L. Ukrainka and I. Franko as translators.
The revival of literary translation in Eastern and Western parts of Ukraine in early 70's and especially in the 1880's was greatly enhanced by the creative work of one of the most prolific Ukrainian poets, playwrights, philosophers, scientists and public figures I. Franko (1856-1916). He began his manifold activities as a patriotically minded realist who expressed his ardent wish for his nation to attain freedom, a better life and education opportunities. Franko purposely turned to enriching his native belles-lettres with masterpieces of world literature in which he addressed the need of his native people in all genres of belles-lettres, philosophies and arts. To achieve this gigantic task, I.Franko would employ any possible way of conveying the content and artistic peculiarities of other nations' literary works. He employed faithful translation alongside of free interpretation and free adaptation or rehash (переробка) both of prose and poetic works from most contemporary and ancient European as well as Arabic, Persian and Indian languages. During his brilliant 40-year literary career, this creative giant managed to translate into Ukrainian thousands of poetic, prose, drama, historic and scientific works of almost all outstanding representative authors and poets from the richest traditions of world literature and culture. In his fifty-volume collection of works, which came off the press in Kyiv in 1970's, seven large volumes were dedicated solely to versification drawn from different languages and cultures of the world. His faithful translations, free interpretations and free adaptations originated from works created by scores of various authors spanning from ancient times until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Separate volumes in the collection are dedicated to Babylonian and ancient Greek, Indian and Arabian literary works as well as to contemporary Slavic, Italian, German, Austrian, Swiss and other literatures. Franko's methods of versifying foreign poetic works were aimed at acquainting Ukrainian readers with the world's best samples of poetic art. An active role in introducing Ukrainian readers to best works of other literatures was also played by Franko's close friend Osyp Makoway (1867-1925). He translated H.Heine (1885) from German, prose works from Polish (H.Sienkiewicz, E.Orzceczkowa, I.Dombrowski, S.Zeromski), Austrian (H.Sudermann, M.Ebner-Eschenbach, M.Konrad), Danish (E.P.Jakobsen), American (Mark Twain), British (Jerome K.Jerome), French (E.M.Prevost) and from other languages.
Lesya Ukrainka is the literary pseudonym of Larysa Kosach - Kvitka, who was born in 1871 in the family of Olha Drahomanova-Kosach (literary pseudonym: Olena Pchilka), a writer and publisher in Eastern Ukraine, and Petro Kosach, a senior civil servant. An intelligent, well-educated man with non-Ukrainian roots, he was devoted to the advancement of Ukrainian culture and financially supported Ukrainian publishing ventures.
In the Kosach home the mother played the dominant role; only the Ukrainian language was used and, to avoid the schools, in which Russian was the language of instruction, the children had tutors with whom they studied Ukrainian history, literature, and culture. Emphasis was also placed on learning foreign languages and reading world literature in the original. In addition to her native Ukrainian, Larysa learned Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German, and English.
Lesya Ukrainka was among the most active Ukrainian translators after P.Kulish and I.Franko. She completed faithful prose translations of G.Hauptman's drama The Weavers and M.Maeterlinck's drama L'lntmse (in Ukrainian Неминуча). Besides these she also successfully translated some prose works of L.Yakobovsky (from German), P.G.Etzel and G.d'Espardes (from French), E.De Amicis (from Italian) as well as Franko's works into Russian. Lesya Ukrainka left behind a considerable number of faithful versifications as well as free versifications (переспіви) from all major European literary traditions. She began translating in the 1880's, with most of her versifications being drawn from her favourite German poet H.Heine, to whose works she turned again and again for over thirty years. From French poets, she chose the works of V.Hugo, from English G.G.Byron's works and excerpts from Shakespeare's Macbeth, from Italian some poems (or parts of them) by Ada Negri and Dante's works. She also translated poetic excerpts from ancient Indian, Egyptian and Greek. Besides these achievements Lesya Ukrainka translated into Ukrainian several Russian works (S.Y.Nadson, I. Turgenev and N.Gogol) as well as works by the outstanding Polish poets A.Mickiewicz and M.Konopnitska.
