SOURCE: "Love and Death in Pushkin's 'Little Tragedies'," in Modern Critical Views: Alexander Pushkin, edited by Harold Bloom, Chelsea House Publishers, 1987, pp. 65-71.

In the following essay, originally published in 1972, Monter probes the thematic unity of Pushkin's "Little Tragedies" in their concern with "the recognition of love and the recognition of death."

A critical attempt to correlate separate works of the same author could hardly be more justified than in the case of Pushkin's four "Little Tragedies." All were completed in the fall of 1830: The Miserly Knight (Skupoi rytsar'), Mozart and Salieri (Motsart i Sal'eri) and The Stone Guest (Kamennyi gost') on October 23, October 26, and November 4 respectively. Pushkin may have been thinking about these three since 1826, but for such finished works their dates of completion are still remarkably close. The fourth play, The Feast during the Plague (Pir vo vremia chumy), was composed entirely during the 1830 autumn at...