Five Russian Plays

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION THE plays selected for translation in this volume are, for the most part, modern. Von Vizin alone belongs to an earlier date, that of the late eighteenth century. Nevertheless it will be found that they have this in common: they are, while still Russian, at the same time European. This...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION THE plays selected for translation in this volume are, for the most part, modern. Von Vizin alone belongs to an earlier date, that of the late eighteenth century. Nevertheless it will be found that they have this in common: they are, while still Russian, at the same time European. This separation of artists into two categories, the national and the European, is quite simple of comprehension. The national author, often the favourite in his own country and one who has strengthened and enriched its language to a great degree, is nevertheless hardly to be appreciated in translation by readers of other European countries. Lomonosov, the father of the Russian language, poet, panegyrist and critic, is an example; so is Dr. Johnson. But a European artist can be appreciated by any foreign reader in an adequate translation, that is, a translation approximating to what the author would have written in that language. Von Vfzin, the first real Russian dramatist, comes in the rank of European artists. He is in everything Russian; his subject, characters and treatment are all Russian, but his plays are written with that brilliant common-sense which may be regarded as the characteristic of the European artist. It is well worth pointing out how his work, coming to an end during the first period of the French Revolution, approaches in spirit the work of the other authors in this book, who wrote a round century after him. This phenomenon is similar to much that can be observed not only in Russian art, but in Russian politics and society. Denis Ivanovich Von Vizin (the name at Pushkin's suggestion was Russianised into Vonvizin during the nineteenth century) was descended from a German prisoner of war. He was born in 1745 and educated at first by his father, his grati...