A Remedy for Solitude: Russian Poet-Translators in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras

My dissertation, "A Remedy for Solitude: Russian Poet-Translators in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras," explores the historical and cultural movements that have shaped the field of Russian poetic translation over the past century.;I see translation as a foundational and multifaceted intellectual enterprise, and draw on the theoretical work of Walter Benjamin and others scholars to argue for its profound role in cultural transformation and in changing the artistic work of those who translate. The dissertation offers innovative analysis of translation in its complex interrelations with the poets' own creative work, and it explores the impact of institutional and ideological contexts on literature and translation. A tool of ideological manipulations, during the Soviet times, translation also became a form of resistance, allowing writers to voice their concerns, opinions, to express themselves when their own writing could not be published. I juxtapose the official discourse on translation with the poets' overt and tacit remarks on their work as translators, and I compare the metaphors and approaches to describing translation in theoretical works and in creative writing.;In Chapter One, I discuss the pivotal role of poetic translation in the development of Russian literary culture in the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. Chapter Two identifies the historical and institutional circumstances that have altered the development of literary translation in the early Soviet period (such as The World Literature Publishing House). It also identifies the main traits of Soviet practices in translation that stood in sharp contrast to the more creative approaches of the earlier epochs. In Chapter Three, I analyze Boris Pasternak's translation of Hamlet, Nikolai Zabolotskii's adaptation of The Igor Tale, and Maria Petrovykh's work on Armenian and Polish poetry. The fourth chapter addresses aspects of resistance and poetic learning shared by the poets of the Thaw generation: Joseph Brodsky, Natalia Gorbanevskaia, Olga Sedakova, Aleksandr Velichanskii. The fifth chapter defines the development of translation in the post-Soviet times, and describes its role in fostering new developments in contemporary Russian poetry.