Russian Fate of the Poem by Robert Burns «Who is that at my bower-door?..»

Abstract

The Russian translation reception of Robert Burns's poem “Who is that at my bower-door?..” (1783) is for the first time considered in the article. It is emphasized that the comic work did not attract the attention of Russian translators until 1862, when the unsatisfactory interpretation of V. D. Kostomarov, deprived of the emotionality of the English original, came out. The results of the analysis of translations of the poem created by M. N. Shelgunov (1879), T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik (publ. 1936), S. Ya. Marshak (1939), S. Sapozhnikov (publ. 2014), E. D. Feldman (2017), A. V. Krotkov (publ. 2018) are presented. The perception of Burns’ work in Russian literary criticism and literary criticism is comprehended. In particular, numerous reviews and studies are analyzed (A. T. Twardowski, K. I. Chukovsky, E. G. Etkind, T. B. Liokumovich, R. Ya. Wright-Kovaleva, A. Bobyleva), caused by S. Ya. Marshak translation, who, despite all his liberties, preserved the atmosphere of a lively conversation between two people, and emphasized their intonational, emotional and gender differences. It is noted that, having entered into a polemic with S. Ya. Marshak, who made Burns unnecessarily classic and stylistically “smooth”, modern translators created interpretations in the spirit of courteous poetry, largely devoid of the aesthetics of the original, its unique melody.