Zukovskij's Early Translations of the Ballads of Robert Southey (1) (Vasilij Andreevic Zukovskij‪)‬

It is generally recognized that Vasilij Andreevic Zukovskij, "the Columbus who discovered for Russian literature the America of Romanticism," (2) won a great part of his reputation through his superb achievement as a poet-translator. One aspect of Zukovskij's contribution to the Romantic movement in Russian literature which requires further investigation, however, is his treatment of the English Romantics, which cannot have failed to exert a significant influence upon the tastes of Russian lovers of poetry during the first three decades of the nineteenth century--and after. Although we shall be concerned here only with Zukovskij's three earliest translations of the ballads of Robert Southey, it is interesting to follow Zukovskij as he works toward the discovery of the English Romantic poets as a group. In 1802 Zukovskij translated Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," in 1805 Oliver Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village," in 1806 works of John Dryden and Alexander Pope, and in 1808 a poem of James Thomson. After translations of poems by Dryden and Goldsmith in 1812 and a poem by David Mallet in 1814, Zukovskij turned to the English Romantics. In 1813 he discovered Robert Southey, whose ballad "Rudiger" was the first work of English Romanticism that Zukovskij translated. The next year he translated two of Southey's ballads, "Lord William" and "The Old Woman of Berkeley." From Southey, Zukovskij moved on to Lord Byron, two of whose works ("Stanzas for Music--There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away" and "The Prisoner of Chillon") he translated in 1820 and 1821. In 1821 and 1822 Zukovskij translated works by Thomas Moore (the second part of Lalla Rookh) and Sir Walter Scott ("The Eve of St. John"). He returned to Scott's works in 1831 ("The Gray Brother") and 1832 (Canto II of Marmion), and to Robert Southey's in 1831 ("Donica," "Mary, the Maid of the Inn," "Jaspar," "God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop," and "Queen Orraca and the Five Martyrs of Morocco"). In 1833 he translated Thomas Campbell's "Ullin and His Daughter," and, finally, in 1839 he re-translated Gray's "Elegy." (3)