Konstantin Ivanov · poem · 1908

Narspi

A love that defied the order of an entire village — the poem often called Chuvashia's "Romeo and Juliet."

In 1908, the seventeen-year-old Chuvash poet Konstantin Ivanov wrote a poem later called the high point of Chuvash literature. Narspi and Setner have since been known as Chuvashia's Romeo and Juliet: a love story set against the entire order of pre-revolutionary village life.

This site isn't a scholarly edition. It's a small reader's tribute: a quick guide to what this poem is, what it's about, who its characters are, and why it's still remembered more than a century later.

About the Poem

How a Chuvash peasant girl named Narspi became a literary heroine of national scale.

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Characters

Narspi, Setner, Tăhtaman — brief portraits of the people at the centre of the drama.

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Themes

The ideas running through the whole poem: free will, custom, land, an unequal marriage.

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