by Tatyana ZDORIK, Cand. Sc. (Geol. & Mineral.), member of the Goethe Commission of the RAS Scientific Council "History of World Culture", State Institute of Art Criticism, RF Ministry of Culture, Moscow, Russia The Moscow-based INSAN Publishers have brought out a new edition of Goethe's works translated into Russian by Venera Dumayeva-Valiyeva. The interest in this great German author is much alive here in Russia. Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) needs no superlatives like great, preeminent and so forth... He is just as intimate to us as are de Cervantes, Dante, Shakespeare or Moliére... Or just like the great Russian authors Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Leo Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoyevsky. Germany boasts of two giants, Johann Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. стр. 104 Goethe is not just as fortunate in this country as Shakespeare published time and again, actually every year. Goethe's first Russian translations appeared in the 18th century; the first translation of Faust came out in 1838; his collected works in six volumes were published in St. Petersburg between 1865 and 1871. And his complete edition in 13 volumes, between 1932 and 1949 (published in Moscow and Leningrad). That's all... In 2009, the Goethe jubilee year, a few Russian editions of the poet's works came off the press in small prints. Sold out immediately, they are now hard to come by So the latest edition is a gratifying fact. It is in a good format, illustrated with Goethe's portraits painted or drawn in different years of his life. Each translation goes side by side with the German original. The translator, Venera Dumayeva-Valiyeva, has done a good job. She does deserve kudos: hers was a bold undertaking, for Goethe the thinker and poet is a universe indeed! The range of his literary works is staggering in its diversity-lyrical poems and elegies, prose novels and drama pieces; ballads and fairy-tales... A man of versatile parts, Goethe lived a ... Читать далее