the little tragedies - aleksandr sergeevich pushkin

7/30/2019 The Little Tragedies - Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

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The Little Tragedies


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Russian Literature and Thought

Gary Saul Morson, series editor


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Translated, with Critical Essays, by Nancy K. Anderson

Yale University Press t New Haven and London


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Copyright by Yale UniversityAll rights reserved.This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in anyform (beyond that copying permitted by Sections and of the U.S. CopyrightLaw and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission fromthe 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 DataPushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, .[Malenkie 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 theCommittee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on LibraryResources.


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Contents

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


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Acknowledgments

to express my gratitude to Robert L. Jackson of YaleUniversity for his continuing advice and encouragement during theprocess of writing this book; and to Caryl Emerson of Princeton Uni-

versity for her sensitive reading of, and valuable corrections to, thetranslations.

The illustrations are by Vladimir Favorsky from a Soviet edition ofthe little tragedies.


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Introduction

So far Ive been reading nothing but Pushkin and am drunkwith rapture, every day I discover something new.

Fyodor Dostoevsky in a letter to his wife, () July

a Russian to name Russias greatest writer, the un-hesitating reply would be not Dostoevsky or Tolstoy but Pushkin. Yetan English-speaking reader who is not a Slavist probably knows little

of Pushkins work beyond Eugene Oneginif, indeed, he or she rec-ognizes the name of Pushkin at all. Thus, a translation of Pushkinslittle tragedies to the English-speaking public requires a few wordsplacing the work in its context.

The little tragedies is the name traditionally given to the col-lection of Pushkins four short dramas in verse, The Miserly Knight,

Mozart and Salieri, The Stone Guest, and A Feast During the Plague.1

These four dramas were never published together in Pushkins lifetime:indeed, The Stone Guestwas not printed until after his death. Never-


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Introduction

theless, the four plays clearly are united, not only by their commonorigin, 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 timeto settle down. He had become engaged to a young woman of greatbeauty and (by the nobilitys standards) little money, Natalya Goncha-rova. At least he hoped he was engaged to her, for Natalyas motherunsentimentally regarded the marriage of her most eligible daughteras the means of settling her familys financial future in the best possible

manner, and was conducting the marriage negotiations accordingly.Pushkins 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, likemost adult sons of the Russian nobility, had not distinguished himselfby his thrift, and the resulting quarrels with his father had done noth-ing to improve his financial position. But Pushkins willingness to take

on the adult obligation of marriage pleased his father, and to improvehis position in the marriage negotiations, his father gave him a share ofthe family property of the village of Boldino, in the province of NizhnyNovgorod. At the beginning of September , Pushkin arrived atBoldino, both to take possession and to find a place far enough fromhis potential mother-in-law so that he could maintain his emotionalequilibrium and concentrate on his writing. He had also discovered, en

route from Moscow, that he was going to be even more isolated in thecountry than he had thought: cholera had broken out there, and offi-cials at post-horse stations along the way were encouraging travelersto turn back. In , cholera was a mysterious, untreatable, some-times fatal disease; but the on-again, off-again wedding negotiationshad driven Pushkin to such a state of exasperation and fury that therisk actually appealed to him, and he pressed onward.

Thus in the autumn of , Pushkins past way of life clearly wascoming to an end, whereas his futureassuming he lived to see it


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Introduction

was thoroughly unpredictable; and in the solitude of the Russiancountryside, with dirt roads washed out by the autumn rains and travelfurther 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 thethree 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 Onegins travels and at least the beginning ofa politically unpublishable Canto X); The Little House in Kolomna, ahumorous 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; The Tales of

Belkin, five short stories which were Pushkins first completed worksof prose fiction, along with an incomplete story, History of the Villageof Goryukhino; and four plays now referred to as the little tragedies.

The completion date of each play is written on its manuscript: TheMiserly KnightisdatedOctober,Mozart and Salieri October,

The Stone Guest November, andA Feast During the Plague Novem-ber. Behind this extraordinarily short time of composition, however,lay several years of reflection. An undated jotting of Pushkins liststen possible subjects for plays, among them The Miser, Mozart andSalieri, and Don Juan; judging from other notes on the same sheet ofpaper, this was probably written in . From Pushkins 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. Pushkins financial dependence upon his money-consciousfather had made him aware of the paradoxical relationship of moneyand personal freedom: too little money, and ones freedom of actionwas hemmed by external constraints; too much interest in money, andones inner freedom was lostan insight that was to find expressionin The Miserly Knight. Pushkins prolonged quarrels with untalented

but officially favored patriotic writers had shown him the depth ofmalice that could be reached by professional envy; and such envy was


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Introduction

to form the starting point for Pushkins creation of Salieri, althoughSalieri 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 femaleconquests. As the marriage negotiations with Natalya Goncharovasmother dragged on, Pushkin developed a new idea of Don Juan, asthe former womanizer who at last falls in love with a good womanand who desires her exclusive faithfulness so passionately that he feelsjealous even of her dead husband. Doa Anna becomes a young andbeautiful widow, still feeling affection toward the memory of the hus-

band whom she married at her mothers command, but not ready tobe faithful to that memory for the rest of her lifethe very positionin which Pushkin, with horror, imagined a widowed Natalya one dayfinding herself.2 Anna Akhmatova has suggested that it was the in-tensely personal nature ofThe Stone Guestthat made Pushkin decideagainst publishing it in his lifetime. A Feast During the Plague, as itsabsence from Pushkins jotting shows, has a different origin from the

other three plays. It is a translation, with significant modifications byPushkin, of a scene from a much longer work, The City of the Plague,written by a minor English contemporary of Pushkins, John Wilson.Pushkins copy of this work, which he took to Boldino with him, waspublished in ; it no doubt evoked memories of Pushkins visit tothe Caucasus in that year, during which he witnessed an outbreak ofthe plague in Erzrum, the capital of Armenia. The cholera epidemic

raging in the countryside around Boldino in made the topic evenmore grimly appropriate.

But the little tragedies are not merely artistic transformations ofPushkins own personal experience.They also reflect his interest in thepotential of drama as a means of exploring human passions. Each ofthe little tragedies has a protagonist of such exceptional gifts andstrength of character that he dominates all the people and circum-

stances surrounding him. The internal psychological conflict of thiscentral character, who faces a crucial choice between opposing alter-


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Introduction

natives,thusbecomesthekeyplotelement.Thisismostobviousin TheMiserly Knight, where the conflict of the central character is summa-rizedinitsverytitle,andin A Feast During the Plague, whereWalsing-

ham uses his dominant position as chairman to turn the feast into anongoing discussion of the issue that obsesses him, the relation of thelivingandthedead.InMozart and Salierithis key plot element assumesan unexpected form: the genius Mozart appears as a secondary figure,while the play is dominated by the inner drama of the lesser composerSalieri, who is torn between his love of Mozarts music and the ambi-tion and envy that makes him sentence Mozart to death. In The Stone

Guest, the conflict involves two extreme types of relationship betweena man and a woman: one emphasizing the beauty and ecstasy of themoment, with no expectation beyond that; the other emphasizing theconstancy of love, throughout life and even beyond the grave.

Passion, choice, consequencesthese were the issues to which, ata crucial moment in his own life, Pushkins thoughts and imaginationturned. Free will and fate, for him, were not opposites. Rather, they

were organically linked, jointly expressing what Pushkin saw as thegreat moral law: the law of Nemesis, that a given choice carries a par-ticular payment or reward as its inevitable result, that as a man sows,so shall he reap. What unites the four protagonists of the little trage-diesisthateachofthemisimpelledbyadominatingpassiontoviolatethemorallaw,and,asthepenaltyforthatviolation,losestheverythinghe sought to gain. The Baron loses both his knightly honor and his

hoardedtreasure,which,ashehasforeseenwithhorror,willpasstohisspendthrift son. Salieri murders Mozart in the name of Art, only to facethe gnawing suspicion that he, the would-be genius, is in fact no betterthan the common crowd. Don Juan, who was ready to gamble his lifefor Doa Annas love, loses both her and his life. Walsingham, whocherishes his late wifes image of him as proud and free, displays thatpride and freedom in an inhuman manner and is forced to acknowl-

edge that he is ashamed before her immortal eyes. The consistentaffirmation of the retribution that occurs when moral law is violated


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Introduction

by a destructive passiona retribution that transcends all the differ-ences in the centuries, cultures, and individual characters depicted ineach playevokes two lines that Pushkin had written years before in

The Gypsies:

, .

