A Window to Europe One Hundred Years Later

The review contains a general description of the scientific monograph by the famous St. Petersburg literary scholar O. B. Kafanova, Translations of N. M. Karamzin in the “Bulletin of Europe”: Content, Philosophy, Poetics. This publication takes into account 350 foreign texts translated by Karamzin into Russian and published on the pages of this journal in the period from 1802 to 1803. The monograph is based on the results of the author’s observations of the main principles of Karamzin’s translation strategy, the composition of the original sources, and the nature of their creative reception by the Russian translator. Each of the four parts of the monograph presents the main thematic blocks of the journal: materials on Napoleon Bonaparte, political life of Europe, fiction and philosophical journalism, works of a historical, philosophical, ethnographic, and educational nature, extracted from popular European publications. In characterizing Karamzin’s large-scale publishing initiative, O. B. Kafanova draws on the broad cultural and historical context, which is accompanied by a detailed comparative analysis of the translation with the foreign-language original source, which provides an opportunity for reasoned conclusions regarding the value position of the translator and editor of the Bulletin of Europe (Vestnik Evropy).