In the course of his short, dramatic life, Aleksandr Pushkin gave Russia not only its greatest poetry–including the novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin–but a new literary language. He also gave it a figure of enduring romantic allure–fiery, restless, extravagant, a prodigal gambler and inveterate seducer of women. Having forged a dazzling, controversial career that cost him the enmity of one tsar and won him the patronage of another, he died at the age of thirty-eight, following a duel with a French officer who was paying unscrupulous attention to his wife. In his magnificent, prizewinning Pushkin, T. J. Binyon lifts the veil of the iconic poet’s myth to reveal the complexity and pathos of his life while brilliantly evoking Russia in all its nineteenth-century splendor. Combining exemplary scholarship with the pace and detail of a great novel, Pushkin elevates biography to a work of art.
Alexander Pushkin is Russia’s most beloved poet. Pushkin is a decedent of a noble family on his father’s side and on his mother’s side the great-grandson of Peter the Great’s Blackamoor slave, who was presented with his freedom and became a general in the tsar’s Navy. Pushkin’s poem “Ode to Liberty” brought hope to the Russian people during a time when other countries were defining their democracy. He is considered to be the Shakespeare of Russian literature having inspired many other writers to follow him. He was revered for his masterpiece Eugene Onegin, and like the hero in his masterpiece became changed by the woman he loved. As a poet, he was also known as the patron saint of dueling having fought many duels during his short life, often over a matter of words or women. His last duel was surrounded with mystery involving an anonymous letter accusing his wife of being unfaithful. He fought this duel to defend his wife’s honor and the mystery of the anonymous letter was never solved, until now! Explore the poetry and letters of Pushkin and read about his fascination with dueling, issues with religion, his struggles with censorship, the years he spent in exile while still serving the autocracy, his tribute to his comrades who fought in the Decembrist Uprising and his search for happiness as he finds and marries the most beautiful woman in all of Russia. Author M. A. DuVernet tells a captivating story of a black poet in Russia during the 1800’s, a man who believed in himself and became a legend in spite of the powerful few who hated him.
A Bibliography of Anton Chekhov in English: Studies, Translations, Reviews and Notes is offered in three appropriate parts. Part One, Studies, comprises sections for book-length bio-literary studies and bio-literary articles; introductions; comparative studies; Russian and foreign memoirs; popular studies; general and individual studies of Chekhov's plays and short stories; studies of his non-fiction, letters, notes, and diaries; and special categories: film, language and stylistics, documents and documentation, translation studies, dissertations, bibliography, and collections. Part Two, Translations, is divided into general collections, drama collections, individual dramas, story collections, individual stories; non-fiction, letters, notes, and diaries; and film. Part Three, Critical Reviews, provides a comprehensive selection of the most significant reviews in major English-language newspapers and journals through the year 1993. It is not possible to provide a comprehensive selection of an estimated 350,000 reviews of Chekhov plays, 1994-2003, but an attempt has been made to provide a representative sampling of reviews in major newspapers and current periodicals. Citations throughout this Bibliography are full and unabbreviated, the intent being to provide access to each work in every appropriate category without complicating the search process with confusing cross-listings. Entries for collections are accompanied by listings of contents in the order given in tables of contents or alphabetically. Entries for collections provide a base for subsequent listings of individual major works for addition of subsequent editions, reprints, and re-publications. Translations of plays are categorized by their most commonly known English titles and cited within categories by the English title given for a particular translation. English titles of stories have not been rationalized in this way because the large number of Chekhov's stories would require division of the section on individual stories into virtually hundreds of sub-sections. Instead, stories are listed in alphabetical order by the various English titles given for a particular translation.
Readers often have regarded with curiosity the creative life of the poet. In this passionate and authoritative new study, David Bethea illustrates the relation between the art and life of nineteenth-century poet Alexander Pushkin, the central figure in Russian thought and culture. Bethea shows how Pushkin, on the eve of his two-hundredth birthday, still speaks to our time. He indicates how we as modern readers might "realize"— that is, not only grasp cognitively, but feel, experience—the promethean metaphors central to the poet's intensely "sculpted" life. The Pushkin who emerges from Bethea's portrait is one who, long unknown to English-language readers, closely resembles the original both psychologically and artistically. Bethea begins by addressing the influential thinkers Freud, Bloom, Jakobson, and Lotman to show that their premises do not, by themselves, adequately account for Pushkin's psychology of creation or his version of the "life of the poet." He then proposes his own versatile model of reading, and goes on to sketches the tangled connections between Pushkin and his great compatriot, the eighteenth-century poet Gavrila Derzhavin. Pushkin simultaneously advanced toward and retreated from the shadow of his predecessor as he created notions of poet-in-history and inspiration new for his time and absolutely determinative for the tradition thereafter.
From the award-winning translators: the complete prose narratives of the most acclaimed Russian writer of the Romantic era and one of the world's greatest storytellers. The father of Russian literature, Pushkin is beloved not only for his poetry but also for his brilliant stories, which range from dramatic tales of love, obsession, and betrayal to dark fables and sparkling comic masterpieces, from satirical epistolary tales and romantic adventures in the manner of Sir Walter Scott to imaginative historical fiction and the haunting dreamworld of "The Queen of Spades." The five short stories of The Late Tales of Ivan Petrovich Belkin are lightly humorous and yet reveal astonishing human depths, and his short novel, The Captain's Daughter, has been called the most perfect book in Russian literature.
Newly translated, unfinished works about power, class conflict, and artistic inspiration by Russia's greatest poet. Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s foundational writer, was constantly experimenting with new genres, and this fresh selection ushers readers into his creative laboratory. Politics and history weighed heavily on Pushkin’s imagination, and in “Peter the Great’s African” he depicts the Tsar through the eyes of one of his closest confidantes, Ibrahim, a former slave, modeled on Pushkin’s maternal great-grandfather. At once outsider and insider, Ibrahim offers a sympathetic yet questioning view of Peter’s attempt to integrate his vast, archaic empire into Europe. In the witty “History of the Village of Goriukhino” Pushkin employs parody and self-parody to explore problems of writing history, while “Dubrovsky” is both a gripping adventure story and a vivid picture of provincial Russia in the late eighteenth century, with its class conflicts ready to boil over in violence. “The Egyptian Nights,” an effervescent mixture of prose and poetry, reflects on the nature of artistic inspiration and the problem of the poet’s place in a rapidly changing and ever more commercialized society.
Read Pushkin's most famous poems without the need for a dictionary with this insightful edition. Passages in Russian and English word-by-word translation are displayed side by side on separate pages, the stressed syllables labeled in bold for each Russian word, thereby eliminating the need for a dictionary. Study Pushkin's most moving passages with ease. This edition is a must for Russian language learners and Russian literature lovers wanting to study Pushkin.
At the great Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg, Alexander Pushkin danced many leading roles from 1925 to 1953. However, it was as a teacher that he ecame a legend. Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov were his star pupils, but nearly all the leading male dancers of the Kirov Ballet from the 1940s through to the 1960s were taught by him.
