ABSTRACT
If we turn to the history of Russian literary translation, we will see alternating periods in which close and free translations dominated. The 18th century was the era of free translation, which adapted the original to norms familiar to the Russian reader in terms of metrics, stylistics, and even content. The borderline between translation and adaptation-imitation was almost indiscernible. Romanticism was the era of close translation, which aimed at introducing the reader to previously unknown images and forms. When Zhukovskii began to translate German ballads in amphibrachs (almost never used in Russian verse up until that point), it was as bold an innovation as when, in the 20th century, Whitman and Hikmet were translated in free verse. Nineteenth-century Realism inaugurated a new era in free translation or adaptation, the most extreme case of which were Kurochkin’s translations of Béranger. In turn, the Modernism of the beginning of the 20th century returned to the idea of close translation. Briusov took this notion even further than any other translator, based on the assumption that one should not impoverish the original by making it conform to the expectations of the reader, that one should rather enrich the reader by introducing him to the original; and this belief was shared by all of the translators of the era, from Balmont to Lozinskii. Finally, the Soviet period represents a reaction against the literalism of the modernists, a softening of extremes, an approach of clarity, subtlety and faithfulness to the traditional values of Russian literary culture. If I had to name a typical representative, it would have to be Marshak, the translator of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
