Selected Poetry - Alexander Pushkin

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Résumé :
Winner of the 2020 Read Russia Prize

A new collection of Pushkin's great narrative and lyric verse, translated by Antony Wood

A Penguin Classic

Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman, based on the statue of Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg and the great flood of 1824, is widely considered to be his most successful narrative poem, the second most famous poem in Russian literature after his Eugene Onegin, and notoriously difficult to translate. One of the most influential works in Russian literature, it will appeal to readers of Dostoyevsky's The Double, Andrei Biely's Petersburg, Anna Akhmatova's poetry, and the works of Nikolai Gogol. This new translation, described by Robert Chandler as truly wonderfull, is accompanied here by Pushkin's greatest shorter verses. They range from lyric poetry to narrative verse based on traditional Russian stories of enchanted tsars and magical fish. Together, they show the dazzling range and achievement of Russia's greatest poet....

Biographie:
Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799. He was exiled for his liberal views on serfdom and autocracy, but this allowed him the freedom to write some of his greatest works, including the novel in verse Eugene Onegin. He died in 1837 after being fatally wounded in a duel.
Antony Wood is an editor and translator from Russian and German, and also runs the publishing house Angel Books....

Sommaire:

WINNER OF THE READ RUSSIA PRIZE 2020

Alexander Pushkin established what we know as Russian literature. This collection includes his strongly personal lyric verse, which springs spontaneously from his everyday life - his numerous loves, his exile, his hectic life in St Petersburg - while the narrative poems here, from exotic Southern tales to comic parodies and fairy tales of enchanted tsars, display his endless ability to surprise. His landmark work The Bronze Horseman, with its ghostly central figure of Peter the Great, holds the meaning of all Russian history. Antony Wood's translations reveal the variety, inventiveness and perfection of Pushkin's verse.