[And everywhere are fatal passions;Against the Fates theres no defense.]

This emphasis on the fateful choice of a central figure is the key tonot only the plot, but the structure of the little tragedies. Everythingthat could distract attention from the fundamental element is sweptaway. The number of characters is reduced to a minimum: indeed, in

Mozart and Salierithe title characters are the only two speaking parts.Moreover, the noncentral characters do not exist independently; theyare defined bytheir relationshipto the centralcharacter, eitherasoppo-sites (as Mozart is to Salieri, oras Marys song is toWalsinghams song)or as doubles (as the Jewish moneylender and the Duke both echoaspects of the Barons personality, or as Laura is a female counterpartto Don Juan). The action is likewise reduced to the most essential ele-ments. In contrast to a traditional play, in which the largest part of thedrama is spent in developing the conflict or plot complication whichis resolved only at the end, each of the little tragedies starts, so tospeak, at the beginning of the fifth act, at the moment when a preexist-ing unstable situation is at the point of becoming a crisis, and movesswiftly and inexorably to its catastrophic climax.

The little tragedies contain a number of scenes that are so in-tensely dramatic that they demand to be seen and heard, rather thanmerelyread:theBaronsmonologuein The Miserly Knight, ortheever-deepening horror of the conversation between the murderer and his

victim in the second scene ofMozart and Salieri, or the tangle of wari-


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Introduction

ness and attraction, passion and calculation, between Don Juan andDoa Anna in the last scene ofThe Stone Guest. But despite the obvi-ously dramatic nature of the plays, they present serious problems in

production. Three of the four plays contain music that is to be per-formed by a character; and although it could be argued that Laurassongs in The Stone Guest are episodic and not fundamentally differ-ent in their dramatic function from the songs that occur in so many ofShakespeares plays, the performances by Mozart inMozart and Salieriand the songs of Mary and Walsingham in A Feast During the Plagueare as important in the plays as the spoken dialogue. No less than the

words, this music is an expression of the deepest feelings, the world-view, of the performer, and is perceived as such by the other char-acters, who respond to it accordingly. And yet Pushkin provides nopractical directions for the music. The piece that Mozart plays in thefirst scene is not even identified. His performance in the second is de-scribed only as being from the Requiem; that is, one man is playing ona piano (and possibly also singing) a selection from a work which is

scoredforfourvoices,chorus,andorchestra,whilepreservingthemaj-esty of the originala transcription problem worthy of Liszt. Marysand Walsinghams songs are both mere lyrics not set to any melody,although the choice of music would be a crucial factor in the songseffect.

ThedegreetowhichPushkinleftsuchavitalproductionfeatureun-delineated raises the question: did the author envision the plays being

staged, and if so, how? One alternative may be ruled out immedi-ately: as an avid theatergoer who had had many occasions to observeaudience behavior, Pushkin cannot have regarded the little trage-dies as stageable in a conventional commercial theater. It has oftenbeen pointed out that no commercial playwright would state an im-portant theme of the play in its very first two lines, as Pushkin doeswith Salieris monologue (They say theres no justice here on earth,/

But theres no justice higher up, either). During the first five min-utes latecomers will still be arriving and people still getting settled in


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Introduction

their seats, and the playwright must adjust the weight of the openinglines accordingly. But what makes the little tragedies unstageable ina conventional theater is not just one or another specific problem, but

the very nature of the plays. Because they are stripped so completelyto their essentials, not only every word but every breath, every facialexpression, acquires a relative importance far greater than in a conven-tional play. And in proportion, the ordinary problems which regularlydiminish the perception of a member of a plays audiencea cough-ing spectator, a poor seatbecome far more seriously damaging tothe works reception.

The little tragedies thus must have been intended for a small audi-ence in an intimate setting, a dramatic equivalent of chamber music.The chamber music analogy also suggests one way in which Push-kin might have imagined the plays being performed. Chamber musicwas often written to be played not only by professional musicians, butalso by gifted amateurs (Beethovens Archduke Trio and SchubertsTrout Quintet, to mention two well-known examples, both contain

parts designed to be played by the patrons who had commissionedthe works). The more cultivated members of the Russian aristocracy,which produced gifted amateurs in many artistic fields, would cer-tainly have been capable of participating in such a chamber theater.Indeed, in the s, the young and as-yet-unknown poet AlexanderBlok courted his future wife, Lyubov Mendeleyeva, during the ama-teur theatricals that were staged in the summer at her familys estate,

where a converted barn was equipped with a stage, footlights, andbenches for the spectators; family friends would long remember Bloksperformance as Hamlet to Mendeleyevas Ophelia. In , in honorof the centennial of Pushkins birth, this little theater staged scenesfrom Boris Godunov, The Miserly Knight, and The Stone Guest. It maywell be that the best nineteenth-century performances of the littletragedies occurred in precisely such private settings and have now

vanished without trace, save for a diary entry or a line in a yellowingletter.


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Introduction

How then should the little tragedies be staged for an audiencetoday? An experimental theater is, of course, one option; but given thesmallnumberofsuchtheaters,amoreaccessibleforumwouldbedesir-

able.Thetwentiethcenturyhasinfactprovidedsuchamediumfilm.The intimacy of the little tragedies is precisely suited to a mediumcapable of close-up shots and of continually positioning the audienceat the best possible viewing anglea medium that, in addition, hastraditionally integrated drama with music. Indeed, the little trage-dies seem so much better adapted to film than to live theater that oneis tempted to suggest that the reason Pushkin left crucial aspects of

the performance undescribed in his manuscript is because he realizedthat he was pushing beyond the staging capabilities of his day, cre-atingworksthatwouldrequiretwentieth-oreventwenty-first-centurytechnology to produce their full effect.

Even as unstaged scripts, however, the four plays have long beenrecognized as among the greatest works of Russias greatest writer.Dostoevsky was fascinated by the image of the miserly knight: in an

article dated , Petersburg Dreams in Verse and Prose, he explic-itly acknowledged its influence on his early short story Mr. Prokhar-chin; fourteen years later he created Arkady Dolgoruky, the centralcharacter of The Adolescent, an embittered youth preoccupied withthoughts of gaining wealth and power (what he calls the idea of Roth-schild) who has learned the Barons monologue by heart and regardsit as representing the greatest idea Pushkin ever expressed. For D. S.

Mirsky, author of perhaps the definitive one-volume history of Rus-sian literature in the English language, The Stone Guestis one of twoworks(theotherbeing The Bronze Horseman)jointlyclaimingthefirstplace in Russian poetry. 3 Without professing to rival the perfectionof Pushkins versea task before which the boldest translator wouldquailI hope, nevertheless, that this translation will at last make thelittle tragedies readily accessible to English speakers, and thus help

to give these four extraordinary plays the recognition they deserve asmasterpieces not merely of Russian, but of world literature.


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The Little Tragedies in English:An Approach

is so well known to English speakersas it should be, but the little tragedies are particularly underrepre-sented. In contrast to, for example, Eugene Onegin, of which several

fairly good translations are available in English, translations of thelittle tragedies are few and frequently do not include all four plays.1

The reason translators largely avoid these works, I believe, is becauseofthedifficultyinhandlingwhatinmodernEnglishliteratureisacom-pletely disused genre, the drama in blank verse. T. S. Eliot, who stroveto revive the form in his plays (Murder in the Cathedral, The FamilyReunion, The Cocktail Party), has described the problems he encoun-

tered in writing a verse drama in two essays, Poetry and Drama and


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The Little Tragedies in English

prose and music. Both prose and music evoke emotion, but in differentways. Prose evokes an emotion in a particular context; music evokesemotion directly, without specifying the circumstance that gives rise

to the emotion. In prose, a person may be joyous because he has fallenin love, or achieved a long-sought goal, or simply seen a cherry tree inbloom; but in any case, there is a stated cause for joy. Music conveysonly the joy itself, although an individual hearer may associate a par-ticular piece of music with a specific joyous event. Poetry, to the extentthat it is akin to prose, evokes an emotion for a stated reason; but to theextent that it is akin to music, it evokes a more intenseemotion than can

be explained simply by pointing to the stated reason.When comparedto prose, poetry has an emotional surcharge. It was this surcharge ofwhich Lermontov was thinking when he wrote:

,

.

[There are speeches whose meaning is obscure or of no import,but it is impossible to hear them without being moved.]

