Gaponov Boris (Dov)

Gaponov Boris (Dov) (1934-1972), Jewish poet, translator. He was born in Evpatoria, Crimea. During the WW II, in 1941, he and his family arrived in Georgia and settled in Kutaisi. In 1956, B. Gaponov entered the Moscow Institute of Oriental Languages, but being hard up for money, he was constrained to abandon his studies and return to Kutaisi, where he worked at various newspapers as an employee of editorial staff. As from 1960s he was engaged in translating various books. B. Gaponov was well versed in Georgian as well as in Ivrit, which he learned from his grandfather, who was a Rabbi. Thanks to the perfect command of both languages and faultless translator’s intuition, Shota Rustaveli’s The Man in the Panther’s Skin, rendered by him into the Hebrew, was acknowledged as a model of brilliant artistic translation. In experts’ judgement, his rendition is an excellent poetic sample of classical Herbrew language. At the same time, it is as close to the versification of the original poem as possible. Swiss scholar V. Arnold wrote: ‘The Jewish translation of The Man in Panther’s Skin is a real sensation. The occurrence has two stars: the first one is Rustaveli - the author of the poem; the second star is Boris Gaponov, who flawlessly translated the poem into the classical Hebrew language’. Full version of Gaponov’s translation was published in Israel in 1969. The book won two national prizes of Israel: one award – named after Saul Chernikhov (1969), the other – named after the President (1971). In 1989, B. Gaponov was posthumously awarded the Shota Rustaveli prize for his brilliant rendition. In 1971 B. Gaponov moved to Israel. He greatly contributed to Georgian and Jewish cultures. Apart from The Man in Panther’s Skin, Gaponov translated the poems by I. Chavchavadze and N. Baratashvili. B. Gaponov holds an honorary place in the galaxy of the best translators world over.

B. Gaponov died in Ramat Gan, Israel.