THE best biographies are those which have no biographer. In Soviet
Russia there exist numerous works in which lives of great writers have
been reconstructed by interspersing excerpts from letters with frag-
ments from the authors' memoirs. When it comes to Pushkin, how-
ever, the task is not so simple, for the available records sometimes give
rise to contradictions and have to be compared and corrected.

Few authors have been more studied and less understood than Push-
kin. The special mystery he presents has resisted all attempts at clarifi-
cation. His elusive character still baffles the professors. And the essays
devoted to his high genius have hidden him from us behind a wall of
solemn commentary. Each time a scrap of paper bearing the least trace
of his handwriting is unearthed, it is an occasion for a national holiday.
Long, learned articles are dedicated to the slightest mark of his pen, to
the most trifling memento concerning him. And whatever the mate-
rial, it is weighed, mulled over, and squeezed to the last drop.

After so much eminent research, it is hardly worth while pointing
out that any unpublished documents relating to Pushkin are now ex-
tremely rare. Nearly all the data on which the present volume is based
were got from the Russian books on the subject which have already
appeared. Nevertheless, it has been possible to make public in the
latter part of this work some important material which up to now had
remained secret. It will serve to explain the poet's duel and his death.
The documents published for the first time are the letters quoted on
pages 427, 464, 465.

In the two-volume edition of the French original, large portions of
the text were devoted to a detailed critical discussion of Pushkin's
works. The American edition has been planned as a one-volume biog-
raphy, which necessitated deletion of these passages. Also deleted was
the extensive bibliography, which can be consulted in the original edi-
tion ( Henri Troyat, Poushkine, 2 vols., Albin Michel, Paris).

H. T.

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