34. The most often employed methods of translation and the artistic level of translation of classical British, American, French, German and Italian prose/poetic works during the 1920s and 1930s.
Undoubtedly the most outstanding translator of poetic works during 1920's - early 1930's was Mykola Zerov (1890-1937). As a professor and scholar in ancient literatures and in the field of translation, he improved and successfully applied new, effective methods of faithful versification, which established his leading position among the Neoclassicists and Ukrainian translators. Among Zerov's accomplishments were several brilliant translations of works by ancient Greek, Roman and West European poets. His first collection was comprised of works authored by several Roman poets (Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and Martial) and was published in the Anthology of Roman Poets (Kyiv, 1920). These translations represented a paragon of truly artistic versification for many years to come. M.Zerov managed to faithfully convey not only their main content, but also the artistic merits and the spirit (pragmatic orientation) of the originals. His translations maintain the ease and poetic beauty found in each original author's work. An ardent fighter against any translations of doubtful artistic quality as well as against any author's works of this kind, Zerov supported the ideas of M.Khvylyovyi who raised his voice in support of the West European way of development of arts. He defined as Asiatic the Communist or proletarian, as it was officially called, way of development of literature and arts in the U.S.S.R. Zerov not only shared this view of Khvylyovyi but also practically realized the main principles of Khvylyovyi through his exemplary original and translated poems.
The up-to-date methods of artistic versification and adherence to neoclassicism in opposition to the inconsistent artistic translation of poetic works of the day, made the Communist critics, who were ignorant of and hostile to neoclassicism even more incensed. As a result, M.Zerov, P.Fylypovych, M.Drai-Khmara and hundreds of other outstanding Ukrainian poets, authors and scientists were arrested in early 1930's.
All translations by the Neoclassicists illustrated the highest level of artistic versification of the 1920's and 1930's in regard to content, artistic merits, and pragmatic orientation of each foreign belles-lettres work. A standard of masterly versification during the years of the so-called Ukrainian renaissance, however, were and will always remain Zerov's translations. He occupies a leading position as an exemplary poetic master whose versifications even today, more than 70 years after their publication, remain artistically complete and mostly unsurpassed.
Another prominent place in the constellation of the Neoclassicists belongs to the poet Oswald Burhardt, pen name Yuriy Klen (1897-1947), who happened to survive during the Bolshevist holocaust and terror in the 1920's and 1930's probably because of his German descent. His first significant Ukrainian collection of German poets (The Iron Sonnets) appeared in 1925 and was followed by more translations of world's greatest English, German and French poets (Shakespeare, Shelley, Gothe, Rilke, Rembaud, Valery, Mallarme, Verlaine and others).
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Close to O.Burghardt stood M.Drai-Khmara (1889-1937), who also pursued the aim of enriching our literature and culture via faithful artistic versification and who met his martyr's death together with M.Zerov in Sandarmokh in 1937. He translated mainly the works of the most outstanding French poets (S.Bodlaire, P.Verlaine, S.Leconte de Lisle, S.Mallarme, Sully Prud'homme) and completed Dante's The Divine Comedy, which was confiscated by the NKVD1 during his arrest and was never found again after that. He also translated Polish (A.Mickiewicz), Czech (J.Hora, J.Mahard), Russian (A.Pushkin, M.Lermontov, A.BIok, S.Yesenin) and poets of other nationalities.
Unquestionably, the most outstanding place among the surviving Neoclassicists, and one who made a significant contribution to llki.unian literature and culture by his poetic translation, belongs to Maxym Rylskyi (1895-1964). He outlasted all his co-literary companions and managed to introduce via his high quality Ukrainian translations many masterpieces of world literature. His translations originated from Polish (Mickiewicz, Slowacki), French (Hugo, Verlaine, Racine, Moliere, Boileau, Voltaire, Musset, Gautier, Heredia, Maeterlinck), German (Gothe), Russian (Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, Blok) and other national literatures. His well grounded theoretical articles and reviews of several translations helped considerably to raise the level of faithfulness in the succeeding prose and poetic translations in Ukraine1.
