In Boris Godunov, for example, there is the endearing self-centred chatter of the two old men Mniszech and Wisniowiecki in Scene 12, which makes us smile, and the cocky stand-off between arrogant Pole and Russian prisoner in Scene 18, at which (the stage direction informs us) ‘everyone laughs’. Onlookers laugh—in the healthy sense that Pushkin intends—when behaviour makes sense. And behaviour makes sense when it is governed by an honest, delimited self-interest. The miserly Baron, the faithless Prince in Rusalka, the cold and ambitious Marina Mniszech, even the poor, denuded, burnt-out Faust are presented so coherently from within their own zones that one involuntarily sympathizes. Pushkin appears incapable of scripting a detached disgust, such as would communicate his abandonment of a character to the realm of caricature. The only possible exception—and it has been found ugly indeed—is his stereotype of the Jewish moneylender Solomon in The Miserly Knight. But even there, justification is not denied from within Solomon’s own experience and worldview. Solomon is absolutely correct that should Albert die in debt, ‘a knight’s good word’ would be a worthless asset for the ‘wretched Jew’ who tried to redeem his pledge. With good reason did Pushkin, in his comments on Shakespearian character, single out for special praise Angelo, the duplicitous deputy in Measure for Measure, and Shylock, the embittered pawnbroker in Merchant of Venice.

In contrast to the lyric, the narrative poem, the prose tale, the history, we might say that the dramatic work exists to illuminate all sides. Antagonists have a right, even an obligation, to act on what they personally see and need. Impartiality, for Pushkin, dictated that there be no single panoptic place from which the spectacle would be wholly true.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

EXCEPT for a few drafts and plans for unfinished projects, of which the most substantial is the unfinished prose drama Scenes from the Times of Chivalry, the collection given here contains all of Pushkin’s dramatic writings. These works by Russia’s greatest poet are masterpieces of the European drama, but unfortunately they remain far less known outside Russia than they should be. Only Boris Godunov is somewhat familiar abroad through its musical adaptation by Modest Musorgsky in his famous opera of the same name. I hope, therefore, in presenting these translations, to provide readers not only with accurate and poetic versions of these remarkable works, but with texts that might actually be performed in the theatre as well.

Pushkin’s first completed drama, Boris Godunov (1825), was composed on a large Shakespearian scale, and I have attempted to convey at least some echoes of its linguistic and thematic richness. Although several scenes and parts of scenes are written in prose, the main body of the work is in blank verse of iambic pentameter, which I have followed in this translation. I have not, however, attempted to reproduce those occasional instances where lines are rhymed, since I felt that this would distort both the sense of the words and the flow of the language. As a guide to pronunciation I have placed an accent mark on names and certain other words to indicate where the stress should fall. I should note in particular that the names ‘Ivan’ and ‘Boris’ are accented in Russian on their final syllables and are therefore pronounced ‘ee-VAHN’ and ‘ba-REES’.

Pushkin’s further experiments in the drama evolved into more compressed and concentrated forms. His next work in the genre was the brief dramatic dialogue, A Scene from Faust (1826). It is written in rhymed iambic tetrameter, which I have once again reproduced in my translation. The Little Tragedies (1830), those four miniature psychological studies of human passions are composed, like Boris Godunov, in blank verse; and many of the plays’ passages, supremely effective as drama, are among the glories of the Russian language. With one exception, here too I have followed Pushkin’s metrical scheme. In the case of A Feast in Time of Plague, however, I have shortened the line from iambic pentameter to tetrameter; this simply seemed to me a better fit as I put Pushkin’s words into English.

The last of Pushkin’s dramatic works offered here in translation is Rusalka (The Water-Nymph), also written in blank verse. Here again, I have preserved the iambic pentameter. The poet worked on the play in the years 1829–32 and several variant drafts exist. It was not published in Pushkin’s lifetime and it has generally been regarded as incomplete. Recently, however, an attempt has been made to arrange the scenes in a different order, ostensibly as Pushkin himself would have done, and to argue that the result is a finished work. Whatever the merits of this proposal, I give the play here in its traditional form.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues, Natalia Pervukhin of the University of Tennessee, and Caryl Emerson and Michael Wachtel of Princeton University, each of whom read these translations in draft and whose criticisms and suggestions helped to eliminate at least some of their lapses from sense and grace. I am further indebted to Caryl Emerson for the introduction she has contributed to this volume. I also would like to express my gratitude to Judith Luna of Oxford University Press for the extraordinary care and sensitivity with which she has shepherded this book into print.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Biography and Letters

Binyon, T., Pushkin: A Biography (New York, 2003).

Bloom, H., Alexander Pushkin (New York, 1987).

Mirsky, D., Pushkin (London, 1926; repr.