Contemporary Russian Poetry – Contemporary Russian Literature

Russian Verse Libre in an Era of New Challenges

Now, in the second decade of the 21st century, we are witnessing an amazing renaissance of Russian free verse poetry, or poetry written, as Thomas Elliot defined it, “in the absence of traditional pattern, rhyme or meter” (Elliot). This unexpected phenomenon seems to have gone beyond the traditional Russian poetic narrative and has already provoked a heated debate among scholars, critics, and poets about its nature and the boundaries between free verse and cut prose, blank verse and rhymed verse, etc. (Manin 580-596). The purpose of this essay is to describe some features of contemporary Russian vers libre poetry as part of the ongoing process of development of the Russian poetic language in the era of new challenges.

To be precise, free verse is not a new phenomenon in Russian poetry. It appeared much earlier, in the 19th century, following Western literary trends, and was exemplified by the poets of the Silver Age until it was banned under Bolshevik rule in the 1920s. Underrepresented and marginalized in Soviet times, free verse has broken into the mainstream of the Russian poetic scene since the late 1990s. Once banned, free verse became one of the most popular hallmarks of Russian poetry in the 2000s and is now published by numerous literary magazines and websites. Twenty-five festivals, representing a wide range of poetic voices, were held in different Russian cities between 1990 and 2018, resulting in the publication of an anthology in 2020 (Sovremennyi russkii svobodnyi stikh. Antologia po materialam Festivalei svobodnogo stikha ). All this allows some critics to state that at the beginning of the 21st century it has established itself as “the dominant verse form in Russian poetry” (Orlitskaia 223).

This success is an indication of the great demand for this type of poetry in the Russian literary scene. In fact, its volatility seems to correspond to the new cultural trends in Russian society. The epochal change in Russian culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century reflects the end of the period of post-totalitarian mourning and the transition to a postmodern society. It has many dimensions in Russian culture, society, education, art, and literature. The concept of “new literature” has yet to be evaluated. However, it is clear that it includes changes in the genre structure of Russian poetry and the development of new poetic forms capable of reflecting these trends.

The era of unpredictable changes in Russia is generating new literary styles and new voices. With the growing crisis of personal communication and the apparent collapse of many ideological dogmas in Russian society, many poets are looking for new poetic tools to reflect on this new reality. In the second decade of the 21st century, a large group of talented poets writing in free verse has emerged at the forefront of Russian poetry. Among them are both established poets and poets of the younger generation. Alla Gorbunova, Andrei Sen-Senkov, Sergei Zavyalov, Nikita Sungarev, Nikita Safonov, Kirill Korchagin, Stanislav Lvovsky, Oleg Paschenko, Danila Davydov, Oksana Vasyakina, Igor Vishnevetsky, and many others have used the possibilities of free verse to create brilliant poetic texts outside the traditional content and metrical system of Russian lyric poetry.

At a time when linear self-expression is in crisis, a new trend is emerging: the expansion of non-lyric poetry. Free verse occupies an important niche in this process. According to the poet Fyodor Svarovsky, this is due to the fact that “traditional stylistics today is simply not suitable for many forms of poetic expression” (Svarovsky). This tendency follows the general logic of the development of Russian postmodern culture and its collision with obsolete structures. In poetry, it often takes the form of a lexical or syntactic deviation of the language. The contemporary development of the free verse in Russian poetry is consistent with the Western model of free verse, which allows the poet to narrate a poetic reality without a clearly organized structure or a pronounced lyrical attitude. This style is prevalent in Anglophone poetry today, and many contemporary poets are exploring the possibilities of free verse. For example, the American poet -laureate Austin Smith writes in the poem “The Hotel” (2011):

……the room
itself is simple
the sort rented out
night by night
to the poor to make
more poor or to die in
but it is not night
nor is she poor. She
could have afforded
a nicer room and it is
day

This almost documentary statement is full of drama and demonstrates an important aspect of free verse – its ability to express psychological momentum without any lyrical undertone. Its content is dense and aimed at the reader’s imagination. The same pattern of verbal communication or conversation on a “hot topic” can be observed in many works of modern Russian poets. Unresolved problems of the past, as well as current issues of social movements, injustice, and oppression, come to the fore as an example of civic self-expression and are popular with poets writing in free verse. Take, for example, Nikita Sungatov’s poem “What Have We Done to You?” (В чём мы провинились перед вами? (2015); its first verse consists of a direct appeal to the reader. It’s an invitation to dialogue on one of the most dramatic themes in contemporary Russian history and culture:

В чём мы провинились перед вами?
За что вы ненавидите нас?
Зачем вы воюете с нами?
Противопоставляете себя нам,
высмеивая и оскорбляя наши ценности.

