Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- A Note on Translitreration -- Abbreviations -- Part 1: Realizing Metaphors, Situating Pushkin -- Why Pushkin -- The Problem of Poetic Biography -- Freud: The Curse of the Literally Figurative -- Bloom: The Critic as Romantic Poet -- Jakobson: Why the Statue Won't Come to Life, or Will It? -- Lotman: The Code and Its Relation to Leterary Biography -- Part II: Pushkin, Derzhavin, and the Life of the Poet -- Why Derzhavin? -- 1814-1815 -- 1825-1826 -- 1830-1831 -- 1836 -- Index.