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Eugene Onegin: A Novel In Verse

Contributors

By Alexander Pushkin

Translated by Douglas R Hofstadter

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Sep 11, 2000
Page Count
224 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9780465020942

Price

$19.99

Price

$25.99 CAD

Format

Trade Paperback

Format:

Trade Paperback $19.99 $25.99 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around September 11, 2000. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

A stunning and playful translation of a Russian classic, from a prizewinning scholar in comparative literature and cognition.

“Hofstadter gives this translation a bubbling excitement very much in the fashion of the original.” –Wall Street Journal


Sparked by reading Jim Falen’s beautiful English version of Eugene Onegin (published in 1992), Douglas Hofstadter presents a more liberal, distinctly American, colloquial version of the Alexander Pushkin classic. Hofstadter’s version is entirely in so-called “Onegin stanzas” – a unique sonnet form devised by Pushkin with a very intricate rhythmic and rhyming pattern. There is also a preface in Onegin stanzas, in which Hofstadter talks about Pushkin, his novel in verse, its form and content, the challenges of translating it into English and his deep admiration for Falen’s version.

  • “Hofstadter gives this translation a bubbling excitement very much in the fashion of the original.”
    Wall Street Journal
  • “Akin to the spirit of Pushkin’s original in its playfulness… Hofstadter’s version certainly holds its own in the pleiade of English Onegin versifications… Reading Hofstadter’s translation is a rewarding experience… His genuine enthusiasm for Pushkin’s poetry is truly inspirational.”
    Comparative Literature Studies
  • “Pushkin’s story of a rich, bored young man who rather offhandedly destroys his chance at love by killing a friend in a duel and alienating his would-be beloved is equally delightful in Hofstadter’s sparkling, breezy version that catches the novel’s combination of wry, Austenish provincial romance and Byronic irony, digressiveness, and satire.”
    Booklist
  • “A masterly performance, and a thoroughly charming book.”
    Kirkus

Alexander Pushkin

About the Author

Douglas R. Hofstadter is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gödel, Escher, Bach; Metamagical Themas; Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies; I Am a Strange Loop; “Translator, Trader”; and most recently, Ambigrammia: Between Creation and Discovery.  He has also translated books from several languages into English.

Learn more about this author