The number of Ukrainian poets/authors who were also translators, and victims to the Bolshevist terror in the 1920's and 1930's, by far exceeds, however, the whole group of the Neoclassicists. Worth mentioning, at least briefly, among them are first and foremost the following: the brilliant poet, researcher and translator M.Johansen (1895-1937), who left behind quality translations from English (G.G.Byron, E.A.Poe and H.G.Wells); D.Zahul (1890-1937), who ti.'inslated from German (H.Heine, F.Schiller, J.W.Gothe, J.Becher), I i.inish (Andersen-Noxe); I. Kulyk (1897-1937), who translated the works of W.Whitman; M.lrchan (1897-1937), whose translations were from Polish, Czech and German literatures and V.Bobynskyi (1898-1938), the translator of some works of Polish, French, Russian and German authors.
35. The revival of Ukrainian translation after World War II in the mid and 1940s (M.Rylskyi, M.Tereshchenko, M.Bazhan, M.Lukash, L.Pervomaiskyi).
The older generation of translators, who were active already during the late 1920's and early 1930's and who produced highly faithful translations, were represented by some masters of the pen. First place among them belongs to Maksym Ryl'skyi (1895-1964), the patriarch <>l the twentieth century Ukrainian translation, who has created highly skilled poetic versifications from Polish (A.Mickiewicz's, Yu.Slowacki's and Yu.Tuwim's major works) and Russian (works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, Blok, Voloshyn). But undoubtfully the greatest number of smaller and larger poetic works were translated from French: J.PMolliere's Tartuffe, The Marriage of Figaroby P.Beaumarchais, as well as Sidby P.Corneille, Fedra by J.Racine, The Misanthrope and I he Poetic Arts by N.Boileau, the Virgin of Orleans by F- M.Voltaire, and also several smaller poems of V.Hugo, A.de Musset, T.Gautier, J.Heredia, P.Verlaine, M.Maeterlinck, and others. Ryl'skyi has also translated some English poets (Shakespeare).
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Meanwhile, another veteran translator and poet, who had a narrow escape from getting into the Stalinist GULAG, Mykola Tereshchenko (1898-1966) performed versifications from French (a collection of the seventeenth-eighteenth century poets F.Malhebre, B.Le Fontenelle, C.Perrot, J.Rousseau, D.Diderot, L.de Lisle, E.Parny, A.Chenier and others). He also translated French classic poets of the nineteenth century (E.Verlaine, P.EIuard and others). Besides that Tereshchenko edited many poetic versifications of other translators (including M.Lukash's first complete translation of Gothe's masterpiece Faust).
A considerable contribution to Ukrainian belles-lettres was made by M.Bazhan (1904-1983), whose most important work in the domain of translation was the versification of Shota Rustaveli's Knight in The Panther's Skin, which all prominent Georgian poets considered to be a masterly translation. Bazhan had also translated several other classical works of Georgian literature (D. Huramishvili) as well as some poems by Italian (Dante, Michelangelo Bounarotti, P. Pasolini), German (Gothe, Helderlin, Rilke, S. Selan), Polish (Yu. Slowacki, A. Mickiewicz), Russian (A. Pushkin, V. Mayakovskiy), Indian (R. Tagore) and other.luthors'poetic works.
Active both in the pre-war 1930's, in the post-war 1940's and also later were some poets, who versified from several foreign languages, though not always directly from the originals but on the basis of interlinear translations. Thus, the poet L.Pervomays'kyi would translate and publish German poets Rilke, Heine, Walter von der Vogelweide and the Russian poetry of Pushkin, Lermontov directly from their originals. At the same time, poetic works of Hungarian, French, Korean, Chinese, Indonesian, Burmese, Persian or Tajik authors could be translated by him, naturally, only on the basis of interlinear translations.
