Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - III
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poem of his can be named for which he did not have
a model. His tales in verse in the popular style, like
the “Song of Oleg” (pronounced Aleeokh) and his
fairytales are modernized bîlinî. Pushkin was one of the
first in Russia who made collections from the epic songs
of the people. His only great drama, “Borís Gudunóf,”
treated in such a masterly manner as to give great
promise, is an imitation of Shakespeare’s historical plays,
especially of Richard III. and Macbeth. That this play
is widely celebrated and greatly admired, while Prosper
Mérimée’s Les debuts d’un Aventurier, which with
infinitely more originality and truth treats the same theme,
the rebellion of the false Dmitri, is almost wholly
unknown, shows with how little justice literary fame is
often awarded. Finally, so far as Pushkin’s ballads
are concerned, they are not only strongly inspired by
Mickiewicz, but two of the best known and most
frequently translated, “The Three Budrysses” and
“Voyevods,” are verbal translations from the Polish poet,
without expressly naming the latter. It may possibly
have been stated in some of the earlier editions of
Pushkin’s works, but in the edition for the people it is
not mentioned, and in Bodenstedt’s translation of 1855
the ballads are treated as Pushkin’s, as a matter of
course.
Necessarily a vigorous independence permeates the
best, of these metrical works, and even more the prose
novels in which Pushkin took up and developed the
Russian prose style created by the great historian
Karamzín. In so far as Pushkin, himself sick, attains the
high point of presenting the healthy, he possesses, in
an extraordinary degree, the characteristic of a great
artist. The artist is generally an outlaw, a living
irregularity, a watch which goes now too fast and now too
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