Theatre
Пінская шляхта
Not translated into English
Vincent Dunin-Marcinkievich · 1918
Opening lines
Марыся
Цяжка жыці мне, дзяўчаці,
3 міленькім ў разлуцы, −
Лае бацька, лае маці,
Што сэрцайка ў скуцы.
It is hard for me, a girl, to live
Parted from my darling;
Father scolds, mother scolds,
Because my little heart is aching.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from knihi.com
Synopsis
In the countryside of the Pinsk district, petty nobles live like the villagers around them, but cling to their rank and fight anyone who treats them as peasants. A dispute between two of them, Cichan Pratasavicki and Ivan Ciuchaj-Lipski, brings Kručkoŭ, an official of the imperial court charged with settling it; he judges by extorting money from everyone, and the affair gradually draws each of the characters into a whirlwind of legal squabbles.
Context
The play was written around 1866: no manuscript bears its date, but a letter from the author dated 1868 mentions it. It is composed in the speech of Pinsk, a stylisation of the language of Polesia. Tsarist censorship prevented its printing; it was published only in 1918, in the journal Volnaja Biełaruś, under the label of farce-vaudeville, in a version adapted by the editor, and again in 1923. A manuscript by the author, found in the 1950s in Vilnius, is preserved.
Who it is for
A short one-act comedy in a Belarusian dialect of Polesia; no French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
A satire of the petty nobility and of tsarist justice, still in the repertoire of the National Academic Theatre of Minsk.
Sources for this page 3
The pages consulted to check this page.