#Portrait of Alexander Pushkin

[phantomrin]

June 6 is the Birthday of A.S. Pushkin - "the Sun of Russian poetry", and today's the 225th anniversary :) And timed to it is the Russian Language Day - congrats to my fellow folks!

Exegi monumentum

A monument I've raised not built with hands, And common folk shall keep the path well trodden...

[myname-isnia]

Ever since I first read Eugene Onegin two years ago, and even more now that I had to reread it for school recently, I've been saying that I've never related to a fictional character more than I relate to Tatyana Larina (not counting my own characters, that is, as they are intentional projections). Particularly the verses about Tatyana's childhood hit very close to home. I've been wanting to talk about it for a while but couldn't find a translation of the book that I liked. So, instead of sleeping, I spent 2 hours absolutely torturing my own brain by coming up with my own translation and I'm way too proud not to share.

Eugene Onegin, chapter 2, verses 25, 26 and 27, translated with the original temp and rhyming scheme intact, by yours truly <3

—

XXV

And so, her sister's named Tatyana.

She seldom catches someone's gaze,

Lacks Olga's beauty, lacks her glamour,

The pink-cheeked freshness of her face.

She's almost feral, quiet with woe,

So quick to startle, like a doe.

And even in her family home

She seemed a child not quite their own.

She hardly ever showed affection,

Both mom and dad would often say.

By window she would spend her day

Alone but for her own reflection,

She judged the children running wild,

Though she herself was still a child.

XXVI

Imagination was her close friend

From infancy. As village days

Kept dragging on without an end,

She'd get lost in her fantasies.

Needle and thread she too avoided,

Fabric was never once embroidered

By her unblemished fingers, for

She found needlework a bore.

An average girl would take her doll,

Sit down with it and start to talk,

Prepare it for the time to walk

Into an upper class grand ball –

To silent dolls during these sessions

Young girls repeat their mothers' lessons.

XXVII

Tatyana never had discussions

With dolls, nor did she play with them;

She never told them of the fashions,

Of city news, and even then

Of toys and games she was quite wary,

She'd rather read of something scary.

In winters, in the dead of night,

Her heart learned how to take a fright.

When for young Olga their old nanny

Would gather up the neighbours' kids

To run and play out in the fields,

Tatyana would act most uncanny:

She never played or ran around,

And found their laughter far too loud.

—

[russianlanguageday]

О.А. Кипренский. Портрет Пушкина. 1827 г.

6 июня, в день рождения великого русского поэта А.С. Пушкина, в рамках программы поддержки и развития многоязычия и культурного многообразия, в ООН отмечается День русского языка. Одна из целей этой программы — поддержание равноправия всех шести официальных языков ООН: английского, арабского, испанского, китайского, русского и французского. Решение о проведении дней языков было принято Департаментом общественной информации (нынешний Департамент глобальных коммуникаций) накануне Международного дня родного языка, отмечаемого ежегодно 21 февраля по инициативе ЮНЕСКО.

[metamorphesque]

💌 some of my favorite poems for World Poetry Day 💌 

A Cloud in Trousers by Vladimir Mayakovsky

Don’t leave the room by Joseph Brodsky (the original)

Ich finde dich (I find you) by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

You, Darkness by Rainer Maria Rilke

I Am Offering this Poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca

a splinter of my imagination by Halina Poswiatowska

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel

Wait For Me by Konstantin Simonov (tr. by Mike Munford)  

Before You Came by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

What I Could Never Confess Without Some Bravado by Emily Palermo

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

I Want to Write Something So Simply by Mary Oliver

What's Not to Love by Brendan Constantine

Bluebird by Charles Bukowski

Time does not bring relief (Sonnet II) by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath

Dear [ ] by Nick Lantz

Dogfish by Mary Oliver

Persephone the Wanderer by Louise Glück

Scheherazade by Richard Siken

The End of Poetry by Ada Limón

A Myth of Devotion by Louise Glück

Where does such tenderness come from? by Marina Tsvetaeva

I Loved You by Alexander Pushkin

Poems for Blok by Marina Tsvetaeva

I’m Glad Your Sickness by Marina Tsvetaeva

Wait for her by Mahmoud Darwish

The Guest by Anna Akhmatova

Listen! by Vladimir Mayakovsky

Carousel by Vahan Teryan

Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors by Richard Siken

Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light by Richard Siken

Notebook Fragments by Ocean Vuong

Headfirst by Ocean Vuong

Advice from Dionysus by Shinji Moon

[uwmspeccoll]

Women Author of the Week

BABETTE DEUTSCH

I mentioned earlier that I  love a good fairy tale, so I started poking around to see if we had any fairy tales or fables that are written or compiled by women, and lo and behold, I came across More Tales of Faraway Folk published by Harper & Row in 1963. Chosen and retold by American poet, novelist, and translator Babette Deutsch (1895-1982), it was edited by her husband, a fellow author and translator, Avrahm Yarmolinsky (1890-1975), and illustrated by Polish artist and illustrator Janina Domańska (1913-1995).

