(Originally Written September 15, 2011 in The Journal)
The Queen of Spades - Alexander Pushkin
I play mirandole (not increasing the stakes)
Lizaveta Ivanova, is she the inspiration or is she the pawn for Hermann's advance for riches?
Hermann wishes not 'to risk the necessary in the hope of winning the superflous'
"Hermann wrote them under the inspiration of passion, and spoke in his own language and they bore full of the testimony to the inflexibility of his desire and the disordered condition of his uncontrollable imagination"
The irony of the paragraph of chapter five about the countess waiting for the midnight bridegroom is grim imagery in light of her death.
I like the tone of this sentence about people cheating by bending the cards: [He] "put straight the corners of cards that some player's hand had chanced to bend".
Russian stories seem to end so abruptly. I enjoy that though.
Lizaveta was the pawn by the way, though I am not sure Hermann always thought so.
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