Учебное пособие 1876

Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue 1 (24), 2019 ISSN 2587-8093

UDC 821.161.1+821.112.2

DANIIL KHARMS AS A CATALYST OF THE TEXT CREATION

OF GERMAN-LANGUAGE WRITERS

A.V. Popova

Russian State University of Humanities, Postgraduate Student, Chair of German Philology Institute of Philology and History, RSUH

Anna Vladimirovna Popova

e-mail: annapopowa2012@gmail.com

Statement of the problem. The article analyses the peculiarities of the reception of Daniil Kharms in Germanlanguage fiction based on the texts of the authors of German prose. Both the processes of reception and the external factors coming along with it, such as the cultural and political environment and the creative behavior of the author-recipient, are considered. The ways of interpretation by the German-speaking authors of the works of Harms and stylistic, semantic and plot transformations of transfer objects in the final texts are described.

The results of the study. The nature of the reception of Daniil Kharms by various authors of German-language literature was determined, the ways of processing and transformation of the source material and their functional role in the final texts are described, taking into account the influence of cultural, geographical and political conditions of the author's writers, as well as their artistic style. The objects of transfer are established: stylistic, lexical and plot elements, motifs and thematic complexes. The nature of the transformation of these transfer objects is described.

Conclusion. The productive reception of Daniil Kharms in the German-language space was promoted by the similarities in the works of Kharms with the works of representatives of the Western European literary tradition, as well as the stylistic and ideological affinity of the writer with modern German-language authors-recipients. The plot structures of some short stories were integrated into German texts, the motives of Kharms' works, such as motives of violence, death, blow and falling, were realized in the process of productive reception.

Key words: Daniil Kharms, cultural transfer, Lutz Rathenow, Christian Futscher, Tobias Premper, productive reception, imitation, intertextuality, modern German prose, influence, author, reader.

For citation: Popova A.V. Daniil Kharms as a catalyst of the text creation of German-language writers / A.V. Popova // Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-didactic Researches”. – 2019. - №1 (24). – P. 124-132

Introduction

The scale of the reception of the Russian writer Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) and its incessant expansion to this day do not allow the author to sink into oblivion. He keeps on “living” not solely in his works, but also in numerous theatrical performances, literary homages, graphic art and cinematography.

Kharms’s writings and artistic image motivated several authors of German-language short prose to create new works. The stylistic peculiarities, the motifs and the plot structure principles of his short stories were used in them. In literary studies this subject was considered by German researcher Weertje Willms on the example of Kharms reception in the novel “Hairdressers’ Picnic” by Felicitas Hoppe [1, p. 15]. Willms came to the conclusion, that Hoppe and Kharms had similarities in the realization of the absurd tendencies and the motifs of violence and death [1, p. 25] despite the differences in the socio-historical contexts of the texts by both writers[1, p. 16]. Her study is currently the only intertextual analysis of Kharms productive reception in the German-speaking space.

The subject matter of the study are the processes of Kharms reception by the contemporary German-speaking authors Lutz Rathenow, Christian Futscher and Tobias Premper and the

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© Popova A.V., 2019

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elements of lexical, structural and stylistic imitation in their short stories. The scope of the study are the peculiarities of Kharms reception processes and the production of the intertextual relations by the authors listed above.

The importance of this study lies in the fact, that the productive reception of Kharms in the German-language literature is still remaining insufficiently investigated despite its massive extent and the persistent interest in the author’s legacy in Russian and international literary studies.

Research methodology

The study aims to scrutinize the hypothesis, that he orientation and the peculiarities of the German-language creative reception were determined by its social-historical frames and stylistic affinities between Kharms’s and German prose authors’ texts. The examination of all the circumstances of the emergence of a work may lead to the conclusion that the socio-historical context did not affect the transformations present in it or the choice of objects for artistic processing. At this point it can be stated that the reception is motivated by the interest of the authors in conducting an aesthetic experiment and creating new eclectic forms of creativity at the intersection of the style of stories from the collection “Incidences” and their own developments in a certain direction. Or, on the contrary, the analysis may show along with the author's interest in the new artistic experience the intention to communicate certain political and ideological convictions and reveal an element of ideological or political instrumentalization.