The book consists of fifteen tales, some of which are animal tales and are accompanied by lovely black and white illustrations that range from half-page to full page throughout the book. The stories themselves have been compiled from all over, ranging from Finland, Central Asia, Russia, Ukraine, Siberia, Armenia, and Estonia. Each story begins with a brief paragraph about the origin of the story, which I find to be a lovely touch. It is always fascinating to see where stories originated and how far out they reached from their home, or what was changed if it was reimagined in another part of the world.

Babette Deutsch’s work is extensive and impressive. While her first published works were poetry, she also wrote four novels, six volumes of children’s literature, ending with ten collections of poetry, and a collection of essays on both poetry and poets. Being fluent in German, Deutsch also translated the works of Rainer Marie Rilke  into English and, with the help of her husband Yarmolinsky, translated Russian poetry which included Alexander Pushkin.

Janina Domańska, who was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland, also had an extensive art career. After leaving Poland, she studied painting in Italy where she supported herself by painting children’s portraits and emigrated to the United States six years later. After working for four years as a textile designer and marrying writer Jerzy Laskowsi, she began showing her artwork to various publishers. Because of this, she was encouraged to focus on illustrating children’s books. She has illustrated more than forty books, with many of them being written by herself.

-- Elizabeth V, Special Collections Undergraduate Writing Intern

[mrdirtybear]

'A Poor Beggar' as painted in 1823 by Russian romantic painter Vasily Tropinin (1776-1857). Much of his life was spent as a serf; he didn't attain his freedom until he was over forty years old. Three of his more important works are a portrait of Alexander Pushkin and paintings called The Lace Maker and The Gold-Embroideress.

Vasily was born as a serf of Count Munnich in the village Korpovo of Novgorod guberniya and then transferred to Count Morkovs as a part the dowry of the Munich's daughter. After being transferred he was sent to Saint Petersburg to become a confectioner. Instead of learning his trade as instructed Tropinin secretly attended free drawing lessons in the Imperial Academy of Arts.

[cromwelll]

Happiness is a Full Bookshelf 😊📚

My goal is to collect every Penguin Classic that has a black spine and cover, white title, and orange author name because they’re sooo aesthetically pleasing to me. My fun challenge of collecting/amassing them is by finding them exclusively through secondhand purchases (resale shops, ebay, garage sales, used bookstores, etc.) Then I only have to shell out $0-$7 each instead of $10-$30 each!

Penguin Classics

A Doll's House and Other Plays by Henrick Ibsen

A Nietzsche Reader by Fredrich Nietzsche

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Dolye

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

All My Sons by Arthur Miller

Angel of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Awakening and Selected Stories by Kate Chopin**

BUtterfield 8 by John O'Hara

Caleb Williams by William Godwin

Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories by Jack London*

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer*

Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple by Susanna Rowson

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker

Confessions by Saint Augustine

Conjure Tales and Stories of the Color Line by Charles W. Chestnut

Consolation of Philosophy by Ancius Boethius

Crucible by Arthur Miller

Daisy Miller by Henry James

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane

Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley**

Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck**

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Hedda Gabler and Other Plays by Henrik Ibsen

History of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë*

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman*

Letters of Abélard and Héloïse

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw

Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

Memoirs by William Tecumseh Sherman

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka*

Middlemarch by Geroge Eliot

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Mysteries by Knut Hamsun

Narrative of the Lige of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave by Frederick Douglas

Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle*

Nineteenth-Century American Poetry

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Odyssey by Homer**

On Liberty and the Subjection of Women by John Suart Mill

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Passing by Nella Larsen

Personal Memoirs by Ulysses S. Grant

Portable Sixties Reader

Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw

Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne**

Seize the Day by Saul Bellow

Silas Marner by George Eliot

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Song of Roland

Summer by Edith Wharton

Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

The Aeneid by Virgil

The Ancien Régime and the Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville

The Bhagavad Gita

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Guide by R.K. Narayan

The Habor by Ernest Poole

The Hound of Baskerville by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Iliad by Homer

The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings by Olaudah Equiano

The Lais of Marie de France

The Marquise of O—and Other Stories by Heinrich Von Keist

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

The Odyssey by Homer

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli*

The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturlson

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Three Theban Plays by Sophocles

To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Utopia by Thomas More

Villette by Emily Brontë

A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft

Washington Square by Henry James

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Non-Penguin Classics

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath**

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank*

Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood**

House on Mango Street by Sander Cisneros

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

The Last Man by Mary Shelley

The Song og Bernadette by Franz Werfel

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien*

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Collections, Compilations, Biographies, and Anthologies