This emotional surcharge explains why nonpoets traditionally try towrite poetry at moments of great emotional intensity, such as dur-ing first love or in wartime: they instinctively realize that this is theform capable of accommodating the greatest emotional content. Thisis also why in works like Shakespeares tragedies or Pushkins BorisGodunov, where prose and poetry are mixed, the prose is used for themore everyday speech of the characters, whereas the great setpiecemonologuesthe emotional peaks of the workare in poetry.

It follows, then, that a work like any of the little tragedies, inwhich a pure emotional peak is sustained for the entire length of the

work, can only be written inand translated aspoetry. But having


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reached this conclusion, the translator then encounters a problem thusdescribed by Eliot in The Music of Poetry:

The history of blank verse illustrates two interesting andrelated points: the dependence upon speech and the strikingdifference, in what is prosodically the same form, between dra-matic blank verse and blank verse employed for epical, philo-sophical, meditative and idyllic purposes. The dependence ofverse upon speech is much more direct in dramatic poetry thanin any other. In most kinds of poetry, the necessity for its re-

minding us of contemporary speech is reduced by the latitudeallowed for personal idiosyncrasy. . . . But in dramatic versethe poet is speaking in one character after another, through themedium of a company of actors trained by a prducer, and ofdifferent actors and different producers at different times: hisidiom must be comprehensive of all the voices, but present ata deeper level than is necessary when the poet speaks only for

himself. Some of Shakespeares later verse is very elaborate andpeculiar: but it remains the language, not of one person, but ofa world of persons. . . . By the time of Otway dramatic blankverse has become artificial and at best reminiscent; and whenwe get to the verse plays by nineteenth century poets, of whichthe greatest is probably The Cenci, it is difficult to preserve anyillusion of reality. Nearly all the greater poets of the last cen-

tury tried their hands at verse plays. These plays, which fewpeople read more than once, are treated with respect as finepoetry; and their insipidity is usually attributed to the fact thatthe authors, though great poets, were amateurs in the theatre.But even if the poets had had greater natural gifts for the the-atre, or had toiled to acquire the craft, their plays would havebeen just as ineffective, unless their theatrical talent had shown

them the necessity for a different kind of versification. It is notprimarily lack of plot, or lack of action and suspense, or im-


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perfect realization of character, or lack of anything of whatis called theatre, that makes these plays so lifeless: it is pri-marily that their rhythm of speech is something that we cannot

associate with any human being except a poetry reader.4

Eliot does not profess to be able to explain fully why it was thatalthough blank verse was properly rooted in the speech of society asa whole, and thus capable of being believably used in a drama with awide range of characters, in the time of Shakespeare, it had lost suchroots by the time of Browning and Tennyson. But he does suggest that

a major factor was the influence of Milton:

I should not care to advance any one reason why prosecame to supersede verse in the theatre. But I feel sure that onereason why blank verse cannot be employed now in the dramais that so much non-dramatic poetry, and great non-dramaticpoetry, has been written in it in the last three hundred years. . . .

If we can imagine, as a flight of fancy, Milton coming beforeShakespeare, Shakespeare would have had to discover quitea different medium from that which he used and perfected.Milton handled blank verse in a way which no one has ever ap-proached or will ever approach: and in so doing did more thananyone or anything else to make it impossible for the drama:though we may also believe that dramatic blank verse had ex-

hausted its resources, and had no future in any event. Indeed,Milton almost made blank verse impossible for any purposefor a couple of generations. It was the precursors of Words-worthThomson, Young, Cowperwho made the first effortsto rescue it from the degradation to which the eighteenth-century imitators of Milton had reduced it.5

Eliot, then, sees Milton as a cosmic force exerting a gravitational fieldso powerful that for a time all English blank verseboth lyric and dra-


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maticis forced into orbit around him. By the time of Wordsworth,lyric blank verse had liberated itself from his overpowering effect andreconnected itself to the common spoken language of its day. But dra-

matic blank verseperhaps already weakened by other, subtle fac-torsnever achieved a similar liberation and reconnection. And yetsuch a connection with the spoken language of its day is most vitalprecisely in dramatic poetry, with its requirement that a range of char-acters speak in a manner appropriate to their natures.

Applying Eliots insights, one can see why English translations ofthe little tragedies are so few and often only partially successful.The

translator is on the horns of a dilemma: if a translation is in prose, theadded emotional effect associated with a poetic translation is lost; ifa translation is in blank verse, the distance between the cadence ofdramatic blank verse and that of the modern English language is sogreat that the reader or listener finds it impossible to believe that sucha speech is an outpouring of the speakers heart.

What, then, is a would-be translator to do? I have no theoretical

solution to offer, but I do have an empirical one. I have attemptedto translate the little tragedies into language that, first, is vivid andmodern enough to sound credible to a readeror listenerand engage theemotions, and then to make that language as musical as it can possiblybe made before losing its credibility. The result turned out to be whatmightbecalledasemi-metricaltranslation:itslineshaveastrongbutnot invariable tendency to be divisible into two-syllable feet, and their

average length is around ten syllables, although individual lines mayvary from six to fourteen syllables. Although it is not Pushkins iambicpentameter,itishauntedbytheghostofthatmeter.Butthissuggestivesimilaritysometimes quite striking, sometimes much fainterwasnot what I consciously set out to produce; I merely wanted a languagethat was as compelling as possible. Intensity, more than anything else,is what the little tragedies are about. The reader or listener should

be on the edge of his seat during them. Every means I could find toconvey this intensity I have used; any form or device which dimin-


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ishes it I have avoided. My principle has been that enunciated by A. K.Tolstoy in his translation of Goethes Die Braut von Korinth and citedapprovingly by Korney Chukovsky in his study of translation:

I am trying . . . as much as is possible, to be faithful to theoriginal, but only when fidelity or exactness does not damagethe artistic impression, and, without hesitating for a minute,I am deviating from a literal translation if that may produce adifferent impression in Russian than in German.

I think that its not necessary to translate the words and

sometimes not even the meaning; the important thing is, onehas to convey the impression.

The reader of the translation has to be transported into thesame sphere in which the reader of the original finds himself;the translation has to act on the same nerves.6

Chukovsky explicitly extends this principle to translating into a dif-

ferent meter when the original meter is culturally inappropriate in thetarget language:

Into what meter, for example, should Lermontovs poetrybe translated by Uzbeks, since for them the iambic tetrameteris an exoticism, something completely foreign to their systemof poetics? In this case, equirhythmic translation would be

unthinkable, because the rich, subtle and complex poetic tra-dition of the Uzbeks has no place for iambic tetrameter, andthe Uzbeks, who over many centuries have accumulated enor-mous poetic experience, perceive a European verse form in acompletely different manner than we do.When it came to, forexample, translating Lermontovs Hadji Abrek into Uzbek,two outstanding Uzbek poets, Gafur Guliam and Sheikh-zade,

didnt even try to translate it into the same meter, because to


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an Uzbeks ear that is not equivalent to the impression whichthat same iamb produces on a Russian ear. Thus Gafur Guliamtranslated Lermontovs iambic tetrameter into a thirteen-

syllable barmak line (that is, into syllabic verse), and Sheikh-zade into a nine-syllable barmak line; and viewed against thetraditional background of Uzbek poetry, this is the equivalentof iambic tetrameter.7

On the strength of Chukovskys argument alone, even without re-gard for the particular problem presented bydramatic blank verse, one

could make a case for a semi-metrical rather than strictly metricaltranslation of the little tragedies. Contemporary poetry in Englishhas moved so far toward free verse (still a rarity in Russian) that astrictly metrical translation sounds dated or bookish to a mod-ern English speaker in the way that the original does not to a modernRussian speaker.

Metrics, however, are not the only problem encountered in convey-

ing an adequate impression of the little tragedies. The vocabulary,too, needs to be sufficiently contemporary and forceful. To give anexample: the Barons second-scene monologue in The Miserly Knightbegins in Russian with the words:

-

, , , , .

In A. F. B. Clarks translation this becomes:

As some young scapegrace bides the trysting hour

With some corrupt enchantress or perchanceSome foolish girl seduced by him, so I


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All day abide the time when I shall comeDown to my secret vault and trusty chests.

In Nabokovs translation this reads:

Just as a mad young fellow frets awaitinghis rendez-vous with some evasive harlot,or with the goose seduced by him, thus Ihave dreamt all day of coming down at lastin vaulted dimness to my secret chests.

And in Eugene M. Kaydens translation:

As a young scamp who waits the trysting hourWith some intriguing harlot or little foolHe has seduced, thus I await daylongAnd dream of going down at last into

This vaulted darkness to my secret chests.

