
Nikolay Gnedich : biography
1784 – 1833
Nikolay Ivanovich Gnedich ( 2 February (13 February) 1784 – 3 February (15 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.Remnick, David. ("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.The Gothic-fantastic in nineteenth-century Russian literature, Neil Cornwell, page 59