100 Best-Loved Poems (American & British)

101 Great American Poems

A Book of Love Poetry

English Romantic Poetry (1996)

Final Harvest by Emily Dickinson

Five Metaphysical Poets

John Donne

George Herbert

Henry Vaughn

Richard Crashaw

Andrew Marvell

Four Great Comedies of the Restoration & 18th Century

Four Great Elizabethan Plays

Great Poems by American Women

Great American Short Stories (1985)

Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction by Joseph Conrad

• “Youth”

• Heart of Darkness

• “Amy Foster”

• “The Secret Sharer

17. Louisa May: A Modern Biography by Martha Saxton

18. Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger

19. Possibilities of Poetry (1970)

20. Selected Poetry by D.H. Lawrence

21. Selected Writings by Gertrude Stein

22. Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)

23. Short Shorts: An Anthology of the Shortest Stories (1983)

24. Short Story Masterpieces (American & British, 1982)

25. Six American Poets (Whitman, Dickinson, Stevens, Williams, Frost, Hughes)

26. Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle

• “A Scandal in Bohemia”

• “The Red-headed League”

• “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”

• “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”

• “The Final Problem”

• “The Adventure of the Empty House”

27. Six Plays of Strindberg

28. Tales of Henry James by Henry James

• “The Aspern Papers”

• “The Pupil”

• “Brooksmith”

• “The Real Thing”

• “The Middle Years”

• “In the Cage”

• “The Beast in the Jungle”

• “The Jolly Corner”

29. Ten Plays by Euripides

30. The Essential Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

31. The Complete Plays of John M. Synge by John M. Synge

32. The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories

33. The Underground Railroad by William Still

34. The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry (1990)

35. The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

36. The Novels by Samuel Beckett

• Molloy

• Malone Dies

•The Unnamable

37. Victorian Love Stories (1997)

Literary Criticism

38. Women & Fiction (1975)

39. Barchester Towers and The Warden by Anthony Trollope

On Poetry and Poets by T.S. Eliot

Speaking of Chaucer by E. Talbot Donaldson

Symbolism and American Literature by Charles Feidelson, Jr.

* = Started & didn’t finish (yet)/Read parts

** = Read ≥5 years ago

Strike-through = Read

Updated: June 17, 2024

Total count: 162

[mariacallous]

Ukrainian officials surmise that the real reason for the demolitions is to cover up evidence of war crimes. Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to Mariupol’s mayor, has repeatedly claimed that many of the city’s destroyed high-rise buildings contained 50 to 100 bodies each. 

The occupation authorities demolished the remnants of the Mariupol Drama Theater in late 2022. All that remains is a portico with a pediment and sculptures of grain farmers and part of the amphitheater, basement ceilings, and the foundations. Many of the bodies of those killed in the theater bombing were allegedly left inside. “All the people are still under the rubble, because the rubble is still there — no one dug them up,” Oksana Syomina, a Mariupol resident who survived the bombing, told the Associated Press. “This is one big mass grave.”

An aerial view of the destroyed Drama Theater. Mariupol, February 2, 2023.

ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO / REUTERS / SCANPIX / LETA

Occupation officials claim they plan to turn the theater into “the most modern venue in the Donetsk People’s Republic” (Russia’s official term for the occupied territories in Ukraine’s Donetsk region). Earlier, the ruins were hidden behind fabric-covered scaffolding emblazoned with the portraits of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy and poet Alexander Pushkin.

The occupation authorities have also restored the Soviet-era names of certain squares and streets (renaming Peace Avenue and Freedom Square after Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, for example), painted over the well-known Milana mural, and dismantled a monument to the victims of political repressions and the Holodomor (a Soviet-engineered faminethat killed millions in Ukraine). Occupying forces also burned and looted the library of Mariupol’s St. Petro Mohyla Cathedral, a Ukrainian Orthodox Church known for its decorative Petrykivka paintings. 

Reimagining Mariupol: A Ukrainian design team develops a new vision for reviving the seaside city Russia destroyed 

[pwlanier]

Moller Fyodor Antonovich (1812-1874) "Portrait of a boy in a Russian shirt." 1850s - early 1860s.

Canvas, oil, 95.3×74.3 cm.

At the bottom left is the author's signature: "F. Moller."

Publications: 1) catalog "Russian portrait from the collection of SBS-Agro", Moscow, 1997, cat. № 2; 2) monograph by L. Markina "Painter F. Moller, Moscow, 2002, cat. № 78.

Expert opinion of TsKHE named after I.E. Repina (S.A. Podstanitsky).

