Martin Bidney - The Beloving Imaginer Episode 24 - Pushkin's Onegin with Replies

The Be-Loving Imaginer

Synopsis for Podcast 22 Pushkin's Onegin with Replies Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) is Russia’s most beloved poet. Eugene Onegin, called by Pushkin a “novel in verse,” is Russia’s favorite narrative poem and her most influential novel. The narrative – about what was widely called a “superfluous man” – sets a context for the works by Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov that were to follow. From Lord Byron, Pushkin borrowed a clever device: the use of a casual narrator who becomes a fascinating character in the story. Tchaikovsky made Onegin into a great tragic opera, but he had to leave out the entertaining character of the narrator – plus all the delightful mood changes in the storyteller’s personality. Form-faithful translator Martin Bidney has created a new genre of literature, the verse interview book. For every 14-line poem of Pushkin’s, Bidney writes a Pushkin-style “reply” poem! So the book becomes a total dialogue, really two verse novels in conversation. Utterly unprecedented. The translator as collocutor.