A. A. Naumov. Alexander Pushkin’s duel with Georges d’Anthès.
Public Domain
Alexander Pushkin Dies in a Duel
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How would you react
to an anonymous lampoon
awarding you the title,
Deputy Grand Master of the Order of Cuckolds?
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We were sure it was the work of Baron d’Anthès.
He’d been sniffing around Pushkin’s wife
in Saint Petersburg society,
but to my knowledge,
the beautiful Natalia’d rejected him.
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Married six years, four children,
Pushkin was as certain of her fidelity
as he was of d’Anthès’s mischief.
.
Sure, tongues wagged as they always will
when a stunning beauty’s involved –
some called Natalia Russia’s Helen of Troy,
and no denying she was a flirt.
She had so many admirers.
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But the mock letter couldn’t be ignored,
and even though the Baron denied writing it –
and face it, it wasn’t exactly Eugene Onegin, –
the week after d’Anthès’s marriage
to Natalia’s sister Yekaterina,
the two of them met at Chernaya Rekha
on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg,
a cold day at the end of January.
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Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for Brick House Books in Baltimore and Reviews Editor for The Adirondack Review. A chapbook of poems, Jack Tar’s Lady Parts, is available from Main Street Rag Publishing. Another poetry chapbook, Me and Sal Paradise, was recently published by Future Cycle Press. An e-chapbook has also recently been published online Time Is on My Side (yes it is) –http://poetscoop.org/manuscrip/Time%20Is%20on%20My%20Side%20FREE.pdf
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North of Oxford 