Pushkin is a Meme

My series of Pushkin drawings began purely by chance.

The Pushkin Russian Language Institute wanted illustrations for their new brochure. And for some reason they asked me. I resisted for a long time, saying I didn’t do those sorts of illustrations. And also that I didn’t want to and could not. But the institute, by which I mean the sweet little woman representing it, turned out to be very insistent. I finally surrendered after it was put in terms of, “Please, anything, as long as it’s about Pushkin.”

In the end, I did not produce anything worthwhile. I made a few drawings where Pushkin was randomly inserted into some scenes from modern life: in a crowd of students with their iPhones, on a skateboard, wearing a backpack. My plan was to use these drawings to demonstrate the absurdity of their request, and that they had picked the wrong artist. Surely such a distinguished institution, where foreigners are taught the “great and mighty Russian language,” would kill me for such mockery of our treasured heritage.

Strangely enough, I did not get in trouble. On the contrary: my i-Pushkin wound up fitting the bill not for the brochure, but for the annual calendar. And they – everyone who saw the images – insisted that I continue! By that time the drawings numbered about a dozen.

So, I continued. The task turned out to be quite engrossing.

People are always trying to insert characters from classic Russian literature into modern realities. The question of how he (she, it) might look (act, sound) arises again and again. There are anecdotes about Lev Tolstoy, Pushkin and Gogol; the line by Bulat Okudzhava, “Alexander Sergeyich is taking a stroll”; and Andrey Bitov’s story of a hare (involving a legend about how a hare crossing the road led Pushkin not to go to Petersburg and take part in the Decembrist revolt). No shortage of examples! Which to me clearly proves the relevance of this classic author and shows that he’s all around us, even now.

A change of clothing and scenery is all the difference you need. Ignore the changes and you can immediately see what the moralist Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy might have to say about today’s “basic standards,” as they’re called, or how Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol would derisively spar with his Friends and non-Friends on FaceBook.

It’s even easier to pull this trick off with Pushkin. Pushkin quotes are absolutely everywhere; even the worst students in class know them. There’s so much Pushkin in our everyday language, nothing could be more familiar. Wherever we go, whatever we do, Pushkin is right there with us. You step out of your apartment and into the outdoors, and the first thing to enter your mind is his line, “Frost and sun, a wondrous day.” Go back inside and you’re confronted with “Who’s doing the dishes? Pushkin?” For anyone who speaks and reads in Russian, nobody’s closer. So just the tiniest effort, and you can bridge the distance between “then” and “now.”

As a result of such bridging via pictures (of which there are now 50, with more being added daily, since it’s simply impossible to stop), there’s already been an exhibition, two series of postcards, a calendar, t-shirts, bags, mugs… And what really has me puzzled is that no one has yet pelted me with stones, or even hurled obscenities at me. Nonetheless, I’m still afraid, and daily expect to be appropriately punished for my deeds. Instead, acquaintances and strangers daily join in the game, proposing ever new ideas for “Pushkin Today,” sending me fitting quotations and eagerly awaiting the continuation. The extremists demand, for example, that I come up with a reimagining of the poet’s duel with Dantes in which “our guy takes the other guy down.”

Before my very eyes and in my drawings, Pushkin is clearly being transformed into a meme, into a hieroglyph. The story starts with his profile in a top hat, but then it unfolds all around me. Sometimes it starts with a thought: “How would Pushkin read Brodsky? What would his facial expression be?” Sometimes it comes from the old quote [from Eugene Onegin] about “Strasbourg pie” that manages to be “eternal,” that is, doesn’t go bad, stays fresh. But really, how many of these pies did they import, this pâté, and how, exactly? And suddenly I found myself surrounded by Yandex-Food couriers… And the sight of a guard, unhurriedly rising to meet you as you enter an office building, immediately and inevitably evokes the “clumsy veteran” Pushkin speculated might clonk him on the head fumbling as he lowers the gate arm (in the poem «Дорожные жалобы» or “Road Woes”). You could talk about parallel realities, or you could think of it another way: that Pushkin connects points in time into a single, unbroken time.

The world is changing, but Pushkin lived, lives, and will live forever. He is a sort of reference point that lets us look at our current reality through fresh eyes. Pushkin is our yardstick, enabling us to measure truth against falsehood. Pushkin is the father of many children, striding through a room strewn with toys. Pushkin is strolling in the courtyard with his screaming son. Taking out a loan until payday. Wading knee-deep in the ocean on a Turkish holiday. Waiting to board a plane to Paris, or getting drunk in a seedy bar with Gogol… Pushkin checks all these situations “for lice,” and it turns that they’re all entirely possible.

Pushkin among us… why ever not?