Russia Update 2; A Week with Pushkin

Amidst the ever-living excitement of living in another country, I spent a significant amount of time with the Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin. His writing is the embodyiment and essence of Russian Literature and is most well known for his verse-novel 'Евгений Онегин'. For Literature class on Tuesday we took a field trip to the well known "Bronze Horseman" monument near the Neva River and St. Issac's Cathedral, where we read and discussed Pushkin's widely read poem 'The Bronze Horseman". It's my understanding that if you go to school in Russia, then you would have had to memorize about 50 lines of the poem, of course these are some of the more patriotic lines and not necessarily the aim of Pushkin's overall critique. Anyone interested in the least of how Russian's lived in the 19th century, should start with these works, one scholar even referenced 'Evgeny Onegin' as an "encyclopedia of Russian life". Reading 'The Bronze Horseman' infront of the Bronze Horseman was an incredible expeirence and helped immensly with fitting all the small details together and bringing it to life for us.

My good friend and fellow blogee decided to take things to the next level when it came to 'Evgeny Onegin', we decided to attend the opera of the same name as composed by Tchaikovsky. It was my very first opera, and I left the Mikhailovsky Theatre more then satisfied, thirsting for my next chance to go to another show. The whole night was filled with eloquence and failing to acheive looking classy enough to belong there. It's too bad I don't have pictures of the sophisticated architeture and me in a plain black t-shirt to really put this into perspectie for you, but use your imagination, think, the two foreign kids who look like they are pretending like they know what to do. I also watched the movie 'Onegin' that came out, in English mind you, in 1999 starring Liv Tyler as Tatiana. The director had a strange twist to it, but it was really well done and set up the dark side of Pushkin in a strange and enjoyable way, although this is only one of the sides to be taken. Here is a painting by 19th c. Russian painter Ilya Repin depicting the famous duel scene between Onegin and his friend Lensky: