The Kuzmin Collection presents a set of works by the Russian writer and composer Mikhail Kuzmin, together with translations, related materials, and critical commentary.

The purpose of the Kuzmin Collection project is to preserve and present the complete works of Russian poet, novelist, playwright, composer and critic Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin (1872-1936), both in Russian and in English translation, in permanent electronic form; to provide bibliographic access to international Kuzmin scholarship; and to develop institutional mechanisms to ensure continuing investigation, translation, and propagation of Kuzmin's work.

John Barnstead of the Department of Russian Studies, Dalhousie University, author of numerous Kuzmin translations and essays, has developed this project with the co-operation and encouragement of the Dalhousie Electronic Text Centre. It has drawn on the invaluable volunteer resources of Canada World Youth, an organization which has brought together young people from Canada and the Russian Federation for information technology internships with the Electronic Text Centre.

The project acknowledges with gratitude the grant support for optical character recognition software received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Table of Contents

Unless otherwise noted, all translations and commentaries on this website are by John Barnstead.

• Kuzmin, An Introductory Essay
  • English: all quotations translated
  • English: all quotations in the original language
  • Russian: all quotations in the original language

• Kuzmin, A Bibliography (English only)
  • Primary Sources
  • Secondary Sources

• Essays (English only)
  • On Beautiful Clarity

• Fairy Tales (English only)
  • An Essay
    • with all quotations translated
    • with all quotations in the original language
  • On the Conscientious Laplander and the Patriotic Mirror
  • The Upper Window
  • Prince Desire

• Short Stories (English only)
  • Florus and the Robber
  • Father Gervasy's Secret
  • The Bride. A Roman Story.

• Novellas (in English translation)
  • The Tale of Eleusippus, told by himself
  • Alexander

• Novels
  • Travellers by Sea and Land (in English translation)
    
    A 1915 roman à clef presenting in lightly-disguised form figures from the Bohemian society who frequented the cabaret "The Wandering Dog" in Saint Petersburg on the eve of World War I.

• Poetry
  • Parabolas/Parables (Russian and English)
    
    A collection of poems published by Petropolis in 1922, this book displays Kuzmin at his most hermetic and recondite.

  • Fuji in a Saucer (Russian and English)
    
    Fuji in a Saucer, a poem written by Mikhail Kuzmin in 1917, was inspired by a print by the Japanese artist Hokusai. The poem and the artwork which inspired it are available here. A related work is also available:
    
    • Another poem inspired by the same image, by Amy Lowell, written contemporaneously

• Mikhail Kuzmin in the world of music
  
  Mikhail Kuzmin was a student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff and completed four years of the seven-year program of study at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He composed a number of popular songs, including the one reproduced here.
  

  If It's Sunny Tomorrow

  • If It's Sunny Tomorrow, by Mikhail Kuzmin
  • Cover page of sheet music for the same song
  • Musical score for the same song

  From the "Alexandrian Songs"

  The Alexandrian Songs, Kuzmin's early cycle of poems in free verse, has attracted the attention of a number of composers, most notably Anatolii Aleksandrov, a portion of whose setting of "How I love, eternal gods, the beautiful world" is reproduc ed here.

  • Lyrics
  • Musical Score (Quicktime)

• Images relating to Kuzmin and his works

To cite these documents:
The Kuzmin Collection. Editor and translator John Barnstead. 14 January 1999. Dalhousie University Electronic Text Centre.
[Date of access] <http://etc.dal.ca/kuzmin/index_std.html>.