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Sumarokov's "Monstrous" Variants: Remarks on the History of Reading, Education and Translation in Eighteenth-Century Russia. Sumarokov's translation practice, throughout his career, reveals a tendency towards "monstrous" solutions — contrary to the tradition of "common sense" translation — аn inclination to unexpected readings, fragmenting the text to the point of absurdity and appropriating it to the reader. This attitude towards translation can be explained by the orientation of St. Petersburg elites of the 1730s (as in the Noble Cadets Corps, where Sumarokov studied), towards Prussian educational models, including the linguistic school of the Halle pietist Johann Joachim Lange. The pinnacle of training in this school was a meticulous philological meditation on the biblical text that provided mystical insight. The significance of these textual practices for St. Petersburg culture of the mid-18th century is confirmed by the fact that the debate over Trediakovsky's translation of Lange's School Conversations in the late 1740s played a crucial role in crystallizing the aesthetic and authorial strategies of key St. Petersburg poets.

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