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Re: [xmca] putzing with pushkin



True, Peter. There used to be a joke among Russians that if you didn't die
when you were 37, then you were not a genius...
Elina

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:

> Just playing around here a bit, reading up on Pushkin...turns out he died
> at
> 37, same as LSV. Here's part of the Wikipedia entry that treats his work in
> translation.
>
> Critics consider many of his works masterpieces, such as the poem The
> Bronze
> Horseman <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bronze_Horseman_(poem)>  and
> the
> drama The Stone Guest <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stone_Guest> , a
> tale of the fall of Don Juan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Juan> . His
> poetic short drama "Mozart and Salieri" was the inspiration for Peter
> Shaffer <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Shaffer> 's Amadeus
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus> . Pushkin himself preferred his
> verse
> novel Eugene Onegin <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Onegin> , which
> he
> wrote over the course of his life and which, starting a tradition of great
> Russian novels, follows a few central characters but varies widely in tone
> and focus. "Onegin" is a work of such complexity that, while only about a
> hundred pages long, translator Vladimir Nabokov
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov>  needed two full volumes
> of
> material to fully render its meaning in English. Because of this difficulty
> in translation, Pushkin's verse remains largely unknown to English readers.
> Even so, Pushkin has profoundly influenced western writers like Henry James
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James> .
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Pushkin#cite_note-Leary-16> [17]
>
>
>
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-- 
I have on my table a violin string. It is free. I twist one end of it and it
responds. It is free. But it's not free to do what a violin string is
supposed to do - to produce music. So I take it, fix it in my violin and
tighten it until it is taut. Only then is it free to be a violin string.
-Sir Rabindranath Tagore
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