As was already mentioned, in late 1950's and early 1960's there came into being and arrayed themselves around Ukrainian publishing houses in Kyiv, Kharkiv, L'viv and some other cities, a new linguistic generation of talented translators. Their proclaimed aim was to translate only directly from the original and fully employ the riches of the Ukrainian language. Some talented translators also grouped around the newly revived (1958) literary Vsesvit journal. Most of these younger generation men of letters were ideological and spiritual adherents of the two most outspoken opponents of Russif ication of the Ukrainian people Hryhoriy Kochur and Mykola Lukash, who were themselves very talented in poetry and prose translation from several foreign languages. Neither of them would yield to the constant pressure and intimidation on the part of the Soviet authorities which accused the translators of archaization of the Ukrainian language and other deadly sins of the kind. As has been mentioned, M.Lukash (1919-1988), a polyglot and an equally brilliant prose and poetry translator from eleven languages began to be published after World War II. He contributed greatly to the enrichment of Ukrainian literature with exemplary versions of many masterpieces of world literature such as Faust oi Gothe, Decameron oi Boccaccio, /Madame Bovary of Flaubert, The Fate of Man by Imre Madac, Don Quixote of Cervantes (in co-authorship with A.Perepadya) and several other important works by West European classics. M.Lukash was also a prolific translator of mainly French poets (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Valery, Apollinaire, etc.) as well of Spanish (Lorca, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon), German (Gothe, Schiller, etc.), English (R.Burns), Polish (Mickiewicz), Hungarian (E.Adi, I.Madach) and several others. His translations are distinguished by a rich and versatile Ukrainian lexicon, accurate idiomatic equivalents, high expressiveness and ease corresponding to those of the originals. In addition to his academic credentials, Lukash, as H.Kochur and I. Svitlychnyi before him, was a symbol of persistence and unyielding defence of the right of the Ukrainian language and culture to their free and independent development and functioning.
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36. Khuschovs thaw and the role of the renewed Vsesvit journal in fostering the post-war translators of poetic and prose works (M.Pinchevskyi, O.Terekh, V.Pasichna, V.Mytrofanov, H.Filipchuk, A.Perepadya, O.Mokrovolskyi, Ye.Popovych, P.Sokolovskyi and others).
The Second World War and the German occupation of Ukraine had for three years completely stopped any belles-lettres translation in the country. Hence, all work had to begin anew in 1944-1945 with the establishing of the publishing houses and republishing of some translations, which were completed before the war. Only in late 1940's the first newly translated foreign belles-lettres works began to appear in Ukrainian, though their number was very small. Therefore, the years 1944-1950 constitute a transitional period in the history of Soviet Ukrainian translation. Only in early 1950's, and especially after Stalin's death in 1953, the first signs of revival in belles-lettres translation began to be really felt. It became finally a reality only during Khrushchov's thaw and after the return from the concentration camps of some outstanding translators. This coincided with the peak in the literary activity of Ukraine's most versatile translator Mykola Lukash. The condemnation of Stalin's cult of personality in late 1950's loosened for a short time the ideological grip on Ukrainian intelligentsia. As a result, there appeared a war-hardened generation of talented and patriotically minded editors and translators, who graduated after the war from philological faculties of universities and institutes. It was during those years that several new editorial departments for translating works from foreign languages were opened at some major publishing houses. It was then that the question of quality of the translated belles-lettres works seriously and officially arose.
As was already mentioned, in late 1950's and early 1960's there came into being and arrayed themselves around Ukrainian publishing houses in Kyiv, Kharkiv, L'viv and some other cities, a new linguistic generation of talented translators. Their proclaimed aim was to translate only directly from the original and fully employ the riches of the Ukrainian language. Some talented translators also grouped around the newly revived (1958) literary Vsesvit journal.
Oleksandr Terekh (b. 1928) enriched our belles-lettres with an exemplary Ukrainian version of J.Galsworthy's most outstanding series The Forsyte Saga. Besides, he has translated some other prose works of the English language authors (J.Joyce, R.Bradbury, P.Ballentine, D.Salinger, G.Trease).
