Monday, May 25, 2026

            For those unfamiliar with the prose of the beloved Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, The Queen of Spades (UK: Penguin Classics, 2016, 259 pp.) is a friendly introduction.  In this small, hardbound volume are a number of tales, including those grouped under the fictional author, “Petrovich Belkin,” and a long story, “Dubrovsky, with a disguised “princess” and a handsome, clever “prince,” and ending with a longer story, “The Queen of Spades,” who has a supernatural deal for a “magic” knowledge eagerly sought by others.  All these stories were originally written in the 1830’s. 

            The stories have the rural background of traditional fairy tales and contain some of the same elements, but they also have the bite of reality, in the end, to emphasize that things may not at all go the way we might like, usually not.  Nevertheless, the detail of Russian life in the hinterlands is one Pushkin knew from personal experience, and this background proves for him a fertile ground for short, pointed stories of love and loss, and longer narratives of the twists of fate.