COMRADE PUSHKIN, ADVANCE AND BE RECOGNIZED!

COMRADE PUSHKIN, ADVANCE AND BE RECOGNIZED!

   ON PUSKIN`S PORTRAITS & PUSHKIN`S APPEARANCE

 

  It`s only Pushkin`s contemporaries who knew how Pushkin exactly looked like.

  At present we can only guess it. His lifetime images failed to reflect his

  true appearance. The Russian imagine Pushkin by the marginal self-portraits

  made by his pen, especially by his famous self-portrait in profile.

  

  

  

 Pushkin refused to be depicted by famous George Dawe.

 

TO DAWE, ESQr 

Why does your marvelous crayon 

Draw my black sideview of a Negro? 

Though preserved for good and all 

It will be hissed off by Mephisto. 

 

 

Olenina`s sweet features draw! 

In glowing of am`rous inspiration 

Just youth and beauty, nothing more 

A genius should bestow his adoration.

 

  

 

But that very year,  1827, the first Pushkin`s Portrait was painted by V. Tropinin (1827). Pushkin  preferred the artists creating his ideal, embellished image a la Orest Kiprensky.

  

  

  

To Kiprensky 

The light-winged fashion`s fav`rite minion 

Not of the British or French school 

You represented me, sweet wizard, 

As a true pet of the Tenth Muse. 

I joy I`ll stick in my grave"s gizzard, 

From mortal bonds for good got loose. 

 

I see myself as in a mirror. 

The mirror flatters me all right. 

It says that I`m without peer, 

And may please rig`rous Aonides. 

Thus, Dresd`ners, Romans and Parisians 

Will recognize me at first sight. 

<1827>

He thought he`d been ugly. He might have been. One of Pushkin`s uncles came   from Moscow to see little Pushkin for the first time. After glancing  at his nephew he couldn"t help exclaiming: `O my! He is a real little blackamore!`  His grandgrand dad was Great Peter`s adopted son from Africa!

  

  

  

Yet Pushkin`s mom Nadezhda, nee Hannibal, was being called the Beautiful  Creole in the High Society.

  

  

  

Still, we can have an idea about Pushkin`s lifetime appearance. It"s enough  to see the photos of his elder daughter Maria Pushkin-Gartung dated back to

  

  

  

 

  1919 and those (dated back to the early 2000s) of his grandgrandson,  Sergei Pushkin, the then Major of the 2-nd Office of the North-West branch of  the Russian criminal police in St. Petersburg.

 

  

  

  

  

 Sergei Pushkin seems to be very much alike his great ancestor. Well, as you can   see Pushkin was not ugly which was to be shown.