This article is part of a broader research project which aims to create an annotated translation of Robert Schumann’s Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker into Portuguese. Such a translation will give special consideration to Schumann’s affinity with the German Romantic Movement – Literature and Aesthetics – and with the foundations of musical critique. In this introductory article, the author attempts to present a bird’s-eye view of Schumann’s interest in foreign languages – the core of his school instruction at the Gymnasium in Zwickau – and his activity as a translator of Greek and Latin poets. Schumann’s musical rendering of his literary experience as a writer, reader, translator and editor reveals the composer in two different aspects: as a spokesman, in music, for the exponents of German Classicism and for the poets of his generation, and as an eager reader, who, in his compositions, provided a personal interpretation of the literary canon of his time.