Author’s name:
Svetlana B. Koroleva, Evgenij V. Vasil’ev – Linguistics University of Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Abstract:
This article explores principles of selecting works and their translations for A Book of Russian Verse, edited by C. M. Bowra, the first anthology of Russian lyric poetry in English published for English-speaking intellectuals in the 1940s. The article aims to characterize the concept of Russian literature presented in the book, assess the influence of M. Baring’s and D. S. Mirsky’s scholarship on its construction, and analyze the relationship between the anthology’s interpretive framework and Baring’s translations included in the book. The relevance of this research lies in the ongoing scholarly interest in understanding how Russian literature has been perceived abroad. The primary material consists of Bowra’s anthology and the works of Baring and Mirsky on Russian literary history. Methodologically, the study combines comparative, cultural, and hermeneutic approaches from literary studies with translation theory. The study arrives at several key conclusions: (a) The concept of Russian literature presented in Bowra’s introduction to A Book of Russian Verse, and reflected in the anthology’s structure and content, synthesizes Baring’s ethnocultural interpretation with Mirsky’s cultural and aesthetic perspective; (b) Russian poetry in the anthology is portrayed as both a unique expression of the national spirit and an independent sphere of creativity, with Pushkin’s genius defining its trajectory; (c) even though, according to the anthology’s Introduction and its structure, one of the main trajectories in the development of Russian poetry was defined by Pushkin’s poem The Prophet, Baring’s translation of The Prophet exemplifies how his approach imparted a non-Orthodox biblical tone, simultaneously narrowing the depiction of the lyrical hero’s spiritual and emotional states into a religiously framed interpretation and shifting the work’s dialogical dynamics toward the dominance of a single subject.
| Section | CROSS-CULTURAL ASPECTS OF LITERARY DISCOURSE |
| DOI: | 10.47388/2072-3490/lunn2025-72-4-191-206 |
| Downloads | 136 |
| Key words | C. M. Bowra; M. Baring; A Book of Russian Verse; interpretation; conception of Russian poetry; translation |