31. O. Navrots’kyi, P.Nishchyns’kyi, S.Rudans’kyi, M.Staryts’kyi, P.Hrabovs’kyi, B.Hrinchenko with his family as translators. Their contribution to Ukrainian belles-lettres during the Tsarist prohibitions of the Ukrainian language, literature and culture in the second half of the 19th – the first decades of the 20th century.
Navrotskyi:The second half of the nineteenth century was marked by a regular revival of translation in Ukraine on the one hand and by ever increasing suppressions and direct prohibitions of the Ukrainian language and culture in Czarist Russia on the other (Valuyev's edict of 1863 and the Czar's Ems decree of 1876). As a result, the publishing of Ukrainian translations and works of Ukrainian national authors in general was greatly hindered. It survived only thanks to the Halychyna (Western Ukraine) publishers who received financial support from wealthy Ukrainian patriotic sponsors, whose names deserve to be mentioned again and again. Among the most influential of them were V.Symyrenko, Y.Chykalenko, M.Arkas and others.
During the period of these humiliating Czarist suppressions of Ukrainian literature and culture in the 1860's, 1880's and 1890's, many outstanding Ukrainian translations could not be published. This happened to accurate versifications of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey by O.Navrots'kyi and to the versified parts of the Odyssey and the Iliad by P.Nishchyns'kyi. Only much later were the free interpretation of the Iliad (Ільйонянка) by S.Rudans'kyi also published, along with excerpts of Homeric poems versified by P.Kulish, O.Potebnya, I. Franko, Lesya Ukrainka and some other translators.
Oleksander Navrotskyi was a member of The Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius. Translated the world’s classics. His works were published in Ukrainian Osnova, Zorya, Kievskaia Starina journals.
P.Nishchyns'kyi: The second half of the nineteenth century was marked by a regular revival of translation in Ukraine on the one hand and by ever increasing suppressions and direct prohibitions of the Ukrainian language and culture in Czarist Russia on the other (Valuyev's edict of 1863 and the Czar's Ems decree of 1876). As a result, the publishing of Ukrainian translations and works of Ukrainian national authors in general was greatly hindered. It survived only thanks to the Halychyna (Western Ukraine) publishers who received financial support from wealthy Ukrainian patriotic sponsors, whose names deserve to be mentioned again and again. Among the most influential of them were V.Symyrenko, Y.Chykalenko, M.Arkas and others.
During the period of these humiliating Czarist suppressions of Ukrainian literature and culture in the 1860's, 1880's and 1890's, many outstanding Ukrainian translations could not be published. This happened to accurate versifications of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey by O.Navrots'kyi and to the versified parts of the Odyssey and the Iliad by P.Nishchyns'kyi. Only much later were the free interpretation of the Iliad (Ільйонянка) by S.Rudans'kyi also published, along with excerpts of Homeric poems versified by P.Kulish, O.Potebnya, I. Franko, Lesya Ukrainka and some other translators. There translations or rather free adaptations began to appear at first in magazines and journals Dzvin, Zorya, Bukovyna, Dilo and others.
Master’s Degree in Theology and Philosophy (National University of Athens).
Translated into Ukrainian the works of antique classical writers, namely, Antigony by Sophocles, /ˈsɒfəkliːz/, Odyssey and Illiad by Homer /hómɛːr/; translated The Tale of Igor's Campaign into Greek.
