Spleen and Coping with Spleen in Alexander Gorodnitsky’s Road to Pushkin

Alexander Gorodnitsky’s Road to Pushkin (2021) contains a poetic triptych: 1) Moscow, 1831 ; 2) Pushkin to Pletnyov, July 22, 1831 ; 3) Spleen . These three poems were written in 2020 during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The last poem compares the poet’s own experience of lock-down spleen with the historical analogy of the autumn of 1830, when Alexander Pushkin was quarantined in his family estate of Boldino due to a cholera outbreak and which became an exceptionally productive period for the great Russian poet. Gorodnitsky centers his Pushkin myth on the utmost value of art. Moscow, 1831 describes how an existential crisis gave birth to the golden age of Russian literature. The other two poems are palimpsests of Pushkin’s imagery and motifs, exploring the nature of Russian spleen ( khandra ) and coping with it. In the triptych, Pushkin’s biography echoes with Gorodnitsky’s own life.