Pushkin in English

...The biography also contains an interesting introduction and bibliography by George Siegel on the (politically as well as artistically) quixotic Mirsky himself, and an extensive appendix of good to better translations of Pushkin's poetry by T. B. Shaw, Max Eastman, Maurice Baring, and Edmund Wilson...

...But what a bore, I ask you, brothers, To tend a patient night and day And venture not a step away: Is there hypocrisy more glaring Than to amuse one all but dead, Shake up the pillow for his head, Dose him with melancholy bearing...

...Discussing scholarly disagreement over Pushkin's love affairs, he coolly puts the matter in its proper pocket with his straight-faced comment that "the subject is much too complicated to be discussed before a foreign audience...

...It was Mirsky's conviction (and a very common one it is) that Eugene Onegin is "incapable of reproduction in any other tongue...

...It is a slight but perfect example of its genre...

...Speaking of the early poem...

...The new translation of Onegin by Walter Arndt which has earned the Bollingen Prize for 1963, effectively challenges that contention...

...On the style of Onegin Mirsky says: "We recognize in the eighth chapter the style of the first as we recognize a familiar face changed by age...

...Not all of Arndt's renditions, of course, maintain this level of brilliance, but most of them do...

...Arndt's Onegin maintains a clear language and natural cadence which is entirely free of literary embroidery...

...The Gypsies, Mirsky comments on its fragmentary, staccato style and then singles out those passages in which Pushkin "allows himself a long poetic breath"—passages which constitute the poem's main strength...

...It is no chance that to Pushkin, the most European and universal and the most Petrine of our poets, his school was more than his family...

...On the relationship of Pushkin toward his family and his Lyceum, for example, he notes: "All Petrine Russia belonged more to its school than to its home...

...In this tone and at this pace Mirsky proves a delightful guide whose explanations, though simple, are founded upon intimate knowledge and sure taste...

...What is more...

...This is the reason why...

...We may now give equal due to both poet and translator by using the judgment which Pushkin himself once made of a French translation—"so brilliant and so insufficient...

...Reviewed by ANDREW FIELD The Pushkin boom is upon us, with Vladimir Nabokov's longawaited annotated translation of Eugene Onegin scheduled for publication this month and two extraordinary books which deserve widespread attention already out...

...I must ask leave to refrain from discussing the subject...

...Intended neither for the reader who wishes inclusive biographical data nor for the seeker after substantive critical explication, Mirsky's book is nonetheless the finest introductory work on Pushkin which we have in English...

...What he really means in both instances, of course, is that these questions are not really worthy of the serious reader's attention...

...Its school was Europe and Civilization, its home the old traditional Russia...

...To cite the passage in chapter seven in which Tatyana examines Onegin's library in his absence: Perhaps he is all imitation...

...He deals similarly with the question of the characters of Onegin and Tatyana, declaring that the matter has "been so profusely written about that it is as difficult to tackle the subject as it is to taste food that has been in many mouths...

...Every kind of absurdity, untruth, and half truth has been said of Onegin and Tatyana...

...Only occasionally does Mirsky betray a certain crotchety closed-mindedness as in his rejecting out of hand all Freudian interpretations of Pushkin's work...

...The critical biography by the late Prince D. S. Mirsky, author of the standard history of Russian literature, has now been reissued after many years out of print...

...The matter of Pushkin's literary school is resolved by Mirsky in a manner which is as simple as it is sensible...

...has produced not only the best Onegin translation we have, but also what is certainly one of the finest English translations of any foreign masterpiece in this century...

...An idle phantom or, poor joke, A Muscovite in Harold's cloak, An alien whim's interpretation, Compound of every faddish pose . . .? A parody, perhaps . . . who knows...

...May his idea inspire others...

...A gifted scholar and critic, Mirsky possessed the additional virtue of irreverence for the accepted etiquette of those professions...

...until Arndt's remarkable achievement, Eugene Onegin was but a sack of literary artifacts, left over from the 18th century and imported to Russia, for the English reader...

...What could have been more opportune...

...The difference is great and yet the essential proportions are the same...

...And think behind a stifled cough, 'When will the Devil haul vou off?' Here we find Pushkin's famed lightness and his unique humor almost perfectly reproduced, and I should note that one of the minor virtues of this stanza is that, for the very first time in English, the frequently used and heretofore intractable Russian expression, "The Devil take you!," has found a natural sounding translation...

...Mirsky does not shirk the proper concerns of criticism, though, and he even knows how on occasion to turn biography to pertinent cultural history...

...One is tempted to add here that a similar observation could be made, on different grounds, about the heroine...

...Only rarely does he fail completely...

...He remarks of the conclusion of that same poem that in it "a very distinctly Pushkinian note is for the first time sounded...

...The fabula of Eugene Onegin is a studied cliché (though you must never say this in the presence of a Russian whom you do not know well), and the "flatness"—to use E. M. Forster's term—of Onegin and Tatyana deceives only the sentimental and those who are afflicted with literary near-sightedness...

...Consider this rendition of the poem's opening stanza: Now that he is in grave condition, My uncle, decorous old prune, Has earned himself my recognition...

...For Arndt (whose native tongue is neither Russian nor English...

...Mirsky provides a précis of each of the poet's significant works, and adds critical observations that remain of value to the reader long after he has familiarized himself with the particular text...

...The brilliance of Eugene Onegin is to be found "only" in the verse, and there is but one "round" character in the tale: Pushkin himself...

...Arndt does this with close fidelity to the literal meaning...

...It is the note of 'tragic life,' so often repeated in his later work...

...Pointing out the "balanced, measured, essentially classical" features of Pushkin's verse which prevent him from being properly termed a Romantic (a title which Pushkin himself accepted, however), he concludes that such Romanticism as Pushkin possessed is "more after the manner of Stendhal and the mature Vigny...