Vasily Zhukovsky - Works

Works

In the opinion of Vladimir Nabokov, Zhukovsky belonged to the class of poets who verge on greatness but never quite attain to that glory. His main contribution was as a stylistic and formal innovator who borrowed freely from European literature in order to provide high-quality models for "original" works in Russian. His translation of Gray's "Elegy" is still cited by scholars as the conventional starting-point for the Russian Romantic Movement. He also wrote some prose, the best known example of which is the 1809 short story "Marina roshcha" ("Mary's grove"), about the ancient past of Moscow; it was inspired by Nikolay Karamzin's famous story "Bednaya Liza" ("Poor Liza," 1792).

Zhukovsky translated from a staggeringly wide range of sources, often without attribution, given that modern ideas of intellectual property did not exist in his day. In his choice of original, however, he was consistently motivated by formal principles, above all generic. Following his initial success with the "Elegy," he was especially admired for his first-rate melodious translations of German and English ballads. Among these, the ballad "Ludmila" (1808) and its companion piece "Svetlana" (1813) are considered landmarks in the Russian poetic tradition. Both are free translations of Gottfried August Burger's well-known German ballad "Lenore," although each renders the original in a completely different way. Characteristically, Zhukovsky later translated "Lenore" yet a third time as part of his lifelong effort to develop a natural-sounding Russian dactylic hexameter. His many translations of Schiller -- including both Classical and Romantic ballads, lyrics, and the verse drama Jungfrau von Orléans (about Joan of Arc) -- became classic works in Russian that many consider to be of equal if not higher quality than their originals. They were remarkable for their psychological depth, strongly influencing the younger generation of Russian realists, among them Dostoevsky, who famously called them "nash Schiller" ("our Schiller").

Zhukovsky also wrote original verse. His love lyrics to Masha Protasova, such as "Moi drug, khranitel'-angel moi" ("My friend, my guardian angel ..."), are minor classics of the genre. Probably his best-known original poem is the patriotic ode "A Bard in the Camp of the Russian Warriors," which he wrote to boost the morale of Russian troops during his service on Kutuzov's general staff. He also composed the lyrics for the national anthem of Imperial Russia, "God Save the Tsar!"

In the late 1830s, after a period of partial withdrawal from the literary scene, Zhukovsky staged a come-back with a highly-original verse translation of his German friend Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's prose novella Undine. Written in a waltzing hexameter, Zhukovsky's version later inspired the libretto for an opera by Tchaikovsky.

On retiring from court, Zhukovsky devoted his remaining years to hexameter translations of Eastern poetry, including long excerpts from the Persian epic Shahnameh. His greatest achievement in this period, however, was his translation of Homer's Odyssey, which he finally published in 1849. Although the translation has been strongly criticized for its distortions of the original, it became a classic in its own right and occupies a notable place in the history of Russian poetry. Some scholars argue that both his Undina and his Odyssey -- as long narrative works in verse—made a significant, albeit oblique contribution to the development of the 19th century Russian novel.

All in all, Zhukovsky's work probably constitutes the most important body of literary hermeneutics in the modern Russian language. He is often considered the founder of a "German school" of Russian poets and as such has influenced figures as far afield as Fyodor Tyutchev and Marina Tsvetaeva.