A Latin Poem Translated into Russian in 1670: A Panegyric in Praise of King Louis XIII from Antoine de Pluvinel’s Book “Maneige Royal”

Abstract

This paper offers an analysis of an early prose translation of a Latin panegyrical poem into Russian. The poem, “In lavdem Lvdovici XIII” was written by Peter / Petrus / Pierre Valens in 1623 or earlier. It was included in the book “Maneige Royal”, first published in 1623 under the name of A. de Pluvinel, who was the riding teacher of the young King Louis XIII. The book was translated into Russian in 1670, albeit not from the original French edition, but from the German version in the bilingual edition “Maneige Royal / Königliche Reitschul”, published in Braunschweig, 1626. The book's Russian title is a verbatim translation of the German one, “Korolevskaia ezdnaia shkola”. The translation is known from two copies: RNB, F.XI.1 (Saint Petersburg), and as one of the texts in the Codex AD 10 (Västerås, Sweden). Our analysis leads to the conclusion that both the translation itself and the two copies most probably were made at the Ambassadorial Chancery (Posol'skii prikaz). The translation of the Latin panegyrical poem shows that the translator understood the Latin text quite well, although it contains a few isolated errors. At the same time, some of these mistakes might have been the result of misprints in the German original, or they may have been caused by the copyist who produced the fair copy. It seems very likely that the translation of the Latin poem (as well as of the entire book) was made by the translator Ivan Tiazhkogorskii, who knew all three languages used in the book (German, Latin, and French). Although Tiazhkogorskii for the most part translated texts from his native language, German, he was able to make decent translations also from Latin and French; however, historical, political and above all mythological allusions caused a few difficulties.