From Booklist
Wood adds value to his sparkling versions of five story-poems by Pushkin (1799-1837) with a good introduction to poet and poems and an excellent afterword on Pushkin's challenges for the translator. The selections demonstrate Pushkin's variety of form and manner within one kind of poetry. "The Gypsies" is the tragedy of a man with a past who passionately loves a fickle beauty; it very probably influenced Prosper Merimee's story and, later, Georges Bizet's opera
Carmen. "Count Nulin" is the comedy of a potential latter-day rape of Lucretia that the lady nips in the bud; here Pushkin is wry, amused, detached: the essence of suavity. "The Bridegroom," a variation on Gottfried Burger's influential ballad "Lenore" that adopts its propulsive stanza, highlights Pushkin's economical plotting, which is also crucial to the excitement of his "Snow White" treatment, "The Dead Princess." The yet more concentrated folktale, "The Golden Cockerel," one of Pushkin's last writings, concludes on a note somberly satirical of tyranny (czar and, a century later, dictator both censored it).
Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
