The “Americanization” of Russian life and literature through translations of Hemingway’s works

Abstract

The article analyzes the reasons for Hemingway’s powerful impact on the Soviet culture from the 1930s through the early 1980s. I suggest that this influence was created not so much by Hemingway himself as by the way his works were translated and presented to the readers in the Soviet Union. In particular, the article examines the style of translation employed by a cohesive collective of Russian-Soviet translators (the Kashkíntsy) in their translations of Hemingway’s works that came to be identified with the “Soviet school of translation.” The translators used a distinctive set of linguostylistic means consisting, to a significant extent, in enhancing the expressive properties of the Hemingway originals in their Russian translations. The resultant translated texts not only affected the behavior of a significant part of especially the male population of the Soviet Union but also set the stage for establishing a distinctive “American style” of writing within the mainstream Soviet literature. In other words, the Soviet translators collectively invented Hemingway’s style that made their translated texts sparkle in Russian.