A Requiem for Aristocratic Art

P ushkin's Egipetskie nochi (1835) has fascinated readers since it was first published in year of Pushkin's death. Much of interest has centered around possible final form this unfinished story was meant to have. The text as it has come down to us consists of three short chapters in prose with two verse passages representing performances of Italian improvisor. The work seems to break off in middle of second improvisation, leaving third chapter as well apparently unfinished. No plans suggest what direction story would have taken, or how many more chapters, if any, remained to be written.1 Perhaps because of its fragmentariness, story has exerted a kind of uncanny fascination over its readers. Belinskii and Briusov counted it among Pushkin's profoundest works.2 Dostoevskii argued that, despite appearances, this was the fullest, most complete work of our poetry .. ! To expand or finish off this fragment in artistic sense would be more than impossible.3 Yet this is exactly what Briusov and

Ancient history · Art · Literature · Discourse Analysis and Cultural Communication · Education, Literature, Philosophy Research · History · Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies

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