Russian-Soviet experience of translating the poem “Annabelle Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of the tradition of translating the romantic poetry of Edgar Allan Poe into Russian. The work of Edgar Allan Poe is distinguished by the grace of the Gothic landscape, a skillful combination of the mystical and romantic aspects of the inner experiences of the individual, the acute struggle of the lofty ideal with social reality. “Madness as art” is a distinctive feature of the search for love of Poe’s lyrical heroes, a feature of their perception of the world. The poetry of the author conveys his inner experiences, which, as a rule, are the personal motives of the lyrical heroes. This specificity significantly complicates the translation of poetry. The author’s last poem “Annabel Lee” generalizes the image of “eternal love”, and the stylistic and lexical-semantic features of the poem testify to the fullness of the artistic world with cultural, mystical-religious, emotional, religious and cult-ritual concepts. Despite the fact that Poe has been criticized for his penchant for formalism, his poetic skill is considered the ideal type of maintaining the unity and integrity of artistic impression. The mechanical preservation of form, characteristic of Poe’s early work, was embodied in his last poem. For the linguistic embodiment of “eternal love” the author contrasts archetypes and forms of interaction between the earthly and heavenly worlds. Adhering to the position of the need for deep, gradual and methodical work on the poem, Poe created a unique synthetic world saturated with the spirit of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the New Time. The image of Annabel Lee has retained the features of Lenore, Helena, Ligeia and other female characters that were created by the author in poetry and prose. The translations made by K. Balmont, V. Bryusov and V. Fedorov are considered to be classical ones. We aim to analyze other well-known translations by S. Andreevsky, D. Sadovnikov, L. Umants, V. Zhabotinsky, A. Olenich-Gnenenko. The result of the research was the identification of the translation features of the poem at the compositional, stylistic, lexical and semantic levels.

References

Adorno T. (2017) Esteticheskaya teoriya = Aesthetic theory. Moscow: Respublika, 532 p. (In Russian.).

Merkur’eva T. Yu. (2019) Zhenskie obrazy v tvorchestve E. Poe = Female images in the works of E. Poe. V sbornike: Tvorchestvo V.I. Lihonosova i aktual’nye problemy razvitiya yazyka, literatury, zhurnalistiki, istorii. Materialy III Mezhdunarodnoj nauchno-prakticheskoj konferencii, pp. 110–116 (In Russian.).

Osipova E.F. (2017) O perevodah Edgara Po v Rossii = About Edgar Poe’s translations in Russia. Literatura dvuh Amerik. No. 2, pp. 141–155 (In Russian.).

Translation by A. Olenich-Gnenenko (1946): http://dkhramov.dp.ua/Dne.AnnabelLee#.YT2-gZ0zbDc [date of the application: 10.01.2023].

Translation by V. Bryusov (1924): http://poe.velchel.ru/index.php?cnt=6&rhime=st_53 [date of the application: 10.01.2023].

Translation by V. Fedorov (1923): http://poe.velchel.ru/index.php?cnt=6&rhime=at_3 [date of the application: 10.01.2023].

Translation by V. Zhabotinsky (1931): http://poe.velchel.ru/index.php?cnt=6&rhime=at_4 [date of the application: 10.01.2023].

Translation by D. Sadovnikova (1879): http://poe.velchel.ru/index.php?cnt=6&rhime=at_1 [date of the application: 10.01.2023].

Translation by K. Balmont (1895): http://poe.velchel.ru/index.php?cnt=6&rhime=bl_20 [date of the application: 10.01.2023].

Translation by L. Umants (1908): http://poe.velchel.ru/index.php?cnt=6&rhime=at_2 [date of the application: 10.01.2023].

Translation by S. Andreevsky (1878): http://poe.velchel.ru/index.php?cnt=6&rhime=st_1 [date of the application: 10.01.2023].

Original poem by Edgar Allan Poe (1849): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44885/annabel-lee [date of the application: 10.01.2023].