What have we done to you?
Why do you hate us?
Why are you at war with us?
You are confronting us,
mocking and insulting our values.

The beginning of Igor Vishnevetskii’s poem “CAPSA” (Vishnevetskii 64) is reminiscent of a casual conversation:

Мы приехали туда поздним вечером –
у меня чудом сохранилось расписание поездов –
в 21.34. Огромное многозвёздное синее небо
накрывало Сахару шатром. В чайных работали телевизоры:
шёл чемпионат Франции и здесь, на дальних выселках
сначала римского, а после и галльского мира
все обсуждали марсельцев, прозевавших дурацкий гол.

We arrived there late in the evening –
I miraculously kept to the train schedule –
at 9:34 p.m. A huge, starry blue sky
loomed over the Sahara like a tent. TVs were on in the tea rooms:
the championship game with France was on and there, in the outskirts of the Roman world at first, and then the Gallic world
everyone was discussing the Marseilles, who had missed a foul goal.

Sometimes free verse is just a polyphony of thoughts and observations, as is seen in the striking short poem by Vasily Borodin “The Banner will Flutter” (Stiag zavyotsia 2011):

стяг завьётся сор взовьется свет ворвётся сердце взорвётся
время порвётся
всё остаётся

the banner will flutter the dust will rise the light will burst

the heart will explode
time will break
everything will remain

Fantasy, dry humor, or satire often testify to the poet’s detachment from difficult experiences, an inability or unwillingness to accept the realities of an ever-changing world. Published in Nikita Sungatov’s book The Debut Book of the Young Poet (Debyutnaya kniga molodoga poeta, 2015), a poem about the creative process of poetry, “There is a Method” (“Est takoi sposob” 2015), simultaneously reveals the experience of a young man in a modern urban environment:

Я хочу рассказать о том, как однажды
я принёс себя в жертву идеологии.
И о том, как, прогуливаясь по центру столицы,
вдруг обнаружил, что моё зрение
подчиняясь определённой логике
выхватывает из окружающей среды
некоторые детали
кажущиеся незначительными со стороны

I want to tell you about the time
I sacrificed myself to ideology.
And how while walking through the center of the capital
I suddenly discovered that my vision
followed a certain logic
it picked up
certain details that seem insignificant from the outside

An important feature of free verse is that the abandonment of the traditional pattern of meter and rhyme and structured form frees the poet in his quest to format the sound of the stanza as a whole. The ability of free verse to create new and unique prosody appeals to the reader’s perception rather than to syllabic meaning. In this case, the unity of non-metrical verse is preserved by the rhythm hidden in the sounding word, by a complex system of changing rhythm and intonation, which the reader perceives as the music of poetry. Free verse allows the author to encode many meanings and images in the short space of the stanza and which can still be perceived as a poetic utterance. The linguistic experiments of contemporary Russian authors often contain semantic deviation and metonymy: they allow a combination of both figurative and sound patterns.

One of the experimental poems by Lada Chizhova “Color. Practice” (Tsvet. Praktika) opens with the image of the “snowed-in city” but then moves the reader into different dimensions full of emotions and bewilderment:

город выбелило
в белила вляпаться всеми конечностями
и лицом
жжется
как смириться с телом готовым перемещаться
и расти

the snowed-in city is whitened
as if all limbs were plunged into white paint
and the face
it burns
and how to reconcile with a body ready to move
and grow up

Whether the nature of this kind of prosody represents a “repetitive metrical” or “irregular accent” topology (Manin 581-582) is up to interpretation. However, one of the important aspects of the modern free verse form is that it gives the poet the freedom to experiment with the word as the basic element of poetic speech and create an unpredictable pattern of changing rhythm. It also allows the poet to use different language registers within a single poetic stanza.

In addition to sound, poets sometimes use visual effects, such as the interruption of lines and the empty space between lines. This expands the space of the poem, as is seen in Sergei Zavyalov’s poem “Autumn. Peterhof” (Osen’. Petergof; 1994):

Кто-то скажет тебе
что это только засохшей листвы под твоими ногами
шуршанье

someone will tell you
that it’s only          the rustle of dried leaves under
your feet

After all, the discussion about the nature and future direction of contemporary Russian free verse is still in its early stages. Gennady Aygi, the once unrecognized genius Chuvashian poet, called poetry a universal tool of world consciousness, which cannot be defined only by the traditional strict syllabic-tonic prosody. The Russian poetic scene includes the vers libre as an essential part of the postmodern literary landscape.

