Of all the brilliant literary figures of the “Pushkin pleiad,” Vil'gel'm Kiukhel'beker has probably suffered the most: both his life and his literary fate are marked by great drama and, at the same time, bad luck. He was a remarkable poet who should be ranked just after Aleksandr Pushkin and Evgenii Abramovich Baratynsky; a writer who worked in widely varying genres from travelogue to heroic tragedy (including lyric and epic poetry, opera libretto, short tales, novels, essays, epistles and diaries); and a polymath noted for his learning even among his most cultivated contemporaries. Yet, he was for many long years excluded from the literary process: because of his participation in the uprising at Senate Square on 14 December 1825, Kiukhel'beker spent ten years in solitary confinement and the rest of his life in Siberian exile. His legacy has still not been published in its entirety: the unpublished material includes his...