Mikhail Shapiro:

“I was born and lived on Pushkinskaya street for 64 years. I was brought up in a family of a leading collector and Pushkin scholar, surrounded by lifetime and rarest scholarly editions of Pushkin’s works, which I was never allowed to approach due to non-sterility of my hands.

This subject couldn’t pass me over, but since childhood I perceived Pushkin as a monument, which works as Pushkin, namely writes poems. When I was four, my aunt gave me a book of Marshak’s poems as a gift. I exclaimed in surprise: “Is Marshak Pushkin of a kind?”  And the aunt worked as the poet’s secretary, Marshak was informed about it, and he was thrilled to bits. If all others transformed Pushkin into a monument as far as he penetrated into them, for me from the very start he was as a bronze monument, which I tried to humanize. In my imagination he lives his own life, meets himself and other inhabitants of Pushkinskaya street. Sometimes he meets his characters, too. For instance, while drinking port, he teaches the old man how to tell his old woman a fairy-tale about the goldfish. And as he is made of bronze and will live forever – what can happen to him? – I will always collect stories about him and draw sketches”.

http://www.borey.ru/en/content/view/261/37/