Our Notes & References

Attractive example of this fine representative of Russian ‘artistic literature’ (‘khudozhestvennaia literatura’), an active branch of Russian publishing in the 19^th century.

With the canonization of Pushkin as Russia’s national poet in the late 19^th century (and especially after the expiry of copyright in 1887), publishers rushed to meet the popular demand for new editions. This edition of Pushkin’s masterpiece is especially remarkable for its larger format, the quality of its production, and the artistry of the illustration, here published for the first time with the text.

The Academician Pavel Sokolov (1826-1905) had realised 48 drawings in 1855-60 for an unrealised project by literary critic Pavel Annenkov: the drawings had not seen light, until the album was rediscovered by the publisher Gote in the possession of Princess Maria Shcherbatova (née Stolypina). Gote first published them in 1892 as photogravure plates without any text, in only 200 copies. The success of that limited edition sparked his republication in 1893 of the poem itself accompanied by K. Fisher’s phototypes of the six best plates by Sokolov, plus many vignettes, along with two additional plates by Lavr Beliankin (published here for the first time).

This 1893 volume was lauded by contemporary reviewers as “the most elegant and luxurious of all those that have appeared thus far” (Russkaia mysl). The great collector and pushkinist Smirnov-Sokolskii, who ended up buying the original album, considered Sokolov’s drawings to be among the best illustrations of Pushkin’s poem.

“If there is one work which has above all others the key role in the formation of Russian literature as we know it, then it is surely Aleksandr Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin” (Clayton), his greatest work, originally published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. Combining features of the mock epic and the Byronic poem, it tells the story of Eugene, a jaded representative of the Petersburg jeunesse dorée, and the naïve yet pure-hearted Tatiana (Mersereau).

Provenance

Acquired from the estate of Kseniia Muratova, Pavel Muratov’s grand-niece, France. Like Pavel, Ksenia was herself a noted art historian, Professor Emerita of Art History at Rennes 2 University in France, and founder of the Pavel Muratov International Center of Studies in Rome.

Bibliography

Clayton, J. D. Ice and Flame: Aleksandr Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin,” Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1985.

Mersereau, J. “The Nineteenth Century: Romanticism, 1820-40,” in Charles A. Moser, ed., The Cambridge History of Russian Literature, 2^nd ed., revised and enlarged, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, 138-88.

Russkaia mysl, vol. 14, bk. 1 (January, 1893); Smirnov-Sokolskii, N. P. Rasskazy o knigakh, Moskva, Kniga, 1977.