“A Feast in Time of Plague” by A.S. Pushkin in the Context of Russian and European Literary Traditions

Abstract

In the center of attention of the authors of this article is semantic discrepancies in the text of the tragedy of A. S. Pushkin "A Feast in Time of Plague" and dramatic poem of John Wilson's "The city of the Plague", which, admittedly, is a literary source of Pushkin's works. This topic long ago has attracted the attention of literary critics. The article raises the question of the conceptual differences of the two authors (Russian and English) in their submissions about the "death" and "eternal life". For the characters of John Wilson's death is presented as a means of overcoming human suffering, inevitable within the boundaries of earthly life. Understanding of immortality is associated by them with the sense of freedom from the burden of earthly suffering. For A. S. Pushkin "eternal life" (immortality) is associated with the expectation of a personal meeting of loving people outside of death in the circumstances, free from the limitations and problems of their earthly life. An appeal to the texts of the literary predecessors of John Wilson and A. S. Pushkin – J. W. Goethe and N. M.Karamzin – in description of their ideas of "eternal life" allows us to speak about the non-randomness of Pushkin deviations from the text of the English original. According to the authors of the article in the texts of A. S. Pushkin and John Wilson are identified discrepancies, caused by the profound reasons of mental character.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s3p271