The study of the processes of reception is carried out on the material of the following texts: “Fatal Incidences” by Lutz Ratenow [1*, p. 25], “For Kharms! Russophiles” by Christian Futscher [2*, p. 113] and “The Old Women at the Window” by Thomas Premper [3*, p. 54].

As the theoretical and methodological basis of the study the theories of intercultural interaction and intertextuality by H.-U. Lüsebrink, W. Broich, J. Genette, J. Kristeva and V. Karrer were used. Methods of comparative historical and intertextual analysis and interview were used in the following order: the work of the German-speaking author, which has obvious parallels with Kharms’s works, was analyzed for the presence of intertextual relations; key similarities and differences caused by various kinds of transformations were identified, the cultural and historical background of the work was established by reconstructing the circumstances that preceded the work, such as the writer’s creative experience, his acquaintance with the works of Kharms, the study of the content of biographic documents and direct communication with the author using any available means of communication.

As the terminological basis served the work of Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, one of the leading theorists of cultural transfer, “Cultural transfer as a methodological model and prospects of its application” [2, p. 213]. It is proposed by the author to distinguish five forms of reception – translation, imitation, various forms of cultural adaptation, commentary and productive reception. The types of reception considered in this study are a good example of the action of cultural transfer in the field of literature and correspond to the definitions of imitation and productive reception. Imitation is a form of reception in which “a foreign language and a multicultural sample remains clearly recognizable” [2, p. 216]. Productive reception is “a form of creative borrowing (non-imitative imitation) and transformation of discourses, texts, practices and institutions from other linguistic and cultural spaces” [2, p. 218].

The reception mechanism must include such components as the subject (in this case, the German-speaking author), the object (a work of Kharms) and the product or result. In this work, the following terminology is used to indicate them: the subject corresponds to the notion of “author-recipient”, the object is “recipient” or “source text”, the product of reception is “final text”.

Research results

Kharms reception in German-language literature dates back to the 1970s. In 1970, the first complete edition of the “adult” works of Kharms in German was published in Germany [3, p. 66], and German-speaking publicists and critics turned their attention to the Soviet author,

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who was very difficult to refer to the followers of such Russian writers as Gogol or Chekhov, but who could be compared with the already well-known Western absurdists and Dadaists [4; 5].

Following the critics and researchers, German-speaking writers showed an interest in Kharms, whose artistic style and aesthetic preferences already overlapped to a certain extent with the peculiarities of the creative behavior of this Soviet writer, whom they had never read before. These are Helmuth Heißenbüttel, Franz Hohler, Lutz Rathenow, Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann and others. Many of them not only gave comments on the publications of Kharms in Germany, but also attempted to write something similar. The reviews on the Kharms translations in Ger- man-speaking countries prove this fact. In them, fellow writers actively compare Kharms’s texts with their new works. “The fact, that “There’s nothing more to say about this, in fact” by Heißenbüttel came from reading Kharms, is obvious, but the miniatures “Several men” by Rohr

Wolf could also appear under his influence” [5]. “To become an author, a parodist must first be a recipient” [6, p. 22]. Imitation and any kind of productive reception of artistic material have a certain developmental algorithm and are subject to the influence of a combination of factors. Firstly, the recipients must be prepared and predisposed to receive the text, thirdly, to receive this text in a material form, and fourthly, read and pass the recipient text through themselves. The process of text reception depends on the so-called institutional and media prerequisites [6, p. 22].

In the first case, we are talking about traditional educational institutions, such as kindergartens, schools, universities, family and environment, and the literary traditions in which the author’s personality, such as the Western European tradition of the theater of the absurd, took place, represented primarily by dramas: S. Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” and E. Ionesco’s “Bald Singer”. Medial prerequisites are the material availability of the text to be received, for example, in the form of a paper or electronic book, video or audio recordings, etc., for example, the translation of Kharms into German, published by the publishing house Friedenauer Presse in 2002. The information about the author-recipient’s familiarization with the parodied and simulated material should be considered when establishing and analyzing intertextual relations between the final and the source text. To reconstruct the reception premises of an author, the researcher examines the author’s archive, as well as the history of reviews of his works and, if the author is alive and it is possible to contact him, the researcher should interview him for correctness of judgments about the presence of intertextual relations.

