The popular notion is that Vasilii Pushkin is remembered in the annals of Russian literature only because he was the paternal uncle of Russia's supreme poetic genius, Aleksandr Pushkin. The fact is, however, that Vasilii Pushkin had entirely on his own earned a literary reputation among his contemporaries and has received attention in the history of Russian literature ever since. The nature of that reputation is peculiar; Vasilii Pushkin achieved fame, indeed legendary status, above all as a figure of fun—benevolent fun on the part of his friends and associates, malicious on the part of his opponents. At the core of that image stood the lifelong versifier extraordinaire who, in the final verse of a poem titled “K liubimstam muz” (To the Beloved of the Muses) exclaimed: “O radost', o vostorg! I ia . . . I ia piit” (O joy, o rapture! I too . . . I too am a poet...