2 FEBRUARY 1940, Page 26

THE latest addition to the Nonesuch Library contains a selec-

tion from Pushkin's plays, prose and poetic stories, folk tales, and lyrics. The selection is well made, but the book suffers from the very varying standards of success reached by the translators. Much the best are those of Miss Babette Deutsch. Her rendering of Eugene One gin, Pushkin's master- piece, is quite superb, and some of her translations of shorter poems are almost equally good. On the other hand, some of the other translations—unfortunately that of Boris Goduntre among them—are pedestrian in the extreme. As a whole the volume forms an excellent introduction to Pushkin's work, though it may cause the Englishman to wonder anew at the position accorded to Pushkin in his own country.