Tseng 2000.1.24 11:45 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 1 of 236 The Little Tragedies Russian Literature and Thought Gary Saul Morson, series editor 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 2 of 236 Tseng 2000.1.24 11:45 The Little Tragedies 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 3 of 236 Translated, with Critical Essays, by Nancy K. Anderson Yale University Press t New Haven and London Tseng 2000.1.24 11:45 Copyright © by Yale University 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 4 of 236 All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections and of the U.S.Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Rebecca Gibb. Set in Fournier type by Tseng Information Systems. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, –. [Malen’kie tragedii.English] The little tragedies / Alexander Pushkin ; translated, with critical essays, by Nancy K. Anderson. p.cm.—(Russian literature and thought) Includes bibliographical references and index. --- (cloth : alk.paper)— --- (pbk.: alk.paper) .Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, –—Translations into English. I.Title. II.Series. III.Anderson, Nancy K. . .' —dc – A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Tseng 2000.1.24 11:45 Contents 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 5 of 236 Acknowledgments vii Introduction The Little Tragedies in English: An Approach The Miserly Knight Mozart and Salieri The Stone Guest A Feast During the Plague The Seduction of Power: The Miserly Knight Betrayal of a Calling: Mozart and Salieri The Weight of the Past: The Stone Guest Survival and Memory: A Feast During the Plague Commentary Notes Select Bibliography Index Tseng 2000.1.24 11:45 Tseng 2000.1.24 11:45 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 6 of 236 Acknowledgments 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 7 of 236 to express my gratitude to Robert L.Jackson of Yale University for his continuing advice and encouragement during the process of writing this book; and to Caryl Emerson of Princeton Uni- versity for her sensitive reading of, and valuable corrections to, the translations. The illustrations are by Vladimir Favorsky from a Soviet edition of the ‘‘little tragedies.’’ Tseng 2000.1.24 11:45 Tseng 2000.1.24 11:45 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 8 of 236 Introduction 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 9 of 236 So far I’ve been reading nothing but Pushkin and am drunk with rapture, every day I discover something new. Fyodor Dostoevsky in a letter to his wife, () July a Russian to name Russia’s greatest writer, the un- hesitating reply would be not Dostoevsky or Tolstoy but Pushkin.Yet an English-speaking reader who is not a Slavist probably knows little of Pushkin’s work beyond Eugene Onegin—if, indeed, he or she rec- ognizes the name of Pushkin at all.Thus, a translation of Pushkin’s ‘‘little tragedies’’ to the English-speaking public requires a few words placing the work in its context. The ‘‘little tragedies’’ is the name traditionally given to the col- lection of Pushkin’s four short dramas in verse, The Miserly Knight, Mozart and Salieri, The Stone Guest, and A Feast During the Plague.1 These fourdramas were never published together in Pushkin’s lifetime: indeed, The Stone Guest was not printed until after his death.Never- Tseng 2000.1.24 11:45 Introduction theless, the four plays clearly are united, not only by their common origin, but by their similar form and themes. The plays were written in circumstances that themselves were highly dramatic.In , Pushkin was thirty-one years old and re- garded himself as having outlived his first youth and reached the time to settle down.He had become engaged to a young woman of great beauty and (by the nobility’s standards) little money, Natalya Goncha- rova.At least he hoped he was engaged to her, for Natalya’s mother unsentimentally regarded the marriage of her most eligible daughter 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 10 of 236 as the means of settling her family’s financial future in the best possible manner, and was conducting the marriage negotiations accordingly. Pushkin’s status as a writer was of little help, since in the Russia of literature was regarded more as a gentlemanly hobby than a pro- fession, which was reflected in writers’ pay.In addition, Pushkin, like most adult sons of the Russian nobility, had not distinguished himself by his thrift, and the resulting quarrels with his father had done noth- ing to improve his financial position.But Pushkin’s