Taras Bulba - Hardcover

Gogol, Nikolai

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Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0460017403 ISBN 13: 9780460017404

Publisher: Dutton Adult, 1972

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This Elibron Classics book is a reprint of a 1886 edition by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York. The title character of this short novel is a Cossack who, along with his two sons, joins his people's war with Poland. Set in the 17th century, the novel depicts the grim fates of the three Bulbas after one of the sons, Andri, deserts the Cossack forces to be with a Polish woman. The novel is particularly noted for its descriptions of the landscape of Gogol's native Ukraine.

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From the Inside Flap

The First New Translation in Forty Years
Set sometime between the mid-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, Gogol's epic tale recounts both a bloody Cossack revolt against the Poles (led by the bold Taras Bulba of Ukrainian folk mythology) and the trials of Taras Bulba's two sons.
As Robert Kaplan writes in his Introduction, "["Taras Bulba] has a Kiplingesque gusto . . . that makes it a pleasure to read, but central to its theme is an unredemptive, darkly evil violence that is far beyond anything that Kipling ever touched on. We need more works like "Taras Bulba to better understand the emotional wellsprings of the threat we face today in places like the Middle East and Central Asia." And the critic John Cournos has noted, "A clue to all Russian realism may be found in a Russian critic's observation about Gogol: 'Seldom has nature created a man so romantic in bent, yet so masterly in portraying all that is unromantic in life.' But this statement does not cover the whole ground, for it is easy to see in almost all of Gogol's work his 'free Cossack soul' trying to break through the shell of sordid today like some ancient demon, essentially Dionysian. So that his works, true though they are to our life, are at once a reproach, a protest, and a challenge, ever calling for joy, ancient joy, that is no more with us. And they have all the joy and sadness of the Ukrainian songs he loved so much."

"From the Hardcover edition.