Baratynsky, Evgeny - Susanne Fusso and Howard Stern (essay date 1995)

Susanne Fusso and Howard Stern (essay date 1995)

SOURCE: “‘The Feasts of Ill Intention’: Baratynskii and the Critics,” in Freedom and Responsibility in Russian Literature: Essays in Honor of Robert Louis Jackson, edited by Elizabeth Cheresh Allen and Gary Saul Morson, Northwestern University Press, 1995, pp. 29-37.

[In the following essay, Fusso and Stern explore Baratynsky's attitude toward his critics and the way in which he used his anger at their attacks as a stimulus to continue writing poetry.]

“Even in the grave?”
“Even under the coffin lid.”
“I cannot sing!”
“Well, sing about that!”

—Marina Tsvetaeva, 1928

[“Tak i v grobu?”
—“I pod doskoi.”
“Pet' ne mogu!”
—“Eto vospoi!”]

“On Planting a Forest” (“Na posev lesa”), written in 1842, two years before Baratynskii's death, is a cross between two of his favorite genres. It is in part an elegy, a...

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