The Fountain of Bakhchisaray
The Fountain of Bakhchisaray is a narrative poem by Alexander Pushkin, written between 1821 and 1823 and published in 1824. It is based on a Crimean legend and set in the harem of the Crimean Khan Giray.
In the poem, Zarema, a Georgian concubine, is sad because the Khan loves Maria, the daughter of a Polish nobleman who was kidnapped by Tatars. Maria is devout and prays to the Virgin Mary; she would rather die than be unfaithful. Zarema tries to pressure Maria to reject the Khan, but Maria dies, and Zarema is drowned by the harem guards. The Khan leaves for war but remains tormented. He orders a fountain to be built in memory of Maria, and the Crimean maidens call it the “fountain of tears.” In the epilogue, a narrator wanders the abandoned palace and wonders if a ghost he sees is Maria or Zarema, recalling a lost love and wishing to return to Crimea.
The poem is 578 lines long and written in freely rhymed iambic tetrameters. It is often seen as Romantic, with a fragmentary structure and some ambiguity about the fates of Zarema and Maria, but it is praised for its lyric beauty and musical language. Pushkin reportedly referred to the poem as “rubbish,” though he valued its epigraph from the Persian poet Saadi and thought the Zarema–Maria exchange had dramatic merit.
The Fountain of Bakhchisaray inspired several other works, including Arensky’s cantata (1899), the short film by Protazanov (1909–10), Asafyev’s ballet (1934), and Ilyinsky’s opera (1911). Zemlinsky’s opera Sarema (1897) is also connected to the poem, and the story was later depicted in paintings, such as Karl Briullov’s work from the 1840s.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 00:46 (CET).