The Uncensored Boris Godunov: The Case for Pushkin's Original Comedy

Preface to the First Edition

The purpose of this book is to rescue the original version of Alexander Pushkin’s historical drama Boris Godunov from obscurity. Long ignored by specialists and virtually unknown to general readers, Pushkin’s Comedy about Tsar Boris and Grishka Otrepiev was composed in 1824–25 while the “dangerously radical” poet was living in exile on his family’s estate. His underappreciated Comedy is a provocative and aesthetically appealing play that differs in many ways from the well-known Boris Godunov published in 1831. The interdisciplinary team of specialists who prepared this volume contends that Pushkin’s Comedy is an extremely important text in its own right – one that deserves to take its place in the canon of the great poet’s works alongside the more familiar version of his play. In addition to new scholarship about Pushkin’s Comedy, this volume presents for the first time an accurate transcription of the original manuscript of Komediia o Tsare Borise i o Grishke Otrep’eve. (In the text published here, readers familiar with Boris Godunov will find – in addition to the scenes and lines of dialogue omitted from the so-called canonical text – several words and phrases not found in previous editions of the play.) In order to make Pushkin’s Comedy known to a wider audience, this volume also contains the first English translation of the play. Notes are also provided to help readers understand occasionally obscure references and to demonstrate the remarkable historical accuracy of the original version of Pushkin’s daring drama set in early modern Russia’s darkest hour, the Time of Troubles (1598–1613). Preface to the First Edition xi This book project grew out of an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the composition of Komediia conducted by Professors Chester Dunning and Brett Cooke of Texas A&M University. Dunning, a specialist in early modern Russian history, became intrigued by the tragic fate of the earlier and more historically accurate version of Pushkin ’s play. When Dunning presented his initial research findings at the annual convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in 1999, his work caught the attention of Professor Caryl Emerson of Princeton University, a leading scholar of nineteenthcentury Russian literature. When Dunning and Emerson decided to embark on this book project, they asked Professor Sergei Fomichev of Novgorod State University – a renowned Pushkinist and one of the world’s leading authorities on the poet’s handwriting – to contribute to the volume. Fomichev suggested adding to the team his colleague Dr. Lidiia Lotman, a highly productive scholar of Russian literature who is the leading researcher at the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinskii Dom) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Finally, when the team received a National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Grant, it became possible to expand the project to include an English translation of Komediia prepared by Antony Wood, an awardwinning translator of Pushkin’s poetry. Research for this book was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency, and smaller grants from the University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences of Princeton University, the Wisconsin Center for Pushkin Studies, and Texas A&M University’s Office of the Vice President for Research, Office of the Assistant Provost for International Programs, College of Liberal Arts, Melburn G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, and Department of History. Several colleagues went out of their way to encourage our research, to support applications for funding, and to offer valuable assistance and advice during the conceptualization and development of this book project. We are especially indebted to Svetlana Fedotova, Olga Catalena, Ksana Blank, Olga Peters Hasty, Michael Wachtel, David Budgen, Alla Gelich, David Bethea, Stephanie Sandler, Brett Cooke, J. Thomas Shaw, Irene Masing-Delic, Kurt Schultz, Raphael Kadushin, Sheila McMahon Moermond, Steve Salemson, Christopher J. Syrnyk, Don Ostrowski, Walter Kamphoefner, Nancy Livengood, Elizabeth Arndt, Janet G. Tucker, David Chroust, Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter, Svitlana Kobets, and the anonymous referxii Preface to the First Edition ees who were so positive about our National Endowment for the Humanities grant proposal. We wish to thank the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Institut russkoi literatury [Pushkinskii Dom] Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk) for permission to publish the text of Komediia o Tsare Borise i o Grishke Otrep’eve and two drawings by Alexander Pushkin. We are grateful to Houghton Library (Harvard University...