ABSTRACT
Andrei Ivanovich Turgenev was a poet, critic, and translator. He was the eldest son of the great Russian educator and freemason Ivan Petrovich Turgenev. In 1801, together with Vasilii Zhukovskii and Aleksei Merzliakov, he founded the Friendly Literary Society [Druzheskoe Literaturnoe Obshchestvo] and became its spiritual leader. Turgenev was among the first to promote the need for a new literary language based on the emerging concept of the nation in Russia, and a series of recent studies have described his importance in the formation of the Decembrists’ revolutionary and literary programmes, especially in their articulation of the civic functions of poetry. Translation was a major activity among the members of the society, and the choice of texts for translation reflected the desire of its members to introduce a civic literature into Russia. Turgenev translated from French, English and German, and he is often viewed as a key figure for promoting German literature in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century. His translations from German included works by Goethe, Schiller, and August von Kotzebue. He also translated Shakespeare’s Macbeth, excerpts from Benjamin Franklin’s essays, and William Penn’s No Cross, No Crown. His translation of Kotzebue’s Die Negersklaven [The Negro Slaves] as Negry v nevole [Negroes in Captivity] was read as a condemnation of Russian serfdom. Intellectually and professionally invested in European politics, Turgenev also started translating works by the popular German historian and publicist Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz, but his early death at the age of 23 prevented him from finishing this project. Despite his premature death, he exerted a lasting influence on the development of Russian literature in the pre-Decembrist period, and particularly on his great friend and confidante Zhukovskii, who would become Russia’s perhaps greatest poet-translator.
