Giants of Russian Literature: Pushkin on Stamps

Pushkin 1987 portrait ssf

More images of Russia’s greatest poet, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799—1837) or references to his work appear on Russian/Soviet philatelic media than for any other celebrity. Over three years leading up to the bicentenary of his birth, elegant sets commemorated the best of his fairy tales, his own cartoons relating to some of his creations like the verse-novel Eugene Onegin and finally via portraits at various stages in his life.

Pushkin 1989 Boris Godunov sf

Pushkin’s Fairy Tales are a popular subject in Russian stamps with the 1997 souvenir sheet, illustrating five tales in stamps and more in the margins being particularly lavish. Some of these tales had been illustrated in a 1969 set e.g. The Golden Cockerel and in 1975 e.g. The Golden Fish.

Pushkin 1975 Golden Fish sf

Pushkin’s first great opus Eugene Onegin, illustrated within the 1998 minisheet took him eight years to complete, beginning in 1823 and concerns the love affairs between the poet Lensky and Olga Larin and his friend Onegin with her older sister Tatiana. This also features on a 1999 postal card showing the singer who created the role Tatiana in the 1879 operatic version by Tchaikovsky, Antonina Vasilievna Nezhdanova.

Pushkin 1999 p-card Onegin ssf

The last minisheet in the series presents three portraits of Pushkin as he was from left in 1815, 1826 and 1836. Until comparatively recently most of the many commemoratives for Pushkin have consisted simply of portraits, for example the 1937, 1962 and 1987 issues…

Pushkin 1999 portraits minsheet sf

Other works by Pushkin illustrated on stamps have included the long romantic poem based on Russian folk tales Ruslan and Lyudmilla, made into an opera by Mikhail Glinka in 1842 and the tale of legendary Russian ruler Boris Godunov also staged to music by Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.

Pushkin 1969 Tsar Saltan sf

To understand why Pushkin is celebrated so extensively in Russian stamps is to acknowledge that he is to Russian culture what Shakespeare is to English-speaking nations. His range is such that some part of his work is accessible to all ages, be it fairy tales, romantic drama, stories from Russian history, tales of the supernatural, lyric poetry and works of high seriousness. Through interpretation on the stage, just as Verdi did for Shakespeare, Pushkin’s work has met a wider public than the careful reader, with international audiences aware of it through drama, opera and ballet.

Pushkin 1937 portrait

He died young at 38 like several roughly contemporary geniuses – Burns, Mozart, Keats, Byron, and Shelley, though he did not perish from some terrible wasting disease or dreadful accident but in a duel fighting to preserve the good name of his stunningly beautiful wife Natalia who was being hounded by a young French emigré. What a story that would have been for him to tell!

Pushkin 1962 Portrait sf

Pushkin’s influence on Russian and European literature was immense. He also helped to “spring-clean” his own language which had been suffering from over-exposure to French though ironically it was that French émigré who fired the fatal shot that killed him.