The article examines one of G.R. Derzhavin’s translations from L. Kozegarten, created in the summer of 1810, during the period of work on the first part of the Discourse on Lyrical Poetry, where, according to A.E. Makhov, an updated understanding of the topos “poetry is like painting” is presented: the lyricist depicts what is born in his imagination, and does not describe the visible. Apparition is a free translation, “imitation” of the poem Die Erscheinung (“Ich lag auf grünen Matten...”), which is about the appearance to the poet of an indefinite image of a girl (Mägdlein), indicating to him that the fatherland of love is only in heaven. The article clarifies the source of the translation (the first edition of the poem, and not the second, later put to music by F. Schubert), notes extraneous to the original, Derzhavin’s own motives, as well as lexical means, thanks to which, on the one hand, the heavenly vision becomes more “visible” (picturesque), and on the other hand, it is recoded into the apocalyptic image of “a women clothed in the sun” (Rev 12:1), traditionally interpreted as an allegory of the Church of Christ.
G.R. Derzhavin; L. Kosegarten; spiritual poems; Apocalypse; history of Russian literature; German poetry in Russia; romanticism; translations; theory of lyric poetry; A.E. Makhov.