proof/pushkin collection/an ode to a literary great on his birthday.

С днем рождения, Пушкин!  Happy birthday to you.  To honor this, the anniversary of your birth, I want to share with the world (or at least my blog readers) that you are, indeed, viewed as the equivalent of god in Russia.  No writer is memorialized or internalized like you.  Everyone and everything tries to stake a claim in your greatness.  It is hard to go anywhere in this city without seeing statues of you, hearing reference to your name, or finding plaques that read, "Pushkin lived here" or "Pushkin sat here" or "Pushkin touched this" (okay, maybe the latter is a bit of an exaggeration).  You inspired this country with your words and the way you brought elevated language and poetic thoughts down to the people.  In so many ways, you are the voice of Russia.  You are the forger of modern Russian literature.   Your fairy tales are imbedded into the hearts of children who then carry them onto the next generation.  Your verses are engrained into the memories of schoolchildren.  Your poems give words to so much that cannot be explained.  You speak to the Russian soul.  You are a storyteller.  You are eternal.  

Я вас любил.../I loved you once...

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может 

В душе моей угасла не совсем; 

Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит; 

Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.

 Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно, 

То робостью, то ревностью томим; 

Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно, 

Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.

I loved you once: perhaps that love has yet 

To die down thoroughly within my soul; 

But let it not dismay you any longer; 

I have no wish to cause you any sorrow. 

I loved you wordlessly, without a hope, 

By shyness tortured, or by jealousy. 

I loved you with such tenderness and candor 

And pray God grants you to be loved that way again.

Алексaндр Сергeевич Пyшкин
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin