ABSTRACT
The translation of Paradise Lost was a purely commercial venture. The first among all French writers, the teacher of a whole generation of men of letters, who once occupied the post of minister and has on several occasions served as ambassador, Chateaubriand translated Milton in his old age because he needed money. Irrespective of his motives, the labour he undertook was a noble one. He could have made a deal with his own conscience and enjoyed the generosity of the new government in the form of power, fame, and money, but he chose honest poverty. Having refused the Chamber of Peers, where he had eloquently spoken on so many occasions, Chateaubriand arrives at the booksellers, proving that only his manuscript, not his conscience, was for sale. How would critics react to that? Would they be too harsh on that noble labourer and judge his goods like thrifty consumers? And yet, Chateaubriand does not need any preferential treatment since the two volumes of this translation are as brilliant as all his previous work, whatever harsh critics choose to say about its imperfections. The undeniable beauty of its pages are worthy of the highest achievements of the great writer, and this will save his book from the condescending reader despite any flaws. […]
P etr Ivanovich Kapnist was a writer, play-wright, and poet. A member of a Russified Greek noble family, Kapnist worked for much of his adult life as a censor and from 1868-1874 was the editor of the journal The Government Herald [Pravitel’stvennyi Vestnik]. His work brought him into contact with a number of prominent writers, such as Ivan Goncharov, Nikolai Nekrasov, and Iakov Polonskii. He was dismissed from his position with the Moscow censorship committee for having allowed the essay ‘Last Year in Russian History’ by M. P. Pogodin, into print; the incident led to the closing of the journal Parus [The Sail]. He held a number of government positions and then served many years with the Petersburg censorship committee.
