Artwork: Miniature portrait of Byron believed to have been painted when the poet was 29 years old and living in Venice, c.1817

I came across a story yesterday about a Russian translator and lecturer, Tatiana Grigorivna Gnedich, who in 1944 was arrested and sentenced to ten years in a Russian labour camp for treason to “the Soviet Motherland”. The facts of the sentence are not detailed. Up until that point Tatiana, having been born into a family of scholars and poets, was an exceptional translator and teacher of foreign languages, speaking fluent English and French. Prior to her imprisonment Tatiana had memorised in English the sixteen cantos of more than 16,000 thousand lines of Lord Byron’s epic poem, Don Juan. While in prison she was able to secure paper to write on and accomplished the extraordinary feat over several years of translating the memorised Don Juan into Russian. Upon her release Tatiana’s translation was published and became the classic Russian version of Byron’s poem.

Such an achievement of the human mind speaks of Tatiana’s love of language and brilliance as a translator, but also a strength of will that in such dehumanising conditions she was able to transcend to create something truly remarkable.

During English literature professor and critic George Steiner’s Gifford Lecture at Glasgow University in 1990, he spoke about this story and said, “There is nothing you can do to a human being who is like that. No state can touch this. No despair can touch it.” And what stood out for me were his words, “What you don’t know by heart, you haven’t loved deeply enough.”