Based on this principle, the reconstruction and analysis of Kharms reception by three modern German-speaking authors were carried out. All three belong to different generations and received Kharms at different times and in different locations: Lutz Rathenow (born in

1952) became acquainted with Kharms’s work in the 1970s. in the GDR; Christian Futscher

(born in 1960), wrote his first dedication to Kharms in the 1990s. in Austria; Tobias Premper (born in 1975), first learned about Kharms in the 2000s. in Germany. The data on the institutional and medial background of Kharms reception were collected and analyzed.

Dissident in the GDR, author of children’s literature, publicist and playwright, currently state commissioner for the documents on the dictatorship of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany3 in the state of Saxony Lutz Rathenow [7, p. 1041-1042; 8, p. 1] was one of the first to apply the plot and stylistic structures of Kharms in the short stories. He processes the material in the context of criticism of the political regime in East Berlin. In the book “Outright Mischief” (“Die laute Bosheit”), published in 1992, a collection of satirical stories, most of which are united by a grotesque depiction of reality under the conditions of the SED dictatorship, written from 1978 to 1989. [9, p. 35], along with parodies of fairy tales (for example, “Hansel and Gretel” [1*, p. 15]) and mini-detectives in the section with the comic name “Castrated De-

3 Hereinafter – the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands).

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tectives” you can also find a parody-pastiche on Kharms’s story “Fatal Incidences” (“Todesfälle”):

Todesfälle

A. saß zu lange in der Sonne und ertrank in seinem Schweiß.

D. wollte noch ein Malzbonbon essen und verwechselte es im Dunklen mit einem Abhörgerät.

S. fürchtete sich so vor Lebensmittelvergiftungen, daß er verhungerte.

M. suchte raschen Basiskontakt und sprang aus dem Fenster.

B. konnte seinen Husten nicht mehr hören und erwürgte sich.

L. stellte sich beim nächtlichen Klingeln tot und vergaß einmal, sich wieder zu bewegen.

G.hielt eine Dampfwalze für eine Vervielfältigungsmaschine und rief als letztes: Aber mindestens drei Abzüge.

O.vermochte Zucker und Rattengift nicht voneinander zu unterscheiden.

H.übernachtete gern in gerade ausgehobenen Gräbern und verschlief eine Beerdigung. Die Friedhofsverwaltung hatte eine Leiche zu viel und beglückwünschte sich zur Planüberfüllung.

R.ließ es sich auch auf Brücken nicht nehmen, unerwartet nach links abzubiegen.

P.starb völlig grundlos. Sein Fall erregte Aufsehen [1*, p. 25].

Fatal Incidences

A. sat too long in the sun and drowned in his sweat.

D. wanted to eat another malt candy and mistook it for a listening device in the dark. S. was so afraid of food poisoning that he starved to death.

M. sought quick basic contact and jumped out of the window. B. could no longer hear himself cough and strangled himself.

L. pretended he was dead when they called at night and once forgot to move again.

G.mistook a steamroller for a duplicating machine and the last thing he cried was: But at least three prints.

O.could not distinguish between sugar and rat poison.

H.liked to spend the night in graves that had just been dug up and slept a funeral. The cemetery administration had one more corpse and celebrated the plan overfulfillment.

R.could not help unexpectedly turning left even on bridges.

P.died completely groundless. His case caused a sensation [1*, p. 25] (translation of the author of the article - Popova A.V.).

