Book Description

Excerpt from Russian Lyrics: Songs of Cossack Lover, Patriot and Peasant To the Reader. The translations in this little collection make no pretension to being more than an effort to share the delight found in them; from which most of the world is debarred by the difficulty of the language in which they are written. They have been chosen at random, each for some intrinsic charm or because of its bearing upon some peculiar phase of the author. Very few of the lyrics of Pushkin have been included, for the reason that the great founder of Russian poetry has been more widely translated than any other Russian poet, and is therefore available in several languages. Remembering always that Heine declared translation was betrayal, - the rhyme and smoothness have in every case been sacrificed when necessary to preserve the exact rhythm, and as far as possible the vigour and colour, as well as thought of the original; a task entirely beyond me save for the co-operation of an accomplished Russian linguist who has kindly assisted in the literal translation of every poem here presented. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.