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xxiii Most readers will use this book to learn about individual poems. Since I do not expect them to read consecutively, I have made no assumptions about what they might have encountered elsewhere in the commentary. However, in order to avoid potential misunderstandings, I strongly urge the first-time user to begin by reading the following explanatory information. This commentary does not include the texts of the Russian poems. It did not seem worth the production costs to do so, since Pushkin’s lyric poetry can be easily found in any Russian bookstore or on the internet. The commentary follows the Academy edition (Полное собрание сочинений, т. , кн. , ), which is generally agreed to be the most reliable Pushkin edition to date. This edition is now accessible on the internet. (Go to http://feb-web .ru/feb/pushkin/default.asp, then to “Произведения Пушкина,” then to “Собра- ния сочинений Пушкина,” then to “Полное собрание сочинений в шестнад- цати томах,” then to “том третий: стихотворения –. Сказки,” then to “стихотворения –,” where the poems can be found by year.) As in the Academy edition, I follow the convention of putting the Russian title in angular brackets () when that title was supplied by the editors. Likewise, I follow their convention for untitled poems of using the first line (in quotation marks) as a title. However, I do not retain their use of square brackets around individual words to indicate things Pushkin himself crossed out in draft. Such editorial details are essential for textologists, but they would be unnecessarily confusing to my probable readership. In the case of obscene words (which the Academy edition regularly omitted), I follow the texts given at http://www.rvb.ru/pushkin/tocv.htm. Readers consulting other editions should have no problem using the commentary , because the texts rarely vary. (Some editions omit poems or change the dates, but – with minor exceptions in cases of modernization of spelling – none change the actual words.) The present volume contains commentary to every lyric poem Pushkin wrote from  to his death in early . Specific poems can be found in the index of titles and first lines at the back of the volume. (Titles of poems do occasionally change from edition to edition, so first lines are generally the safest way to search.) The commentary is geared toward the level of an advanced American undergraduate or beginning graduate student. If a word can unambiguously be found in a standard Russian–English dictionary, I have not glossed it. However, I have tried to cover all instances where a seemingly familiar word has changed meaning Reader’s Guide xxiv Reader’s Guide since Pushkin’s day. For example, when Pushkin uses the word “язык” to mean “a people,” I gloss it. When it means “language,” I do not. Since Pushkin wrote poetry to be heard (and not only to be read silently), it is essential that one understand where the stresses fall. I mark the accents on all words that I gloss. (I do not mark the stress in passages from Pushkin’s prose or in verse citations from other Russian poets.) The convention followed is that no stress is marked on monosyllabic words or on polysyllabic words where the stress falls on the first syllable. There are, however, a few exceptions to this practice. I mark the stress on the first syllable of a word where a student would logically expect it to fall elsewhere , for example, in folkloric passages, where the expected “деви́ца” becomes “де́вица.” I mark the stress on monosyllabic prepositions in the rare instances when the stress shifts onto them rather than falling on the noun that follows. I mark the “ё” to distinguish it from “é,” so, for example, the stress on “чернь” is not marked, but the stress on “чёрный” is indicated by the two dots over the vowel. When Pushkin uses a form that might strike a student as unfamiliar, I place that word in the standard modern form in an adjacent parenthesis, putting an equal sign in front of it, for example, оспо́ривай (=оспаривай) глупца́. It is crucial that readers recognize this convention, lest they think that Pushkin himself gave such alternate forms. In fact, if they scan correctly, some of these alternate forms can be found in less scholarly editions. However, in many cases, the parenthetical form does not scan, as in чредо́ю (=чередой) незаме́тной, in which case, of course, no editor would include it. Students should be aware that Pushkin frequently uses the “неполногасие” (non-pleophonous) form of words that are now more common in “полногласие” (pleophony). In cases where the definition seems obvious (e.g., “младой” instead of “молодой”), I do not gloss it. In slightly more complicated cases (“глас” instead of “голос”), I do. Likewise, I ordinarily...

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