Kharms’s short story consists of a series of incidents leading

• either to death:

Once, Orlov ate to many crushed peas and died. And Krylov, having learned about it, also died ... [4*, p. 465]

• or to other adverse consequences for the heroes:

And Kruglov painted a lady with a whip and went mad… [4*, p. 465]

“Fatal Incidences” by Rathenow, have or imply death, which corresponds to the story name, except for one – the incidence D. It does not imply physical destruction directly and is of key importance for the entire text. In contrast to the others, this “fatal incidence” has a more specific chronotope, which it is quite legitimate to transfer to the rest of the text: the marker

“listening device” (Abhörgerät) refers to the historical context, namely the political regime in

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the GDR, against which Rathenow fought. Considering that Rathenow, especially in his miniatures depicting the regime, is inclined to make its manifestations look grotesque, the inevitable consequence of swallowing the bug in this context can be considered complete control over life and possible physical destruction of the character by the authorities.

Despite the fact that the hyperbolization of Kharms and Rathenow has a different nature, it is impossible not to take into account that Rathenow’s interest in the figure of Kharms and his “Incidences” is caused by parallels between the political situations in which Kharms and Rathenow lived and worked, respectively: Kharms – during the years of Stalinist repression, Rathenow – during the tyranny of the Stasi in the GDR. It is possible that Rathenow, like many Western, including West German publicists [10; 11], saw the evidence of the cruelty of the Soviet socialist regime in the stories and diaries of Kharms, which led him to transfer his own grotesque vision of the modern regime to him on the constructions of Kharms, as in the given example.

Austrian writer Christian Futscher works in the field of literary sketch, his work is nothing more than a series of notes about the life of a writer in modern society of the 1990s-2000s. with a humorous and satirical bias: “Beautiful and good” (“Schön und gut”) (2005), “Arrow in the eye” (“Pfeil im Auge”) (2008), “The Man That Couldn’t Endure The Sight Of Eating Women” (“Der Mann, der den Anblick essender Frauen nicht ertragen konnte”) (2014), “What the Meerkats Talk About” (“Was mir die Erdmännchen erzählen”) (2016) and others. Some of his works, such as the novel “Pfeil im Auge ”, due to the proximity of deep philosophical reflections with parodies, puns and rhetoric of fantastic wanderings in time and space can be called modern Menippean satire, and their tone and criticism of modern Austria resemble those of the novels and tales by his compatriot Thomas Bernhard.

Futscher got acquainted with the works of Kharms in the 1990s, when the collection of Kharms and his notebooks was already published in Germany. The latter, translated and published by Peter Urban in Berlin’s Friedenauer Presse in 1992 as a publication, which was named after the OBERIu’s slogan “Art Is A Cupboard” (German “Die Kunst ist ein Schrank”), became the reference book of the Austrian writer. Futscher expresses his attitude towards it as follows:

... I don’t take up any other book as much as this one, I have already marked many places in it, here and there something is written (and all this with different pens, at different times, in different decades), sheets of paper lie between the pages, the corners are bent here and there... [5*].

This statement shows the devotion of Futscher the reader to the Russian writer. His interest in Kharms and the nature of the influence of the Russian writer on the textual expression of Futscher the writer was originally due to the fact that the concept of the mentioned edition of

Kharms’s notebooks, representing a compilation from texts of various forms - diaries, notes, sketches, letters, quotes, lists, fairy tales, scenes, drawings, etc., was consonant with Futscher’s intention to publish a collection of his own texts which would be distinguished by such genre diversity. Of course, with the evolution of the communication means, the format of these texts would be somewhat different:

... in my case, these would be E-mails, SMS, dreams, texts that I have already published in another form, excerpts from E-mails, child’s utterances, etc. [5*].

Mosaic and fragmentary presentation of the material is generally characteristic for Futscher’s books, most texts are written in a stream of consciousness. The fragments, which are often fragments from dialogues, E-mails, or comments on quotations, flow organically one into another, homogeneous thematically, but heterogeneous in form. Sometimes the author deliber-

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ately or undeliberately does not complete the thought and thus creates the feeling of incompleteness. In the story “Soups” at the end of a monologue, the phrase “But maybe not” (“Oder auch nicht”) is often to be found, with which the author renounces what he said himself [6*, p.

