1818

1818 marks the near-fatal illness at the end of Alexander Pushkin’s first years in St. Petersburg: after a punishing cycle of work and nighttime dissipation, he contracted putrid fever and nearly died. The episode also offers a biographical counterpoint to Eugene Oneguine, whose opening canto reflects the early dissipations of its young protagonist.

Context in St. Petersburg

Pushkin left the Lyceum in 1817 and took an appointment in the Foreign Office at St. Petersburg. The capital opened its social world to him across a striking range, from the prince’s palace to the officers’ quarters of the Imperial Guard. His lyrical talent made him widely popular, while his life acquired a relentless rhythm: he scarcely slept, worked through the day, and dissipated at night.

The Fever

The consequences of that routine came in 1818, when Pushkin contracted putrid fever. The illness nearly carried him off, turning metropolitan excess from a mode of life into a mortal danger. The account presents the fever as the culmination of three years of reckless dissipation in the capital, rather than as an isolated interruption.

Reflection in the Poem

The account connects Pushkin’s experience with the first canto of Eugene Oneguine, where the early dissipations of the “Philosopher just turned eighteen” reflect the poet’s own life in the capital. Pushkin was exactly eighteen when he began that period of his career. The overlap makes the poem’s youthful world more than a general portrait of fashionable excess: its details carry the imprint of a life whose pace had brought its author close to death.