Though his name may not car­ry much weight in Eng­lish speak­ing circles—his virtues “lost in trans­la­tion”—no Russ­ian writer stood as high in his time as Alexan­der Pushkin (1799–1837). In his short life of 37 years, Pushkin—the great grand­son of a cap­tured African prince—authored two of his coun­try’s most revered and influ­en­tial works, the play Boris Godunov and the nov­el in verse Eugene One­gin. Like a char­ac­ter in that lat­ter work, the eru­dite noble­man poet met his death at the hands of a sup­posed roman­tic rival “on a win­ter evening,” writes Phoebe Taplin in The Tele­graph, when he “trav­elled by sleigh from Nevsky Prospekt to the Black Riv­er area of St. Peters­burg, then filled with woods and dachas, where Georges D’Anthès fatal­ly wound­ed him in the stom­ach.”

Pushkin wrote as pas­sion­ate­ly as he lived—and died. (That final duel was the last of twen­ty-nine he fought). His work remains vis­cer­al­ly com­pelling, even in trans­la­tion: into oth­er lan­guages, oth­er gen­res, and oth­er media, as in the ani­mat­ed film above of a short poem of Pushk­in’s called Rusal­ka, or “The Mer­maid.” Ani­mat­ed in a mas­ter­ful hand-paint­ed style by Russ­ian artist and film­mak­er Alexan­der Petrov, the film tells the sto­ry of a monk who falls in love with a beau­ti­ful and dan­ger­ous myth­i­cal water spir­it. You can read a para­phrase, trans­la­tion, and inter­pre­ta­tion of the poem here. I rec­om­mend watch­ing the ten-minute film first. Though pre­sent­ed in Russ­ian with­out sub­ti­tles, you will—even if you don’t speak Russian—find your­self seduced.

Petrov, who painstak­ing­ly paints his images on glass with oils, has also adapt­ed the work of oth­er dra­mat­ic writ­ers, includ­ing anoth­er fel­low Russ­ian artist, Dos­to­evsky. His take on Hem­ing­way’s The Old Man and the Sea won an Acad­e­my Award in 2000, and most deserved­ly so. Petrov does not adapt lit­er­ary works so much as he trans­lates them into light, shad­ow, and sound, immers­ing us in their tex­tures and images. His Rusal­ka, just like the poem on which it’s based, speaks direct­ly to our imag­i­na­tions.

Find more lit­er­ary ani­ma­tions in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Hand-Paint­ed Ani­ma­tion of Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Man”

Crime and Pun­ish­ment by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky Told in a Beau­ti­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

If the impres­sion­is­tic ani­ma­tion style of psy­chol­o­gist, writer, and film­mak­er Ilana Simons’ “About Haru­ki Murakami”—a short video intro­duc­tion to the jazz bar own­ing, marathon run­ning, Japan­ese novelist—puts you in mind of Richard Lin­klater’s Wak­ing Life, then the ellip­ti­cal, lucid dream nar­ra­tion may do so even more. “He did­n’t use too many words,” Simons tells us. “Too many words is kin­da… too many words. Some­one’s always los­ing their voice. Some­one’s hear­ing is acute. Haru­ki Muraka­mi.” Like Roger Ebert said of Lin­klater’s film, Simons’ ode to Murakami—and the nov­el­ist’s work itself—is “philo­soph­i­cal and play­ful at the same time.”

Simons reads us Murakami’s exis­ten­tial­ist account of how he became a nov­el­ist, at age 29, after hav­ing an epiphany at a base­ball game: “The idea struck me,” he says, “I could write a nov­el…. I could do it.” And he did, sit­ting down every night after work­ing the bar he owned with his wife, writ­ing by hand and drink­ing beer. “Before that,” he has said in an inter­view with singer/songwriter John Wes­ley Hard­ing, “I did­n’t write any­thing. I was just one of those ordi­nary peo­ple. I was run­ning a jazz club, and I did­n’t cre­ate any­thing at all.” And it’s true. Besides sud­den­ly decid­ing to become a nov­el­ist, “out of the blue” at almost 30, then sud­den­ly becom­ing an avid marathon run­ner at age 33, Murakami’s life was pret­ty unre­mark­able.

It’s not entire­ly sur­pris­ing that he became a nov­el­ist. Both of Murakami’s par­ents taught Japan­ese lit­er­a­ture, though he him­self was not a par­tic­u­lar­ly good stu­dent. But the author of such beloved books as Nor­we­gian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, Kaf­ka on the Shore and dozens of short sto­ries (read six free here), has most­ly drawn his inspi­ra­tion from out­side his nation­al tradition—from Amer­i­can base­ball and jazz, from British inva­sion rock and roll, from Fitzger­ald, Kaf­ka, and Hol­ly­wood films. As Col­in Mar­shall wrote in a pre­vi­ous post on the BBC Muraka­mi doc­u­men­tary below, “he remained an author shaped by his favorite for­eign cultures—especially Amer­i­ca’s. This, com­bined with his yearn­ing to break from estab­lished norms, has gen­er­at­ed enough inter­na­tion­al demand for his work to sell briskly in almost every lan­guage.”

Murakami’s desire to break with norms, Simons tells us in her charm­ing, visu­al­ly accom­plished ani­mat­ed short, is symp­to­matic of his “detach­ment” and “intro­spec­tion.” Muraka­mi “liked escape, or he just does­n’t like join­ing groups and invest­ing too many words in places where words have been too often.” The thought of “orga­nized activ­i­ties,” Muraka­mi has said, like “hold­ing hands at a demon­stra­tion… gives me the creeps.” Murakami’s love of soli­tude makes him seem mys­te­ri­ous, “elu­sive,” says pre­sen­ter Alan Yen­tob in the film above. But one of the extra­or­di­nary things about Murakami—in addi­tion to his run­ning a 62-mile “ultra­ma­rathon” and con­quer­ing the lit­er­ary world on a whim—is just how ordi­nary he is in many ways. Both Simons’ increas­ing­ly sur­re­al­ist, bebop-scored short and the BBC’s cool jazz-backed explo­ration make this con­trast seem all the more remark­able. It’s Murakami’s abil­i­ty to stretch and bend the ordi­nary world, Simons sug­gests near the end of her lyri­cal trib­ute, that makes his read­ers feel that “some­how, mag­i­cal­ly… he does some­thing very pri­vate and inti­mate with their brains”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 6 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Briefly not­ed: Jonathan Safran Foer (Extreme­ly Loud and Incred­i­bly Close and Every­thing Is Illu­mi­nat­ed) has a new short sto­ry, “Love Is Blind and Deaf,” in the Sum­mer Fic­tion Issue of The New York­er. And, by short, I mean short. His quirky Adam and Eve sto­ry runs 592 words.

You can read the sto­ry free online here (if you haven’t exceed­ed the month­ly quo­ta of The New York­er’s pay­wall). Or, if you’re more visu­al, you can watch an ani­mat­ed adap­ta­tion of the sto­ry above. Direct­ed by Gur Ben­twich and ani­mat­ed by Ofra Koblin­er, the video was pro­duced by Sto­ryvid, a non­prof­it pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny that aspires to cre­ate “the lit­er­ary equiv­a­lent of a music video.”

For more Foer, lis­ten to him read Amos Oz’s sto­ry, “The King of Oz,” which oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of 630 Free Audio Books.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

700 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Mor­ri­son & Steven Pinker Cul­ti­vate Thought on Chipotle’s Cups and Bags

The New Yorker’s Fic­tion Pod­cast: Where Great Writ­ers Read Sto­ries by Great Writ­ers