Pushkin and Orthodox Enlightenment: A Reading of 'Unbelief' [Безверие] (1817)

• In Event: Orthodox Enlightenments

Abstract

Literary critics in the Soviet period tended to interpret Pushkin’s lycée poems as evidence of his Voltairean outlook or of his incipient atheism, but more recent scholarship has emphasized religious references, particularly biblical allusions, in his work. “Unbelief” is a good test-case for understanding his religious worldview at the end of the lycée years. The poem is also an invitation to historians to think again about the chronological boundaries of Russian Enlightenment and about the Enlightenment’s mutations after the Napoleonic wars.

Author

• Gary Michael Hamburg, Claremont McKenna College