Among the translators, who have greately contributed to the recognition of the journal as a reliable source of foreign literature and who are partly obliged to it as their nursery, which made them later known in Ukrainian literature, were M.Pinchevs'kyi, V.Mytrofanov, V.Pasichna (a prolific translator from Czech, Slovak and Polish literatures) and some others. Closely collaborated with the journal in some years also our well-known translators M.Lukash, H.Kochur, I. Steshenko, BorysTen, Yu.Lisnyak, A.Perepadya, Y.Popovych, O.Senyuk, H.Filipchuk, M.Lytvynets', O.Mokrovolskyi, M.Moskalenko, V.Shovkun, to name but a few.
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37. The return of some prominent translators (V.Mysyk, H.Kochur, Borys Ten, D.Palamarchuk and others) from the Stalinist concentration camps during mid 1950s-1960s and the public demand for raising the artistic level of Ukrainian post-war belles-lettres translation (critical articles of O.Kundzich, M.Rylskyi and others).
Thus, during the late 1950's and early 1960's, when the natural revival of artistic translation and its scientific criticism had almost taken root, the third period in Ukraine's history of Iftnslation began. It was soon marked in the mid 1960's, however, with new persecutions and reprisals against such prominent transla-iinsasH.Kochur, M.Lukash,I.Switlychnyi,V.Marchenko,I.Yushchuk, A.Perepadya, R.Dotsenko, O.Terekh and others, who were in the u. myuard of the Sixties Movement. They came under longer and heavy fire of the Communist ideologists. This last wave of Soviet persecutions and reprisals against Ukrainian intellectuals slowed down only in the IN irlod of Gorbachov's restructuring (Perestroika) during 1985-1989. The third period in Soviet Ukrainian translation was also marked by the common understanding of the need for higher standard of artistic requirements, which were finally put before all translators of belles-iHtios by noted literary critics in the late 1950's and early 1960's. It was then that many regular samples of faithfully translated works of great foreign literary masters were published. This inspired the succeeding generation of post-war translators to follow the fine example of Ryl'skyi, Lukash, Mysyk, Tereshchenko, Borys Ten, and others.
Exceptionally masterful versifications from Western and Eastern belles-lettres were performed by one more veteran translator and Soviet concentration camp inmate, Vasyl' Mysyk (1907-1983). His translation output comprises one half of R.Burns' poems, which rank among the best versifications of the Scottish bard in all Slavic languages. Besides, Mysyk left behind extraordinary translations of some works by Shakespeare, Byron, Milton, Shelley, Keats, Longfellow. Moreover, he was the only qualified translator, who besides A.Krymskyi, was able to render works of some Eastern classics directly from the original. He revealed in Ukrainian the works of old Persian and Tajik world-wide known classics A.Firdousi, Abu Ali Husain Ibn Seana, Omar Khayam, M.Saadi, Sh. Hafiz as well as some French classics (J.du Bellay, P.Scarron) and several others.
H.Kochur (1908-1994), a former student of M.Zerov and higher school lecturer in foreign literatures spent several years in Soviet concentration camps. He was a scrupulous versifier from foreign languages such as ancient Greek (Alcaeus, Sappho), contemporary Greek (C.Cavafes, Y.Ritsos) and especially the French classics (A.Vigny, C.Baudelaire, PVerlaine, A.Rimbaud, P.Valery, Saint-John Perse and some others). He also translated English and American classics (R.Burns, T.S.Eliot, John Milton, P.B.Shelley, G.G.Byron, J.Keats, H.W.Longfellow), Polish classics (Yu.Slowacki, Yu.Tuwim), Czech, Jewish, Lithuanian and other national poets. An inspirational role belonged to Kochur as he influenced and guided the Ukrainian translators during his chairmanship of the Translator's section in the Ukrainian Writers Union in early and mid 1960's.
