A.S. PUSHKIN’S LYRICAL POETRY IN THE CONCEPT AND TRANSLATIONS OF CECIL BOWRA |
| 3 | |
| 2026 |
| scientific article | 821.161.1+821.111 | ||
| 89-104 | антология русской лирики, англоязычные переводы, А.С. Пушкин, С.М. Боура, концепция русской поэзии, переводческая интерпретация, «Дар напрасный, дар случайный…», христианская парадигма миропонимания, М. Хайдеггер, anthology of Russian lyric poetry, English translations, A.S. Pushkin, C.M. Bowra, concept of Russian poetry, translation interpretation, “A gift in vain, a gift by chance, …”, Christian paradigm of worldview, M. Heidegger |
| The article analyzes the concept of Russian poetry from Pushkin to Mayakovsky, set out in the preface to the English-language anthology edited by Cecil M. Bowra (A Book of Russian Verse, 1943). The analysis includes tracing relationship between Bowra’s ideas and the concepts of Russian realism developed by his authoritative predecessors, M. Baring and D.S. Mirsky. In the perspective of the described concept A. S. Pushkin’s poem A gift in vain, a gift by chance... (1828) and Bowra’s own translation are comparatively interpreted. It is argued that the concept of dominant themes, set out in the anthology, consistently and uniquely synthesize the results of Bowra’s translation experience with the concepts of Russian literature put forward by Baring and D.S. Mirsky. Comparative analysis of Bowra’s translation (and the original text by Pushkin) proves a meaningful similarity between the original and translated texts, which is not accidental within the context of his concept. At the same time, it is demonstrated that the translation replaces the harmonious euphony of Pushkin’s verse with a tense, dramatic sound, offers a specific interpretation of its message within paradigms familiar to both the translator and the English-language reader (the motif of evil fate, the traditions of metaphysical poetry and English Romanticism, the metaphysics of Nothingness); and replaces the religious, Christian worldview fundamental to Pushkin’s poem with a metaphysical (in the spirit of M. Heidegger) discussion of the essence of human life in the face of death and Nothingness. |
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