Clarks As some young scapegrace bides the trysting hour, althoughunderstandable on the printed page, has parted company with any-thing believable as spoken English. It simply slides by without catch-ing on anything, without ever engaging either ones ear or ones emo-tions. Kayden, too, clearly is not hearing his own translation, or he

would not introduce line breaks in places where they inappropriatelysplit what should be a single thoughtlittle fool/He has seducedand into/This vaulted darkness. Nabokovs text is the one we canmost readily imagine in a spoken voicewith the significant provisothat it should be a British upper-class voice. His rendering of as goose is a particularly striking touch, suggesting the dismissivecontempt that a male aristocrat might feel in contemplating a credu-

lous servant girl, just as mad young fellow, with its combination ofcensure and joviality, suggests a gentleman deploring, but not seri-


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a work to be high in style and yet have the unmistakable cadence ofspoken languagethe obvious example, for an American, being Lin-colns Gettysburg Address or Second Inaugural Address. It is true that

(for reasons both too lengthy and too controversial to discuss here) thehigh style has largelydisappeared from contemporary spoken English.Thus, when a passage in the little tragedies clearly calls for the highstyle, the best the translator can do is to take the cadence of a noncon-temporary example and remove any too-obvious archaismsto aimfor a style which is negatively contemporary (not actively jarring tocontemporaries) rather than positively so (recognizable by contempo-

raries as their own).This problem of translating high style occurs throughout The Stone

Guest. The play draws heavily on the fact that it is set in sixteenth-century Spain. Undergirding its structure is the whole set of imagesthat that time and place automatically bring to mind: on the one side,the stern militance of the Counter-Reformation, the combination ofpalace and monastery that was the Escurial, the power and terror of El

Grecos distorted saints under a stormy sky; on the other side, the pas-sion all the more reckless for being forbidden, the nighttime serenade,the rose dropped from the balcony, the secret meeting. It is a worldof love and death, the red and the black, a larger-than-life world. Andits inhabitants, naturally enough, speak a language that to us seemsthe wildest extravagance.To Doa Anna it is not really surprising thatan unknown man should throw himself on his knees before her and

answer her question, What do you want? ( ?)with the speech:

. ,

, ,

-, ,


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, , ,

.

To find a similar degree of extravagance in English poetry, one wouldhave to go back several centuriessay, to Marvells To His Coy Mis-tress:

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime.We would sit down and think which wayTo walk and pass our long loves day . . .An hundred years should go to praiseThine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;Two hundred to adore each breast;But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,And the last age should show your heart;For, Lady, you deserve this state,Nor would I love at lower rate . . .

To be sure, Marvell is not an ideal model for Don Juans speeches,because unlike Don Juan, he has a perfect sense of linguistic balance:

he can simultaneously use the most extravagant language and smile athisownextravagance,andthiscontradictionnotonlydoesnotdestroyhis literary artifice, but enhances our pleasure in it as we recognize theskill involved. In this sense of balance, the character who is most likeMarvell is the First Guest at Lauras supper, with his ability to turn aperfectly mannered compliment for Lauras song:

, . .


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, , . . .

which I have translated as:

Why have you come hereTo trouble me? I cannot, I must notFollow after you: I am bound hereBy despair, by terrible remembrance,By the knowledge of my lawlessness . . .

In comparing Pushkin and Wilson, another aspect of Pushkinsability as an author and translator specifically of dramatic poetryshould be noted. For a drama inpoetry to succeed, it must besuccessfulboth as poetry and as drama: that is, not only must the individual linesbe good as poetry, but they must be psychologically appropriate to thecharacter by whom they are spoken. Wilson makes no effort whatso-

ever to give any of his characters a recognizably individual voice. Partof this, no doubt, was simply the result of the overall design of hiswork, which might be described as a meditation on the horrors of thePlague and the consolations of faith. The City of the Plague has onlythe slenderest of narrative threads, and with its constantly changingscenes, it seems as dizzyingly overcrowded with figures as a Brueghelpainting of a village weddingalthough, in view of the grotesque

treatment of its subject, a Last Judgmentby Hieronymus Bosch mightbe a more appropriate comparison. In this sweeping view of the agonyof a great city, it is perhaps understandable that Wilson does not ex-pend too much energy on creating individually recognizable charac-ters. What is surprising is that in contrast to the medieval paintingsof the Dance of Death, where king and burgher, bishop and peasant,noblewoman and nun are all readily distinguishable, Wilsons charac-

ters do not even have voices appropriate to their social position. A


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sailor, a priest, a village girl, even the inevitable comic gravedigger,all speak in the same manner.

Unlike Wilson, Pushkin as an author of dramatic poetry was very

consciousoftheneedforcharacterstospeakalanguagesuitedtothem-selves. During the second half of July , when he was working on

Boris Godunov, hewroteonthistopictoN.N.Raevsky:Verisimilitudein the situations and truthfulness in the dialoguethats the real ruleof tragedy. I havent read Caldern or Lope de Vega, but what a manthat Shakespeare is! I cant get over it. How puny the tragic Byronlooks next to him. . . . Read Shakespeare, hes never afraid to compro-

mise his characters, he lets them speak with all the range and spreadof life, because he knows that he can give them their own individuallanguage when the time and place calls for it. 8 In keeping with thisconcern for individual character and language, the speaking parts of

A Feast During the Plague are so individualized that one could composeimaginary biographies for them: the young man, no doubt a gentle-mans son, onewho has spent time at Oxford or Cambridge, who could

quote Ben Jonson and discuss the latest play; Mary, the village girl wholeft home for the excitement and opportunities of the big city, only tobe seduced and abandoned, and then to fall into the only way availablefor a woman with a damaged reputation to support herself; Louisa, thecynical prostitute, born into and thoroughly at home in the criminalunderworld of Londons slums, that now-lost world whose memorysurvives in The Beggars Opera orHogarthspaintings;thepriestwhose

words, as they break into the revels, resound like thunder from thehills, like the unrecorded sermon of an unknown Jonathan Edwards;andfinallyWalsinghamhimself,nowatoncetouchedandcondescend-ing in his response to Marys song, now using Louisas fainting as theoccasion to draw a philosophical lesson on human nature (the cruelare weaker than the tender), now proudly and fiercely defiant in hisHymn to the Plagueand beneath all of these facets, at last reveal-

inghimselfasadespairingmantryingtobraveoutalossthathecannotaccept.


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This vividness of characterization can serve as a guide to the trans-lator, by suggesting what type of language would be used by such acharacter if he or she were speaking not Russian but modern English.

As an example, consider Louisas speech:

! : . ,

, , . : . .

When I went to translate the speech as a whole, it seemed to resistmy efforts, but two specific details almost at once leapt into mindpass for and jaundice-yellow hair for . . ..Thefirstofthesetwotranslationscouldbeexplainedquitesimply, as replacing a Gallicism in Russian, with its implicit claim toFrench sophistication, with a similar Gallicism in English. But wheredid the jaundice-yellow hair come from? It didnt seem to be merely

a nonnative speakers confusion of (yellowness, sallowness)with (jaundice); somehow it felt too strong, too convincinglyright,particularlyinviewoftheresistanceIfeltfromalltheotherlines.After some thought, it came to me that the problem with translatingthis speech lay in its cynicism. Real thoroughgoing cynicismas op-posed to the sort that is a defense for a wounded sensitivityis one ofmost difficult emotions to handle in poetry, because cynicism deadens

the imagination while poetry heightens it. There is, however, a solu-tion for this aesthetic problem in certain aspects of popular culture,


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such as the hard-boiled detective novel or film noir: to use imagerythat conveys not only corruption but exaggerated corruption, so thattedious emptiness is replaced by memorably jarring garishness. This

was what the jaundice-yellow hair was telling me: that the way togiveLouisaanEnglish,ormoreexactlyathcenturyAmerican,voicewas to allow her to sound like a tough broad talking to a private eye:

Now those songsAre hopelessly pass. But there are stillSome fools who like to melt when women cry,

Wholl swallow it hook, line, and sinker.Shes decided that her tearful lookCant be resistedif thats what she thoughtAbout her laugh, no doubt wed see herGrinning all the time. Walsingham likedThe weepy northern beautiesso of courseShes got to moan and groan. I cant stand

The jaundice-yellow hair of these Scotch girls.

