Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
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.
Synopsis
The Little Tragedies, written by Pushkin in the early 1830s, are highly compressed "chamber dramas", focusing on a protagonist at a crucial moment of moral choice - as Anderson puts it in her introduction, "each little tragedy begins in the fifth act." Far surpassing the previous translators, Anderson has sought to preserve the heightened intensity of Pushkin's diction while avoiding the archaic cadences of blank verse. Without sacrificing authenticity, Anderson has managed to translate these pieces into readable, twentieth-century English. Anderson has provided a substantial critical apparatus to the translations, including a lengthy introduction in which she both outlines the literary and historical context of the plays and explains her method as a translator. The volume also includes four critical essays (one on each tragedy), two of which Caryl Emerson has described as "the best ever written on these plays."
Library Journal
Pushkin's four dramatic scenes in verse, known as The Little Tragedies, are skillfully translated by Anderson, an independent scholar. Written in 1830, these pieces include "The Miserly Knight," "Mozart and Salieri," "The Stone Guest," and "A Feast During the Plague." The theme of inner conflict dominates them all. Compared with Vladimir Nabokov's 1944 translation of three of the tragedies, Anderson's are more fluid, with flexible meters that will please contemporary English readers. The use of short scenes makes these translations suitable for acting. The translated text consists of only 66 pages; in addition, Anderson provides a scholarly introduction, four critical essays on each of the tragedies with line-by-line interpretations, and brief commentaries and notes for each tragedy. The book provides refreshing reading and scholarly research in one. Recommended for all academic and large public libraries.--Ming-ming Shen Kuo, Ball State Univ. Lib., Muncie IN Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\