The Lifelike Statues of Ovid and Pushkin's Orthodoxy

Abstract

Ovid's imitation of Horace's Exegi monumentum is the culminating image of the ekphrastic and iconic modes of the many lifelike statues in Metamorphoses . In the fourth century, classical concepts of metamorphosis and metaphor play an integral role in the formulation of Eastern Orthodox concepts of Incarnation and theosis . This article demonstrates the intersection of the Ovidian and Orthodox paradigms of the lifelike statue in Pushkin's imitation of Horace and its various Russian manifestations: Monument (1836). Analysis refines notions of the conflict between word and image in the poem to emphasize the mutually enlightening progressions of matter and spirit as a continuum, not a binary opposition, challenging traditional interpretations of Monument. Pushkin's concept of his poetic legacy rejects the notion of a static immortality, privileging writerly over readerly reception as the fundamental component of his life after death. The sulunar pit that Pushkin references in the second stanza is read not as a future sympathetic reader, but as a future innovative writer that will transform Pushkin's works into new ones, thereby ensuring the poet's vital and earthly immortality. Pushkin's sculptural myth becomes a paradigm for allusion as the rite by which the sacred life of poetry is perennially renewed.