Nikolay Gnedich

Nikolay Ivanovich Gnedich Никола́й Ива́нович Гне́дич
Born	13 February 1784 Poltava, Russian Empire
Died	15 February 1833 (aged 49) Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire

Nikolay Ivanovich Gnedich (Russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Гне́дич; IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ ˈɡnʲedʲɪtɕ]; 13 February [O.S. 2 February] 1784 – 15 February [O.S. 3 February] 1833) 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..."

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]

("Крив был Гнедич-поэт, преложитель слепого Гомера,

Боком одним с образцом схож и его перевод.")

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