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For you, czarinas of my soul (poems, dramas and fairytales)
For you czarinas of my soul - poems, dramas and fairytales Author:Alexander Pushkin Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), the greatest Russian poet, writes lightly and personally, tells about his participation in the high society life, his country living and above all about his passion for women, czarinas of his soul. Pushkin's writings are colloquial and at the same time musical; he is Mozart of poetry. Pushkin's poetry is so simple,... more » so beautiful, so passionate, so meaningful. Each poem tells a story whether it is a long novel in verse or a short poem of several lines. This collection for the first time includes the translation of the most important Pushkin's works in one volume. Readers will find here the famous novel in verse Eugene Onegin , the best example of Pushkin's love lyrics, The Copper Rider , the poem about the conflict between interests of the state and the aspirations of a little man, The Gypsies , a tragic love story that inspired Merimee to write Carmen , the fairytale about the Golden Fish, the drama Mozart and Salieri , the tragic story about envy, and many other poems that were never translated before including rather unusual love stories such as the legend about Cleopatra and the tale about a medieval knight's infatuation with Virgin Mary. But not only romantic love and the natural scenery are the subjects of Pushkin's poetry. He writes about the malicious traits of human character, greed and envy, about the complex problems of life. The Copper Rider , one of Pushkin s most deep and bold poems, describes the fatal conflict between the state personified by the revived bronze statue of powerful and ruthless Peter the Great and Eugene, a poor young man with his personal hopes, love and a desire for a quiet family life. In The Gypsies the Poet raised the everlasting questions about fate, freedom and happiness. Does absolute freedom lead to happiness? Aleko, the hero of the poem, curses abandoned civilization and escapes to the nomadic Gypsies in his quest for absolute freedom. But absolute freedom leads to absolute egoism and crime. Malicious envy is the main theme of the tragedy Mozart and Salieri . After poisoning Mozart, Salieri is crushed by the thought that he is not a genius because genius and evil are two things that aren't compatible , a genius can not commit crimes. So again Pushkin raises the eternal and troubling question: whether genius and evil can coexist in a single human being. Pushkin knew about envy and hatred to his genius that was so well described in Death of the Poet , Lermontov's angry response to the badgering and the murder of his great contemporary. The fairytale about the Fisherman and the little Fish is the story about human greed, the story so meaningful, so modern, so forewarning, so foretelling: grab more ... more... more... and then a catastrophe. The role of the Poet in the society is addressed in four poems: The Demon, Arion, The Prophet and Freedom Ode. The Poet is the Prophet, who overcomes seduction by the demonic force, survives a catastrophe and sings freedom. Pushkin's protest against absolutism in this Ode to Freedom was one of the reasons of his exile by the Czar. Pushkin believed in translation - translators are the horses of civilization . So far though, those horses did not ride Pushkin to acceptance and fame outside Russia. Thus efforts have to be continued, stubbornly and devotedly, to overcome well-known untranslatability of Pushkin's poetry. The goal of the present translation was to reproduce, as much as possible in English, the simplicity and the music of Pushkin's poetry and to retain the images, the meaning and the beauty of the original verse. But it is up to a reader to judge...« less