The Death of Tarelkin and Other Plays (Russian Theatre Archive) - Softcover

"Decided! ...I don't want to live...Poverty has exhausted me, my creditors torn me to pieces, my superiors have driven me to the grave&...I'll die. But I'm not going to die like any old horse dies. Any fool can die according to the law of nature. Your time comes and that's that! No - I'm goind to die in the defiance of the law and nature. I'm going to die for my own pleasure and satisfaction; I'm going to die like nobody ever died before." -The Death of Tarelkin "Sukhovo-Kobylin's Trilogy is excellent theater and has fair claim to being the most pessimistic drama ever written. Mr. Segel's lively, fluent translation is the first in English, and his Introduction is informative and thoughtful." -Helen Muchnic of "New York Review of Books

Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin's trilogy - "Krechinshy's Wedding", "The Case", and "The Death of Tarelkin" represent the sole literary legacy of their author - whose involvement in a sensational murder case became one of the great scandals of mid 19th-century Russia. Out of the drama of his own life Sukhovo-Kobylin created a trilogy of plays of satire against the tsarist bureaucracy and police encompassing several theatrical traditions. Harold Segel has translated this trilogy into English and written an introduction to the text.