Donald Rayfield
Peter’s Polymath
A very Russian contradiction, which Hugh Barnes has noted in one of his newspaper reports, is that the Moscow skinheads who enthusiastically beat to death any lone black man they might see on their patch will profess to revere the national poet Aleksandr Pushkin and take pride in the fact that one of his great-grandfathers was the African slave boy Gannibal. The real role of Gannibal in eighteenth-century military science and in Russian politics is extraordinary enough; yet more important are his genes in the make-up of his great-grandson, although one might argue it is not so much who Gannibal really was, but who Pushkin imagined him to be, that determined the African influence on Pushkin’s poetry.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'We may not be able to shield ourselves from irrational passions such as hatred, anger, envy, mockery and pride, or from the buffetings of circumstance, but we can rise above them by obtaining insight into their nature and their causes.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-poetry-of-reason
Sign up to our e-newsletter!
Get highlights from the new issue and selected archive articles, as well as exclusive competitions and subscription offers delivered straight to your inbox.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/freenewsletter
'Some Labour MPs who were shocked by Corbyn’s rise behaved appallingly ... Not only were they disloyal; they also had no coherent strategy for removing Corbyn or an alternative left-of-centre project.'
@steverichards14 https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-accidental-leader