About the Author:
Antony Wood is publisher of Angel Books, London. His previous translations of Pushkin's poetry include Mozart and Salieri: The Little Tragedies, Boris Godunov, and a number of lyric poems. He was awarded a Pushkin Medal by the Russian government in 1999, the bicentenary year of Pushkin's birth.
Simon Brett has been making wood engravings since 1961. His prints, bookplates, and book illustrations are among the finest of the present time, and he writes frequently on the history, practice, and current condition of the engraver's art.
From Booklist:
Wood adds value to his sparkling versions of five story-poems by Pushkin (1799-1837) with a good introduction to poet and poems and an excellent afterword on Pushkin's challenges for the translator. The selections demonstrate Pushkin's variety of form and manner within one kind of poetry. "The Gypsies" is the tragedy of a man with a past who passionately loves a fickle beauty; it very probably influenced Prosper Merimee's story and, later, Georges Bizet's opera Carmen. "Count Nulin" is the comedy of a potential latter-day rape of Lucretia that the lady nips in the bud; here Pushkin is wry, amused, detached: the essence of suavity. "The Bridegroom," a variation on Gottfried Burger's influential ballad "Lenore" that adopts its propulsive stanza, highlights Pushkin's economical plotting, which is also crucial to the excitement of his "Snow White" treatment, "The Dead Princess." The yet more concentrated folktale, "The Golden Cockerel," one of Pushkin's last writings, concludes on a note somberly satirical of tyranny (czar and, a century later, dictator both censored it). Ray Olson
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