Nikolay Gnedich

Nikolay Ivanovich Gnedich (Russian: Николай Иванович Гнедич) (February 2(13), 1784, Poltava - February 3(15), 1833, Saint Petersburg) was a Russian poet and translator best known for his idyll The Fishers (1822). His translation of the Iliad (1807-29) is still the standard one.

Alexander Pushkin assessed Gnedich's Iliad as "a noble exploit worthy of Achilles" and addressed to him an epistle starting with lines "With Homer you conversed alone for days and nights..." [1]

Pushkin also penned an epigram in Homeric hexameters, which unfavourably compares one-eyed Gnedich with the blind Greek poet:

Poet Gnedich, renderer of Homer the Blind,

Was himself one-eyed,

Likewise, his translation

Is only half like the original.^[1] ("Kriv byl Gnedich poet, prelozhitel slepogo Gomera, / Bokom odnim s obraztsom skhozh i ego perevod.")

He also wrote Don Corrado de Gerrera (1803), probably the first example of Russian Gothic fiction.^[2]

References

1. ^ Remnick, David. The Translation Wars
2. ^ The Gothic-fantastic in nineteenth-century Russian literature, Neil Cornwell, page 59

Persondata
Name	Gnedich
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1784
Place of birth
Date of death	1833
Place of death

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