fell like a hero,” he sought to console an imaginary grieving Greek wife: 

“When the enemy’s lance thrusted deeply into his chest.  

Don’t cry! Didn’t you show him before the first battle 

The bloody path to honour? 

But look! The black flag of freedom is unfurled! 

Like Aristogeiton he twined the sword of myrtle, 

And rushed into the field; and, falling had accomplished 

The great, sacred goal!” 

 

At the same time, like all the Romantics of his time, he orientalised and idealised Greek women, turning them into objects of desire and fascination. Thus in to a Greek Girl, later set to music by composer Rimsky-Korsakov and dedicated to Greek refugee Calypso Polychroni who was said to have bean Lord Byron’s lover, Pushkin wrote rapturously: 

 

“You were born to ignite 

the imagination of poets.. 

With your oriental and unique voice.. 

With your shining and visionary eyes 

And the immodest and little foot. 

O, you were born… 

for passion’s ecstasy divine…” 

 

Burning passions have a habit of become embers and then ash, their ardour having grown cold and this seems to have happened to Pushkin vis a vis the Greeks. In Moldo-Wallachia, Ypsilantis’ ill trained troops experienced one defeat after another. He planned to write an epic poem about freedom-fighter Georgakis Olympios’ exploits at the battle of the monastery at Secu but never completed it. Soon, defeated and dejected, members of Ypsilantis’ army began to trickle through the border into Russian-held Bessarabia. Seen, as Pushkin observed: “in the coffee-houses, with long pipes in their mouths, sipping ground coffee out of small cups,” they no longer resembled the dashing heroes of just a few weeks earlier. He became disillusioned especially with Ypsilantis’ officers who talked big but were incapable of military action, writing acerbically:  

 

“We have seen the new Leonidases in the streets of Odessa and Kishinev...we attest their complete worthlessness, they have not the slightest idea of military art, nor concept of honour, nor enthusiasm...that is just why I become indignant when I see these poor wretches invested with the sacred office of defenders of liberty.” 

 

To others he would describe the wannabe revolutionaries, now drowning their sorrows in the fleshpots of Odessa and Kishinev as “self-centered, incomprehending, light-minded, ignorant and stubborn.” 

 

By 1824, having been devastated by the course the Greek Revolution had taken towards internecine strife and warlordism, Pushkin was scathing against the Greeks, the erstwhile objects of his affection: 

“[They] have talked our heads off about Themistocles and Pericles, and we have come to imagine that a nasty people made up of bandits and shopkeepers are their legitimate descendants… If you would come to us in Odessa to look at the fellow countrymen of Miltiades, you would agree with me.” 

 

All that pain, borne of frustration and anguish at the fratricidal disintegration of the dream of the freedom of Greece vanished however upon the recognition of Greece’s Independence. This event and his reading of Rhigas Pheraios' «Δεῦτε παῖδες τῶν Ἑλλήνων,» popularised in Europe in translation by Lord Byron, caused  Pushkin to pen his last poem dedicated to the Greek Revolution "Восстань, о Греция, восстань" "Arise o Greece, Arise!" in which both Byron and Pheraios make an appearance. Despite his earlier misgivings about classical Greece’s modern day descendants, none of whom feature in any of the stanzas, Pushkin finally comes to the conclusion that all the pain, grief and devastation was worth the sacrifice: 

“Arise o Greece, Arise! 

Not in vain did you strain your forces, 

Not in vain did violently wrestle 

Olympus, Pindus and Thermopylae. 

Under the shadow of their ancient peaks 

Young freedom appears 

And on the grave of Pericles, 

The marbles of Athens. 

Land of heroes and gods 

Destroy the chains of slavery 

While singing fiery songs 

Of Tyrtaeus, Byron and Rigas.” 

 

The man who predicted that “Greece will come out victorious and that the twenty-five million of Turks will leave Hellada which is the legal heir of Homer and Themistocles,” may have had his belief in liberty and democratic rule solely tested by the Greek Revolution. Yet he never lost his love for the Greek world and its people and sang in service of the cause of their liberation and re-genesis like no other bard. In doing so, he instilled in millions of his compatriots both contemporary and succeeding, a love of Greece that endures to the present day. 

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU 

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on 1 April 2023