Prominent in the galaxy of this older generation translators was Borys Ten (1897-1983), the pen name of Vasyl' Khomychevs'kyi. A poet and former Stalinist terror victim, he was the first to produce entire masterly translations of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey in Ukrainian. Besides, he edited M.Bilyk's translation of Virgil's Aeneid and provided the Ukrainian theatre with a collection set of dramas by the most outstanding ancient Greek playwrights as Aristophanes, Sophocles, Aeschylus and others. Borys Ten also iianslated the works of Shakespeare (King Richard III).
Thus, Dmytro Palamarchuk (1914-1998), a poet and also a former Soviet concentration camp victim, was an active participant of the Sixties Movement. He successfully versified all Shakespearian sonnets (1966) and published a collection of Byron's and Shelley's poems as well as many poems of well-known French poets (C.Baudelaire, S.Prud'homme, J.Heredia, S.Mallarme, A.Renoir) and also German (H.Heine), Polish (Yu.Tuwim, A.Mickiewicz), Italian (E.Petrarca) and Byelorussian (M.Tank, P.HIebka) poets. Besides, he also translated several novels by H.G.Wells, A.France, F.Mauriac, A.M.Stendhal, H.Flaubert.
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Very close to the new generation of translators spiritually was the participant of the Sixties Movement Feofan Sklyar (1903-1979). He was a poet and scrupulous editor of many poetic translations carried out from West European languages by his colleagues, but he also versified the works of German Renaissance poets Sebastian Brandt (The Ship of Fools) and Hans Sachs (The Country of Idlers) published in the Vsesvit journal. Apart from these he also gave our readers a collection of excellent translations of P.Ronsard's poems into Ukrainian.
A leading position in the history of Ukrainian post-war translation have occupied some translators of prose and poetic works from Germanic and Romanic languages. Namely, Rostyslav Dotsenko (b. 1931), a former Soviet concentration camp victim and active participant of the Sixties Movement. He produced excellent prose translations from English (works by O.Wilde, Mark Twain, J.F.Cooper, W.Faulkner, E.A.Poe), French (J.-P.Sartre), Polish and other literatures. Mar Pinchevskyi (1930-1984), who translated prose works from literatures of the English language countries (Gr. Britain, the U.S.A., Canada, Australia). He produced Ukrainian versions of novels and narratives of E.Hemingway, W.Saroyan, S.Maugham, W.Faulkner, F.S.Fitzgerald and others. Oleksandr Terekh (b. 1928) enriched our belles-lettres with an exemplary Ukrainian version of J.Galsworthy's most outstanding series The Forsyte Saga. Besides, he has translated some other prose works of the English language authors (J.Joyce, R.Bradbury, P.Ballentine, D.Salinger, G.Trease).
38. The historical circumstances and preconditions of birth and development of Ukrainian criticism of literary artistic translation in the 20th centurary.
Unquestionably, the most outstanding place among the surviving Neoclassicists, and one who made a significant contribution to llki.unian literature and culture by his poetic translation, belongs to Maxym Rylskyi (1895-1964). He outlasted all his co-literary companions and managed to introduce via his high quality Ukrainian translations many masterpieces of world literature. His translations originated from Polish (Mickiewicz, Slowacki), French (Hugo, Verlaine, Racine, Moliere, Boileau, Voltaire, Musset, Gautier, Heredia, Maeterlinck), German (Gothe), Russian (Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, Blok) and other national literatures. His well grounded theoretical articles and reviews of several translations helped considerably to raise the level of faithfulness in the succeeding prose and poetic translations in Ukraine1.
39. The main established principles of faithful translation and their realization in the practice of conveying the poetic and prose works by the outstanding translators (M.Zerov, M.Rylskyi, V.Pidmohylnyi, V.Mysyk, M.Lukash, Borys Ten, Ye.Popovych, Ye.Drobyazko, Yu.Lisnyak, D.Bobyr and others).