77]. This manner of presentation is also characteristic for Kharms, known for using the “And that’s all!”, “We’d rather not talk about him anymore”, “That’s all, in fact” and so on, and unexpected plot twists. This similarity does not necessarily arise as a result of stylistic borrowing, but its presence justifies Futscher’s interest in the works of Kharms.

Another feature common for the texts of Kharms and Futscher are motifs of blow, violence and death. There is a text, apparently written in the period of the acquaintance of Futscher with the works of Kharms, which shows the influence of Kharms by the presence of obvious intertextual connections and the mention of the author’s name. This text is an homage to Kharms as one of the best Russian writers, written in the form of a conversation between two fellow lovers of Russian literature under the heading “Cheers Kharms! Russophiles” (“Cheers Charms! Die Russenfreunde”). The protagonists drink vodka, raise toasts for Russian writers and speak on the topic of death in a familiar manner, then reason, how these writers have passed away, projecting this question on themselves and on each other:

-Wie wir wohl sterben werden?

-Irgendwie werden wir schon sterben.

-Ich werde ganz traurig, Brüderchen, wenn ich daran denke, dass dein Gehirn einmal vermodert. Dass so ein Gehirn vermodern muss ... [2 *, p. 114]. - And how are we going to die?

-We will die somehow.

-It makes me very sad, brother, when I think that your brain will ever rot. That such a brain should ever rot ... (translated by the author of the article – Popova A. V.).

The other demands him to stop wailing, threatening to blow in the face, if the demand is ignored:

- Dann hau ich dir eine in die fresse! Am besten mit dem Stiefel rein in die Fresse! [2*, p. 114]. – Then I'll hit you in the face! Best of all with a boot right in the face! (translation of the author of the article – Popova A.V.).

Having heard the words “Dann hau ich dir eine in die Fresse!” (“Then I will hit you in the face!”), the friends realize that they may belong to Kharms, and, delighted by this insight, raise a toast to the Russians, Pushkin, Gogol and Kharms. Futscher uses the idioms of P. Urban’s German translations: in this homage “hit in the face” is expressed as “eine in die Fresse hauen”, exactly in this form the translator conveys the expression:

Wenn ich einen Menschen sehe, habe ich Lust, ihm eine in die Fresse zu hauen. Es ist so angenehm, einem Menschen eine in die Fresse zu hauen! [7*, p. 184]. - When I see a man, I want to hit him in the face. So nice to hit in the face of a man! (translated by the author of the article – Popova A. V.)

The dialogue, however, is crowned with a life-affirming ending: the interlocutors proclaim victory over death:

-Dem Tod hauen wir eine in die Fresse! Am besten mit dem Stiefel rein in die Fresse!

-Genauso machen wir es, Brüderchen!

Die beiden werfen ihre Gläser an die Wand und trinken fortan aus der Flasche. [2 *, p. 115]. – We hit the death in the face! Best of all with a boot right in the face!

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- So we will, brother!

Both are throwing the glasses against the wall and drinking henceforth from the bottle

(translated by the author of the article – Popova A. V.).

Tobias Premper learnt about Kharms having got acquainted with the works of Russian masters of literature, such as A. Pushkin, N. Gogol, F. Dostoevsky, A. Chekhov, L. Tolstoy and E. Zamyatin [8*; 9*]. Not the last role for the reception of Kharms was played by the literary background in Germany and the United States, where the formation of the Premer as the author took place – F. Kafka, T. Bernhard, P. Handke, S. Beckett and F. Pessoa [8*; 9*, p. 2]. It is noteworthy that the discovery of the miniature stories of Kharms influenced his attitude to the German novel tradition, the symbol of which Premper arbitrarily calls Thomas Mann:

Was uns daran faszinierte? Dass einer über etwas schrieb, obwohl dazu nichts zu sagen ist. Dass einer nicht den großen Knall inszenierte, sondern eine Belanglosigkeit aufschrieb, die uns mehr bedeutete als alle Thomas-Mann-Romane zusammen. Dass da einer sich traute, etwas aufzuschreiben, obwohl er gar nicht schreiben durfte oder nur im Geheimen. Dass ist meine Realität. Hier. Alles. Kurz und knapp. [9*, p. 1-2] - What fascinated us in this? That someone wrote something, although there was nothing to say about it. That he did not depict the big bang, but wrote about a minor incident, which, however, meant more to us than all the novels of Thomas Mann together. That someone dared to write something, although he did not have the right to write, or only in secret. This is my reality. Here it is. Everything. Briefly and clearly (translated by the author of the article - Popova A.V.)

