Apparently, today is Take-your-poet-to-work Day…Well, it would be pretty crowded in the studio then. I have been meaning to read some more Pushkin. I have unfortunately not seen the Eugene Onegin opera, but you can listen to it here! Just as delicious, you can listen to the translated poem here, read by the inimitable Stephen Fry. The poem has been translated by various people, including Vladimir Nabokov and Douglas R. Hofstadter (of Gödel, Escher,Bach).
There is a beautiful ink self-portrait of Pushkin on the Wikipedia site:
This poem seemed apt:
MON PORTRAIT
Vous me demandez mon portrait,
Mais peint d’après nature :
Mon cher, il sera bientôt fait,
Quoique en miniature.
Je sais un jeune polisson
Encore dans les classes :
Point sot, je le dis sans façon
Et sans fades grimaces.
Onc, il ne fut de babillard,
Ni docteur de Sorbonne
Plus ennuyeux et plus braillard
Que moi-même en personne.
(from Poems by Alexander Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin– January 1888, Cupples and Hurd- Publisher on Google Play)
(Another interesting resource I found, as translated by G.R Ledger: Pushkin’s Poems…)
Related articles
- Mumbai University remembers Pushkin on Russian language day (indrus.in)
- Pushkin’s descendant keeps poet’s name alive (rbth.ru)
- Poets and Czars (newrepublic.com)
- One fish, two fish (dubih.wordpress.com)
- Russian Cotletas (hague6185.wordpress.com)
