There are certain artists who are consolingly mature when they start producing their literary works. Joseph Conrad was 43, George Eliot 40, when they wrote their first novels. But generally speaking, writers reveal their talents young. Jane Austen was 20 when she wrote Sense and Sensibility and 22, God damn her, when she completed her first draft of Pride and Prejudice. (We might, in passing, rejoice in her decision not to marry Harris BiggWither, so becoming Jane Bigg-Wither, housewife, mother and unpublished scribbler of ill-considered trifles).
That is to say, the chances are, if you haven't started writing by your mid-twenties, you are never going to do it all. But that doesn't mean you need to go to the precocious extremes of Alexander Pushkin, whose first work was published when he was just 15. Maybe he felt upon his cheek the cold breath of mortality, for he survived barely another 20 years; like Marlowe (famous at 23, dead at 29) he came to an early and violent end, in a duel over his wife's honour.
Every Russian writer
What might he have produced if he not died at the age of 37? At the same age, Shakespeare had still to write Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Anthony and Cleopatra; what might have lain ahead for the author of Yevgeny Onegin, Boris Godunov and The Captain's Daughter? As it was, he inspired every Russian writer since, not merely in his liberal and catholic embrace of Russian culture, but in his use of language, which must, of course and alas, be beyond those of us who have no Russian.
Of course great genius survives translation; but one wonders, how much? What of Yeats can make the journey into French or German? How can Joyce possibly be read and understood by anyone who is not merely master of English, but master also of Hiberno-English and master too of Dublin's streets and Dublin's little ways? And what of Shakespeare, who not merely towers over the literature of the English-speaking peoples, but towers too over our language? How do the sumptuous glories and extravagant linguistic whimsy of A Midsummer Night's Dream withstand the rigours of the journey into Russian? Yet apparently they do, at least in part.
Civilisation has its private continuities, its apostolic succession of genius. Shakepeare was inspired by Boccaccio, Boccaccio by Petrarch, Petrarch by Virgil and Homer. The thread runs true, and right down the ages; and Pushkin revered Shakespeare. But how did he read Shakespeare? In French? In Russian? Hardly English. So what of Shakespeare did Pushkin actually understand, when the English language is at the core of presentation, plot and character of everything the man did? Yet he clearly did understand him; or perhaps more to the point, rather thought he did.
Literary language
The apostolic succession within Russia after Pushkin is simple enough; Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Gorky and all other giants of Russian letters employed the literary language he created; and please do not mistake this bald statement for understanding. I merely make this declaration with as much comprehension as a caveman putting his lips around the words "electron microscope" or "particle physics".
But Pushkin is interesting in one further regard. Shakespeare (for example) inspired no worthwhile opera in English, either because his genius is so complete that it is beyond adaptation, or because there is no English-language opera to speak of. There is of course Benjamin Britten who, with his shrieks and moans, is pretty deplorable: he only partially redeemed himself with his Missa Brevis, but that, unfortunately, is seldom performed these days because the excruciatingly banal modern liturgy has no room for it. Yet Britten at least had the good grace to leave Shakespeare to composers who could write music, such as Mendelssohn and Verdi, largely confining himself to the odd adagio for three cats with their tails in blenders, and a musical sonnet best performed by a soprano having her tonsils removed.
Russian musicology
Pushkin on the other hand was enormously important in Russian musicology. Tchaikovsky, Glinka and Mussorgsky all used his works to create their own masterpieces; which suggests that it is probably impossible to understand Russian culture or even Russia without understanding Pushkin and his works.
No doubt, no doubt; but why am I rabbiting on about Pushkin when I clearly know so little about him? Well, because it is his 200th birthday on June 6th in the new calender, (May 26th in the old one) and the Waterfront in Belfast is celebrating the event with a concert by the Kirov Opera and Orchestra, under the baton of the extraordinary Valery Gergiev, with excerpts from the operatic and orchestral works which his writing inspired. These happen to be some of the greatest passages in all of Russian opera.
This concert does not actually fall on his birthday, but on Friday, June 11th, and it will be the only one given by the Kirov in Ireland. There is an overnight package for visitors to Belfast - train from Dublin, a night in the Hilton with dinner, etc. - about which you can find out more from Jane Coyle at (from the Republic) 08-01232-426524.
It would be nice indeed to attend this concert, but I won't be doing so. For there is another anniversary which falls on June 6th, in Normandy; and I will be there to remember and honour the many young Irishmen who gave their lives for the freedom of this world, 55 years ago this summer.