Asthisexampleremindsus,justasthetranslatormustalwaysbearinmind the characteristics of the language from which the work is beingtranslatedits history, its literature, its registers of vocabulary andstylethetranslatormustbearinmindthesamecharacteristicsforthelanguage into which the work is being translated. A target language

is not a linguistic blank slate. If the translator knows the literature ofthe target language well and is skillful in evoking its associations, thereader of the translation is more likely to perceive the work as natu-ral, graceful, and inevitable, rather than being distracted by deviceswhich, although fitting and acceptable in the original language, are notin the spirit of the target language. A particularly interesting challengeof this type occurs when translating the two songs in A Feast Dur-

ing the Plague, where it is necessary to make the songs believable as


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English poems, which means that the reader or listener has to perceivethem as fitting within the history and traditions of English poetry.

Since Marys song is described by Walsingham as a Scottish folk

song, it was to the Border ballads that I turned as a possible modelfor how her song might sound in English.9 The subject of Marys songis not a typical one for a ballad; but the terrible images of its secondand third stanzas are no grimmer than The Twa Corbies, and thepromised constancy of Jenny no greater than that of The Nut-BrownMaid. In terms of metrics, however, there is an important difference:a traditional English ballad is significantly less tightly structured than

the Russian version of Marys song. The stanzas of Pushkins text havethe rhyme scheme abab; by contrast, a ballad typically has the rhymescheme abcb. The meter of Pushkins text is trochaic tetrameter, with aperfectly regular alternation between eight-syllable and seven-syllablelines (the last unaccented syllable dropped). Both iambic and trochaictetrameter are normal English ballad meters, but there are often slightmetrical imperfections in some verses, which a singer no doubt com-

pensated for by either doubling or omitting a note as the need arose.In terms of both rhyme scheme and meter, my translation adhered tothe less formal poetics of the English ballad.

But as a draft English version emerged, I became more and moreaware of a pronounced difference between Marys song and the tradi-tional ballad. The old ballads, with their stories of violent feuds andillicit love, were in a sense the tabloids of their day. When their nar-

rative reaches a highly dramatic point, they sustain the terror as longas possible: think how many stanzas it takes before Sir Patrick Spenssdoomed ship actually sinks, or before the condemned Young Watersactually reaches the gallows. A ballad-maker, presented with the ma-terial of Marys song, would be unable to resist describing Jennysdeathbed agony, the lamentations of her family, Edmunds collapsingfrom grief at her funeralall of which would so strongly emphasize

the sufferings of the separated lovers as to overshadow what shouldbe the climax of the song, its final two lines: And Jenny will be true


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to Edmund /Een in her place among the blest! A ballad-maker, likea Baroque artist, reveled in the details with relatively little concernabout how each part fitted into or affected the whole. The creator of

Jennys song, by contrast, subordinates the details to the overall artis-tic effect. Thus, an English counterpart to Marys song would have tobe thought of as the work of some minor poet who, while respect-ing the old tradition of popular song, nevertheless was producing aconsciously shaped and edited imitation of it. This suggestion of lit-erary affection for the traditional country way of thought and life ledme to the sentimentalist poets, to Goldsmith and Cowper and Gray;

and accordingly, although the rhythmic structure of my translation ofMarys song is that of a ballad, the vocabulary chosen was intended toevoke, not folk speech, but the style of language used in the poems ofthe pre-Romantics. At best, I hoped that my translation might call tomind a distant, less philosophical cousin of Grays Elegy in a CountryChurchyard; at least, that it would have a recognizable affinity withthe relatively late and more literarily self-conscious ballads, such as

Barbara Allen or The Bailiff s Daughter of Islington.Forming an idea of what Walsinghams song might have been like

in English was less difficult. The song, in Russian, consists of six-linestanzas with a rhyme scheme aabcbc. In Russian, as in English, a six-line stanza is much less common than a four-line one. The relativerarity of this type of stanza suggested a deliberate choice on Pushkinspart, one that I felt could and should be observed also in translation.

As for meter, the Russian version is in iambic tetrameter, a meter thatis also common in English and transfers easily to it. In keeping withthe poems nature as a ringing rhetorical pronouncement, in the origi-nal version a pause could logically occur (or a singer take a breath)at the end of any line in a stanza, and there only; there are no en-jambments. I tried to preserve the resulting syntax, with its tersenessand forcefulness, as much as possible. Beyond that, to get some idea

of what a poem like Walsinghams might have been like in English, Iturned to those poets who celebrated a somewhat similar theme, the


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glory of warfare and danger. This led me to such now-forgotten latereighteenth-century poems as William Smyths The Soldier:

Then, soldier! come fill high the wine,For we reck not of tomorrow;Be ours today and we resignAll the rest to the fools of sorrow.Gay be the hour till we beat to armsThen, comrade, Death or Glory;Tis Victory in all her charms,

Or tis Fame in the worlds bright story

or Thomas Osbert Mordaunts

Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!Throughout the sensual world proclaim,

One crowded hour of glorious life

Is worth an age without a name.

Such lyrics have a characteristic vocabulary that combines the simpleand straightforward with obviously literary phrases (we reck not,sound the clarion); I have tried to giveWalsinghams this same styleof language. And if the result turns out to be less satisfactory thanI hoped, I can always take refuge in the fact that it was, after all, an

amateurs effortthe first poem Walsingham ever wrote.The use of a flexible rather than strict meter, which allows Pushkins

lines to be translated in a manner reflecting the cadences of contem-porary English and thus gives the speeches of his characters emotionalverisimilitude; the choice of an English vocabulary and style of expres-sion for each character which is suited to that characters backgroundandpsychology;andtheuseofappropriatepartsoftheEnglishliterary

tradition as a suggestive starting point for developing such a character-fitting style of expressionthese are the principles that I have relied


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upon in my approach to translating the little tragedies. These prin-ciples grew directly out of my own experience in reading the littletragediesintheoriginalRussian:timeandagainIfeltthatIcouldper-

ceive the characters themselvesthe tones of their voices, their facialexpressions, their gesturesand irresistibly I felt the desire to try toexpress that perception in English. The work resulting from this im-pulse is thus an interpretation of the little tragediesinterpretationnot merely in the sense of a translation from one language to another,but also in the sense in which an actor interprets a role. It representsmy understanding of, and tribute to, a masterpiece whose depths can

long be explored, but never exhausted.


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The Miserly Knight

John: Still limping;You cant ride him for some time yet.

Albert: Theres nothing for it, then: Ill buy the bay.Theyre not asking much for him.

John: Not much, but we dont have the money.

Albert: Whats that good-for-nothing Solomon say?

John: He says that he cant loan youAny more money without collateral.

Albert: Collateral! whered I get collateral, the devil!

John: Thats what I told him.

Albert: Whatd he say?

John: Groaned and waffled.

Albert: Then you shouldve told him my fathersRich as a Jew himself, and sooner or laterIll inherit everything.

John: Thats what I said.

Albert: Whatd he say?

John: Waffled and groaned.

Albert: What a mess!

John: He was going to come himself.

Albert: Well, thank God.I wont let him out without a ransom.

(Knock at the door.)

Whos there?


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(The Jew enters.)

Jew: Your humble servant.

Albert: Ah, friend!You damned Jew, honorable Solomon,Come over here; soyou, I hear,Dont believe in credit.

Jew: Ah, merciful knight,I swear to you: Id be glad . . . truly, I cant.

Where would I get money? Ive ruined myself Through my zeal for always helping knights.No one repays. I wanted to ask youIf you couldnt give me even just part . . .

Albert: Robber!If I had any money, would I beFooling around with you? Enough,

Dont be stubborn, my dear Solomon;Give me some gold. Send me a hundred piecesBefore I have you searched.

Jew: A hundred!If only I had a hundred gold pieces!

Albert: Listen:

Arent you ashamed not to helpYour friends?

Jew: I swear to you . . .

Albert: Enough, enough.You demand collateral? what rubbish!What collateral should I give you?a pigs skin?

If I had anything I could offer, long ago


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The Miserly Knight

Id have sold it. Or is the word of a knightWorth so little to you, you dog?

Jew: Your word,So long as you shall live, is worth a great deal.All the treasure chests of Flemish merchantsIt will open like a magic wand.But when its given to me, a lowly Jew,And shouldGod forbidyou die, thenIn my hands it will be of no more value

Than the key to a casket flung into the ocean.Albert: Can my father possibly outlive me?