A жасмин надвигается:
словно душа – отодвинувшаяся
сразу – легко – от греха! …

Jasmine is emerging:
like a soul –
having pushed aside instantly
easily – the sin! …

– Aygi, 1969

Elena Dimov

Works Cited

Aygi, Gennady. “Poiavlenie Zhasmina.” Pamiati Muziki. Shubaskar, Russika – Lik Chivashii, 1969, p.6.

Borodin, Vasily. “Stiag zaviyotsia.” P.S. Moskva, Gorod-Zhiraf. Stikhi, 2005-2011. N.Y.: Evdokiia, 2011, p. 29. <https://brownianmotionfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/gorod-ghiraf_final1.pdf>

Chizhova, Lada. “Zaneslo gorod vybelil,” Tsvet: Praktika. Tsykl stihotvorenii, 2013. < www.litkarta.ru/studio/participants/chizhova-l>

Eliot, Thomas S.”Reflections on Vers Libre.” The text of “Reflections on Vers Libre” by T.S.Eliot. <https://www.theworld.com/~raparker/exploring/tseliot/works/essays/reflections_on_vers_libre.html>

Manin, Dmitrii Y. “Chopped-up Prose or Liberated Verse? An Experimental Study of Russian Vers Libre.” Modern Philology, vol. 108, no. 4, 2011, pp. 580–596 <https://doi.org/10.1086/660697>

Orlitskaiia, Anna. “Posleslovie.” Sovremennyi Russkii Svobodnyi Stikh: Antologiia Po Materialam Festivalei Svobodnogo Stikha (Moskva, Sankt-Peterburg, Nizhnii Novgorod, Tverʹ S 1990 Po 2018 G.). Edited by Orlitskaia Anna and Orllitskii, Iu. Moskva: 2019. vol. 2, p. 223. <https://rusfreeverse.com/books>

Svarovsky, Feodor. “O razrushitelnoi sile verlibra.” Novosti literatury, 10.06.2011. <https://novostiliteratury.ru/2011/10/novosti/koloka-avtora-fedor-svarovskij>

Smith, Austin. “The Hotel.” The New Yorker, Sept. 17^th, 2012. < newyorker.com/magazine/2012/09/17/the-hotel>

Sungatov, Nikita. “V chem ny provinilis pered vami?” Debi︠u︡tnai︠a︡ kniga molodogo poėta. M.: Translit, 2015.

______________. “Est’ takoi sposob.” Debutnaya kniga molodogo poeta.

Vishnevetskii, Igor. “CAPSA.” Sovremennyi Russkii Svobodnyi Stikh: Antologiia Po Materialam Festivalei Svobodnogo Stikha, vol. 1, p. 64.

Zavylov, Sergei. “Osen’ Petergof.” Ody i epody. St. Petersburg: Borey-Art, 1994. <http://www.litru.ru/?book=45665&description=1>

Disclaimer

Translations of excerpts from works by contemporary Russian authors on this website are used under Fair Use solely for literary criticism and educational purposes.

Several Poems by Feodor Svarovsky in Translation

About the Author

Feodor Svarovsky was born in Moscow in 1971. At the age of 19, he emigrated to Denmark. In 1997, he returned to Moscow and worked as a journalist and editor at Vedomosti, then at the Paulsen Publishing House and Esquire. In 2007, he published his first book of poetry Все хотят быть роботами (Everybody Wants to Be a Robot). He is also the author of Путешественники во времени (Time Travelers, 2009); Слава героям (Glory to the Heroes, 2015). In 2011, Svarovsky participated in PEN’s New Voices reading series at the National Arts Club in NYC. He currently lives in Montenegro with his wife and amazing cats.

“When the Antarctic ice melts”

Fyodor Svarovsky hardly needs any introduction. One of the best contemporary Russian poets, he is well known in Russia, and readers admire his poetry, both romantic and metaphysical. He is a universal poet. The appeal to the world of nature and feelings, their projection into the future – these are the main components that create the versatility of Svarovsky’s poetry and cause the readers’ love.

