Lopatina, N. and Fridstein, Y., eds. (2019). ‘Whom thou desertest not, O Genius…’ Goethe in translations by Russian 19th-c. poets. Moscow: Infinitiv: Lingvistika. (In Russ.)

Abstract

A review of the anthology prepared by N. Lopatina, a renowned Russian bibliographer. The collection includes 187 translations of Goethe’s 78 poems, which are quoted in the original language, and of several poetic fragments from the tragedy Faust, the novel Wilhelm Meister, as well as the cycle West-Eastern Divan, made by 63 Russian 19th-c. poets, representatives of various traditions — from Classicism and Sentimentalism to Symbolism and Acmeism. The collection showcases the high achievements of the country’s school of poetic translation and acute cultural awareness of the Russian society in the 19th c., and focuses on the part of Goethe’s poetic oeuvre that was especially popular with the Russian reader. Another role of the anthology is to bridge a gap in our knowledge and uncover names, often unfairly forgotten, of Russian poets and philologists of the past in their interaction with the Western European literature.