About the book: 2012 / The anthology presents Konstantin Balmont (1867–1942) as a translator of French-language poetry as fully as possible (A. de Musset, C. Baudelaire, Sully-Prudhomme, J.M. de Heredia, C. Van Lerberg). The second section includes translations of poems by K.D. Balmont, belonging to French poets - his contemporaries. The book opens with M. Tsvetaeva’s essay “The Tale of Balmont.” “Giving artistic equivalence in translation is a never-impossible task. A work of art, in its essence, is singular and unique in its face. You can only give something approaching more or less. Sometimes you give an exact translation, but the soul disappears, sometimes you give a free translation, but the soul remains. Sometimes the translation is accurate, and the soul remains in it. But, generally speaking, poetic translation is only an echo, a response, an echo, a reflection. As a rule, the echo is poorer than the sound, the echo reproduces only partially the voice that awakened it, but sometimes, in the mountains, in caves, in vaulted castles, the echo, having arisen, will sing your cry seven times, seven times the echo is more beautiful and stronger than the sound. This happens sometimes, but very rarely, with poetic translations. And the reflection is only a vague reflection of the face. But with high qualities of the mirror, with favorable conditions for its position and lighting, a beautiful face in the mirror becomes more beautiful and radiant in its reflected existence. Echoes in the forest are one of the best charms." K. D. Balmont