Spring

Spring in Pushkin’s account is not a season of uncomplicated renewal but one whose approach brings melancholy. Its association with love makes the contrast especially sharp: the season conventionally linked to desire arrives as a source of distress, while the poet found his creative temperament more at home in autumn’s chill and mist.

Pushkin’s Response to Spring

The commentary characterizes Pushkin as proportionally depressed by the approach of spring. It quotes his address to the season as “Mournful is thine approach to me,” then names it “O Spring, thou chosen time of love.” The juxtaposition sets the season’s familiar promise of love against a personal response of sorrow: spring’s cultural and emotional associations do not dispel melancholy but intensify it.

Contrast with Autumn and the Poem

Pushkin preferred autumn, especially its rainy, chill, and misty weather, for literary composition. Spring therefore occupies the opposite pole in this account of his seasonal temperament: autumn fosters his work, whereas spring’s arrival weighs upon him. The commentary directs readers to a parallel in the seventh canto, making the poet’s response part of the poem’s wider seasonal imagery rather than an isolated biographical detail.