Editing Alexander Pushkin (section)

==Death==
By the autumn of 1836, Pushkin was falling into greater and greater debt and faced scandalous rumours that his wife was having a love affair. On 4 November, he sent a challenge to a duel to [[Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès|Georges d'Anthès]], also known as Dantes-Gekkern. [[Jacob van Heeckeren tot Enghuizen|Jacob van Heeckeren]], d'Anthès' adoptive father, asked that the duel be delayed by two weeks. With efforts by the poet's friends, the duel was cancelled.

On 17 November, d'Anthès proposed to Natalia Goncharova's sister, Ekaterina. The marriage did not resolve the conflict. D'Anthès continued to pursue Natalia Goncharova in public and rumours circulated that d'Anthès had married Natalia's sister just to save her reputation.

On 26 January (7 February in the Gregorian calendar) 1837 Pushkin sent a "highly insulting letter" to Gekkern. The only answer to that letter could be a challenge to a duel, as Pushkin knew. Pushkin received the formal challenge to a duel through his sister-in-law, Ekaterina Gekkerna, approved by d'Anthès, on the same day through the attaché of the French Embassy, Viscount d'Archiac.

Pushkin asked [[Arthur Magenis]], then attaché to the [[Consulate-General of the United Kingdom, Saint Petersburg|British Consulate-General in Saint Petersburg]], to be his second. Magenis did not formally accept but on 26 January (7 February) approached Viscount d'Archiac to attempt a reconciliation; however d'Archiac refused to speak with him as he was not yet officially Pushkin's second. Magenis, unable to find Pushkin in the evening, sent him a letter through a messenger at 2 o'clock in the morning declining to be his second, as the possibility of a peaceful settlement had already been quashed, and the traditional first task of the second was to try to bring about a reconciliation.<ref name="simmons">{{cite news |last1=Simmons |first1=Ernest J. |title=Pushkin |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.126492/page/n435/mode/2up/search/magenis |access-date=28 January 2020 |date=1922|ref=Simmons |page=412}}</ref><ref name="binyon">{{cite book |last1=Binyon |first1=T. J. |author-link=T. J. Binyon |title=Pushkin: A Biography |date=2007 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-307-42737-3 |pages=593–594 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xr7tZng-w-0C&q=Sir+Arthur+Magenis+second+duel+with+Pushkin&pg=PA593 |access-date=27 January 2020 |language=en}}</ref>

The pistol duel with d'Anthès took place on 27 January (8 February) at the [[Chernaya River (Saint Petersburg)|Black River]], without the presence of a second for Pushkin. The duel they fought was of a kind known as a "barrier duel".{{efn|This was coincidentally the same form of duel as the one depicted in ''Eugene Onegin''; see Hopton (2011)}} The rules of this type dictated that the duellists began at an agreed distance. After the signal to begin, they walked towards each other, closing the distance. They could fire at any time they wished, but the duellist that shot first was required to stand still and wait for the other to shoot back at his leisure.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hopton |first=Richard |title=Pistols at Dawn: A History of Duelling |date=1 January 2011 |publisher=Little, Brown Book Group Limited |isbn=978-0-7499-2996-1|pages=85–87}}</ref>

D'Anthès fired first, critically wounding Pushkin; the bullet entered at his hip and penetrated his abdomen. D'Anthès was only lightly wounded in the right arm by Pushkin's shot. Two days later, at 2.45 pm on 29 January (10 February), Pushkin died of [[peritonitis]].

In [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]]'s novel [[The Idiot]], a character suggests that the shot was accidental: ‘The bullet hit so low that d’Anthès was probably aiming somewhere higher, the chest or the head; nobody aims where that bullet hit, that means it probably hit Pushkin by chance, a fluke. I’ve been told that by people who know.’ <ref>{{cite book |last=Dostoevsky |first=Fyodor |title=The Idiot |date=1992 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-953639-2}}</ref>

At Pushkin's wife's request he was put in the coffin in evening dress, not in chamber-cadet uniform, the uniform provided by the emperor. The funeral service was initially assigned to St Isaac's Cathedral but was moved to Konyushennaya church. Many people attended. After the funeral the coffin was lowered into the basement, where it stayed until 3 February, when it was removed to Pskov province. Pushkin was buried in the grounds of Svyatogorsky monastery in present-day [[Pushkinskiye Gory]], near Pskov, beside his mother. His last home is now a [[National Pushkin Museum|museum]].
[[File:Ivan Makarov - Natalia Nikolaevna Pushkina-Lanskaya 1849.jpg|thumb|180px|right|His widow [[Natalia Pushkina|Natalia Goncharova]], 1849]]
[[File:Pushkin ancestry.png|thumb|left|100px|Pushkin's ancestry]]