The Little Tragedies [Paperback]

Alexander Pushkin (Author), Nancy k Anderson (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2000 | Series: Russian Literature and Thought Series

A translation from the original Russian of Pushkin's four short dramas in verse. The translater and critic Nancy Anderson preserves the cadence and intensity of the works, while aligning them with modern poetic practices and a freer approach to metrics. Critical essays examine each play in depth.

Editorial Reviews

From 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.DMing-ming Shen Kuo, Ball State Univ. Lib., Muncie IN
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Anderson's project, with its conscientious approach to both poetic translation and scholarly annotation as forms of art, is very exciting. It should become the standard edition of Pushkin's Little Tragedies in English." Caryl Emerson, Princeton University --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (April 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300080271
• ISBN-13: 978-0300080278
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,040,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Four intriguing plays, July 9, 2000

By 

"mikeu3" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Little Tragedies (Paperback)

The "Little Tragedies" are four thematically related one-act plays which Pushkin wrote during his extremely productive stay on his country estate in the fall of 1830. The Miserly Knight is about the conflicts between the title character and his profligate son, who have very different but equally misguided visions of knightly honor. Mozart and Salieri portrays Salieri as a hardworking but uninspired student of music driven to murder by his jealousy of Mozart's genius. In The Stone Guest, Don Juan attempts to conquer the heart of Dona Anna, who he has earlier made a widow, but the title character, a statue of Dona Anna's deceased husband, endeavors to thwart Don Juan's hopes. Finally, A Feast During the Plague is an adaptation of a scene from a now-obscure English play in which a plague survivor struggles with the conflict between his sense of community with the deceased (who include his wife and mother) and his desire to live as happy a life as possible given the circumstances.

The approach of the plays is extremely interesting. Each is very concise and intense, focussing on the main character at a moment when he must make an important choice, and in each case the choice the protagonist makes results in one fashion or another in the destruction of at least a part of himself. Though Pushkin didn't write all that much drama (if I'm not mistaken his only other completed dramatic work is the considerably more orthodox Boris Godunov) and for that matter seldom set his works outside of Russia (all four of these plays are set in western Europe), he seems very much in his element here, and while these pieces aren't particularly multifaceted, they are sufficiently gripping that they really deserve more attention than they tend to get. In this edition (which appears to be the only edition in print in English), translator Nancy Anderson provides a detailed critical essay for each of the plays as well as a general introduction and a discussion of translation issues, and I found each of her essays to be strong and helpful. It's unfortunate that the Little Tragedies had been out-of-print until the release of this volume, and Anderson has done us a substantial service by making these innovative and exciting plays available again to the general English-speaking audience.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Price of Passions, September 4, 2009

By 

Mehmet Demirhan (Istanbul) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Little Tragedies (Hardcover)

This is a very nice translation of Pushkin's little but master-piece of genre. I dont have Russian, so I am not in a position to evaluate the translation but I can say that the introduction is elegant, valuable and comprehensive. The rest is Pushkin's wonderful insights into simple but universal human facts. In all four stories, the main characters ( The Baron, Salieri, Don Juan and Walsingham) go against a moral law for the sake of their burning passions and at the end they are punished by loosing their very beloved thing for which they transgressed the moral law. One should perhaps read this with a background of Heidegger's insightful readings of early Greek way of thinking of Moira and Nemesis in his book Early Greek Thinking. The Little Tragedies is a good entry to understand the greatness of Pushkin.