Pushkin s Joumey to the Orient

Throughout his entire life Pushkin journeyed to the Orient twice: in 1820 during his southern exile, and in 1828 on the Russian campaign to Kavkaz. Although his physical journey to the area was restricted to two occasions, the Orient - its actual as well as its imaginary attractions - continued to be a part of the poets great interest, which is vividly documented in his numerous, and various, forms of writing. The Orient, of course, is the Romantic locus of poetic power and freedom; the Orient is also the object of Pushkins, and Russia' s, imperialistic desire; the Orient, towards the end of his life, symbolizes a purely foreign, yet lost place of peace and will", whither the exhausted poet repeatedly longed to run away. By examining his personal letters and works, especially The Prisoner of Kavkaz" and The Journey to Arzrum" , we witness Pushkins genera1 view on the Oriental Question, his orientalism", which at times was far from being democratic or humanistic. What we actually see in Pushkin as an European" Russian is not a Romantic poet per se, but rather a clear minded man of practical sense and poetic sensibility, eternally entrapped in the Romantic irony of ambivalence