Alexander Pope: a short biography of the English poet

Alexander Pope - a famous translator of works by Homer, an English writer and poet, who created in the 18th century.

Youth years

Coming from a well-off family, Alexander Pope was born in 1688, on May 21. Child and youth years, the future writer spent in the Windsor Forest, Binfield, on which his family was replaced by a bustling London in 1700. Calm rural atmosphere contributed to the development of Alexander as a person.

In his home environment, Alexander Pope received a decent education, which allowed him to begin to get involved in poetic lines early. To a greater extent, the future poet gravitated toward the epic works of Homer, Milton, Virgil, filled with heroic themes.

The beginning of the literary path

Like Virgil, Alexander Pope entered the literature with the "Pastoral" (1709), and in 1711 introduced the reader to the poem "The Experience of Criticism", in which, in defending the writers of antiquity, he appealed to critics of the present day with a call for leniency , Tolerance and gentleness. This work became a kind of manifesto of the British classicism of the Renaissance period.

From 1712 to 1714, Alexander Pope, who had a passion for the epic and an innate penchant for satire from childhood, worked on the heroic comic poem The Rape of the Curl, in which the modern secular community showed a great sense of humor. The work tells of two families who quarreled violently because the young lord jokingly cut the curl of a lover. By the way, the names of the heroes of the poem were named satellites of the planet Uranus: Umbriel, Ariel and Belinda.

Translations of Alexander Pope

The translation of the Iliad into English by Alexander Pope prompted his enthusiasm for Homer's work, as well as the perseverance of close friends. The lack of knowledge of the ancient Greek language, the lack of higher education was more than offset by the author's enormous work capacity. Translation in 6 volumes in the artistic sense was very powerful and vivid. The painstaking work dragged on for several years, from 1715 to 1726, and was carried out by the previously not used pentameter, otherwise it was a "heroic verse", which became an innovation for English literature.

During the Jacobite riots of 1715, Alexander Pope, who was under suspicion, was strongly criticized by the Whig writers for communicating with D. Arbetnoth, J. Swift and others. Pope was forced in 1716 to move with his family in Chiswick (near London), where a year later he buried his father. Then, with his mother, moved to Twicken, settled in a house on the banks of the Thames and lived there until the end of his days.

On the protection of satire

From 1722 to 1726, Pope also translated into the English language "Odyssey" without any help from outside, and then began to take an active interest in Shakespeare's work, trying to save his translations from the vulgarisms inherent in the original. In 1733, the light was seen by several significant works, among them Imitations of Horace, which defended satire and sharply criticized corrupt politicians. Alexander Pope - a poet of the 18th century, believed that satire has the right to freely express what it considers necessary. Therefore, behind-the-scenes furious battles of politicians, unpresentable quarrels in the royal family, sweeping all the mania of exchange games, he tried to heal with mockery. The most famous of the "Imitations" is the poem "The Message to Doctor Arbuthnot", written in 1734.

By age 56, the already weak throughout the life of the English poet's health was undermined by asthma and exacerbation of the inflammatory process in the kidneys. Died Alexander Pope, whose verses made a huge contribution to the development of English literature and became her invaluable heritage, May 30, 1744.