S.Rudans'kyi:
Rudansky, Stepan [Rudans’kyj], b 6 January 1834 in Khomutyntsi, Vinnytsia county, Podilia gubernia, d 3 May 1873 in Yalta. (Photo: Stepan Rudansky.) Poet. He studied at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Medicine and Surgery, and after graduation (1861) he worked for the rest of his life as a doctor in Yalta. Rudansky began to write poetry in his pre–Saint Petersburg days, while still a student at the Kamianets-Podilskyi Theological Seminary, and that poetry shows the influence of Taras Shevchenko's work and of folklore. He began to publish his work in 1859 in Saint Petersburg, where he became friendly with a group of Ukrainian writers working on the journal Osnova (Saint Petersburg). Having begun in the genre of the Romantic ballad, Rudansky then turned to poetry on social issues, using that of Shevchenko as a model. That later poetry featured a condemnation of serfdom, a rallying call to work in the field of Ukrainian culture, and a reliving of the glorious history of the Ukrainian people. Rudansky achieved long-lasting fame as author of Spivomovky (Singing Rhymes, 1880), which consisted of poems of various length, jokes, proverbs, and short anecdotes about landlords, clerics, Gypsies, Muscovites, Poles, Jews, Germans, devils, Cossacks, peasants, and so forth, derived mainly from folk oral literature and written in a jaunty tone with pointed humor and many witticisms. Apart from those light-hearted spivomovky, Rudansky wrote lyric poetry filled with an aching sadness, which reflected not only the poet's personal life but also the sufferings of all his people. Some of those poems are autobiographical, and some became popular songs (such as ‘Povii vitre, na Vkraïnu’ [Blow, Wind, on Ukraine]). Rudansky's works also include translations, such as of Slovo o polku Ihorevi (The Tale of Ihor's Campaign), of excerpts from the Králové Dvåur Manuscript, of Homer's Iliad, of Virgil's Aeneid, of a part of Mikhail Lermontov's Demon, and of individual poems by Heinrich Heine, Teofil Lenartowicz, and Branko Radičević. Most of his significant works were published only posthumously. Rudansky's style straddles the Romantic and the realist. His imagery and the poetics of his ballads and lyric poems are clearly of folkloric derivation. Editions of Rudansky's works have appeared in 1895–1903 (7 vols) and 1972–3 (3 vols).
Only few of his poems were published in magazines during Rudansky's life. Repeated attempts of Rudansky to publish collection of his poetry as books have been failures due to anti-ukrainian censorship policy of the Russian government and material needs of the author.
Participating in the process of unification of Ukrainian literature and culture into one national stream were also some other prominent figures of the first half and of the first decades of the second half of the nineteenth century. Among these were some already well-known Ukrainian poets and authors as Y.Hrebinka, M.Maksymovych, L.Borovykovs'kyi, Y.Fed'kovych (Austrian and German poetry), O.Shpyhots'kyi (Mickiewicz's works), K.Dumytrashko(The War between Frogs and Mice, from ancient Greek), M.Kostomarov (Byron's works), M.Staryts'kyi and others. All the above-mentioned poets and authors, though generally amateurish translators themselves, nevertheless inspired the succeeding men of letters to turn to this field of professional activity.Alongside of these literary giants, were some other translators of prose and poetic works who contributed considerably to the Ukrainian literature and culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Of considerable note is PHrabovskyi(1864-1902), who made both faithful translations and free versifications of many works by several prominent poets of different national literatures. While still in his homeland, and later during his Siberian deportation, he versified (on the basis of interlinear translations) the works of great lyric poets as well as patriotically and socially expressive poets from several national languages. He chooses from English and American poets R.Burns, T.Hood, T.Moor, P.B.Shelley, H.W.Longfellow; from German H.Heine, L.Uhland, F.Freiligrath; from French C.Baudelair, O.Barbier; from Hungarian S.Petofi; from Bulgarian Kh.Botev; from Polish M.Konopnitska and from Russian K.Ryleyev, N.Nekrasov and some others.All these translations, like many others to be mentioned below were published primarily in Halychyna, where the Ukrainian language and literary activity was not forbidden as in czarist Russia.
