MUSSET, Alfred de, and Nikolai Porfir’evich GREKOV, translator.
Rolla, poema … perevod N.P. Grekova [Rolla, a poem … translated by N.P. Grekov].
Moscow, F.B. Miller, 1864.
12mo, pp. 36; title-page lightly foxed, but a very good copy, uncut, in the original pale green printed paper wrappers.
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Rolla, poema … perevod N.P. Grekova [Rolla, a poem … translated by N.P. Grekov].
First edition in Russian of Musset’s Rolla (1833), a poetic reinterpretation of the Don Juan myth, translated by the poet Nikolai Porfir’evich Grekov (1810–1866).
A bankrupt playboy decides to commit suicide, but first returns to a young prostitute to reflect on his wasted life. It is only as he dies in her arms that he first experiences love. Musset was the only French poet held in any esteem by Pushkin. ‘Dès années 1830, Musset acquiert en Russie une vaste notoriété’, his work for the stage banned by the censors but followed keenly by, for example, Turgenev. His later admirers included Tolstoy and Gorky (Treskounov, ‘Musset en Russie’, in Oeuvres et opinions 1(25) (1965)).
Grekov also translated Romeo and Juliet and Goethe’s Faust and published several collections of original poems and stories. Some of his poems were set to music by Tchaikovsky (who also set pieces by Musset).
Not in OCLC, Library Hub, or KvK. There is a copy at the National Library of Russia.
