RUSSIAN CULTURE NAVIGATOR

english
win1251
KOI8
By Olga Rusanova
Pushkin's anniversary has been recognized as a matter of state significance, like, say, elections or space flights. Pushkin Day is an exciting experience to every Russian. Pushkin has everything to do with each and everyone of us. It's particularly true for film and stage directors, actors, poets and composers. Pushkin seems to have united and inspired us all. On the eve of the anniversary the poet's personality and his work have prompted a wave of publications, productions and music programs.
Impressions are still fresh from a recent festival of drama schools, "Podium". A particularly lasting impression was produced by the graduates of Moscow's Academy of Eurhythmic Art and their version of "Feast at the Time of Plague" from Pushkin's "Little Tragedies". Eurhythmia, which means "beautiful rhythm" in Greek, is, in fact, "visible music" or "visible speech". It's dramatic play employing facial expression, gesture, and movement against the background of music or text, play in rhythms without words. Light and costumes add to the expressiveness of the action. The play itself is Pushkin's translation of a dramatic poem by the English writer John Wilson. Pushkin's is a free translation with vivid additions. The story describes the epidemic of plague in London in 1665. Pushkin thought it echoed with the contemporary situation: in the first decades of the 19th century Russia was swept with a no less terrible epidemic of cholera. The drama's characters challenge death by feasting and performing death-honoring anthems. Apparently, this attitude appealed to Pushkin.
Undoubtedly, the play has its romantic audacity, but also something else. The director of the production, Rector of the Academy of Rhythmic Art, Nikolai Konovalenko says: "Today this story retains its urgency. It provides answers to many questions of the day, helps understand many processes currently underway in society and in people."
The title, "Feast in the Time of Plague", has long become a popular expression in this country. Nowadays one can hear it particularly often. We use it when we want to describe the rich and mighty who continue to live in clover even during the crisis the country is swept with. But it was not only the topicality that inspired Nikolai Konovalenko to stage the play. Eurhythmic art operates with special forms of expression, special rhythms. "Rhythm is in everything: breath, heartbeat, poetry. Pushkin's works are born from rhythm. Like those of Schiller, who first created rhythms, and even "paced out" his verses, and then put words on the rhythms."
At times the eurhythmic "Feast in the Time of Plague" looks like a ritual.
Another Pushkin-related production is called "He who Believes, is Blessed…" based on the novel in verse "Eugene Onegin". The composition, created by graduates of the Russian Academy of Theater Art under the direction of Oleg Kudryashov, combines various things ranging from poetry reading - solo and in chorus - to eccentric, nearly circus numbers with changing clothes and different tricks. The production is filled with music: arias, romances, folk tunes. "School study often makes fresh perception of Pushkin impossible," says producer and teacher Oleg Kudryashov. "At first the students took the novel as something dead. Then, in my opinion, a real interest in Pushkin was awakened. Pushkin is a whole universe, an endless world. Finally the students realized that one could enjoy reading and listening to Pushkin in any epoch, that he is always wonderful. Our today's graduates, who live 170 years after the novel was written, seem to trust Onegin. They look upon the story of Onegin's dramatic life and belated love as if it all happened to them. They take the novel as a contemporary story about unfulfilled dreams and frustrated plans."
The third Pushkin-related production is based on the poem "A Small House in Kolomna" - a trivial story about a widow who hired a cook. The cook was stupid but asked no money for her work. But one morning the mistress caught her unawares: the cook was shaving. In a word, the cook turned out to be a man. This story had already attracted the attention of composer Igor Stravinsky who wrote the comic opera "Mavra" by the name of the cook.
A new stage version based on the same story is currently under preparation. The musical "A Small House in Kolomna" by Moscow-based composer Alexander Rozenblat is to be premiered on June 6 - the day of Pushkin's anniversary. The premiere will take place at a drama theater in Norilsk, a city in the polar region. The poem "A Small House in Kolomna" takes a mere ten pages but this is a case usually referred to as "a joke of a genius". Kolomna is a St. Petersburg suburb, where young Pushkin lived for some time after he finished his studies at the Lyceum. That was a quiet place with patriarchal way of life. It's easy to understand how dismayed the widow was when she learned that her cook was a man. The musical closes with a polonaise. The action is over. There is only Pushkin and his muse on the stage. And this is symbolic: Pushkin and his muse are always with us, always on the stage .
By Nina Yakhgontova
The theme "Pushkin and Music" is enormous: his verses, prose and dramas have prompted more than three thousand musical works. Add to these folk songs to his words. The poet was fond of the village: its nature, simple life and folk music.
"For his love" says a folklore expert, Professor Yevgenia Zasimova, "ordinary people paid Pushkin in kind. A great many of his verses particularly those written by him in his school years, at the age of 15-16, would travel from town to town to finally become Russian folk songs."
It's common knowledge that his nurse Arina Rodionovna, an ordinary Russian woman of serf origin, played a key role in his life. As a child, he used to listen to her tales and songs during long winter evening. Their relationship was warm and tender. One of Pushkin's verses is directly addressed to his nurse, who is also present in the famous poem "A Winter Night". A Russian folk song to the words of the poem is very popular.
The poet collected folk songs. He even wanted to publish a collection of these songs but could not find time. So finally he gave 50 songs to the prominent folklore scholar Pyotr Kireevsky. Pushkin collected not only Russian but also Ukrainian, Moldavian and Gypsy songs, while he lived in Pskov Province, in the environs of the Pushkin's family estate Boldino near Nizhny Novgorod, in Orenburg Province in the foothills of the Ural Mountains and in Moldavia. He studied works of other folklore collectors. His personal library contained nine volumes of folk songs.
"Alexander Pushkin knew and loved folk songs and found their characters very interesting," says Professor Yevgenia Zasimova. He was concerned, for example, with the life of Stepan Razin. In 1826 Pushkin asked his brother in a letter from the settlement of Mikhailovskoye to send him books about Razin. There had long existed a set of songs about the audacious Cossack leader, who headed a peasant uprising in the 17th century .
 
 

BACK TO MAIN PAGE