Mikhail Brunya
The young officer Alexander Veltman arrived in our region in 1818 on a business trip – to conduct military topographic surveys in Bessarabia, and served here as a military topographer until 1830. He explored our region from side to side, and the fruit of his business trip was his work “Outline of the ancient history of Bessarabia” (1828).
Veltman’s creative heritage connected with our region is quite large. Bessarabia, its people, customs, traditions, language, legends, nature are depicted in such works as the novel “The Wanderer”, stories “Ursul”, “Kostesht Rocks”, “Ilya Larin”, “Two Majors”, “Happiness and Unhappiness”, “Yanko-Chaban”, “Tundza”, “Radoy” and others. The novel “Wanderer” (1831-1832) made a great impression on Pushkin.
One of the researchers of Veltman’s life and work noted: if we collected everything he wrote about Bessarabia, we would have a very interesting textbook.
What was the purpose of the reading aloud?
World Read Aloud Day is celebrated annually on the first Wednesday of February on the initiative of LitWorld organization. It is aimed at improving literacy, popularizing reading and demonstrating the power of the spoken word. On this day, people in more than 170 countries organize loud readings, read fairy tales and poems to children, and libraries organize thematic events.
Svetlana Shalberova, Head of the Museography Department of the Pushkin House-Museum, emphasized that the idea of the action “Reading together! We read aloud!” – is the sound of wonderful literature, encouragement to think, development of listening and listening skills. “For many people, reading aloud is a long-forgotten tradition,” says Svetlana. – But the generation of the 1980s remembers it, and in school reading tests were used to check not only how many words a child reads per minute, but also how meaningfully he or she does it.
For businesspeople, reading aloud is crucial because it improves communication skills (diction, intonation, persuasiveness), increases confidence in public speaking, and trains the brain for better memorization and analytics. Expands vocabulary and helps to better articulate thoughts, which is important for negotiations, presentations and leadership. It also develops empathy and allows you to “live” the text more deeply, which helps you better understand other people, not just the information.
What was read aloud in Chisinau
In the first part of the program, the museum staff and guests read aloud excerpts from the works of A. Bitov, N. Gogol, M. Eminescu, F. G. Lorca, G. Byron, A. Pushkin, T. Guerra, R. N. Güntekin. The Pushkin House Museum is planning several events in 2026, at which works of world literature will be played.
The second part of the program was dedicated to “The Wanderer” by A. Veltman. The guests received small books with illustrations by Mikhail Bruni and text for reading aloud excerpts from the novel.
“It was so unexpected and pleasant to meet familiar toponyms in Veltman – shares impressions of the artist. – How charmingly he wrote, alternating prose with poetry. And it is absolutely unclear in what space the action takes place: whether he is traveling in reality, or lying on a sofa, in imagination, and next to a desk with a geographical map. We find out about it when the author says: “Oh, in Spain and Italy I had a flood – a glass of water overturned”. This casual play on words is marvelous. I read “The Wanderer” with pleasure and was very happy to be asked to illustrate it.
Michael Brunet needed to capture the spirit of Veltman’s creation in a small number of illustrations. On the one hand, all the journeys in “The Wanderer” take place mainly in the author’s imagination, and on the other hand, the novel contains very vivid descriptions of the nature of Bessarabia, which Veltman traveled in all directions.
Everything in the book is permeated with love; the symbol of love is Calypso Polychroni, sung by Pushkin, the embodiment of exotic southern beauty and mystery. In addition, when creating the drawings it was necessary to take into account that Veltman is a military man, and his hero is a marching officer. Mikhail Brunya depicted the hero either on a horse or riding Pegasus on the cover drawing – the artist, like the writer, has one smoothly transitions into the other. Inside the book there are pictures depicting a laurel wreath, a sofa on which a Moldavian boyar sits with a doll, a cupid swinging on a swing, arnauts on the hinges….
With the help of AI, the artist’s graphic images came to life on the big screen. Colleagues believe that Mikhail Brunya has very elegantly and wittily conveyed the charm of Veltman’s prose.
He presented the original illustrations for The Wanderer to the Pushkin House-Museum.