willingness to take on the adult obligation of marriage pleased his father, and to improve his position in the marriage negotiations, his father gave him a share of the family propertyof thevillage of Boldino, in the province of Nizhny Novgorod.At the beginning of September , Pushkin arrived at Boldino, both to take possession and to find a place far enough from his potential mother-in-law so that he could maintain his emotional equilibrium and concentrate on his writing.He had also discovered, en route from Moscow, that he was going to be even more isolated in the country than he had thought: cholera had broken out there, and offi- cials at post-horse stations along the way were encouraging travelers to turn back.In , cholera was a mysterious, untreatable, some- times fatal disease; but the on-again, off-again wedding negotiations had driven Pushkin to such a state of exasperation and fury that the risk actually appealed to him, and he pressed onward. Thus in the autumn of , Pushkin’s past way of life clearly was coming to an end, whereas his future—assuming he lived to see it Tseng 2000.1.24 11:45 Introduction —was thoroughly unpredictable; and in the solitude of the Russian countryside, with dirt roads washed out by the autumn rains and travel further restricted by quarantines, he had plenty of time for reflection. The result was an extraordinary burst of creativity, an artistic sum- mation of everything that he had thought and experienced.In the three months that Pushkin spent at Boldino, he wrote the final canto of Eugene Onegin, along with two sections not included in the final ver- sion of that work (one on Onegin’s travels and at least the beginning of a politically unpublishable ‘‘Canto X’’); The Little House in Kolomna, a 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 11 of 236 humorous anecdote in octaves; two mock folk tales in verse, The Story of the Priest and His Workman Balda and The Story of the She-Bear; some thirty lyric poems, ranging from polemics to elegies; TheTales of Belkin, five short stories which were Pushkin’s first completed works of prose fiction, along with an incomplete story, History of the Village of Goryukhino; and four plays now referred to as the ‘‘little tragedies.’’ The completion date of each play is written on its manuscript: The Miserly Knight is dated October , Mozart and Salieri October, The Stone Guest November, and A Feast During the Plague Novem- ber.Behind this extraordinarily short time of composition, however, lay several years of reflection.An undated jotting of Pushkin’s lists ten possible subjects for plays, among them The Miser, Mozart and Salieri, and Don Juan; judging from other notes on the same sheet of paper, this was probably written in .From Pushkin’s biography, one can see why these three subjects not only would have appealed to him originally, but would have stayed in his thoughts over the follow- ing years.Pushkin’s financial dependence upon his money-conscious father had made him aware of the paradoxical relationship of money and personal freedom: too little money, and one’s freedom of action was hemmed by external constraints; too much interest in money, and one’s inner freedom was lost—an insight that was to find expression in The Miserly Knight. Pushkin’s prolonged quarrels with untalented but officially favored ‘‘patriotic’’ writers had shown him the depth of malice that could be reached by professional envy; and such envy was Tseng 2000.1.24 11:45 Introduction to form the starting point for Pushkin’s creation of Salieri, although Salieri is no more a ‘‘simple’’ envier than the Baron is a ‘‘simple’’ miser. As for Don Juan, Pushkin himself had a reputation in his youth as a ladies’ man, and kept what he called a ‘‘Don Juan list’’ of his female conquests.As the marriage negotiations with Natalya Goncharova’s mother dragged on, Pushkin developed a new idea of Don Juan, as the former womanizer who at last falls in love with a ‘‘good’’ woman and who desires her exclusive faithfulness so passionately that he feels jealous even of her dead husband.Doña Anna becomes a young and 5953 Pushkin / THE LITTLE TRAGEDIES / sheet 12 of 236 beautiful widow, still feeling affection toward the memory of the hus- band whom she married at her mother’s command, but not ready to be faithful to that memory for the rest of her life—the very position in which Pushkin, with horror, imagined a widowed Natalya one day finding herself.2 Anna Akhmatova has suggested that it was the in- tensely personal nature of The Stone Guest that made Pushkin decide against publishing it in his lifetime.