I learned a bit ago that two of my classes-- African-American
Literature and Russian Literature-- are somewhat connected, in
the form of the founder of modern Russian literature, Aleksandr
Sergeyevich Pushkin (Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Пу́шкин). Pushkin's
father descended from one of the Russian gentry's oldest
families who traced their history to the 12th century, while his
mother's grandfather was Ibrahim Petrovich Gannibal, a former
Eritrean who was abducted when he was a child and ended up in
Russia and became a great military leader, engineer and nobleman
after his adoption by Peter the Great. And from James Weldon
Johnson's Preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922):
Is it not curious to know that the greatest poet of Russia is
Alexander Pushkin, a man of African descent; that the greatest
romancer of France is Alexandre Dumas, a man of African descent;
and that one of the greatest musicians of England is Coleridge-
Taylor, a man of African descent? The fact is fairly well known
that the father of D