‘A FINE JOB FOR A PHILOSOPHER!’ ON ONE JOURNAL ENTRY OF THE STUDENT PUSHKIN
https://doi.org/10.31425/0042-8795-2018-1-40-52
Abstract
The article is devoted to an entry in Pushkin’s diary from when he was a student at the Lyceum, on 10 December 1815: he writes that ‘in the evening, together with his fellow-students, he was snuffing out the candles and lamps in the auditorium’ and calls it ‘a fine job for a philosopher’. In calling himself a philosopher, Pushkin evokes the image of Voltaire in Condorcet’s Vie de Voltaire, the book he was reading at the time and which interprets a philosopher as another term for educator and enemy of prejudice. ‘Snuffing out’, by contrast, was associated with a conservative reaction in the minds of liberal writers in the late 18th - early 19th centuries. This analogy is entrenched in the publications about an imaginary Order of the Extinguishers in the French opposition journal Le Nain Jaune (1814-1815). These were in active circulation among members of the Arzamas Society, with which the young Pushkin was also affiliated. Therefore, a philosopher putting out light must have looked comical, which was noted in Pushkin’s journal entry.
About the Author
E. AbdullaevRussian Federation
Evgeny Viktorovich Abdullaev, Candidate of Philosophy, literary critic.
Author of many works about philosophical influences on the Russian literature of the early 19th and 20th centuries, as well as of a number of articles on contemporary literature.
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Review
For citations:
Abdullaev E. ‘A FINE JOB FOR A PHILOSOPHER!’ ON ONE JOURNAL ENTRY OF THE STUDENT PUSHKIN. Voprosy literatury. 2018;(1):40-52. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.31425/0042-8795-2018-1-40-52
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