Influence
The work has had enormous influence in Russian culture. Dostoevsky's The Double: A Petersburg Poem (1846) directly engages with "The Bronze Horseman", treating Evgenni's madness as parody. Andrei Belyi's novel Petersburg (1913; 1922) uses the Bronze Horseman as a metaphor for the centre of power in the city of Petersburg, which is itself a living entity and the main character of Belyi's novel.
The statue itself, which is one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg in much the same way that the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of New York City, is now known as the Bronze Horseman owing to the influence of the poem.
Reinhold Glière made the story into a ballet (1950), and Nikolai Myaskovsky's 10th Symphony (1926–7) was inspired by the poem.
Read more about this topic: The Bronze Horseman (poem)
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, it were in vain to take such pains to inculcate it; and nothing would be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts with which all moralists abound.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“They tell us that women can bring better things to pass by indirect influence. Try to persuade any man that he will have more weight, more influence, if he gives up his vote, allies himself with no party and relies on influence to achieve his ends! By all means let us use to the utmost whatever influence we have, but in all justice do not ask us to be content with this.”
—Mrs. William C. Gannett, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 5, ch. 8, by Ida Husted Harper (1922)