Nikolay Gnedich

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Nikolay Ivanovich Gnedich (Russian: Николай Иванович Гнедич) (February 2(13), 1784, Poltava - February 3(15), 1833, Saint Petersburg) was a Russian poet and translator best known for his idyll The Fishers (1822). His translation of the Iliad (1807-29) is still the standard one.

Alexander Pushkin assessed Gnedich's Iliad as "a noble exploit worthy of Achilles" and addressed to him an epistle starting with lines "With Homer you conversed alone for days and nights..." [1]

Pushkin also penned an epigram in Homeric hexameters, which unfavourably compares one-eyed Gnedich with the blind Greek poet: "Kriv byl Gnedich poet, prelozhitel slepogo Gomera, / Bokom odnim s obraztsom skhozh i ego perevod."