As soon as Svarovsky’s first book, Everybody Wants to Be a Robot (Все хотят быть роботами), was published in 2007, it was an instant hit with literary critics and readers. Even among the diverse and vibrant voices of contemporary Russian poetry, his poems immediately stand out for their fantastic adventurous spirit and unusual poetic style. His book was nominated for the Andrei Bely Prize and won the prestigious Moscow Schyot Prize for the best debut poetry collection. Since then, Svarovsky has played a significant role in the revival of the ballad genre, or narrative poetry written in an “epic” mode. In the process of renewing the genre over the past decade, it has often been defined as a “New Epic”. It represents an original artistic approach to understanding complex reality as a scene of interaction between various forces and actors. Its main characteristics are a narrative text without an author’s linear voice or lyrical statement, the predominance of metaphysical meanings and unusual themes, and a fascinating plot. They were defined in the famous Manifesto (2008). This type of poetry, postmodern in nature, often refers to metaphysical forces beyond the control of the individual.

This trend in Russian poetry continues and flourishes in recent days. Many contemporary poets explore the long ballad genre at the new level of metaphysical comprehension of the world. Among them are such prominent poets as Maria Stepanova, Leonid Schwab, Arseny Rovinsky, Stanislav Lvovsky, Linor Goralik, Pavel Goldin, Andrei Rodionov, Sergei Kruglov, and others.

Drawing on the potential of the “new epic” form, Svarovsky’s first works were bizarre and sometimes grotesque – they introduced themes and heroes unusual for Russian poetry: robots fighting in civil wars, aliens stranded in the Moscow suburbs, or post-Soviet warriors acting in extraordinary circumstances and sometimes in timeless space. In the poetic space of Svarovsky’s first book, Everybody Wants to Be a Robot (Все хотят быть роботами), humans and robots, heroes and villains interact in bizarre circumstances, moving freely through time and space. Besides the unusual plot, some critics immediately noted the features of Anglophone postmodern literature: fragmented narrative, paradox, dry humor, and irony. One of the hallmarks of his first book was the attribution of infinite human emotions to robots, which expanded the poetic space to universal proportions. In one of the most poignant stanzas, the tragic situation in which the robot finds itself is described with almost human sentiment:

знаешь
у роботов ангелов нет
никто не беспокоится
не летит
не закрывает
невидимыми крыльями
нас в пути
поэтому в тяжёлый момент

мы обращаемся напрямую
и вот я прошу
кислоты и воды
но
главное
я тоскую

* * *

you know
robots don’t have own angels
no one worries
no one’s watching us
or covers us with
their invisible wings
on our path
so in times of need
we deal with it directly
and here I’m begging
for acid and water.
but
above all

I’m aching.

Written as contemporary ballads without the visible presence of the author, Svarovsky’s poems meet the aesthetic demands of postmodern literature. They address the realities of modern society, both technologically advanced and aesthetically sophisticated. The unusual settings and characters – space pirates, robots engaged in galactic wars, and humans communicating with robots – perfectly met the public’s desire for literary forms and characters beyond the usual lyrical standard.

This debut brought Svarovsky deserved fame, many of his poems became famous among readers, and the author became one of the most popular and admired poets in Russia. The reason for this phenomenon is not only the author’s poetic talent, but also his style, which appeals to the reader’s imagination. Svarovsky explained: “The author describes events whose reality or apparent fiction does not matter for achieving the aesthetic effect, since the main goal of the ‘new epic’ is mostly artistic – to provoke an aesthetic, emotional, or intellectual reflection”(Manifesto, 2008).

Like the heroes of ancient tragedies, his characters often face difficult choices and sacrifice themselves. The poet’s detached voice evokes emotions beyond our comprehension. Behind the captivating plot hides the timeless epic story of a man overcoming despair and tragic circumstances. Entertainment is replaced by compassion, and readers find themselves captivated by a dramatic story, as in the poem “Mongolia,” about the incredible bond between an old robot warrior and a little Japanese girl, Aiko, in a desolate land devastated by endless wars (Everybody Wants to Be a Robot). As a result, we react to the fantastic events in Svarovsky’s poems as if they really happened, and indeed we all coexist in a complex universe where time, space and nature are interconnected.

