'The people are silent'

So ends Pushkin's great historical drama Boris Godunov, in which Boris's reign as Tsar witnesses civil strife and intrigue, brutality and misery. Its legacy is an uncertain future for the new Tsar whose inauguration is met with devastating silence by the people. Pushkin's dramatic work displays a scintillating variety of forms, from the historical to the metaphysical and folkloric. After Boris Godunov, they evolved into Pushkin's own unique, condensed transformations of Western European themes and traditions. The fearful amorality of A Scene from Faust is followed by the four Little Tragedies which confront greed, envy, lust, and blasphemy , while Rusalka is a tragedy of a different kind - a lyric fairytale of despair and transformation.

James E. Falen's verse translations of Pushkin's dramas are here accompanied by an Introduction by Caryl Emerson on Russia's most cosmopolitan playwright.

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Translated by: James E. Falen
Introduction by: Caryl Emerson