ANECDOTES ABOUT PUSHKIN’S LIFE

1

Pushkin was a poet, and all the time he was writing something. Once Zhukovsky found him writing and shouted at him, “You really are a scribbler!”

From that time on, Pushkin loved Zhukovsky and in friendly fashion called him simply Zhukov.

2

As is known, Pushkin could never grow a beard. This bothered him a lot, and he always envied Zakharyn, who on the contrary really had a properly growing beard. “His grows and mine doesn’t grow,” Pushkin often complained, pointing at Zakharyn with his fingernails. And each time he was right.

3

Once Petrushevsky broke his watch and sent for Pushkin. Pushkin came, looked at Petrushevsky’s watch, and put it back on the chair. “What do you say, Brother Pushkin?” Petrushevsky asked. “The wheels stopped going round,” Pushkin said.

4

When Pushkin broke his legs, he got about on wheels. His friends liked to tease Pushkin and caught the wheels. Pushkin became angry and wrote poems in which he swore at his friends. He called these poems “erpigarms.”

5

Pushkin spent the summer of 1829 in the country. He would get up early in the morning, drink a pitcher of milk, and run to the river to bathe. After bathing in the river, Pushkin would lie down on the grass and sleep till lunch. After lunch Pushkin would sleep in his hammock. When he met smelly peasants, Pushkin would nod to them and hold his nose with his fingers. The smelly peasants would take off their caps and say, “It’s nothing.”

6

Pushkin loved to throw rocks. As soon as he saw a rock, he would throw it. Sometimes he became so excited that he stood, all red in the face, waving his arms, throwing rocks, simply something awful.

7

Pushkin had four sons, all idiots. One didn’t even know how to sit on a chair and fell off all the time. Pushkin himself also sat on a chair rather badly. It was simply killing: they sat at the table; at one end, Pushkin kept falling off his chair continually, and at the other end, his son. Simply enough to make one split one’s sides with laughter.