The ballad “The Bridegroom” by Alexander Pushkin?

Question by Ryan: Can someone explain the ballad “The Bridegroom” by Alexander Pushkin?

I dont understand what the ballad is about and would like a translation. Thanks.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Countessa
The Bridegroom is the darkly sinister tale of a merchant’s daughter and a highly traumatic experience which she has recently undergone, but feels unable to relate to her parents. It is only at her wedding, and through the meshing of dream and reality, that the truth is uncovered. Beginning with a hint of mystery, the suspense builds with alarming pace in this tightly written verse tale, holding the reader gripped until the secret of what has happened to poor Natasha is revealed. Borrowing the metrical form of a German Romantic Ballad, but combining it with a story of almost Gothic horror (possibly based on an oral tale told by his nanny), Pushkin’s skill as a story teller is showcased at its very best. Returning from Paris and cursing ‘Holy Russia’ for its backwardness, Nulin is very much the modern man of the time, and his threat to ‘true’ Russia in the person of Natalya Petrovna, is subtly drawn out by Pushkin. Finished in late 1825, on the very day the Decembrist uprising was being suppressed in St. Petersburg, Pushkin’s exploration of the battle between tradition and modernity in Russia, and his attempt, as he puts it, to re-write history is fascinating. The comic nature of the tale adding to, rather than distracting the reader from, these bigger issues.

The last verse narrative, The Tale of the Golden Cockerel, is an exquisite example of the genre for which Pushkin is perhaps best known in the West, the Skazka or fairy tale. Beginning with the Russian equivalent of our own ‘Once upon a time…’, we are transported to fairy land, here ruled over by the rather unpleasant despot Tsar Dadon. In his old age he is under siege from his enemies and looks for assistance to a eunuch-astrologer. The astrologer gives him a golden cockerel which will keep watch over Dadon’s realm and warn of any approaching troubles. For his assistance the eunuch is promised riches and anything he asks for from the Tsar. However, the Tsar does not fulfil his promise and later kills the eunuch-astrologer, but of course gets his just desserts in the end.

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