Georgics by Virgil, translated by A.F. Voeikov: History of Creation and Oblivion

Abstract

The article reconstructs three stages of A.F. Voeikov’s translation of Georgics by Virgil, undertaken by him “in competition” with the translations of the ancient epic poetry of A.F. Merzlyakov and N.I. Gnedich. Initially (around 1813), Voeikov translated the Latin poet in iambic 6-foot with cross-rhyming, largely focusing on the French translation of Jacques Delisle (1769), which was considered “exemplary.” But under the influence of S.S. Uvarov’s “polemics about hexameters,” Voeikov joined the winning point of view — about the priority of the transmission of the ancient epic by Russian dactylic hexameter, and reworked his translation, counting on success and imperial favor, similar to those that Gnedich’s Iliad won. But despite the intermediary efforts of V.A. Zhukovsky, Voeikov did not receive any royal favor. At the end of the 1810s for the third time he radically changes the strategy of his translation of Georgics, striving for equilinearity and refusing to look back at Delisle’s experience. This last edition is published from the archival manuscript in the Appendix to this work for the first time.