Pushkin's Poem 'The Bronze Horseman' and its politicо-philosophical implications

Abstract

The claim this paper makes is that the The Bronze Horseman (1833), poem by Alexandre Pushkin, is not only one of the crowning achievements of Russian literature, but of Russian political philosophy as well. As it is well known, one of the protagonists of the poem is river Neva and the flood restrained by the Bronze Horseman, Pushkin's incarnation of Peter the Great. The author puts forward the hypothesis that the The Bronze Horseman could be conceived by the poet in terms of the treatise of Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513), the centrepiece of the respective system of notions being the figure of the 'prince' who overpowers the barbarous masses, depicted by Machiavelli through the metaphor of an uncontrollable destructive torrent. It may further be supposed that The Bronze Horseman is in a certain sense Pushkin's response to the criticism from his once friend, the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz who had dealt with the ideas of Machiavelli (an important authority in Polish Catholic tradition) in his work. During his stay in Russia in 1824-1829 Mickiewicz met Pushkin in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg many times and developed a friendship with him. One of the most significant encounters took place by the Bronze Horseman on the Senate Square and was subsequently described by Mickiewicz in his short poem entitled Monument to Peter the Great. After the suppression of the Polish revolt of 1830-1831 Mickiewicz remained outraged by the position of his 'former Russian friend Pushkin' who celebrated the 'capture of Warsaw' in enthusiastic verse.