Only two years after writing
Boris Godunov[see separate entry], Pushkin thought up another scheme for the theatre – a series of short, stageable scenes, which would be intended as what we would now think of as psychological studies. Deformation of character would be the focus of interest; monomaniacal passion would be depicted and condemned. Disaster would attend the crazed individual at the centre of each sketch, which were to see the light only three years later, in 1830, the results of an inspired onrush of writing made possible, perhaps inevitable, by the poet's inability to get away from his eastern estate of Boldino, because of an outbreak of cholera in the vicinity. Four short plays emerged;
Skupoi rytsar'[
The Miserly Knight]
, Motsart i Sal'eri[
Mozart and Salieri],
Kamennyi1627 words
Citation: Briggs, A.D.P.. "Malen’kie tragedii". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 May 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16896, accessed 09 October 2024.]