Books: Beyond the Wooden Curtain

PUSHKIN AND RUSSIAN LITERATURE (226 pp.)—Janko Lavrin—Macmillan ($2).

"You have no idea," wrote the great Russian poet Pushkin to a friend, "how nice it is to run away from one's fiancee and to write verses. Oh my dear, what joy!" In that autumn of 1830, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin wrote an astonishing number of lyrics, short plays and stories, some of which for more than a century have been proclaimed masterpieces. When he returned to Moscow, he married his cold, beautiful Natalia (by his own count she was woman No. 113 in his life), but...