The Illustrious Legacy of Alexander Pushkin
Described in Russia as simply ‘nash vse’ (our everything), the legacy that Pushkin left on Russian society and literature is monumental. Celebrate the 227th anniversary of his birth with this selection of Pushkin rarities.
‘Na beregu pustynnykh voln, stoial on, dum velikikh poln’…
I can still remember the opening to Pushkin’s A Bronze Horseman nearly twenty years after being made to recite it at school. Pushkin’s verse often has a way of repeatedly permeating its way into your life once you read it. I often find myself unwittingly saying ‘Moroz i solntse; den chudesnyi!’ (Cold frost and sunshine: day of wonder!) on a fine winter’s morning as my Russian teachers always did when the snow was crisp and the sky bright.
It’s hard to overstate the impact Pushkin had and still has on Russian society and further afield. He is described in Russia as simply ‘nash vse’ (our everything) and often compared to Shakespeare in terms of how much he revolutionised the language and literature of the country. He steered away from elevated and inaccessible works of the past and created his own style which appears simple and spontaneous but was meticulously crafted.
[Album in the Memory of A.S. Pushkin: 15 illustrations].
Not limited to one genre, he had a broad scope for his literary genius, writing novels in verse, romantic poetry, historical dramas and fairy tales. He was greatly admired in his own lifetime and his untimely death in a duel in 1837 helped catapult him to infamy. In fact, his devilish persona as a prolific dueller probably helped perpetuate his popularity. Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Turgenev and Tolstoy were all strongly influenced by him and even the Russian Revolution did not dampen his popularity. The Soviet Union marked the centenary of his death in 1937 with a mass renaming of streets and one still doesn’t have to go far before bumping into a bust of Pushkin.
Born in 1799 to a noble family, Pushkin was raised largely by his nanny who imparted a strong love of traditional Russian fairy tales. One such fairy tale was The Tale of Tsar Saltan. Originally published in 1831, it is considered more of an original lyrical work than a simple adaptation. Pushkin’s works inspired many artists to publish illustrated editions such as Sergey Malyutin who drew from traditional folk art to create a Russian version of Art Nouveau style. Malyutin is most famous for inventing Matryoshka dolls, but he can also be credited with influencing Bilibin’s famous illustrations for the same work published seven years later as seen here.
Pushkin was deeply interested in Russia’s past and used historical plots as a way of making subtle allegories for the delicate political situation in Russia at the time. Exiled twice for his liberal writings, Pushkin had to tread a fine line with the censor. His ballad ‘The Song of the Wise Oleg’ was published in 1822 during one such forced presence in the South and was a retelling of a legend he’d read in Karamzin’s History of the Russian State which describes the miraculous death of the Varangian ruler Prince Oleg. This edition was published to commemorate Pushkin’s birth and has wonderful illustrations and ornaments by Vicktor Vasnetsov.
Karmazin’s History of the Russian State also provided inspiration for his play Boris Godunov, based on the 16th-century Tsar. The play passed the censor for publication in 1831 but not for performance and so did not premiere until 1870. The warm colours and intricate patterns of Zworykin’s scenes perfectly complement the sentiment of Pushkin’s work.
Pushkin’s tendrils spread far and wide into Russian culture and it was not only illustrators but also composers who used his texts as inspiration for new works. Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Glinka all wrote operas for librettos adapted from Pushkin’s texts. We have four such examples here showing either the scores, or the stage, or costume designs for The Golden Cockerel, La Dame de Pique and Ruslan and Ludmila.
It’s impossible to talk about Alexander Pushkin without mentioning his greatest achievement, Evgeniy Onegin. Published in a serial form between 1825 and 1832. The first complete edition was published in 1833, and this illustrated edition appeared in 1893. It was lauded by contemporary reviewers as ‘the most elegant and luxurious of all those that have appeared thus far’. An epic achievement, almost the entire work is made up of fourteen-line stanzas of iambic tetrameter with an unusual rhyming scheme known as the ‘Onegin Stanza’ or ‘Pushkin Sonnet’.
Eugene Onegin. A novel in verse by...Translated from the Russian
For studying the language of Evgeniy Onegin, Nabokov’s commentary and translation is an excellent place to start. This four-volume work provides an in-depth analysis of one of the seminal texts of Russian literature by one of the best 20th-century writers.
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