In this paper I aim to invite attention to a possible way of interpreting Pushkin’s historical play, Boris Godunov. I shall attempt to trace a particular poetical mechanism employed by Pushkin throughout his historical play. I call this mechanism ‘the poetics of provocation’, wherein the original sense of the Latin verb provoco is to be
be understood: ‘to call out, challenge, invite one to’. The particular way this Pushkinian text is organized via what I hereby term as the ‘poetics of provocation’ has
has a special bearing on how the sujet of this play unfolds.