The first translations of S. Gessner’s works into the Russian language

Abstract

The paper discusses the early translations of works by S. Gessner into Russian. In 1772, the Vechera magazine published translations of five idylls from the homonymous collection by Gessner (1756). A number of conclusions important for understanding how Gessner’s works are perceived in Russia were made from having studied these texts. Firstly, the emergence of Russian translators’ interest in the works by Gessner was apparently due to the literary reputation of the Swiss author created in the 60s and early 70s in France. Secondly, we managed to find the probable source of translations published in the Vechera magazine. In our opinion, it is a book “Idylles et poemes champêtres” containing M. Hubert’s French translations published in 1762. In addition, it is significant that Gessner’s translations coexisted in Vechera with numerous other examples of the pastoral genre. In order to understand the difference of Gessner’s idylls from other pastoral works for Russian readers, they were analyzed in terms of composition, subject matter, role of landscape, and presence of moral component. The analysis allowed us to conclude that even the first translations of the idylls could provide the readers with an understanding of Gessner’s works originality. Despite the fact that only five small works were published in Vechera, the readers of the magazine could get an idea of novelty introduced by Gessner to the development of the idyll genre even from these texts.