ABSTRACT
Indeed, Schiller cannot be forgotten by those who have smelled the fragrance of his inspirational poetry. The truthfulness of my words can best be proved by the book under discussion. For many years, despite their anti-romantic tendencies and some inborn Russian mistrust of the mysterious German muses, all of our best poets worked from time to time on a translation from Schiller. These were followed by lesser poets, and then even by those of very little talent; and yet, even the work of these least fortunate children of Apollo is worthy of attention. Mr. Gerbel’s bibliographical article [‘On Russian Translations from Schiller’] has introduced some people who had previously written only prose and who ventured into the winged poetic field only because of Schiller. It is not even worth mentioning here that all of this has happened not simply as a result of fashion or some temporary infatuation.
