One Sang the Body Electric: The Twentieth Century Russian and Bulgarian Approaches to Translating the Poetics of Whitman

  • N. E. Kamovnikova
  • K. T. Ivleva
Keywords: Balmont, Whitman, translation, Zenkevich, Stoyanov, Svintila

Abstract

The article focuses on four translations of Walt Whitman’s poem I Sing the Body Electric into Russian and Bulgarian by Balmont, Zenkevich, Stoyanov, Svintila. The choice of the Russian and Bulgarian languages which share historical and cultural experience in their pre-communist, communist and post-communist periods enables us to define the main strategies applied to the highly unconventional poetics of Whitman by his Russian and Bulgarian translators constrained by the rules of the Socialist Realism and the literary canon of different historic periods of the twentieth century. The results obtained demonstrate an evolution of translation approaches to the structure and poetics of the original.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Berman, A. (1995). Pour une critique de traduction: John Donne. Paris, Gallimard.
Blok, A.A. (1962). O lirike [Upon lyrics]. In: A.A. Blok. Sobranie sochinenij v vos'mi tomah. T. 5. Moskva: Hudozhestvennaja literatura, 130-160 (in Russian)
Careva, N.A. (2007). Russkij simvolizm i postmodernizm: problemy svjazi I preemstvennosti [Russian symbolism and post-modernism: problems of connection and continuity]. Problemy filologii, kul'turologii i iskusstvovedenija, 4/2007, 157-162 (in Russian)
Emerson, R.W. (1983). Essays and Lectures: Nature; Addresses, and Lectures. Essays: First and Second Series. Representative Men. English Traits. The Conduct of Life. New York: Literary Classics.
Gutman, H. (1998). I Sing the Body Electric. Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing. Available at: http://www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_9.html (Accessed 15 April 2015)
Kashkin, I.A. (1955). V bor’be za realisticheskij perevod [In the struggle for realistic translation]. Voprosy hudozhestvennogo perevoda. Moskva: Sovetskij pisatel’, 120-164 (in Russian)
Klatt, L.S. (2008). The Electric Whitman. The Southern Review 44.2, 321-332.
Leighton, L. (1982). Whitman in Russia: Chukovsky and Balmont. Walt Whitman Quarterly International, 22. Available at: http://www.chukfamily.ru/Humanitaria/Whitman/leighton.htm (Accessed 21 November 2012)
Litovskaja, M.A. (2008). Socialisticheskij realizm v literature XX veka [Socialist Realism in the literature of the 20 century]. Filologicheskij klass, 19, 14-21(in Russian)
Polonsky, R. (1997). Translating Whitman, mistranslating Balmont. Slavonic and Eastern-European Review, 75(3), 401-421.
Schmidgall, G. (2001). Intimate with Walt: Selections from Whitman’s conversations with Horace Traubel 1888 – 1892. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Uitman, U. (1965). Strykcheta treva [Leaves of Grass]. Sofia: Narodna kultura (in Bulgarian)
Uitman, U. (1996). Trevni lista [Leaves of Grass]. Sofia: Srebyren lyv (in Bulgarian)
Uitmen, U. (1970). Izbrannye proizvedenija. List'ja travy. Proza. [Selected Works. Leaves of Grass. Prose.] Moskva: Hudozhestvennaja literatura (in Russian)
Uitmen, U. (1911). Pobegi travy [Leaves of Grass]. Moskva: Skorpion (in Russian)
Whitman, W. (2006). Leaves of Grass and Other Writings. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Published
2018-09-10
How to Cite
Kamovnikova, N. E., & Ivleva, K. T. (2018). One Sang the Body Electric: The Twentieth Century Russian and Bulgarian Approaches to Translating the Poetics of Whitman. Cognition, Communication, Discourse, (10), 44-55. https://doi.org/10.26565/2218-2926-2015-10-03