Ах, Александр Сергеевич, милый .... (с) or Pushkin's Birthday

Today, on the 6th of June ,we celebrate Alexander Pushkin's birthday. Only lazy one didn't mention it today in his account anywhere. This just proves that Pushkin is indeed "наше все" - 'our everything', as we use to call him now, following the phase of some critic.

Indeed, if you ask many interesting and talented professors in Russia 'who is your favourite writer', many of them will say 'Pushkin...', and that is of course not because they didn't read anything else! Pushkin is indeed greatest poet and a real treasure of Russian literature

Let's see why. Let's read the quotations about Pushkin by the writers and critics of his time  - here we will find interesting facts about him

При имени Пушкина тотчас осеняет мысль о русском национальном поэте. В самом деле, никто из поэтов наших не выше его и не может более назваться национальным; это право решительно принадлежит ему. В нем, как будто в лексиконе, заключилось все богатство, сила и гибкость нашего языка. Он более всех, он далее раздвинул ему границы и более показал все его пространство. Пушкин есть явление чрезвычайное и, может быть, единственное явление русского духа: это русский человек в его развитии, в каком он, может быть, явится чрез двести лет. В нем русская природа, русская душа, русский язык, русский характер отразились в такой же чистоте, в такой очищенной красоте, в какой отражается ландшафт на выпуклой поверхности оптического стекла.

Н.В. Гоголь

When I think about Pushkin, I immediately think of the idea of ​​the Russian national poet. In fact, none of our poets is above him. In him, as if in the lexicon, is combined all the wealth, power and flexibility of our language. More than anyone else, he further extended the boundaries of the language and showed all its space. Pushkin is a phenomenon, unique phenomenon of the Russian spirit: he is a Russian man in his development, as he might be in two hundred years. He is of Russian spirit, the Russian soul, Russian language, Russian character reflected in the same purity, in such beauty, in which the landscape is reflected on the convex surface of the optical glass.

NV Gogol

It is difficult to estimate the contribution of  Pushkin in the formation of Russian literature and Russian language. This is already the undisputed truth, and confirmed by a wide variety of studies.

Russian literature and Russian language is constantly experiencing the impact of the political situation in the country. Depending on who rules a great power, began to set up their own rules and regulations that speak about how to write or say what books will be sold and which will fall under the ban. Language  assimilated, feeling the impact of popular dialects, as well as European language. Gradually, language and literature acquired properties of other cultural traditions that took root in Russia, but all were strange.

 Everything has changed since then, as the literary arena joined Alexander Pushkin. In his works, the author uses the popular lexicon. Despite the fact that he is considered a good connoisseur of French language, is widely established in various areas, Pushkin refers specifically to the people's speech, using specific words or concepts. Thus, he brings in a whole new language of communication elements that have been forgotten or replaced by a foreign vocabulary. Pushkin understood that the Russian language - is primarily a national treasure, and however  it had been changed and distorted by the great minds of his time, ordinary people will still speak the national language – same that had been used by their ancestors.

 In addition, the author introduces the language of a large variety of beautiful epithets and metaphors. He imbues his works phraseology and expressive epithets, the writer tries his readers not think straight, and try to see the image and beauty of language and words denoting the usual subject and ordinary action. The literary language of Pushkin became a classic of Russian language, which was later followed by other writers.

Pushkin was the first Russian writer who began to make experiments with the stylistic orientation of the text. He never followed the strict framework of genre when writing texts. Pushkin is more appealing to the notion of style, highlighting the common features of it, playing with it, creating a unique product. In addition, Pushkin laid the foundation of a new stylistic direction in Russia - realism. All the writer's works are multi-faceted and diverse.

Reading Pushkin, you hear his voice. He was the first poet who destroyed the image of a convention of copyright: in "Ruslan and Lyudmila," "Eugene Onegin", Pushkin speaks to the reader "on an equal footing", as it is between close friends, all grasping at a glance 

Заслуги Пушкина перед Россией велики и достойны народной признательности. Он дал окончательную обработку нашему языку, который теперь по своему богатству, силе, логике и красоте формы признается даже иностранными филологами едва ли не первым после древнегреческого; он отозвался типическими образами, бессмертными звуками на все веяния русской жизни. Он первый, наконец, водрузил могучей рукою знамя поэзии глубоко в русскую землю...

И.С. Тургенев

The merits of Pushkin for Russia are  great and worth getting national recognition. He gave a final transormation to our language, which is now by its richness, power, logic and beauty of form is recognized even by foreign philologists as almost the first after the ancient Greek.  He was the first, who finally hoisted the banner of poetry, deep in the Russian land by the mighty hand...

IS Turgenev

source of photos - vk.com
text (Russian) here and here