During this same periodP.Hrabovs'kyi worked with another prolific author and translator M.Staryts'kyi(1840-1906), who acquainted Ukrainian readers with a number of faithfully versified Serbian folk ballads (dumas) and poems of Yu. Slowacki (Poland). He also successfully versified the poems of Lermontov, Nekrasov and other Russian authors. Besides, M.Staryts'kyi also composed a very faithful versification of Hamlet's monologue (Shakespeare).
But undoubtedly the most active translators in the first decades of the twentieth century (with the exception of I. Franko and LesyaUkrainka) were the members of the Hrinchenkos family. The outstanding poet, author, literary critic, editor and lexicographer BorysHrinchenko(1863-1910) accomplished translations/versifications and free translations, which were mostly shortened versions of the originals, from works of German and Austrian classical authors (J.W.Gothe, F.Schiller, H.Heine, G.Hauptmann, A.Schnizler), from French belles-lettres (V.Hugo, A.France), from English (D.Defoe), Polish (B.Cherwinski) and Russian (A.Pushkin, A.Maikov, A.PIeshcheyev). B.Hrinchenko's wife, Maria Zahirnya(1863-1928), employed both translation and free adaptation of classical works by H.A.Andersen, A.Daudet, H.Beecher-Stowe, H.Ibsen, H.Sudermann, M.Maeterlinck, C.Goldoni, Mark Twain and also works by L.Tolstoi, I. Turgenev, M.Saltykov-Shchedrin, D.Mamin-Sibiryak, M.Leskov among others. Their daughter NastyaHrinchenko(1884-1908) actively participated in the creation of a whole Ukrainian juvenile library which comprised works by foreign authors hitherto unknown or little known to our young readers. She completed Ukrainian adaptations and edited or truncated works of the authors who enjoyed popularity during those years: Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), H.Ibsen(HeddaHablerand The Sea Woman), of some better known works of French (A.France), German (H.Saudermann), Danish (H.Brandes), Italian (E.DeAmicis) and South African (O.Schreiner) and other authors.
32. The level of artistic translation in Ukraine before and during the years of independence (1917-1921) and in the first decades of Soviet rule. O.Burhardt, M.Lysychenko, O.Baikar (Shtan’ko), M.Ryabova, H.Kasyanenko, M.Ivanov, V.Samiylenko as belles-lettres translators.
According to I. V. Korunets’, all the translations during the first Ukrainian independence can be divided into two periods:
The first – is the shortest one, embraces the years 1917 – 1921. After Ukraine gained independence in 1917, the close ties which had existed between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian parts of Ukraine were fully restored. Because of wars that had been held in those times, not many works could have been translated. Hence some fiction works, for example, which have been translated in Lviv or Chernivtsi or other places, were later republished in Kyiv.
Kalynovytch has founded Vsesvitnya Biblioteka publishing house where foreign works were being translated.
All the works being translated were know to lack the artistic level of translation because they were predominantly free adaptations. Among them: J. London "Stories of the North" (translated by N. Romanovych-Tkachenko), O. Wilde "The Happy Prince", R. C. Stevenson "Treasure Island" and others.
Practically republished during the first and last years of Ukraine's independence in 1920-1921 were also several works of R.Kipling (Mowgli, 1920), E.A.Poe (The Red Death, 1922), W.Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew, 1922) and some others.
The artistic level of those translations, which were mostly free adaptations (except The Iron Heel, which was neither shortened nor adapted), left much to be desired. They mostly contained many lexico-semantic, syntactic/structural and stylistic inexactitudes which could often even pervert the meaning of the original sense units, as it was the case with V.Trotsyna's translation of The Iron Heel. The Ukrainian version of this J.London's work was marked by very many conspicuous literalisms of all kinds. There were, naturally, a few regular faithful translations too, as, for example, the little shortened O.OIes's versification of H.Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha reprinted in Kharkiv in 1923 (after first being published in Lviv in 1912).