Jew: Who knows? Our days are numbered by Another;Last night a youth was healthy, now hes deadAnd there you see four gray-haired menCarrying his coffin on their stooped shoulders.The Barons in good health. God willing, ten years, twenty,Even twenty-five or thirty he could live.

Albert: Youre lying, Jew; besides, in thirty years,Ill be pushing fifty, and then what useWill I have for the money?

Jew: Money?MoneyIs always, whatever our age, useful to us;But a young man sees it as a servantAnd doesnt hesitate to send it far and wide.An old man sees it as a trusty friendAnd guards it as the apple of his eye.

Albert: Oh, for my father moneys not a servantOr a friend, but a master; he himself serves it.

And serves ithow? like an Algerian slave,Like a dog on a chain. A kennel with no heat


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The Miserly Knight

Albert: Your old man deals in poison.

Jew: Yes,

Poison too.Albert: And so? Instead of loaning money,

Youre offering me two hundred vials of poison,At one gold piece per vial. Is that it?

Jew: Youre pleased to have your joke at my expenseNo; I meant . . . perhaps you . . . well, I thought

The Barons time had come to die.Albert: What! Poison my father! You dare face a son . . .

John! Seize him. You dare say this to me! . . .Get this straight, you Jewish heart,You dog, you snake, Ill have you hangedThis instant at the castle gate.

Jew: Im guilty!Have mercy: I was joking.

Albert: John, bring a rope.

Jew: I . . . I was joking. Ive brought you money.

Albert: Out, dog!

(The Jew leaves.)

This is what my fathers miserlinessHas brought me to! To have a Jew darePropose that to me! Bring me a glass of wine,Im shaking like a leaf. . . . But I still need money.John, go catch up with that damned JewAnd take his gold. And bring the inkwell here.

Ill give him a receipt, the crookbut dontBring that Judas in here. . . . No, wait.


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His gold pieces will stink of poison,Like his kinsmans silver did. . . .I asked for wine.

John: We dont have any wine,Not a drop.

Albert: What about the giftThat Raymond sent me from Spain?

John: Yesterday I took the last bottle

To the sick blacksmith.Albert: Yes, I remember, I know. . . .

Give me water then.What a damned life!No, its settledIll go and seek my rightsFrom the Duke; let him make my fatherSupport me like his son, not like some mouseBorn under a floorboard.

Baron: Like a young skirt-chaser who waits for whenHell meet his bimbosome tramp on the make,Or some fool hes snowedthats how all day

I wait for the minute I go downInto my secret vault, to the faithful chests.Todays a happy day! Now I can openThe sixth chest (the one thats not full yet)And pour in a handful of piled-up gold.Not much, it seems, but little by littleThe treasure grows. Once I read

About a king who ordered his menTo bring, each one, a handful of earth,


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The Miserly Knight

And a mighty hill rose upand the kingCould gaze down merrily from that heightUpon the valleys, covered with white tents,

And on the sea, where ships were sailing.Thus I, bringing my poor handfuls one by one,Bearing my accustomed tribute to my vault,Have built up my hilland from its heightI can gaze on all thats in my power.Whats not in my power? From here,Like a demon I can rule the world.

If I just want itpalaces will spring up;Into my splendid gardens there will danceA company of playful nymphs;The Muses too will bring me tribute,Free genius will become my slave,And virtue and unsleeping toilWill meekly look to me for their reward.

Just let me whistlebloodstained villainyObediently and timidly will crawl to meAnd lick my hand, and peer into my eyes,Looking for a sign of my will there.To me all things submit, and Ito none;I stand above desire; I am calm;I know my might; this knowledge

Is enough for me. . . .(Looks at his gold.)

It seems like little enough,But how much human care and woe,How many lies, tears, prayers, and cursesIt stands forwhat a heavy load!

Theres one old doubloonright here. NowThe widows given it to me, but first


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A boy who throws money around like mad,With his hellraising friends out for a good time!No sooner than Ive died, he! Hell come here

Into these peaceful and long-silent vaults,With a pack of greedy courtiers at his heels.After stealing the keys from my dead body,Hell laugh as he throws open all the chests.And all my treasures will flow outAnd pour through the holes of satin pockets.Hell break into bits the sacred vessels,

Let dirt drink up the coronation oilHell squander it. . . . And by what right?Have I really acquired all this for nothing,Or just for play, as if I were a gamblerRolling the dice and and raking in my piles?Who knows how much bitter self-restraint,What passions choked back, what weary thoughts,

What cares day after day, what sleepless nightsAll this cost me? Or will my son sayThat my hearts long overgrown with moss,That I feel no desire, that even my conscienceNever gnawed at me, my conscience,That beast with claws that tear my heartmy conscience,That guest I didnt invite, a wearying companion,

That harsh demanding creditor, that witchWho makes the moon hide and who troubles graves,Making them give up their dead? . . .No, first suffer through piling up your own wealth,And then lets see if some unhappy manWill come and squander what you got by blood.Oh, if only I could hide this vault from all

Unworthy eyes! Oh, if from my grave


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Baron,I am glad to see you well and in good spirits.

Baron: I am happy, my lord, that I had the strengthTo come into your presence at your command.

Duke: Youve been away a long time, baron,A long time. Do you remember me?

Baron: I, my lord?I see you as if it were now. Oh, you were

A boy with spirit.The late dukeUsed to say to me: Philip (he always calledMe Philip), what do you think? Eh?Twenty years from now, for sure, the two of us,Well be nothing compared to that kid . . .To you, that is . . .

Duke: Well now renew

Our acquaintance. You have forgotten my court.

Baron: Im an old man now, my lord; what shouldI do at court? Youre young, you loveTournaments and ftes. But for such things IAm no longed suited. If God sends war, then IAm ready to climb wheezing onto my horse;Ill still find strength enough to drawMy old sword for you with a trembling arm.

Duke: Baron, your devotion is well known to us;You were my grandfathers friend; my fatherEsteemed you. And I have always considered youA loyal and brave knightbut lets sit down.Baron, do you have any children?

Baron: One son.


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The Miserly Knight

Duke: Why dont I see him near me?Youre weary of the court, but it would befit him,At his age and with his rank, to be near me.

Baron: My son dislikes a noisy fashionable life;Hes unsociable and gloomy by natureAll day he wanders the forests round the castleLike a young deer.

Duke: Its not good for himTo be so unsociable.Well soon teach him

About gaiety, about balls and tournaments.Send him to me; provide your sonWith an estate fitting to his rank . . .Youre frowning, are you weary from the road,Perhaps?

Baron: My Lord, I am not weary,But youve embarrassed me. I would ratherNot have admitted it to you, but youHave forced me to say about my sonSomething I wanted to hide from you.He, my Lord, unhappily is not worthyOf either your favor or your attention.Hes spending his youth in rowdiness,Engaging in low vices . . .

Duke: That, Baron,Is because hes alone. SolitudeAnd idleness destroy young people.Send him to us: hell forgetHabits that arose up-country.

Baron: Forgive me, but, truly, my lord,

I cannot consent to that . . .


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Duke: Why then?

Baron: Spare an old man . . .

Duke: I command: tell me the reasonFor your refusal.

Baron: Im angered atMy son.

Duke: Why?

Baron: For his wicked crime.Duke: And what, tell me, was that?

Baron: Spare me, Duke . . .

Duke: This is very strange,Or are you ashamed of him?

Baron: Yes . . . ashamed . . .

Duke: But what did he do?

Baron: He . . . he meantTo murder me.

Duke: Murder! Ill hand him overTo justice as a foul villain.

Baron: I wont set out to prove it, but I knowThat my death is what hes thirsting for,And I know that hes made an attemptAt . . .

Duke: What?

Baron: Robbing me.

(Albert bursts into the room.)


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The Miserly Knight

Albert: Baron, youre lying.

Duke: (To the son.)

How dare you? . . .Baron: Youre here! You dare face me! . . .

You can say a thing like that to your father! . . .Im lying! And in the presence of our lord! . . .To me . . . or am I no longer a knight?

Albert: Youre a liar.

Baron: And lightning hasnt struck him, righteous God!Then take this, and let the sword judge between us!

(He flings his gauntlet, his son hastily picks it up.)

Albert: My thanks. Heres my first gift from my father.

Duke: What did I see? Whats thisand in my presence?A son accepted the challenge of his old father!In what times have I taken upon myselfThe ducal chain! Silence: You, madman,And you, tiger cub! Enough.

(To the son.)

Give it up;Hand me that gauntlet.

(He takes it.)

Albert: (Aside.)A pity.