Premper, who, like Futscher, reflects the era of open borders and opportunities for cultural interactions (he himself lived in different countries, including the United States), made the name of the American group Ramones’s song “Here today, gone tomorrow” his creative credo

[9*, p. 3]. It not only symbolizes the mobile lifestyle as such, the lack of attachment to one place and the transience of life, but also acts as a structural and stylistic principle in the work of

Premer. “For me, there is no linear life” [8*, p. 3], he says, explaining that today he thinks in one way, and tomorrow there can be no trace of these thoughts, and the linear text, such as a novel, is not able to describe his life. The fragmentary manner of Kharms’s presentation fully satisfies the requirements of the paradigm in which Premper exists and thinks [9*, p. 3].

The German-speaking connoisseurs of Kharms payed attention to Premper thanks to the books “That’s all” (“Das ist eigentlich alles”) (2012) and “Through the trees” (“Durch B’ume hindurch”) (2013) [12; 13; 14]. In these books there are not only direct references to Kharms, such as the title “That’s all” and quotations from his works and diaries, but also plot and style imitations of his stories. Premper, as he himself admits, took over from Kharms the unexpected endings and plot twists, the irrationality of the development of the action, the narrative breaks, and the rhythmic elements such as repeated falls, disappearances, circular movements, struggle [9*, p. 1-2].

Intertextual connections, unlike Futscher’s homage, are not explicitly declared in Premer’s texts, however, not only the motifs, but also the plot lines coincide. Of particular interest is the story “The Old Women at the Window”, written from Kharms’s story “Old Women Falling Out”. Holger Moos noted that the miniature “The Old Women at the Window” provides the grounds to talk about Kharms’s influence on Premper’s work. “As for Kharms, so for Premper the world consists of everything that is an incidence” [14]. However, the old woman in the window in Premper’s story has a completely different fate. She sees a stork in the window “with the windand rain-torn feathering” and recalls reading the story of old women who had fallen out of the window, being too curious, when she was young. And now, reaching old age, she realizes that this cannot happen to her, because she is not so curious. Even though the

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fall did not take place, the story has an ending structurally and rhythmically similar to the ending in the story of Kharms, but differs in the meaning:

Dann schloss sie das Fenster und dachte an eine zerfranste Fahne, die vor langer Zeit gehisst und irgendwann vergessen worden war. [3*, p. 54]. – Then she closed the window and thought about a battered banner that was once raised long ago and forgotten (translated by the author of the article – Popova A. V.).

For comparison, here is the ending from the story of Kharms:

When the sixth old woman fell out, I was tired of looking at them, and I went to Maltsevskiy market, where, they say, they gave one blind man a knitted shawl [4*, p. 466] (translated by the author of the article – Popova A. V.).

The stork coat and the banner form a parallelism: the feathering looks like a forgotten banner – a symbol of hopes and life goals left by the heroine, who avoided risks all her life, was not curious and walked only along the beaten paths.

Premper processes the material in accordance with the need to give the reader an antiexample of life. The credo “Here today, gone tomorrow” in Premper’s interpretation finds expression here as an allegorical warning: in order not to regret the past life at the old age, one must be curious enough in his youth and not be afraid to go for bold deeds and experiments.

