New Yorker Julian Lowenfeld, sole translator of the ambitious endeavour, is a jack-of-all-trades-lawyer, poet, translator and playwright. Creative veneration of Russian literature is hereditary in his family. His great-grandfather, Berliner Tagesblatt correspondent in Russia, was the first to translate Leo Tolstoy into German, and wrote the classics fictionalised biography. Julian studied Russian literature in Harvard and went through a postgraduate course at the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) University before he enrolled in the University of New York for a degree in the law.

"It took me something like three years to make this book. I wo

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uld never have accomplished it if not for the constant care, encouragement and inestimable advice of Nadezhda Braghinskaya, literary historian and my teacher. It was from her I acquired disinterested love of Pushkin and painstaking academism. To her I dedicate this book," Julian Lowenfeld said to Novosti.

"This is an amazing endeavour. One cant help admiring it. I am grateful to the translator for his tremendous contribution to world Pushkin studies and US-Russian cultural contacts," said Andrei Denisov, Russian Ambassador to the UN.

Russian and American actors recited Pushkin poems and sang songs to his lyrics at the gala. Pupils of the Russian office secondary school were among the performers.

Known in literary history as "luminary of Russian poetry", Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) was an unsurpassed poet, prose writer and playwright, and founding father of contemporary literary Russian.

NEW YORK CITY, November 11 (RIA Novostis Andrei Loschilin)