Poltava (poem) - Analysis

Analysis

This poem has received considerably less attention than Pushkin's other narrative poems, and its reception has been mixed. A.D.P. Briggs sees Pushkin's fusion genres and subject matter as unsuccessful, calls it overly-long - at nearly 1500 lines it is one of the longest of Pushkin's narrative poems - and protests the lack of variety in rhyme. Babinski also makes the charge that the disparate elements in the poem are not well-integrated, suggesting the poem is "not a continuous narrative… barely a narrative poem at all, more like a three-act play with an all-purpose narrator to keep the material together."

Several critics have made the charge that Poltava is an apology for Russian Imperialism. J.P. Pauls (1962) accuses Pushkin of "propagating the Russian imperialistic cause" and "distorting" historical truth. This view is echoed by Svetlana Evdokimova (1999), who contrasts what she sees as unabashed patriotism of Poltava with the richer, more ambiguous portrayal of Peter I and Empire in The Bronze Horseman (1833). Pushkin's biographer Henri Troyat suggested that Pushkin deliberately wrote a pro-Imperial poem in order to assuage Tsar Nicholas I, who was suspicious of his political loyalties after his return from exile.

Soviet critics tended to be more sympathetic towards the poem. V.M. Zhirmunskii (1924) sees the poem as the moment of Pushkin's decisive break with Byron, arguing that Pushkin uses a moral and historical perspective to create psychological portraits and evaluations of his characters, while Byron relies on emotion alone. S.M. Bondi argues that Pushkin successfully pulls together historical and personal themes and the poem is a valuable meditation on the place of the Russian state among European powers. However, while Pushkin certainly made the claim that he was writing a historically-accurate poem, Babinski points out "for all his insistence upon historicity, Pushkin slanted the facts."

Western critics who have been kinder to Poltava have focused on its characterization. John Bayley says that Mazepa "has something of the depth of a Shakespeare portrait". David Bethea also suggests that Poltava owes something to Shakespearean characterization. The most sympathetic treatment of the poem is offered in a book-length treatment by Virginia Burns (2005), which praises the poem for its successful characterization, tight structure and the scope of its philosophical inquiry.