Mikhail Bulgakov's "Don Quixote"

FAIN: FT-57597-10

Margarita Dimitrova Marinova
Christopher Newport University (Newport News, VA 23606-2949)

The goal for this project is to make available for the first time in English translation Mikhail Bulgakov's dramatic adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote. The play will be presented in its original Russian as well as in my translation. It will be annotated and accompanied by a scholarly introduction presenting the history of the Russian reception of Don Quixote, Bulgakov's original re-working of Cervantes's text, an analysis of the fate of the Soviet Artist during Stalin's regime, and a critical exegesis that connects the play to themes central to Bulgakov's oeuvre as a whole and his magnum opus, The Master and Margarita, in particular. The edition will also include a translator's note about the special challenges facing any translator of dramatic works.

Associated Products

Don Quixote: A Dramatic Adaptation (Book)
Title: Don Quixote: A Dramatic Adaptation
Author: Margarita Marinova,
Author: Mikhail Bulgakov
Editor: Scott Pollard
Editor: Margarita Marinova
Abstract: When Soviet censors approved Mikhail Bulgakov's stage adaptation of Don Quixote, they were unaware that they were sanctioning a subtle but powerful criticism of Stalinist rule. The author, whose novel The Master and Margarita would eventually bring him world renown, achieved this sleight of hand through a deft interpretation of Cervantes's knight. Bulgakov's Don Quixote fits comfortably into the nineteenth-century Russian tradition of idealistic, troubled intellectuals, but Quixote's quest becomes an allegory of the artist under the strictures of Stalin's regime. Bulgakov did not live to see the play performed: it went into production in 1940, only months after his death. The volume's introduction provides background for Bulgakov's adaptation and compares Bulgakov with Cervantes and the twentieth-century Russian work with the seventeenth-century Spanish work.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: https://www.mla.org/Publications/Bookstore/MLA-Texts-and-Translations/Don-Quixote-A-Dramatic-Adaptation
Primary URL Description: MLA main publications website.
Publisher: MLA
Type: Translation
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 978-1603291507
Translator: Margarita Marinova
Copy sent to NEH?: No

??? ????? [Don Kikhot]: A Dramatic Adaptation (Book)
Title: ??? ????? [Don Kikhot]: A Dramatic Adaptation
Author: Mikhail Bulgakov
Editor: Scott Pollard
Editor: Margarita Marinova
Abstract: When Soviet censors approved Mikhail Bulgakov’s ??? ?????, a stage adaptation of Don Quixote, they were unaware that they were sanctioning a subtle but powerful criticism of Stalinist rule. The author, whose novel ?????? ? ????????? would eventually bring him world renown, achieved this sleight of hand through a deft interpretation of Cervantes’s knight. Bulgakov’s Don Quixote fits comfortably into the nineteenth-century Russian tradition of idealistic, troubled intellectuals, but Quixote’s quest becomes an allegory of the artist under the strictures of Stalin’s regime. Bulgakov did not live to see the play performed: it went into production in 1940, only months after his death. The volume’s introduction provides background for Bulgakov’s adaptation and compares Bulgakov with Cervantes and the twentieth-century Russian work with the seventeenth-century Spanish work. Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) grew up and was educated in Kiev. He practiced medicine but soon turned to journalism and writing. He struggled persistently for artistic freedom but was frustrated by the Soviet censorship. “In the last seven years,” he wrote to a friend in 1937, “I have created sixteen works in various genres, and they have all been slain.”
Year: 2014
Primary URL: https://www.mla.org/Publications/Bookstore/MLA-Texts-and-Translations/Don-Kikhot-A-Dramatic-Adaptation
Primary URL Description: This is the MLA main publication website.
Publisher: MLA
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 9781603291491
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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