3 ms·
Poe was very much loved here in Eastern Europe. I know he was loved in Romania, from where I'm from, my dad had a couple of his translated volumes in our librar
by paganel 3y ago
Poe was very much loved here in Eastern Europe. I know he was loved in Romania, from where I'm from, my dad had a couple of his translated volumes in our library, in fact The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is one of the first books I've read as a kid (the title seemed interesting, that's why I had chosen it).
At a quick search I found this blog-post detailing Poe's influence on Russian literature [1], apparently he had been translated in Russian since pretty early on, in the 1840s (via the French translation, not directly from English). Found this part pretty interesting:
> ”Edgar Poe—the underground stream in Russia.” So the Russian Symbolist poet Aleksandr Blok noted in his journal for November 6, 1911, a topic for a future critical study.
[1] https://simonbeattie.co.uk/blog/archives/2151/ https://simonbeattie.co.uk/blog/archives/2151/
- DFHippie 3y agoPoe benefited from having translators with a great deal of literary talent of their own. For example, Charles Baudelaire was one of his translators.
- tremon 3y agoSame in NL: one of his translators was Simon Vestdijk, a prolific author and poet himself. In a way, his translations ruined Dutch literature for me: the fantastic imagery of Poe and the lyrical translations of Vestdijk produced a combination that not many home-grown writers could match.
- simiones 3y agoAs a Romanian as well, I was quite surprised to find out that Mihai Eminescu was one of the people who translated Poe's work in Romanian. This was especially surprising given how much more modern Poe's work felt compared to Eminescu's, and yet Eminescu was born one year after Poe died...