In the first of our new lecture series in partnership with the Anglo-Russian Research Network, Dr Muireann Maguire speaks on the origins of English translation of Russian poetry.
Sir John Bowring (1792–1872), an Exeter-born wool merchant, visited Russia on a business trip in 1819. He was received at the Imperial Court in St Petersburg and, with the help of a German friend, Friedrich von Adelung, he learned to appreciate Russian poetry, then just at the dawn of its Golden Age. Bowring would become a celebrated polymath, diplomat, economist, world traveller, and ultimately Governor of Hong Kong, but scholars of Russian remember him as one of the first British translators of Russian literature.
In 1821, Bowring translated and published the first English-language anthology of Russian poets, Russian Anthology: Specimens of the Russian Poets, for which he was later honoured by Tsar Alexander I. Whilst omitting Russia’s greatest poet, Alexander Pushkin (born 1799), Bowring’s selection was otherwise highly representative, including such influential writers as Mikhail Lomonosov, Nikolai Karamzin, Konstantin Batiushkov and Gavriil Derzhavin. This talk will discuss British-Russian relations at the time of Bowring's visit, explore the quality of his translations, and discuss their contribution to the reception of Russian literature in Britain.
Dr Muireann Maguire is Senior Lecturer in Russian at the University of Exeter and Principal Investigator on the ERC-funded project “The Dark Side of Translation: 20th and 21st Century Translation from Russian as a Political Phenomenon in the UK, Ireland, and the USA.” She has previously taught Russian literature and language at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and at Queen Mary, University of London. Her academic specializations include the literary Gothic-fantastic, the representation of pregnancy and childbirth in literature, and the nineteenth-century Russian novel. Her book Stalin’s Ghosts: Gothic Themes in Early Soviet Literature was published by Peter Lang in 2012. She has published several literary translations, including a short story collection Red Spectres: Russian 20th-Century Gothic-Fantastic Tales (2012). A second collection, White Magic, is forthcoming in 2021. She is currently working on translating a novel by the poet Georgii Shengeli.
The Anglo-Russian Research Network was established in 2011 by Rebecca Beasley and Matthew Taunton to bring together research students, scholars and members of the general public interested in the influence of Russian and Soviet culture and politics in Britain in the period 1880–1950. The ARRN invites proposals for reading groups on any aspect of Anglo-Russian history of cultural relations and literary/translation/reception/art history studies during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (c. 1880–1950). To get involved, please, contact Dr Ben Phillips, Nicholas Hall or Anna Maslenova.
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