Duke: How he plunged his claws into it!the monster!Go: do not dare appear in my presence

Until that time when I myselfShall send for you.


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(Albert exits.)

You, unhappy old man,

Are you not ashamed . . .Baron: Forgive me, my lord,

I cannot stand . . . My knees are giving way . . .Its stifling! . . . Stifling! . . . Where are the keys?My keys, keys! . . .

Duke: Hes dead. God!

A terrible age, terrible hearts!


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Mozart and Salieri

(A room.)

Salieri: They say theres no justice here on earth,But theres no justice higher up, either.To meThats as clear and simple as do-re-mi.I was born with a love for art;When I was a child, when up on highThe organs notes echoed in our old church,I listened and was spellboundI wept,

Sweet tears flowed against my will.


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Early I refused all idle amusements;To know anything other than music wasHateful to me; stubbornly and proudly

I denied all else and gave myself upTo music alone. The first steps were hardAnd the first path was tedious. I overcameMy early difficulties. I gave craftIts place as the foundation stone of art;I made myself a craftsman; my fingersAcquired obedient, cold dexterity

And my ear, accuracy. I killed sounds,Dissected music like a corpse. I put harmonyTo the test of algebra. Only after that,Experienced in my studies, did I dareAllow myself the luxury of creative dreams.I began creating; but silently, in secret,Not daring even to think yet of glory.

Often, after sitting silently in my cellTwo or three days, forgetting sleep and food,After the taste of ecstasy and tears of inspiration,I burned my work and watched coldlyAs my idea and the sounds I had brought forthBlazed up, then vanished with a puff of smoke.What am I saying? When the great Gluck

Appeared and revealed to us new mysteries(Deep and captivating mysteries),Didnt I abandon everything Id known before,Everything Id loved and believed so fervently,And didnt I set out boldly after himWithout a murmur, like one whos lost his pathAnd is directed to go another way?

By concentrated, constant effortFinally in the unbounded realm of art


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Mozart and Salieri

I achieved a high place. GlorySmiled on me; in peoples heartsI found the harmonies that Id created.

I was happy: I peacefully enjoyedMy work, success, renown; as well asThe works and the successes of my friends,My colleagues in the miracles of art.No! I never once felt envy then,No, never!not even when PicciniLearned to charm the savage Paris audience,

Not even when I heard for the first timeThe opening chords ofIphigenia.Who will say that proud SalieriWas ever a contemptible envier,A snake trodden powerless underfoot,Left half-alive to bite the dirt and dust?No one! . . . But nowI say it myselfnow

I am an envier. I feel envy; deep,Tormenting envy. Oh heaven!Where is rightness, when the sacred gift,Immortal genius, comes not as rewardFor ardent love and self-renunciation,Labor, zeal, diligence, and prayersBut bestows its radiant halo on a madman

Who idly strolls through life? Oh, Mozart, Mozart!Mozart: Aha! You saw me! And I wanted

To give you a surprise amusement.

Salieri: Youre here!Whend you get here?

Mozart: Just now.I was walking here, coming to show you something,

And as I went by a tavern, suddenly


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I heard a fiddle. . . . No, my friend Salieri,Youve never heard anything funnierIn all your life. . . . This blind fiddler in the tavern

Was sawing away at Voi che sapete. Splendid!I couldnt resist, I brought the fiddler hereSo I could treat you to his art.Come in!

(An old blind man with a violin enters.)

Play some Mozart for us!

(The fiddler plays an aria from Don Giovanni;Mozart laughs.)

Salieri: And you can laugh?

Mozart: Oh, Salieri!Really you dont laugh at that?

Salieri: No.I dont find it funny when some worthless dauberMakes smears and drips on Raphaels Madonna,I dont find it funny when some vulgar showmanReels off a parody that dishonors Dante.Be off, old man.

Mozart: Wait: heres something for you,Drink to my health.

(The old man exits.)

Right now, Salieri,Youre not in a good mood. Ill come see youAnother time.

Salieri: Whatd you bring me?


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Mozart and Salieri

Mozart: Oh, nothingjust a trifle. Late last nightMy insomnia tormented me,And two or three ideas crossed my mind.

Today I sketched them out. I wantedTo find out what you thought; but right nowYou dont feel like hearing me.

Salieri: Oh, Mozart, Mozart!When dont I feel like hearing you? Sit down;Im listening.

Mozart: (At the piano.)Imagine someonewho?

Well, say myselfonly a little younger;In lovenot all that deeply, but a littleIm with a pretty girl, or with a friendsay you,Im in good spiritsJust then, a ghostly vision,A sudden gloom, or something of that sort . . .

Well, listen.

(He plays.)

Salieri: You were coming to me with thatAnd you could stop off at a tavernAnd listen to a blind fiddler!My God!Mozart, youre not worthy of yourself.

Mozart: What, its good?

Salieri: What depth!What boldness and what just proportion!You, Mozart, are a god, and you yourself dont know it;I know it, I know.

Mozart: Bah! really? well, maybe . . .

But my divineness is hungry.


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Salieri: Listen: lets have dinner togetherAt the Sign of the Golden Lion.

Mozart: If you want;Id be glad to. Let me run home firstTo tell my wife she shouldnt wait for meFor dinner.

(He exits.)

Salieri: Ill be expecting you, remember!

No! I cannot set myself againstMy destinyI am the one whos chosenTo stop himor else we all will perish,All of us, priests and servitors of music,Not only I with my empty glory . . .What is the use if Mozart livesAnd even achieves still greater heights?What he doeswill he elevate Art? No,It will fall again when he has vanished;No heir of his will remain among us.What use is he? Appearing like an angel,He brings us a few of Heavens songs,And then, once hes roused a wingless desireIn us, children of dust, he flies away!Fly away then! And the sooner, the better!

Here is the poison, my Izoras final gift.For eighteen years Ive carried it with meAnd often in that time I have found lifeAn unbearable wound, and often I have satAt table with a heedless enemy,And, yes, I heard the whisper of temptation

But I didnt yield, although I am no coward,Although I feel an injury deeply,


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Mozart and Salieri

Although I love life little. Still I waited.When the thirst for death tormented me,Why die?I thought: it may be, life

Will bring me unexpected gifts;Rapture, it may be, will come to meIn a creative night of inspiration;It may be some new Haydn will bring forthGreatnessand I will rejoice in it . . .When I feasted with a hated guest,It may beI thoughta still worse foe

Awaits me; an injury still worse, it may be,Will strike me down from some proud heightThen you wont be in vain, Izoras gift.And I was right! At last Ive foundMy enemy, and at last a new HaydnWondrously has enraptured me!Now its time! cherished gift of love,

For you to go today into friendships cup.

(A private room in a tavern; a piano.Mozart and Salieri are at the table.)

Salieri: Why are you gloomy today?Mozart: Me? Not at all!

Salieri: Surely, Mozart, something has upset you?The food is good, the wine is splendid,And you sit silently and frown.

Mozart: I must admit,

My Requiem is troubling me.


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Salieri: Ah!Youve been working on a requiem? For long?

Mozart: Yes, long, about three weeks. But a strange thing . . .Havent I told you?

Salieri: No.

Mozart: Then listen.Three weeks ago, one night I came homeLate.They told me somebodyd come by

And asked for me. WhyI dont know,But all night I thought: who could it be?And what was I to him? The next dayThe same man came and didnt find me in.The day after I was playing on the floorWith my little boy. Someone called me;I went out. A man dressed all in blackGreeted me respectfully, ordered from meA requiem, and vanished. I sat downAnd began to write at onceand since thenMy black mans never come back to my house;And Im glad; Id hate to have to partWith my work, although the RequiemAlready is complete. But meanwhile I . . .

Salieri: What?Mozart: Im embarrassed to admit this . . .

Salieri: What?

Mozart: Day and night my black man wontLeave me alone. Everywhere I goHe follows like a shadow. Even now,


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Mozart and Salieri

It seems to me, hes sitting with usAs a third.

Salieri: Rubbish! What childish fear is this?Drop this useless brooding. BeaumarchaisUsed to tell me, Brother Salieri, listen:When black thoughts come to trouble you,Pop the cork on a bottle of champagne,Or reread The Marriage of Figaro.

Mozart: Good! Beaumarchais was after all your friend;

You wrote the music for his Tarara,A splendid thing.Theres a motif in it . . .Im always singing it when I am happy . . .La la la la. . . . Ah, is it true, Salieri,That Beaumarchais poisoned someone?

