Испанская классическая литература в переводах Константина Тимковского

Abstract

The article is the first analysis of the literary activity of Konstantin Timkovsky (1814–1881), translator and propagandist of Spanish literature in Russia. Unlike his predecessors, Timkovsky had a good knowledge of written and partly spoken Spanish and did not use intermediary translations. Timkovsky is also distinguished by the number of works and authors translated, namely Cervantes, Calderon, Francisco de Rojas, Leandro Moratín, Agustín Moreto. Being a pioneer in the direct translation of Spanish dramaturgy, Timkovsky assumed regular but inconsistent shortenings of texts: he omitted passages that, due to internal or external censorship, might have seemed obscene or affected religion. In Calderon’s drama “Life is a Dream” all references to Russia and Russians were replaced by Bohemia and Bohemians; instead of translating puns, Timkovsky uses comments: he declares that it is impossible to transmit the wordplay into Russian and quotes the original text for comparison. The most important and still nowhere mentioned feature of all Timkovsky’s works is the choice of prose for the translation of poetic dramatic texts. The sentence in the Petrashevsky case and the exile prevented Timkovsky from carrying out a large-scale project: to compile a translated set of Spanish literature and to write its “complete history” in the form of a series of articles.