Generally speaking, there were few faithful translations at that time.
The second – embraces the years 1923 – 1925 – years of Soviet Ukraine’s history. These were promising years for the readers who wanted to keep the whole library of foreign classics at home. The first to appear were J. F. Cooper’s novels of the Leather Stocking series: The Deerslayer translated by O. Baikar, The Pathfinder translated by M. Lebedynets’ and The Spy translated by D. Kardynalovs’kyi.
A still larger, twenty-seven brochure-size volume collection of Jack London's works (originally planned as a fifty-volume collection) appeared during 1927-1932. This collection was prepared by the translators M.Ryabova, M.Lysychenko, M.Gray, O.Burhardt, I. Ryl'skyi (M.Ryl'skyi's brother) and others.As to American authors, whose works wore repeatedly published in Ukrainian translation in those years, Mark I w.iin should be mentioned first (The Adventures of Tom Sawyerand The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), as well as E.A.Poe's detective stories, O.Henry's stories (published in 1924,1926,1928,1930) and the narrative Cabbages and Kings (1932) first translated into Ukrainian by M.Ryabova.
Probably the highest level of prose interpretation in the1920's and 1930's was shown by Mykola Ivanov (1886/7? -1945/6?), who translated into Ukrainian several masterpieces from French (Rabelais' GargantuaandPantagruel), English (J.F.Cooper, H.G.Wells, W.Shakespeare) and other languages. Translations of high artistic quality were always produced by Lesya Ukrainka's sister Olha Kosach-Kryvyniuk (1877-1945), who began translating as far back as 1892 (C.Dickens' short stories). She selected for Ukrainian children the best prose works by E.Seton-Thompson, R.Kipling, George Sand, P.Loti and others. Her translations continued to be published during Ukraine's independence in 1918 as well. She also translated some novels of Guy de Maupassant {Our Heart, 1930), A.Dumas' Queen Margot (1930), V.Hugo's The Year of Ninety-Three, Les Miserables (1932), short stories by I.Turgenev and other works of great authors.
This period of translations in Ukraine was known to be the period of high literary quality and effective methods of faithful versification applied by Mykola Zerov. It should be highlighted, that Mykola Zerov managed to faithfully convey not only the main content of the verses but their poetic beauty, artistic merits and the pragmatic orientation of the originals as well.
The were also interesting ideas of translating fiction in the so-called "West European" style brought into life in Ukraine by an outstanding translator M. Khvylyovyi (M. Zerov supported his ideas).
Actually, they opened up a period of neoclassicism in the history of Ukrainian translations. The main principle, which these translators and their contemporaries were driven by, was simply the artistic versification in regard to content, artistic merits and pragmatic orientation.
It should be pointed out, that even after the renaissance period translations provided by Mykola Zerov remain to be complete and unsurpassed.
In 1931 Ada Negri's poems (she was befriended by Lesya Ukrainka) were published in versification of P.Hrabovskyi, V.Samiylenko, Marianna-Khmarka and some others.
Alongside of prose works many poetic works were also translated, i.e., versified in the mid 1920's and 1930's both in Soviet Ukraine and in the Polish occupied Halychyna. Most of the versifications of world classics were published, however, not in separate collections, but in different journals or anthologies. Among the more or less often translated were the poetic works of German, French and English poets (Heine, Schiller, Gothe, Hugo, Beranger, Verlaine, Rimbaud, R.Bums, Byron). Separate editions were much rarer, though not excluded altogether. Thus, Byron's famous poetic dramas and poems appeared in the following succession: Cain (1925), Mazeppa (1929), Manfred (1931) and his Tragedies in 1939. A separate edition had also the French poet P.Beranger (Selected Songs, 1933) as well as some others. Among the translators were D.Zahul, V.Samiylenko, M.Ryl'skyi, M.Tereshchenko, M.Yohansen, I. Kulyk and several others, not to mention the Neoclassicists.