The “Little Tragedies”, as Pushkin called them, include four very short plays written over an impressively short two week period in 1830. As Pushkin was ever the master of concision and brevity, it’s interesting that the introduction, translator’s notes, and critical essays that accompany this volume are much longer than the works themselves – but they are helpful, and by and large interesting. (The translator’s notes in particular were fascinating because of the side by side comparisons of passages from various translators that came before Nancy K. Anderson, and then her own.) As for the works themselves, each is very strong, masterful writing, with The Stone Guest standing out as exceptional.

Without recapping the premises to the various plays, it was interesting to me that they all seemed to relate in some way to Pushkin’s life. The Miserly Knight, his financial dependence on his father, Mozart and Salieri, his own artistic genius, The Stone Guest, his own highly amorous ways, and A Feast During the Plague, a cholera outbreak near Boldino that year.

There is something elemental about them, and I found a theme of transience running through each. Despite the miserly knight’s riches, we see that you can’t take it with you, and despite Mozart’s transcendent genius, we see that everything passes. Despite a young woman having multiple suitors in The Stone Guest, we get that warning that beauty fades, and with A Feast, that disease may come suddenly and randomly carry people away. That’s all a little more poignant, knowing Pushkin would die just seven years later at 37.

The tragedy, though, is not in the transience, it’s in man’s flaws blinding him to doing what’s right. With the miserly knight (and his son, and the moneylender) we see the flaw is greed, and with Salieri, it’s envy. With Don Juan in The Stone Guest it’s lust, and the shallow pursuit of desires even if it means killing men or running women. With the revelers in A Feast it has a little more to do with frailty I suppose, and the pathetic responses to transience/tragedy – both in their sardonic partying, as well as the priest chastising them. Just as one can’t stop karmic retribution in The Stone Guest, one can’t stop death’s cart from approaching if that is one’s fate in A Feast.

Quotes:
On kindness, actually from ‘My Own Monument I’ve Built, Not Made by Any Hand,’ quoted in one of the essays:
“My memory will be loved among the people long,
Because kind feelings were by my lyre awakened,
Because in my cruel age, I praised Freedom in my song
And mercy to those forsaken.”

On love and music, from The Stone Guest:
“Among life’s pleasures, Music yields to none save love; but love itself is melody…”

On regret, from ‘Remembrance’, quoted in one of the essays:
“Relentless Memory will wordlessly unwind
Her long, long scroll for my inspection;
With loathing I peruse the record of my years,
I execrate, I quail and falter,
I utter bitter plaints, and hotly flow my tears,
But those sad lines I cannot alter.” ( )