Undine

The literary success of the German writer-romantic Friedrich de la Mott Fouke-a quite significant figure in Germany of the 1810s-turned out to be short-term. The only work of this “excessively prolific”, according to his contemporary Ludwig Tik, a writer who withstood the test of time, was the fairy -tale story "Undine". But in Russia, Fouke was not lucky with her: the brilliant poetic translation of Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky completely overshadowed the figure of a German author. Since then, one and a half centuries have not even tried to translate the story of the mermaid in love in Russia. It was the "romantic tale of Zhukovsky" at the beginning of the 20th century that was published with color illustrations of the English artist Arthur Rekham, originally created for the story of Fouquet. The prosaic translation of "Undina" was already made in the 20th century by a German philologist, a researcher of literature of the XVII-XVIII centuries Nina Alexandrovna Zhirmunskaya