, who lived in Russia for a long time. Dated 1837. Whether the drawing was made from life is unknown, but Pushkin and Wright were acquainted. showing Pushkin and
Constantin Stamati Literary Critics consider many of his works masterpieces, such as the poem
The Bronze Horseman and the drama
The Stone Guest, a tale of the fall of
Don Juan. His poetic short drama
Mozart and Salieri (like
The Stone Guest, one of the so-called four
Little Tragedies, a collective characterization by Pushkin himself in 1830 letter to
Pyotr Pletnyov) was the inspiration for
Peter Shaffer's
Amadeus as well as providing the libretto (almost verbatim) to
Rimsky-Korsakov's opera
Mozart and Salieri. Pushkin is also known for his short stories. In particular his cycle
The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin, including "
The Shot", were well received. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "the narrative logic and the plausibility of that which is narrated, together with the precision, conciseness – economy of the presentation of reality – all of the above is achieved in
Tales of Belkin, especially, and most of all in the story
The Stationmaster. Pushkin is the progenitor of the long and fruitful development of Russian realist literature, for he manages to attain the realist ideal of a concise presentation of reality". Pushkin himself preferred his verse novel
Eugene Onegin, which he wrote over the course of his life and which, starting a tradition of great Russian novels, follows a few central characters but varies widely in tone and focus.
Onegin is a work of such complexity that, though it is only about a hundred pages long, translator
Vladimir Nabokov needed two full volumes of material to fully render its meaning into English. Because of this difficulty in translation, Pushkin's verse remains largely unknown to English readers. Even so Pushkin has profoundly influenced western writers such as
Henry James. Pushkin wrote
The Queen of Spades, a short story frequently anthologized in English translation.
Musical Pushkin's works also provided fertile ground for Russian composers.
Glinka's
Ruslan and Lyudmila is the earliest important Pushkin-inspired opera, and a landmark in the tradition of Russian music.
Tchaikovsky's operas
Eugene Onegin (1879) and
The Queen of Spades (
Pikovaya Dama, 1890) became perhaps better known outside of Russia than Pushkin's own works of the same name.
Mussorgsky's monumental
Boris Godunov (two versions, 1868–9 and 1871–2) ranks as one of the very finest and most original of Russian operas. Other Russian operas based on Pushkin include
Dargomyzhsky's
Rusalka and
The Stone Guest;
Rimsky-Korsakov's
Mozart and Salieri,
Tale of Tsar Saltan, and
The Golden Cockerel;
Cui's
Prisoner of the Caucasus,
Feast in Time of Plague, and ''
The Captain's Daughter'';
Tchaikovsky's
Mazeppa;
Rachmaninoff's one-act operas
Aleko (based on
The Gypsies) and
The Miserly Knight;
Stravinsky's
Mavra, and
Nápravník's
Dubrovsky. Additionally, ballets and
cantatas, as well as innumerable
songs, have been set to Pushkin's verse (including even his French-language poems, in
Isabelle Aboulker's
song cycle "
Caprice étrange").
Suppé,
Leoncavallo and
Malipiero have also based operas on his works. Composers
Miriam Rakhmankulova,
Valentina Ramm,
Yudif Grigorevna Rozhavskaya,
Galina Konstantinovna Smirnova,
Yevgania Yosifovna Yakhina,
Maria Semyonovna Zavalishina, and
Zinaida Petrovna Ziberova composed songs using Pushkin's text.
The Desire of Glory, which has been dedicated to Elizaveta Vorontsova, was set to music by
David Tukhmanov, as well as
Keep Me, Mine Talisman – by
Alexander Barykin and later by Tukhmanov.
Romanticism Pushkin is considered by many to be the central representative of Romanticism in Russian literature; however, he was not unequivocally known as a Romantic. Russian critics have traditionally argued that his works represent a path from
Neoclassicism through Romanticism to
Realism. An alternative assessment suggests that "he had an ability to entertain contrarities which may seem Romantic in origin, but are ultimately subversive of all fixed points of view, all single outlooks, including the Romantic" and that "he is simultaneously Romantic and not Romantic". His work as a critic and as a journalist marked the birth of Russian magazine culture which included him devising and contributing heavily to one of the most influential literary magazines of the 19th century, the
Sovremennik (
The Contemporary, or
Современник). Pushkin inspired the
folk tales and genre pieces of other authors:
Leskov,
Yesenin and
Gorky. His use of Russian formed the basis of the style of novelists
Ivan Turgenev,
Ivan Goncharov and
Leo Tolstoy, as well as that of subsequent lyric poets such as
Mikhail Lermontov. Pushkin was analysed by
Nikolai Gogol, his successor and pupil, and the great Russian critic
Vissarion Belinsky, who produced the fullest and deepest critical study of Pushkin's work, which still retains much of its relevance.
Soviet centennial celebrations In the centennial year of Pushkin's death in 1937, a mass renaming of streets across the entire
Soviet Union occurred in his honour. These monuments, along with any
toponymy named after him, are now illegal in
Ukraine following the implementation of
a law that bans symbols "dedicated to persons who publicly, including … in literary and other artistic works, supported, glorified, or justified
Russian imperial policy". ==Honours==