Description

8vo, hardcover, pp.xiii-220. Boris Godunov as the expression of Alexander Pushkin's thinking about the Russian state, especially the Russian state of his own time (some two hundred years distant from the events of the play), and even his own place within that state. Dimitry's Shade makes a startling departure from the traditional interpretation of Boris Godunov as the some-what awkward product of an exiled and angry young liberal-leaning poet who hated Tsar Alexander I, questioned autocracy, and flirted with atheism. Here instead we see how the play marks a sharp break with the Decembrists and Pushkin's own youthful liberalism, signaling its author's emergence as a Russian conservative. Boris Godunov, Clayton argues, can be best understood as an ideologically conservative defense of autocracy. In addition, Clayton shows that the play contains significant religious elements that have long been ignored by scholars due primarily to prejudices dating from the Stalin era