The homage works by Rathenow, Futscher and Premper demonstrate three types of reception and intertextual relations. Rathenow concentrates on the productive imitation of

Kharms’s text structure, filling it with thematic content that is close to the content of Kharms’s stories, but adapting the final text to a given profile – political satire. In this case, the relationship between Kharms’s text and that of the author are hypertextual [15, p. 14], and the reception is imitative and productive. Futscher, on the contrary, borrows the motifs, the though constructions, and actively introduces quotations from the works of Kharms, thus specifically establishing intertextual productive connections between his texts and those of Kharms. Premper uses structural models, like Rathenow, but at the same time tries to rethink the content of the source text, adds didactic elements, which are most often lacking in Kharms’s stories.

Conclusion

Through a combination of biographical and intertextual analysis — the study of intertextual relationships in German-language texts based on the biographical data of their authors — it was established that the socio-historical context of the creation of texts, worldview, literary style and belonging of the authors-recipients to certain literary traditions influenced German Kharms reception.

The examples examined in this study testify the universality of Kharms’s works as a catalyst for the creation of new works. Small prose of Kharms in the German-speaking space is of interest not only as literary and artistic material for passive-theoretical reception, but also as a source of plot-fable designs and motifs, such as the motifs of blow, violence, death, fall, for active-productive reception, due to similarities in style and moral and ideological affinities between Kharms and the authors of German prose considered in this study.

It seems appropriate to identify and study all the most significant cases of Kharms textual reception by German-speaking authors, its influence on the development of modern Germanlanguage short prose. This phenomenon vividly demonstrates the theory of cultural transfer in literature in action and has great potential for further research due to the high interest in

Kharms’s heritage and the problem of intercultural contacts in world literature and the need to understand literary-historical processes caused by the interaction of cultures.

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Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-Didactic Researches” Issue 1 (24), 2019 ISSN 2587-8093

THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TRANSLATION

UDC 811.111’255

INTEREST TO THE BOOKS OF RUSSIAN AUTHORS

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH: YESTERDAY AND TODAY

V.V. Kozlova

____________________________________________________________________________

Voronezh State Technical University,

Ph.D. in Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages and technology of translation

Victoria V. Kozlova e-mail: victoriak_@mail.ru

____________________________________________________________________________

Statement of the problem. The article offers a brief overview of the relevance of English translations of the Russian authors’ works in English-speaking countries (Great Britain and the USA). The XXth and XXIst centuries are diachronically and synchronically analyzed.

Results. Russian-Britain and Russian-American history of interaction of literary contacts was analyzed from the point of view of translation and book publishing. The main periods with typological features in the translational activity of each of them are defined. The fundamental trends affecting the translation in each of the periods have been revealed.

Conclusion. Translation is a type of cultural influence of one country on another. This impact leads to positive results for the country of the target language, since the translating is first of all a cultural and spiritual enrichment of the “target” state. Russian culture with the aid of translation of the Russian writers’ works produces a significant impact on the development of other states, including English-speaking ones.

Key words: translation, the English language, translator, literature, text, book, Russian authors, fition, literary translation.

For citation: Kozlova V.V. Interest to the books of Russian authors translated into English: yesterday and today / V.V. Kozlova // Scientific Journal “Modern Linguistic and Methodical-and-didactic Researches”. – 2019. - №1

(24). – P. 133-145

Introduction

At the present stage of world development, when digital technologies are moving forward at an incredible speed, globalization and universalization prevail on the human evolutionary path, and the concepts of unification and optimization are becoming unofficial slogans of the majority of social, cultural, educational processes it can be thought that literature and its translation might be not in demand. Literature, especially fiction, is a reflection of the nationality of the country and its representatives, and the translation, therefore, is the "mouthpiece" of this nationality in another culture, worldview and mentality 1; 2; 3 . Do representatives of a particular country feel the need to represent the “alien” linguistic culture in their own language? This question continues to be controversial in the latest decade, when the percentage of the reading population has declined compared to the previous century and remains unstable in different countries, and the demand for the genre is influenced not by the aesthetic or substantive side of the translated literature, but more often by social and political processes the country where this text was created. Let us see how the demand for translations of works created by Russian authors has evolved abroad in particular English-speaking countries, over the past 100-odd years, in the 20 – 21st centuries.

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© Kozlova V.V., 2019

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