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John Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions is a very difficult work to translatebecause it is abundant in alchemical terms and imagery the contemporary reader may hardlyunderstand as alchemy is long a dead language code. Unfortunately, that imagery oftenrefers to a specific theological background and it should be elucidated either by means ofclever translation or by virtue of footnotes or commentary. Otherwise, grasping the propermeaning of the entire Donne’s work may be impossible. Russian translation of Donne’sDevotions by Anton Nesterov is perhaps the best existing attempt to render the original textwith all its intricacy into language other than English. However, there are some treacherousand fascinating passages in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions Niestierow mistranslatedbecause he did not fully understand the alchemical background they refer to.