Making prophecy the poet's mission: Adam Mickiewicz and Vladimir Solov'ev analyze the example of Aleksandr Pushkin

In this study, the juxtaposition of Aleksandr Pushkin's poem "The Prophet" with the texts written about Pushkin by Adam Mickiewicz and Vladimir Solov'ev permits a reexamination of how poets began to consider themselves and other poets as prophets under the influence of Romantic thought.;Although the word "prophet" is often used to refer to poets in European literature, particularly beginning with the Romantic period, the use of the term has not been thoroughly analyzed. Scholars of Romanticism in various contexts (such as M. H. Abrams and Wiktor Weintraub) use the term without explaining its origin. In an attempt to find a convincing explanation for the appeal of this term during and after Romanticism, its use in Russian and Polish literature is considered as it plays out in the creative work of Pushkin, Mickiewicz, and Solov'ev. The prophet "model" is addressed as one which permits a unique interaction between the pressure to guide society through history and the individual aesthetic imperative to craft eloquent poetry and prose.;Pushkin was a writer who rejected the idea of himself as a prophet publicly perceived, although this idea retained a certain allure for him. A new reading of "The Prophet" is offered for this argument, as well as a discussion of the poet's 1831 poems about the Polish Uprising.;Mickiewicz wrote an obituary for Pushkin while living in Paris. This text together with lengthy mentions of Pushkin from the Lectures which he gave at the College de France in the early 1840s form the basis for reevaluating not only Mickiewicz's view of Pushkin, but of his own prophetic mission.;Solov'ev wrote three essays about Pushkin in the late 1890s. A summary of his earlier writings about prophets complements thorough analysis of these late essays, suggesting a new reading of Solov'ev's literary criticism which refutes assertions of his hopeless pessimism in his final years.;Finally, the study reflects on the place of these explorations of prophecy in the larger context of Slavic anxiety vis-a-vis Europe, and advances a hypothesis for the particular appeal of poet-prophets for writers in Slavic contexts.