Salieri: I dont think so; he was too much a buffoonFor such a craft.

Mozart: Hes a genius,Like you and me. And genius and crimeAre two things that dont combine. Isnt that true?

Salieri: You think so?

(Pours the poison into Mozarts glass.)

Well then, drink.

Mozart: To yourHealth, my friend, and to the faithful unionThat binds together Mozart and Salieri,Two sons of harmony.

(He drinks.)


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Salieri: Stop,Stop, stop! . . . You drank it . . . without me?

Mozart: (Tosses his napkin on the table.)Ive had enough.

(Goes to the piano.)

Salieri, listen toMy Requiem.

(He plays.)

Youre weeping?

Salieri: These tearsAre the first Ive shedfrom pain and pleasure,As if I had fulfilled a burdening duty,As if the surgeons knife had cut from meThe part that suffered! Friend Mozart, these tears . . .

Dont notice them. Continue, still make hasteTo fill my soul with sounds . . .

Mozart: If only everyone could feel the powerOf harmony like you! but no, for thenThe world could not exist; no one would wantTo spend time taking care of lifes low needs;All would be given over to free art.We are but few, we chosen, happy idlersWho look disdainfully at petty usefulnessAnd form a priesthood serving only beauty.Isnt that so? But now I feel unwell.Something weighs me down; I want to sleep.Farewell!

Salieri: Until we meet again.


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Mozart and Salieri

(Alone.)

You will sleepA long time, Mozart! But is he really rightAnd am I not a genius? Genius and crimeAre two things that dont combine. Thats not true:What of Michelangelo? or is that just a fableOf the stupid, senseless crowdand it was notA murderer who designed the Vatican?

[To view this image, refer tothe print version of this title.]


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The Stone Guest

Leporello: O statua gentilissimaDel gran Commendatore! . . .

. . . Ah, Padrone!

Don Giovanni

Don Juan: Well wait for nightfall here. At long last

Weve reached the walls of Madrid! SoonIll be dashing through the well-known streets,My cape covering my chin and my hat, my eyes.What do you think? Could I be recognized?

Leporello: Oh yeah, its tough to recognize Don Juan!Theres a swarm of men like him!

Don Juan: Are you kidding?Whos going to recognize me?


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The Stone Guest

Leporello: The first watchman,Some gypsy girl or drunken street-musician,Or one of your own kind, some swaggering lord

With a sword at his side and wearing a cape.

Don Juan: So what if they do know meso long asI dont meet the king himself. But still,Im not afraid of anyone in Madrid.

Leporello: And tomorrow word will reach the kingThat Don Juan violated his exile

And showed up in Madridwhat do you thinkHell do to you then?

Don Juan: Send me back.Hes hardly going to cut off my head.After all, Im not a state criminal.He sent me away although he loves me,To keep me out of reach of the familyOf the man I killed . . .

Leporello: Thats just it!You should have stayed thereout of reach.

Don Juan: Your humble servant! I was on the pointOf dying of boredom there.What people,What a country! Even the skys just smoke.And the women? Let me tell you something,My foolish Leporello: I wouldnt tradeThe lowliest peasant girl there is in AndalusiaFor the foremost of their beautiesthats the truth.Oh, at first I was intrigued by themBy their blue eyes and their fair complexions,Their modesty, and most of all, their novelty;

But, thank God, soon I saw through them


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Its a sin to even flirt with women such as thatTheyre not alive, theyre nothing but wax dolls;But our women! . . . Wait a minute, we know

This place already; do you recall it?

Leporello: How could I not know it: yes, I rememberThe Monastery of St. Anthony. Wed ride hereAnd Id hold the horses over there in the grove.A damned bad job, let me tell you. YouSpent your time here a lot more pleasantly

Than I did, believe me.Don Juan: (Pensively)

Poor Inez!Shes gone now! how I loved her!

Leporello: Inez!the black-eyed one. . . . Now I remember,For three months you were paying courtTo her; it was all the devil could do to help.

Don Juan: July it was . . . at night. I found strange pleasureIn gazing at her sorrowful eyesAnd death-pale lips. Its strange.You apparently didnt think she wasA beauty. And in fact, there wasntMuch beautiful about her. Her eyes,

Just her eyes. And her glance . . . Ive never seenAnother glance like that. And her voiceWas quiet, feeblelike a sick womansHer husband was a worthless wretch, and sternI found that out too latePoor Inez! . . .

Leporello: Well, so, after her came others.

Don Juan: True.


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The Stone Guest

Leporello: And while were still alive, therell be still more.

Don Juan: Also true.

Leporello: So what woman in MadridAre we going to go after?

Don Juan: Oh, Laura!Ill head straight for her house.

Leporello: Thats it.

Don Juan: Ill walk right through her doorand if theres company,Ill invite him to make his exit through the window.

Leporello: Of course. And now weve cheered right up.Dead women dont trouble us for long.Whos that coming toward us?

(A monk enters.)

Monk: Shes comingNow. Whos this? Are you Doa Annas people?

Leporello: No, were gentlemen, our own masters,Out strolling here.

Don Juan: Whom are you expecting?

Monk: Doa Anna should be coming to visitHer husbands grave.

Don Juan: Doa AnnaDe Solva! The wife of the knight-commanderKilled by . . . I forgot his name?

Monk: The shameless,Godless profligate, Don Juan.


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Leporello: What do you think of that? Don Juans fameHas penetrated even a peaceful monastery,The anchorites sing his praises.

Monk: You know him, perhaps?

Leporello: Us? Not at all.So wheres he now?

Monk: No longer here,Hes in exile far away.

Leporello: Thank God.The farther, the better.Would all such profligatesWere sewn up in a sack and thrown into the sea!

Don Juan: What nonsense are you talking?

Leporello: Quiet: its on purpose . . .

Don Juan: So this is where the knight-commanders buried?

Monk: Yes; his wife set up a monument for him,And every day without fail she comes hereTo say prayers for the soul of the departedAnd to weep.

Don Juan: What strange kind of widows this?And not bad-looking?

Monk: We anchorites must notBe tempted by the loveliness of women,But lying is a sin; a saint himself could notLook unmoved upon her wondrous beauty.

Don Juan: Theres the reason her husband was so jealous.Doa Anna always was kept locked up inside,


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The Stone Guest

None of us have ever so much as seen her.Would that I could speak with her.

Monk: Oh, Doa Anna never says a wordTo a man.

Don Juan: Not even to you, Father?

Monk: Thats different; Im a monk.There she is.

(Doa Anna enters.)

Doa Anna: Father, open the gate.

Monk: Coming, seora; I was expecting you.

(Doa Anna follows the monk.)

Leporello: So, whats she like?

Don Juan: You cant see anythingUnder her black veil and widows weeds.I caught one glimpse of a narrow heel.

Leporello: For you, thats enough. Your imaginationWill fill in all the blank spots in a minute;It works faster than a portrait painterAnd you dont care what it begins with,

A forehead or a foot.Don Juan: Listen, Leporello,

Im going to meet her.

Leporello: Thats just what we need!What next! Hes bumped off the husbandAnd now he wants to see the widows tears.

Shameless!


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Don Juan: But its already gotten dark.Before the moon can rise above our headsAnd turn the darkness into shining dusk,

Well go into Madrid.

Leporello: A Spanish grandeeWho waits for dark and fears the moon, like a thiefGod! Damn this life. How much longerWill I have to drag after him? Im worn out.

(A room. Dinner at Lauras.)

First Guest: I swear, Laura, that youve never actedWith such perfection as you did today.How well you understood your character!

Second Guest: How powerfully you developed your role!

Third Guest: And with what art!

Laura: Yes, today every word,Every gesture came out well for me.I gave myself up freely to inspiration.The words poured out as if they were brought forth,Not by slavish memory, but by the heart . . .

First Guest: True.Even now your eyes are shining yet,Your cheeks still burn, the ecstasyHas not gone from you. Laura, do not letIt cool and die in silence; sing, Laura,

Sing something.


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The Stone Guest

Laura: Give me my guitar.

(She sings.)

All: Oh, brava! brava! Wonderful! Splendid!

First Guest: Our thanks, enchantress.With your spellsYou charm our hearts. Among lifes pleasuresMusic yields to none save love;But love itself is melody . . . look:Even Carlos is moved, your gloomy guest.

Second Guest: What sounds! How much soul there is in them!Whose wrote the lyrics, Laura?

Laura: Don Juan.

D

the little tragedies - aleksandr sergeevich pushkin

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