Polonskiy (1820-1898), a contemporary and a great friend of Turguéneff, displayed all the elements of a great artist. His verses are full of true melody, his poetical images are rich, and yet natural and simple, and the subjects he took were not devoid of originality. This is why his verses were always read with interest. But he had none of that force, or of that depth of conception, or of that intensity of passion which might have made of him a great poet. His best piece, A Musical Cricket, is written in a jocose mood, and his most popular verses are those which he wrote in the style of folk-poetry. One may say that they have become the property of the people. Altogether Polonskiy appealed chiefly to the quiet, moderate “intellectual” who does not much care about going to the bottom of the great problems of life. If he touched upon some of these, it was owing to a passing, rather than to a life interest in them.
One more poet of this group, perhaps the most characteristic of it, was A. Shenshin (1820-1892), much better known under his nom-de-plume of A. Fet. He remained all his life a poet of “pure art for art’s sake.” He wrote a good deal about economical and social matters, always in the reactionary sense, but—in prose. As to verses, he never resorted to them for anything but the worship of beauty for beauty’s sake. In this direction he succeeded very well. His short verses are especially pretty and sometimes almost beautiful. Nature, in its quiet, lovely aspects, which lead to a gentle, aimless sadness, he depicted sometimes to perfection, as also those moods of the mind which can be best described as indefinite sensations, slightly erotic. However, taken as a whole, his poetry appears monotonous.
To the same group one might add A. K. Tolstóy, whose verses attain sometimes a rare perfection and sound like the best music. The feelings expressed in them may not be very deep, but the form and the music of the verses are delightful. They have, moreover, the stamp of originality, because nobody could write poems in the style of Russian folk-poetry better than Alexéi Tolstóy. Theoretically, he preached art for art’s sake. But he never remained true to this canon and, taking either the life of old epical Russia, or the period of the struggle between the Moscow Tsars and the feudal boyars, he developed his admiration of the olden times in very beautiful verses. He also wrote a novel, Prince Serébryanyi, from the times of John the Terrible, which was very widely read; but his main work was a trilogy of dramas from the same interesting period of Russian history (see Ch. VI).
Almost all the poets just mentioned have translated a great deal, and they have enriched Russian literature with such a number of translations from all languages—so admirably done as a rule—that no other literature of the world, not even the German, can claim to possess an equally great treasury. Some translations, beginning with Zhukóvskiy’s rendering of the Prisoner of Chillon, or the translations of Hiawatha, are simply classical. All Schiller, most of Goethe, nearly all Byron, a great deal of Shelley, all that is worth knowing in Tennyson, Wordsworth, Crabbe, all that could be translated from Browning, Barbier, Victor Hugo, and so on, are as familiar in Russia as in the mother countries of these poets, and occasionally even more so. As to such favourites as Heine, I really don’t know whether his best poems lose anything in those splendid translations which we owe to our best poets; while the songs of Béranger, in the free translation of Kúrotchkin, are not in the least inferior to the originals.
We have moreover some excellent poets who are chiefly known for their translations. Such are: N. Gerbel (1827-1883), who made his reputation by an admirable rendering of the Lay of Igor’s Raid (see Ch. I.), and later on, by his versions of a great number of West European poets. His edition of Schiller, translated by Russian Poets (1857), followed by similar editions of Shakespeare, Byron, and Goethe, was epoch making.
Mikhail Mikháiloff (1826-1865), one of the most brilliant writers of the Contemporary, condemned in 1861 to hard labour in Siberia, where he died four years later, was especially renowned for his translations from Heine, as also for those from Longfellow, Hood, Tennyson, Lenan, and others.
P. Weinberg (born 1830) made his reputation by his excellent translations from Shakespeare, Byron (Sardanapal), Shelley (Cenci), Sheridan, Coppe, Gutzkow, Heine, etc., and for his editions of the work of Goethe and Heine in Russian translations. He still continues to enrich Russian literature with excellent versions of the masterpieces of foreign literatures.
L. Mey (1822-1862), the author of a number of poems from popular life, written in a very picturesque language, and of several dramas, of which those from old Russian life are especially valuable and were taken by Rímsky Korsákoff as the subjects of his operas, has also made a great number of translations. He translated not only from the modern West European poets—English, French, German, Italian, and Polish—but also from Greek, Latin, and Old Hebrew, all of which languages he knew to perfection. Besides excellent translations of Anacreon and the idylls of Theocritus, he wrote also beautiful poetical versions of the Song of Songs and of various other portions of the Bible.
D. Mináyeff (1835-1889), the author of a great number of satirical verses, also belongs to this group of translators. His renderings from Byron, Burns, Cornwall, and Moore, Goethe and Heine, Leopardi, Dante, and several others, were, as a rule, extremely fine.