Russia's Poet, Seth's Inspiration

Considered one of the greatest literary craftsmen of his age, Vikram Seth is one of those rare writers who have managed to avoid being trapped by a single genre. In his relatively brief career, his accomplishments have included poetry collections, fables and novels in verse, epics and travel books.


Paying Moscow a fleeting visit this week as a guest of the First Moscow International Poetry Festival f held to coincide with the bicentenary of Alexander Pushkin's birth f Seth read from some of his earlier works written in various verse forms, paying tribute to Russia's great literary tradition. Following his Moscow readings, he is embarking on a pilgrimage to Pushkin places, heading to Pskov and then Mikhailovskoye, the poet's family estate.


Although Seth doesn't speak the language, it was via Russia, which he first visited in 1982, and through the influence of its greatest poet, that his literary career began.


"In 1982, I had no idea that Russia, specifically Pushkin, would be the making of me as a writer," said Seth, who was born in Calcutta in 1952 and is now based in England.


It was only in 1983, when he was back in Stanford completing his Ph.D thesis in economics, that Seth decided to take a break from punching research data into the computer and read something completely different. Stumbling upon Charles Johnston's translation of "Eugene Onegin" in a bookstore, he became so smitten by Pushkin's verse, its rhythm and wit, that he abandoned his dissertation and began writing a novel in verse of his own.


Borrowing from Pushkin's meter, the iambic tetrameter, Seth transported the early 19th-century literary tradition to the English language and to a plot based in sunny California, centering on the angst of a Silicon Valley whiz kid.


Thus was born "The Golden Gate," Seth's 1986 literary debut and an instant bestseller.


"I used to think that writers make a big deal of the muse and inspiration, that it's an antiquated notion. But I fell in love with "Eugene Onegin," and I had to put everything else in my life aside to write this book," he said.


In it, he pays homage to "Pushkin's masterpiece/ In Johnston's luminous translation:/ Eugene Onegin f like champagne/ Its effervescence stirs my brain."


Seth's career, like Pushkin's, has turned increasingly to prose, from his epic "The Suitable Boy," which has been compared by a critic to Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace," to his latest novel, "An Equal Music," published earlier this year.


"An Equal Music" concerns an intense and solitary violinist, Michael, whose life in London is dominated entirely by memories of Julia, a former love and a fellow pianist from their student days in Vienna. Against the backdrop of the rarefied world of classical music, Seth gently unfolds Michael's life in all its passion, desperation, glory and, ultimately, frustration f Julia is now married and suffering from an incurable form of deafness, which threatens to sever her link from music, her one connection to Michael.


The meaning of the title, which has baffled many, only becomes clear in the context of the epigraph, a quotation from a John Donne sermon in which Donne talks about life after death.


Defending this unlikely epigraph f "An Equal Music" deals exclusively with life on Earth f Seth points to Pushkin once again, saying that the epigraphs in "Eugene Onegin" "have a loose but very suggestive connection to the text that follows."


The novel's dedication, to Seth's musician friend Phillipe Honore, also bears a strong Pushkin imprint. It takes the form of an acrostic Onegin stanza in which each of the 14 lines begins with a letter from his friend's name.