In Svarovsky’s recently published book, Glory to the Heroes (2015), new themes and metaphorical systems emerged. In the book’s preface, Oleg Pashenko emphasizes that Svarovsky has become more open about his Christian eschatological ideas, including the “image of water, sea or seashore as the Kingdom of God.” His poetic style has become more sophisticated and reflected new ontological dimension of reality, “when a person sitting in front of the screen, writing or reading, and at the same time swimming or diving in the notional sea in such a way that the reality is not alien but exists as an additional dimension, as another layer of ontological freedom” (Pashenko, Preface).

In an interview with Sergei Sdobnov about his book (Colta, Oct.25 2015), Svarovsky emphasized that ”for the postmodern and other consequent paradigms, time does not exist; like any other categories, it is an easily controllable part of artistic creation. Since the author isn’t identified with the text, his or her personal sense of time isn’t important.” In this respect, his poetry is in tune with the work of such Russian postmodern prose writers as Mikhail Shishkin, Valery Votrin, and others. The objects in them are only approximations to an ideal world.

Timelessness and the idea of a universal world in which man lives in absolute harmony with all living beings are embodied in his poetic texts. It echoes Plato’s idealistic conception of the unity of all things, but it is also an integral part of the poet’s Christian worldview:

life is love
people are immortal
and glory
glory to the heroes

Far from being a “banal slogan,” as the recent History of Russian Literature (Oxford: 2018) suggests, or an “irony,” this is one of the most powerful humanist messages in contemporary Russian poetry. As such, it can’t be trivially dismissed; it is the only way out of the crisis of human civilization in recent years. All this makes Svarovsky’s poetry relevant to our times, when we all suddenly realize that the survival of humanity depends on harmony with nature, on a return to humanity in politics and society, on refusing to mistreat animals and other living beings, on the love and heroism of the many nameless heroes who fight for all of us. This may seem idealistic in today’s cruel world, but ultimately only poetry can explain life in its entirety.

We are pleased to present some of Feodor Svarovsky’s poems in translation to English-speaking readers. Authentic poetry always loses some of its beauty and magic in translation, but we have tried to preserve as much as possible the originality of the poetic texts and the author’s voice.

Alice and Tiger

In my early childhood
it was absolutely necessary

to keep a super small dog
the size of my pinky

and honestly

a similarly sized little girl
so, they fit in my pocket

the dog was called Tiger
and the girl’s name was Alice
I loved them

I wanted to own a swimming pool too
but a weird-shaped one
long

with curves
with the houses
under the water

where we would be at home
and there
we would swim between the walls
in the crystal water
devoted to each other until death
and absolutely immortal

Day at the zoo

we went to the zoo
but we didn’t see a crocodile
because he was lying at the bottom of a concrete pit
and didn’t float up
and we didn’t see the hippo either
my parents said: look, there are his ears and nostrils
but I saw
neither ears
nor nostrils,
polar bears
and brown bears alike sat in their cages
the giraffe was cold
and didn’t come out
monkeys and lemurs were hiding
eagles were sleeping
capybaras were peeking out of their homes
with their backs to the audience
the elephant was standing in the distance
and it was hard to see him
just some pointless
deer
and bulls
which could be seen everywhere
were posturing in plain sight
all of a sudden, I’ve got an upset stomach.
and they didn’t buy cotton candy for me

it was Saturday
on my birthday
seventy-two-and-a-half years
ago

it was a special day
everything went awry from the start
giraffe had a stomach ache
crocodile had a toothache
monkeys and lemurs were bored and cold
eagles were sad and cold
capybaras were sleepy and cold
hippo was cold
brown bears were cold
and even polar bears were cold
and the elephant was appalled
deer and bulls
wandered in some despair
nobody remembers now who it was
but one of the animals
or not of them
but definitely someone
said:
Animals, so be it, it is okay,
one day it will end
it will be over
and we’ll go
home

When the Antarctic Ice Melts

when the Antarctic ice melts

we will be happy
after many rainfalls
dry bones will become wet
gardens will bloom
on Queen Maud’s land
on the Queen Victoria Peninsula –
white tents flitter in the wind
and meadows stretch from one lake to another –
the bird snatches fish and bread from our hands
everything will be be fine
all the dead will come back to life
all the good
except the bad
oh, glass cities
oh, the land rising from the ice
His Majesty the Emperor
is swinging
ankle-deep in warm water
walking
towards the green coast

just a penguin
imperial

Glory to the Heroes

four Canadians
saved the world from a genetic catastrophe
one Armenian invented a new type of rocket fuel
and a treatment for cancer
one Russian sacrificed himself
he shut down the reactor and saved the international space station
one Englishman gave his liver to a wounded journalist
who came back from the California coup
one Tatar during the ethnic conflict in Southeast Asia
saved 240 Malaysian babies
one Frenchwoman died for the freedom of Phobos in the dungeons
of Deimos
one Cardian
was supposed to attack Earth on a neutrino-driven ship
but
after seeing the blue planet
he turned the ship toward the sun
life is love
people are immortal
and glory
glory to the heroes