Some Ukrainian translators also worked successfully in more than one foreign language, the most outstanding of them being Yuryi Lisnyak (1929-1992), a former Soviet concentration camp victim as well and an active participant of the Sixties Movement. He left behind exemplary artistic prose and poetry translations from Czech (A.lrasek), German (H.Nachbar, M.-B.Schulz, B.Brecht, H.B6II, H.Mann), English (J.K.Jerome, C.Dickens, R.OIdington, B.D.Golding, H.Melville, W.Shakespeare), French (A.France, H.de Balzac) and other authors. Lisnyak was the chief editor of the new complete six-volume edition (1984-1986) of the complete works of Shakespeare in Ukrainian (translated by M.Ryl'skyi, O.Mokrovol'skyi, I.Steshenko, Borys Ten, H.Kochur, D.Palamarchuk, V.Koptilov and some others).
Yevhen Popovych (b. 1930) has dedicated his creative activities to the exclusive translation of the German language belles-lettres. He has brought into Ukrainian the most outstanding prose works of German, Austrian and some Swiss authors. For almost 40 years he has produced masterly translations of a veritable library of well-known novels, narratives, dramas and short stories written by the greatest authors as J.W.Gothe, H.Heine, E.N.Remarque, H.Hesse, M.Frisch, H.B6II, G.E.Lessing, J.Roth, J.Mosdorf, T.Mann and some others. Popovych in his translations pays an extraordinary attention to the faithful rendition of the main characteristic features pertaining to the syntactic structures and artistic style of every belles-lettres work, its expressiveness and ease like that within the logical sentence structures of the source language works. Like M.Lukash and Yu.Lisnyak, Y.Popovych ranks among the most outstanding Ukrainian translators of the second half of the 20th century.
Scandinavian belles-lettres were almost exclusively translated in the last 35 years by Olha Senyuk (b. 1929).
Among the first-rate masters of the pen is also Valerian Pidmohyl'nyi (1901-1938), a prominent Ukrainian prose writer and translator who found his martyr's death together with M.Zerov, M.Drai-Khmara, L.Kurbas and hundreds of other Stalinist GULAG victims in Sandarmokh in late October or oarly November 1937. He succeeded in recreating several masterpieces of French belles-lettres, among them being The Prison by P. Amp, Candidby D.Diderot, Letters from the Windmillby A.Daudet, Colomba by PMerimee, works by J.Verne and J.Romanis. During 1927-1930 he prepared and edited Balzac's and E.Zola's (18 volumes) as well as G.de Maupassant's 10 volume works. He also translated H.Flaubert's Madame Bovary and V.Hugo's Ninety-Three (1928), Jargal(\ 928), The Man Who Laughs (1930) and Les Miserables (1930).
As a translator, V.Pidmohyl'nyi excelled in his artistically unsurpassed skill for conveying the individual peculiarities of style and characteristics of each prose masterpiece of foreign writers. His translations are close to the originals, utilizing an equally rich Ukrainian lexicon, reflecting the versatility of stylistic devices and the individual author's means of expression.
No less significant versifications were performed by Yevhen Drobyazko (1898-1980), who was the first to artistically recreate The Divine Comedyby Dante in Ukrainian (1975). This achievement established the reputation of Y.Drobyazko as a real master of translation, who also produced some quality translations from German (Heine, Gothe, Schiller), French (Moliere, H.de Balzac), Italian (Eduardo de Filippo), Russian (A.Pushkin, A.Griboyedov, I.Krylov, A.Herzen, V.Mayakovskiy), Polish (Yu.Slowacki, Yu.Tuwim), Czech (V.Nezval) and works of some other prominent foreign authors.
No less successful a translator of Russian literature and other national authors was Diodor Bobyr (1907-1980). A noted Ukrainian author himself, he faithfully turned into Ukrainian many poetic and prose works of A.Pushkin, M.Lermontov, A.Prokofyev, V.Soloukhin, and others. Bobyr also left behind exemplary translations of H.Heine's and B.Nusic's works as well as some theoretical articles on the theory and practice of poetic and prose translation.
