Can someone explain the ballad “The Bridegroom” by Alexander Pushkin?
The Bridegroom is the darkly sinister tale of a merchant’s daughter and a highly traumatic experience which she has recently undergone, but feels unable to relate to her parents. It is only at her wedding, and through the meshing of dream and reality, that the truth is uncovered. Beginning with a hint of mystery, the suspense builds with alarming pace in this tightly written verse tale, holding the reader gripped until the secret of what has happened to poor Natasha is revealed. Borrowing the metrical form of a German Romantic Ballad, but combining it with a story of almost Gothic horror (possibly based on an oral tale told by his nanny), Pushkin’s skill as a story teller is showcased at its very best. Returning from Paris and cursing ‘Holy Russia’ for its backwardness, Nulin is very much the modern man of the time, and his threat to ‘true’ Russia in the person of Natalya Petrovna, is subtly drawn out by Pushkin. Finished in late 1825, on the very day the Decembrist uprising was being
