Vasily Zhukovsky

Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky (1783–1852) was the founder of Russian Romanticism. His free translations and adaptations of English and German poetry, among them Gray’s “Elegy”, Bürger’s ballads and the ballad “Svetlana” (1813), brought a new emotional range to Russian verse. He later served as tutor to the future Alexander II and was an early mentor and friend of Pushkin.

The versions here are by John Bowring, from his Specimens of the Russian Poets (Part the First, 1821; Part the Second, 1823), one of the first English anthologies of Russian verse. They are free, rhymed versions, and should be read as period translations rather than as literal renderings.