Слава героям

четыре канадца спасли мир от генетической катастрофы
один армянин изобрёл новый вид ракетного топлива
и лекарство от рака
один русский пожертвовал собой
отключил реактор и спас международную космическую станцию
один англичанин отдал свою печень раненной журналистке
вернувшейся после переворота в Калифорнии
один татарин во время этнического конфликта
в Юго-Восточной Азии спас 240 малайских младенцев
одна француженка умерла за свободу Фобоса в застенках
Деймоса
один картадианин
должен был атаковать Землю на корабле с нейтринным приводом
но
увидев синюю планету
он развернул корабль в сторону солнца
жизнь есть любовь
люди бессмертны
и слава
слава героям

Brothers

the elephant would never
start fighting the whale

not that the whale is stronger than the elephant
it’s that a war between them is impossible

these animals are brothers
together they swim under the water

the whale is young
and lively
the elephant is jovial and young

the whale’s fin cuts through currents in the depths
the elephant’s trunk flaps overhead

mermaids glide after them
they are the people and gorillas’ brothers

Aristotle
wrote about it

and Plato at the Academy spoke
of it

Elena Dimov

Charlottesville, 2020

The Art of Poetry Translation

My original intention was to write about my work on the English translation of the poetry by contemporary Russian authors. In my mind poetry translation is walking a road alongside the author and his thoughts, imagery and poetic imagination, where a translator’s role in reproducing the author’s intention is of the same merit but usually not recognized.

Maria Rybakova expressed this process in a splendid metaphor:

Translator,
the winds from the North and the West blow upon you,
your thoughts have just flown to Thrace,
but now waves carry you like a goddess on a shell to the shore of a

paper sea,
and no one recognizes you.

But the process of working on the novel–in-verse Gnedich by Maria Rybakova and other poetic works by contemporary Russian poets has become part of a broader reflection on the art of poetic translation as a unique element of the creative process. This is especially important now if we want to draw the attention of the Anglophone world to the many brilliant but unknown in the West Russian poets. Almost unknown are the translated books of poems by contemporary Russian women poets.

Recreating the poetry’s imagery and meaning into another language connotes translator’s ability to reproduce both the poetry’s music and its essence. When beginning work on a translation, a translator typically has before his or her eyes an original text which incarnates the poet’s soul: the poet’s own thoughts, sense of reality, and metaphors born by a poetic perception of the world. In addition, this perception is always a unique snapshot of the universe.

The translator usually has the necessary knowledge and linguistic means for recreating the text in another language. However, reproducing the original poetry’s metaphors and epithets in the other language, or what Brodsky called the “fringe” of a language that actually creates the poetry, suggests a departure from simple reproduction of the poetic work by linguistic tools to a new design thinking.

This often requires the translator’s creative ability to think metaphorically. Translators often have two solutions to this situation. The first approach is based on technically competent translation without touching the poetry’s subtext as the soul of the language.

Another approach is when translators create their own poetic work using tropes and images from the original work. Brodsky called them “espousing certain poetics of their own” and was unhappy with this kind of poetry translation. Both approaches could not lead to success in the art of poetic translation. Unlike other forms of literary translation, a successful translation of the poetic form requires absolute harmony between the original and the translated version.

In my opinion, the key part in a successful translation of the original poetic imagery is the metaphorical thinking of the translator. This suggests the same level of metaphorical representation of reality as in the original.

The ability to recreate a poetic image in another language implies the translator’s creation of the adequate symbol in consonance with a poet’s own inner world. It depends primarily on the translator’s creative and linguistic potential and metaphorical vision of the world. In this case we observe the successful union of the two creative potencies, when the translator is able to re-create a unique work in another language, as was the case with Homer’s Illiad translated by Gnedich. And this brings us back to the beginning of this essay: the translator’s own work is sometimes as good as the original, but remains out of the readers’ sight, “and no one recognizes it.” But these questions are open to discussion.

Elena Dimov, Ph.D.

Featured pictures by Alexander Borisenko