SOURCE: "The Reception of Pushkin's Poetic Works in the 1820s: A Study of the Critic's Role," in Slavic Review, Vol. 28, No. 3, September, 1969, pp. 394-415.

In the following essay, Debreczeny explores early commentary on Pushkin's works in relation to the evolution of Russian literary criticism.

The relationship between Pushkin and his critics has been a subject of considerable interest and discussion since the poet's own time. Belinsky made it the focus of the introduction to his series of essays on Pushkin. The early biographers provided some further information, and scholarly attention dates from the 1889 monograph by S. S. Trubachev, Pushkin v russkoi kritike, 1820-1880, which appeared shortly after V. A. Zelinsky had published, between 1887 and 1889, his extremely, useful anthology of Pushkin criticism. The monograph is little more than a pedestrian rehearsal of reviews, digressing only to promulgate such myths as Pushkin's "aristocratic" attitude toward critics, but it remains valuable...