Reading, Interpreting, and Translating Shakespeare: The Problem of (In)Action and of Its Causes in Soviet Translations
Kovalevskaya Tatyana Vyacheslavovna
Russian State University for the Humanities
Submitted: 12.09.2022
Abstract. The aim of the article is to explicate the ideational contents of translations of the word “conscience” and their significance for understanding the poetic mythology of the Silver Age. Using translations of “Hamlet” by Mikhail Lozinsky, Boris Pasternak, and Anna Radlova, the article traces translations of the word “conscience” and instances where the word was omitted or added in the Russian translations. The conclusion is that specific translational choices were conditioned not so much by Soviet censorship (which demanded an ametaphysical mindset that would be contrary to treating “conscience” as moral knowledge concerned with a human being’s posthumous fate), as by a Silver Age myth of the poet as a super-human being and a cultural hero. This myth aligns with “rationalizing” Hamlet’s indecision. The paper’s novelty lies in its conclusion that it was that poetic myth that led Soviet and post-Soviet translators to prefer to interpret Hamlet as a super-human being charged with a mission of a cosmic scale, which should not have been hindered by the moral considerations of the characters. Our findings are that translators of Shakespeare continued the Silver Age myth of the poet as a divine being, even as the interpretations paradoxically appeared to be in line with the Soviet worldview that looked unfavorably at all things metaphysical.
Key words and phrases: трагедия «Гамлет», Михаил Лозинский, Борис Пастернак, Анна Радлова, поэт как божество, tragedy “Hamlet”, Mikhail Lozinsky, Boris Pasternak, Anna Radlova, poet-as-deity
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