ABSTRACT
N ikolai Stepanovich Gumilev was a poet, playwright, translator and essayist. As one of the founders of the so-called Academy of Verse [Akademia Stikha, 1909], and later of the Guild of Poets [Tsekh poetov, 1914-1917], Gumilev professed that all people could learn how to write poetry as long as they followed the instructions of the guild’s masters. A leading member of the Acmeist movement, he considered craftsmanship to be the essential element in poetry, and he compared composing poetry to building a cathedral. His early collections of poetry The Way of the Conquistadors [Put’ konkvistadorov, 1905], The Pearls [Zhemchuga, 1910], and Alien Sky [Chuzhoe nebo, 1912] reveal his fascination with exotic subject matters. The same fascination with the exotic inspired his travels in Europe, Asia and Africa. An officer in the Russian army, he summarized his World War I experience in a poetic collection The Quiver [Kolchan, 1916]. His last poetry collection Pillar of Fire [Ognennyi stolp, 1921] is believed to represent Gumilev’s return to the aesthetic of Symbolism. His play Gondla (1917), which celebrates a hero-martyr who dies for the sake of his ideas, could be considered prophetic in that it predicted the death of its author. Gumilev made no secret of his anti-Bolshevik views, and in 1922 he was executed for his participation in a monarchist uprising. Throughout his life, Gumilev was influenced by the ideals of French poetry, especially by the works of Théophile Gautier, whose poetry he translated. The Russian version of Gautier’s Emaux et Camées appeared as Enamels and Cameos [Emali i kamei] in 1914. His other translations included The China Pavillion: Chinese Poems [Farforoviy
A Babylonian Epic [Gil’gamesh. Vavilonskiy epos, 1919]. He also translated Coleridge’s Ballad of the Ancient Mariner which appeared as A Poem of an Old Sailor [Poema o starom moriake] in 1919. His translations of French folk songs were published posthumously in Berlin in 1923. In his 1919 article ‘Poetic Translations’ [‘Perevody stikhotvornye’], Gumilev laid out the basis for his approach to translation which could also serve as a master’s instructions for beginning translators.
