The Bronze Horseman

Summary

The Bronze Horseman is a poem by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, written in 1833. The poem recounts a real historical event, the flood in Saint Petersburg in 1824. The main character, a young impoverished clerk named Eugene, loses his fiancée Parasha and his sanity due to the disaster. In a fit of anger and despair, he blames his tragedy on Emperor Peter I, as it was by his will that the city was built on marshy land. Consequently, he is haunted by the vision of the bronze monument to Peter I (The Bronze Horseman), which leads him to ultimate despair and madness.