Historical painter, graphic artist, portraitist. Since 1828, as a free student, he attended drawing classes of the IAH. In 1830-1831 he participated in the Polish campaign. In 1832, he took part in an academic exhibition for the first time, presenting the painting "The Battle of Ostrolenka", which was acquired by Emperor Nicholas I. In April 1837, he began his studies with K.P. Bryullov in the class of historical painting. In 1856-1860 he taught at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, until 1861 he headed the pensioners of the Society. He spent the winter months from 1861 to 1866 in Berlin, where he worked on a picturesque cycle dedicated to Alexander Nevsky for the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow. The master's work is represented in many museum collections, including the State Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Estonian State Art Museum, the State Museum of Fine Arts named after A. C. Pushkin and others.

Litfund

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artwork of the Day (11/28/22) Karl Bryullov (Russian, 1799–1852) The Last Day of Pompeii (c. 1830-33) Oil on canvas, 456.5 x 651 cm The Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg

This painting, Bryullov's best-known work, is a vast composition compared by Pushkin and Gogol to the best works of Rubens and Van Dyck. It created a sensation in Italy and established Bryullov as one of the finest European painters of his day.  The painting received rapturous reviews at its exhibition in Rome and brought Briullov more acclaim than any other work during his lifetime. The first Russian artwork to cause such an interest abroad, it inspired an anthologic poem by Alexander Pushkin, and the novel "The Last Days of Pompeii" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. It depicts a classical topic but exhibits characteristics of Romanticism as manifested in Russian art, including drama, realism tempered with idealism, interest in nature, and a fondness for historical subjects. A self portrait is in the upper left corner of the painting, under the steeple, but not easy to identify.

For more of this artist's work, see this MWW gallery/album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3189977994440881&type=3

[heirofdemetra]

Alexander Pushkin’s - Eugene Onegin (1833)

Portrait by Lidia Timoshenko

(All the rights belongs to the owner)

[nevsky]

Hi! Love your blog, can I ask where your PFP is from?

Hello, it is Alexander Pushkin’s portrait of himself.

[sentimentallyeducated]

Article du blog 6 - Proust et l’objet de la mémoire

Pyotr Konchalovsky - Portrait of the Poet Alexander Pushkin (1932)

Le scène des madeleines est peut-être le plus connu dans Du côte de chez Swann. Contrairement aux autres passages du livre, celui-ci est relativement autonome (probablement parce qu'il se situe à la fin du chapitre). Le première goût de la madeleine s'enflamme les souvenirs d'enfance distinct et sensual pour Marcel--il capture l'essence du projet littéraire de Proust. Mais, à part les descriptions vivantes de la sensation en bouche du biscuit ou des désirs du jeune Marcel pour sa mère, il y a ces observations philosophique et poétique que creusent vraiment le cœur du livre.

Celui-ci vient juste avant l'introduction de la madeleine:

Il en est ainsi de notre passé. C'est peine perdue que nous cherchions à l'évoquer, tous les efforts de notre intelligence sont inutiles. Il est caché hors de son domaine et de sa portée, en quelque objet matériel (en la sensation que nous donnerait cet objet matériel), que nous ne soupçonnons pas. Cet objet, il dépend du hasard que nous le rencontrions avant de mourir, ou que nous ne le rencontrions pas (88).

Ici Marcel pontifie sur le matérialité de l'acte de se souvenir. Parce que nos souvenirs sont entrelacé avec nos experiences, quelles sont physique et sensual lui-mêmes, nous dépendons de choses matériel à provoquer notre lien avec eux. Mais comme nous oublions la plupart de nos expériences, nous devons attendre que l’objet de la mémoire ils nous reviennent. Si le souvenir n'est pas déclenché, nous mourrons après l'avoir perdu. Un tel événement est essentiellement arbitraire. C'est comme nous sommes chercheurs qui recherchaient involontairement des objets perdus de leur passé, mais la découverte est accidentelle. Alors, que pouvons-nous faire à ce sujet ?

Marcel propose une sorte de réponse à la page suivante:

Grave incertitude, toutes les fois que l'esprit se sent dépassé par lui-même; quand lui, le chercheur, est tout ensemble le pays obscur où il doit chercher et où tout son bagage ne lui sera de rien. Chercher ? pas seulement: créer. Il est en face de quelque chose qui n'est pas encore et que seul il peut réaliser, puis faire entrer dans sa lumière.

Créer, l'écriture, est un acte volontaire de souvenir--c'est la mission du Proust.

[mightyflamethrower]

Vasily Andreevich Tropinin (1776 - 1857) was a Russian Romantic painter. Much of his life was spent as a serf; he didn't attain his freedom until he was more than forty years old. Three of his more important works are a portrait of Alexander Pushkin and paintings called The Lace Maker and The Gold-Embroideress.

[catgondoliere]

Orest Kiprensky (Russian, 1782-1836) Portrait of Alexander Pushkin (1827)

[feral-ballad]

She spends herself as, bright and daring, she rushes on against those bars, how like a lawless comet flaring among the calculated stars!

Alexander Pushkin, from A Treasury of Russian Verse; “Portrait”