WHAT THE DWELLER OF THE VYBORG SIDE HAS SAID ABOUT TRANSLATION

The pseudonym "Dweller of the Vyborg Sides" has been written into the history of Russian Ro manticism by P. A. Vyazemsky, who gave his programmatic pro Romantic preface to A. S. Pushkin's poem The Fountain of Bakhchisaray - a title, Conversation Between the Publisher and the Classic from the Vyborg Side or Basil Island (1824). Analysis of the only text published under this pseudo nym, the critical article "On Translations", that appeared in three issues of Blagonamerenny maga zine in 1822-1823, shows that it was by no means a programmatic attack of the "Classics" of N. A. Tsertelev type, aimed against "the new school of poetry", but a petty, imitative, self contradic tory statement authored presumably by B. M. Fyodorov and A. E. Izmaylov and made primarily in the interests of Blagonamerenny and the inner polemics within VOLRS (Free Society of Champions of Russian Literature).