Mental Travelers. Obscure Pages of the Artistic Dialogue between Nikolai Gumilyov and William Blake

Gumilev-Translator As A Guide To The World Culture

“…In 1920, when the translation of "Némée" was created, Gumilev wrote poems that describe the space of "delirium", the world on the verge of reality and delusion -for example, in the works "Amongst Gypsies", "Lost Street-car" the lyrical hero appears in some twisted, changed world which does not live according to the usual logical laws (Kulikova, 2015(Kulikova, , 2017Serdechnaya, 2019;Zavelskaya, 2017). A reference to this world is the mention of "delirium" in the translation of Heredia: if the character of the original is just scared, then the character of the translation as if for a moment falls into this delusional space, and immediately realizes that he is not in the world of delirium, but in the real world, and the man approaching him who defeated the lion is even more monstrous than what he first imagined.…”