Did Pushkin write a review of Baumeister’s Metaphysics?

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of the authorship attribution of the anonymous review published in Literaturnaya Gazeta on 2 March 1830 in response to a revised edition of the Russian translation of F. C. Baumeister’s Metaphysics [Institutiones Metaphysicae]. The hypothesis that names the author as A. Delvig (V. Vinogradov, S. Kibalnik) is criticized for its lack of proof. The scholar argues in favour of Pushkin’s authorship. The review is considered in the context of Pushkin’s ‘indirect polemic’ with the book’s translator Y. Tolmachev, a prominent figure of the Russian national education system in the 1810s–1820s. Pushkin’s possible authorship is revealed in the stylistic features of the review as well as parallels between the poet’s own works (A Scene from ‘Faust’ [Stsena iz Fausta], Mozart and Salieri [Motsart i Salieri], and the so-called ‘Objections to Küchelbecker’s articles published in Mnemozina’ [‘Vozrazheniya na statyi Kyukhelbekera v Mnemozine’]) and selected paragraphs from Baumeister’s Metaphysics. Nearly all those texts relate to the period of Pushkin’s exile to his Mikhaylovskoe estate, when the poet had the opportunity to familiarize himself with Baumeister’s book.