Pushkin Club: An Evening in Commemoration of Father Alexander Men’ – 7.00 pm, Tuesday, 22 October
This event may be of interest to members. Next Tuesday, 22 October the Pushkin Club will be commemorating Father Alexander Men’ (22 January 1935 – 9 September 1990) by an event which will be dedicated to Russian poetry on religious and spiritual themes.
The ‘old’ Pushkin Club – which was then based in Ladbroke Grove – held an evening in April 1991 in memory of Father Alexander. In the course of that Evening, poems were read on religious and spiritual themes – including poems by Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Blok, Gumilyev, Mandelstam, Akhmatova and Pasternak.
The Evening was attended by some of the most prominent luminaries in the UK on spiritual matters: Michael Bourdeaux, the Head of Studies on Religious Freedom in the USSR in Britain (Keston Institute); the Leader of Religious Society of Friends (Quakers); and the Metropolitan Father Anthony Bloom of the Russian Orthodox Church.
That Evening was one of the most memorable events in the history of the Pushkin Club.
This year is also the 65th Anniversary of the Pushkin Club, which Pushkin House has been celebrating this year. By repeating the Evening on Religious Themes in Russian Poetry held in commemoration of Father Alexander in 1991, the Pushkin Club will also itself be celebrating its 65th anniversary and, in doing so, honouring late members of the Pushkin Club who translated most of the poems that were read on that occasion, namely its former Co-Chairman, Richard McKane, and Helen Szamuely.
So, the Evening will also very much also be a tribute to Richard and Helen.
You will find further details in the attached publicity notice and in the Pushkin House link below:
https://www.pushkinhouse.org/events/an-evening-in-commemoration-of-father-alexander-men
David Brummell