Pushkins The Queen of Spades Essay -- Pushkin Queen of Spades Essays

Pushkins The mogul of SpadesFrench connoisseurs already know Pushkins The Queen of Spades inM mouthes translation. It might appear impertinent to expand now a newversion, and I do not discredit that the earlier one will appear more elegantthan this one, which has no merit former(a) than its scrupulous exactness.That is its justification. A preoccupation with explaining and rounding byinduced Mrime to blunt somewhat the microcrystalline peaks of the tale. Wehave resisted adding anything to Pushkins clean and spare style, with itsslender grace, which hums identical a sloshed string. When Pushkin writesHerman quivered like a tiger, Mrime adds ... lying in wait. When hehas Lisaveta bend over a book, Mrime says gracefully. This charmingwriter thus marks his own manner, and if some pink his dryness it isclear here that the criticism is ill-founded, or, at least, that only bycomparison with the lush style of the writers of his period can Mrimesstyle seem so unadorned to us. The clar ity of Pushkin, on the other hand,chafes him, and nothing shows that better than a study of thistranslation. Poets, Pushkin wrote, often sin by neglect of simplicityand accuracy they pursue all manner of outdoor(a) effects. The pursuit of formsweeps them toward exaggeration and bombast. He criticized in Hugo,whom he admired, an absence seizure of simplicity. Life is lacking in him, hewrote. In other words, truth is absent. The strangeness of most Russian writers, including the greatest amongthem, often baffles the French reader, and indeed, sometimes repels himbut I confess that it is the absence of strangeness in Pushkin thatconfounds me. Or at least what baffles me, is to see that Dostoevsky,that genius so prodigi... ...offersus geniuses like Shakespeare, Cervantes, Schiller. But show me, even oneamong them all, who possesses to the same degree as Pushkin thecapacity for universal comprehension. And again Pushkin was the onlyone among the poets who succeeded in expect the soul of otherpoets. But according to Dostoevsky it is to his profoundly Russian caseful that Pushkin owes his universality, for the mission of eachRussian is doubtless a universal mission. ... To render truly a Russian,he adds, to become completely Russianmeans to feel oneself chumto all men. The Queen of Spades, that brief masterpiece, offers us an excellentexample of the admirable poetic qualities of Pushkin and his gift forself-effacement. Work Cited Gide, Andre. Preface to The Queen of Spades. Reflections on lit and Morality. New York Meridian Books, 1959.