TREDIAKOVSKII, Vasilii Kirillovich, Mikhail Vasil'evich L...

Choix des meilleurs morceaux de la littérature russe, à dater de sa naissance jusqu'au règne de Catherine II; traduits en Français, par M. L. Pappa do Poulo [sic] et par le Cen. Gallet.

Paris, Leport, 1800. 8vo, pp. xxiii, [1], 390, [2], with a half-title (signed on the verso as usualby the translators and publisher) and a final advertisement leaf; front free endpaper repaired, and first few leaves slightly dampstained and with a short wormhole in the gutter, but a very good copy in contemporary half calf and blue paper boards, joints restored. First edition of the first French anthology of Russian literature, including the first, and apparently only, French versions of several important works; the translations are by Manuel Léonard Pappadopoulo and Pierre Gallet, who also provide an interesting preface.Trediakovsky (1703-1769), 'premier poëte russe', was, with Lomonosov (1711-1765), one of the founders of modern Russian poetry and 'the first to introduce the genre of the solemn ode' (Terras); his famous 'Oda torzhestvennaia o sdache goroda Gdanska' (1734), translated here, was written a year before his influential treatise, A New and Brief Method for Composing Russian Verse. Lomonosov, the outstanding man of science and letters in the period, is himself represented by six odes written for state occasions. His imperial subjects 'provided suitable opportunities to give full play to the baroque exuberance of his high poetic style ... Lomonosov's one unfinished heroic poem, entitled "Peter the Great," is exuberant and hyperbolic in praise of the tsar's victories and noble deeds, particularly in his wars with Sweden. It is written on a monumental scale, following the pattern of classical heroic epics'. 'Pierre-le-Grand, poëme heroique' had been translated in 1755 by Baron de Tschoudy, and appears here in a prose translation on pp. 129-170.Sumarokov (1718-1777), a poet and dramatist, learned from his predecessors but rejected Trediakovsky's formality and Lomonosov's baroque grandeur in favour of a more simple vernacular style, and was arguably the most influential of the three authors. As well as the satirical comedy Likhoimets ('The Usurer', 1768), an important account of the Strelitz uprisings of 1682 and several smaller pieces, Pappadopoulo and Gallet translate Sumarokov's most provocative tragedy Dmitrii Samozvanets ('Dmitry the Pretender', 1771), which 'went so far as to suggest that even the illegitimate acquisition of a throne could be legitimized by good rule' (Terras). Sumarokov, 'the Racine of the North' or 'a conceited ass' depending on whose testimony you prefer (his own, or Catherine the Great's), evidently proved popular enough in France to inspire the publication of a further volume of his tragedies in 1801, also translated by Pappadopoulo.

• GBP 1,250.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: F984

• bookseller: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)