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4 unusual facts about Friedrich von Bodenstedt


Death of the Poet

The first publication (a German translation under the title "Lermontov's lament at the grave of Alexander Pushkin") was in 1852 in Friedrich von Bodenstedt's Mikhail Lermontoff's Poetic Legacy.

Friedrich von Bodenstedt

This led to his appointment in 1844 as the head of a public school at Tiflis, Governorate of Tiflis (present-day Georgia).

He took the opportunity of his proximity to Persia to study Persian literature, and translate and publish in 1851 a volume of poetry under the fanciful title, Die Lieder des Mirza Schaffy (English trans. by E. d'Esterre, 1880).

Though he claimed that the volume was his own poetry published under oriental disguise to gain popularity, it has been argued that the volume was a successful translation of the Persian and Azeri poems of an Azeri poet, and a known acquaintance of his, Mirza Shafi Vazeh.



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