Editor’s Note
Welcome to the Spring 2024 issue of The Mercurian! Following up on Magda Romanska’s translation of the great Polish film director Andrzej Wajda’s adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment published in the Fall 2023 issue of The Mercurian, this issue begins with Romanska’s translation of Wajda’s adaptation of Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz’s stage adaptation of his novella…
June Night
Grażyna Szapołowska (Ewelina) and Aleksander Domogarow (Edmund). Press Photo. Copyright TVP June Night: Of Love and Duty (1980) By Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz Translated from Polish by Magda Romanska Polish poet, novelist, and playwright, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, was a complex figure with conflicted biography. Born in 1894, near Kyiv during the time of Russian Empire’s rule over the…
The Mountain King and the Misanthrope (1828)
Drawn by Johann Christian Scholler; engraved by Zinke, c1829. Laurence Senelick Collection. By Ferdinand Raimund Translated from German by Michael McDowell and Laurence Senelick The Zauberposse or magical farce was a dramatic form peculiar to Austria and especially Vienna in the latest eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A baroque genre that made its appeal to…
The Bullet
Photo by Victor Pelayo By Sergio López Vigueras Translated from Spanish by Jacqueline E. Bixler The Bullet presents the story of Lauro and Valeria, who furtively glance at and wonder about each other every morning as they ride to their respective jobs on a microbús. On this particular morning, their daily routine as well as…
Kafka in Love
Chema Ruiz and Jesús Noguero in Madrid production. Photo by Marta Vidanes. By Luis Araújo Translated from Spanish by Phyllis Zatlin Kafka In Love (Kafka enamorado) by Spanish playwright Luis Araújo is based in large part on Franz Kafka’s letters, written from 1912 to 1917. Some brief scenes also evoke moments from Kafka’s fictional works,…
Review of Fauna and Other Plays
Romina Paula. Fauna and Other Plays. Ed. April Sweeney and Brenda Werth. Trans. April Sweeney, Brenda Werth, and Jean Graham-Jones. Kolkata: Seagull Books, 2023. 164 pp. Reviewed by May Summer Farnsworth Fauna and Other Plays, edited by April Sweeney and Brenda Werth, offers four plays in English translation by Argentine playwright Romina Paula. The editors,…
Review of Nothing to Do with Love and Other Plays
Santiago Loza. Nothing to Do with Love and Other Plays. Ed. Samuel Buggeln and Noe Montez. Trans. Samuel Buggeln and Ariel Gurevich. London, New York, Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2021. 199 pp. Reviewed by Amalia Gladhart In Nothing to Do with Love and Other Plays, translators Samuel Buggeln and Ariel Gurevich present an inviting and varied…
Review of Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare: An Anthology, 1987-2007
Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare: An Anthology, 1987–2007. Ed. Alexa Alice Joubin. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 303 pp. Reviewed by Zhixuan (Mia) Zhu Sinophone Adaptations of Shakespeare: An Anthology, 1987–2007 (2022), edited by Alexa Alice Joubin, consists of an introductory chapter by the editor and seven English translations of Sinophone Shakespeare adaptations in different performance genres between…
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