It was in the Crimea that he
learned to know and wonder over Byron. He remained three years in
Kischinew,--in the service chiefly of wine, women and cards. In 1823 he
went to Odessa as attache of the General Governor Count Woronzow, whom
he pursued with biting epigram,--until in 1824 the poet of "Russlan and
Ludimilla" was removed from the service and banished to his mother's
estates by order of the Tsar Alexander I.
These two years of unwilling retirement worked mightily upon the soul of
Pushkin so filled with storm and stress. He struck off the chains of
Byron and steeped himself in Shakespeare; writing at this period his
drama of Boris Godunow. Nicholas First amnestied the poet and recalled
him to Moscow, instituting himself censor of all future work; likewise
placing Pushkin under the all-powerful Chief of Police Count
Benkendorff, from whom Lermontoff later had also so much to suffer. In
1829 Pushkin went to the Caucas and with the Russian army to Erzum. In
1830 he inherited from his father the management of But Boldino, where
he finished "Onegin," and three other dramas. In 1831 he was married at
Moscow to Natalie Nikolajewa Gontsharowa, whose beauty had for three
years held him in her toils. In the same year he was appointed to the
foreign office again. In 1833 the poem was published that won him his
fatal commission.
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