CHAPTER II.
ROMANTICISM.—PUSHKIN AND POETRY.
Russia—all Europe, in fact—was now enjoying a period of peace. A truce of twenty-five years lay between the great political wars and the important social struggles to come. During these years of romanticism, so short and yet so full, between 1815 and 1840 only, all intelligent minds in Russia seemed given up to thought, imagination, and poetry.
Everything in this country develops suddenly. Poets appear in numbers, just as the flowers of the field spring forth after the sun's hot rays have melted the snow. At this time poetry seemed to be the universal language of men. Only one of this multitude of poets, however, is truly admirable, absorbing all the rest in the lustrous rays of his genius,—the glorious Pushkin.
He was preceded by Zhukovski, who was born twenty years earlier, and who also survived him. No critic can deny that Zhukovski was the real originator of romanticism in Russian literature; or that he was the first one to introduce it from Germany. His works were numerous. Perfectly acquainted with the Greek language, his version
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