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Cargando... The Little Tragediespor Alexander Pushkin
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In a major burst of creativity, Russian poet Alexander Pushkin during just three months in 1830 completed Eugene Onegin, composed more than thirty lyric poems, wrote several short stories and folk tales, and penned the four short dramas in verse that comprise the "little tragedies." The "little tragedies" stand among the great masterpieces of Russian literature, yet they were last translated into English a quarter-century ago and have in recent years been out of print entirely. In this outstanding new translation, Nancy K. Anderson preserves the cadence and intensity of Pushkin's work while aligning it with today's poetic practices and freer approach to metrics. In addition she provides critical essays examining each play in depth, a discussion of her approach to translating the plays, and a consideration of the genre of these dramatic pieces and their performability. The four "little tragedies"-Mozart and Salieri, The Miserly Knight, The Stone Guest, and A Feast During the Plague-are extremely compressed dialogues, each dealing with a dominant protagonist whose central internal conflict determines both the plot and structure of the play. Pushkin focuses on human passions and the interplay between free will and fate: though each protagonist could avoid self-ruin, instead he freely chooses it. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)891.72Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages Russian and East Slavic languages Russian dramaClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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Without recapping the premises to the various plays, it was interesting to me that they all seemed to relate in some way to Pushkin’s life. The Miserly Knight, his financial dependence on his father, Mozart and Salieri, his own artistic genius, The Stone Guest, his own highly amorous ways, and A Feast During the Plague, a cholera outbreak near Boldino that year.
There is something elemental about them, and I found a theme of transience running through each. Despite the miserly knight’s riches, we see that you can’t take it with you, and despite Mozart’s transcendent genius, we see that everything passes. Despite a young woman having multiple suitors in The Stone Guest, we get that warning that beauty fades, and with A Feast, that disease may come suddenly and randomly carry people away. That’s all a little more poignant, knowing Pushkin would die just seven years later at 37.
The tragedy, though, is not in the transience, it’s in man’s flaws blinding him to doing what’s right. With the miserly knight (and his son, and the moneylender) we see the flaw is greed, and with Salieri, it’s envy. With Don Juan in The Stone Guest it’s lust, and the shallow pursuit of desires even if it means killing men or running women. With the revelers in A Feast it has a little more to do with frailty I suppose, and the pathetic responses to transience/tragedy – both in their sardonic partying, as well as the priest chastising them. Just as one can’t stop karmic retribution in The Stone Guest, one can’t stop death’s cart from approaching if that is one’s fate in A Feast.
Quotes:
On kindness, actually from ‘My Own Monument I’ve Built, Not Made by Any Hand,’ quoted in one of the essays:
“My memory will be loved among the people long,
Because kind feelings were by my lyre awakened,
Because in my cruel age, I praised Freedom in my song
And mercy to those forsaken.”
On love and music, from The Stone Guest:
“Among life’s pleasures, Music yields to none save love; but love itself is melody…”
On regret, from ‘Remembrance’, quoted in one of the essays:
“Relentless Memory will wordlessly unwind
Her long, long scroll for my inspection;
With loathing I peruse the record of my years,
I execrate, I quail and falter,
I utter bitter plaints, and hotly flow my tears,
But those sad lines I cannot alter.” ( )