Not everyone knows that A. S. Pushkin was not only a poet and writer, but also translated other people's works and was fond of studying languages. According to the researchers, in addition to Russian, to one degree or another he was familiar with sixteen languages, although only French was fluent.
Instructions
Step 1
Pushkin knew several languages sufficiently to read works in them in the original and understand them as a whole. Even if he did not know the literal meaning of some words, he was able to grasp the essence. In addition, he loved to translate foreign works, as well as his own works into foreign languages, mainly French. He considered translation a very worthy pursuit and a good way to enrich Russian literature with the best examples of foreign literature.
Step 2
Translation for Pushkin was not a professional activity. He received satisfaction from them as a creative person, because in this way he had the opportunity to fix his artistic perception of a work or passage that impressed him and express it, as well as acquaint other people with it. Most often, the writer translated his favorite authors and folklore. Alexander Sergeevich always brought something of his own into the translation, so that a new work was born in some way, while maintaining the national originality of the source.
Step 3
Pushkin translated Moldavian and Serbian songs, verses by English poets (including white ones), sonnets by Italian and French authors, excerpts from the Koran, excerpts from the biblical Song of Songs and much more.
Step 4
Among the specific authors whose works were translated by Pushkin are the French philosopher Voltaire; playwright Antoine-Vincent Arnault; poet Anthony Deschamp; comedian Kazimir Bonjour; English poets William Wordsworth, George Gordon Byron, Barry Cornwall, John Wilson, Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge; English preacher John Bunyan; the Italian poet Francesco Gianni; the Italian playwright Ludovico Ariosto; Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz; Brazilian poet Tomas Antonio Gonzaga, etc. Pushkin also undertook the translation of Horace and Plato. Basically, these are not translations of entire works or poems, but their fragments, probably the most interesting from the point of view of the poet.
Step 5
As a basis for the plot of his "Tale of the Golden Cockerel" (1834), Pushkin took the short story "The Legend of the Arab Astrologer" by the American writer Washington Irving. And the fairy tale "The Tsar Saw Before Him …" (1833) by the Russian poet is a free revised translation of the fragment "The Legend of the Arab Astrologer".
Step 6
Pushkin's "The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Heroes" appeared as a free poetic adaptation of the German brothers Grimm's fairy tale, as well as "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish".
Step 7
In 1836, the poet translated eleven Russian folk songs into French in order to introduce the French to Russian folk poetry.
Step 8
For several years of his life, Pushkin was fond of translating memoirs and ethnographic literature.
