Vyacheslav Ivanov and C.M. Bowra: a ... - UCL Discovery

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CHAPTER THREE Bowra's Translations of Ivanov Vous êtes confident de ma Muse, dont vous avez porté en Angleterre les premiers échos. Vos traductions de lyriques russes sont autant précises que musicales, et je suis fier de trouver parmi elles mes rimes transposées très heureusement par vous. 42 V.I. Ivanov to C.M. Bowra, December 1947 Bowra's first encounter with Ivanov was as a reader and translator of his verse. According to his earliest letter to Ivanov, written on 1 September 1946, he discovered the poet’s books in the London Library in 1941 and was immediately captivated by them, especially by Cor Ardens, admiring the fine artistry, wisdom, and great talent that ‘burns’ throughout them. 1 He added that he had attempted to render three of Ivanov's poems into English but remained uncertain about the results. Surprisingly, however, he entirely omitted to mention that these three translations had in fact already been published three years earlier in his Book of Russian Verse. Bowra’s anthology grew out of his great personal enthusiasm for Russian poetry, kindled during his visit to Petrograd in 1916 and developed throughout the 1930s. Its publication in 1943 was evidently also linked to the general move to develop Anglo- Russian cultural relations during the war-time alliance. Numerous English translations of Russian poetry were included, for example, in Britanskii soyuznik (The British Ally), the popular weekly paper produced in Russian by the British Embassy in 1 Letter 2 in Chapter 5.
Moscow during the war years. 2 The anthology compiled by Bowra was substantial and varied; it included over one hundred-and-fifty poems, starting with Pushkin's ‘The Prophet’ and closing with Mayakovskii's ‘Our March’. Of the twenty-seven poets represented, fourteen were chosen from the twentieth century: Annenskii, Sologub, Ivanov, Bal’mont, Bryusov, Blok, Khodasevich, Gumilev, Akhmatova, Mandel’shtam, Pasternak, Esenin, Kazin, and Mayakovskii. These poets were all represented by one to five poems, apart from Blok who received a more generous allocation of seventeen poems. About half the translations, particularly from the later poets, were Bowra's own work; as he commented in the preface: ‘it was not my first intention to add many pieces of my own, but I seemed forced to do so by a desire to make the book really representative.’ 3 From today’s perspective, it is difficult to appreciate the originality and full impact of Bowra’s collection when it was first published. At a time when the criteria for evaluating the literary standing of Russian writers were becoming increasingly confused and distorted by political considerations, a publication appearing in the West could play a vital role in establishing reputations and giving writers a sense that their voices were still heard and valued. As evidence of the powerful impact of Bowra’s anthology, it is worth citing the reactions of a well-known contemporary Russian poet. In November 1945, when Boris Pasternak first came across the book and found among its pages Bowra’s translation of Mandel’shtam’s ‘Tristia’, followed by one of 2 The classicist N.N. Kazanskii recalled having a teacher in the 1940s, who lovingly preserved a whole series of issues of this paper; private communication to the author, St. Petersburg, 2002. When Bowra’s friend Isaiah Berlin arrived in Moscow on 8 September 1945, he attended a dinner hosted by the British Embassy in celebration of the third anniversary of Britanskii soyuznik; among the guests were J.B. Priestley, Lina Prokof’ev, Aleksandr Tairov, Sergei Eisenstein, and Kornei Chukovskii (whom Bowra had met in Petrograd in 1916). See Isaiah Berlin, ‘Meetings with Russian Writers in 1945 and 1956’, in his Personal Impressions, ed. Henry Hardy, with an introduction by Noel Annan (London: The Hogarth Press, 1980), 163-6, and Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life, 135-6. 3 C.M. Bowra (ed.), A Book of Russian Verse, tr. into English by various hands (London: Macmillan, 1943), v. 43
Page 1 and 2: BIRMINGHAM SLAVONIC MONOGRAPHS No.
Page 3 and 4: Дорогой друг мой, м
Page 5 and 6: Illustrations Photograph of V.I. Iv
Page 7 and 8: Transcription and Transliteration I
Page 9 and 10: INTRODUCTION Vyacheslav Ivanov (186
Page 11 and 12: classical tradition of humanism to
Page 13 and 14: tradition’. 1 Although Ivanov beg
Page 15 and 16: he overlooked them because of his h
Page 17 and 18: ‘zhiznetvorchestvo’ (creation o
Page 19 and 20: (Transparency, 1904), Eros (1907),
Page 21 and 22: humanism; as we shall see below, th
Page 23 and 24: his transformation of the Russian l
Page 25 and 26: The publication of these letters in
Page 27 and 28: edition then formed the basis of th
Page 29 and 30: Жил Диониса новый с
Page 31 and 32: CHAPTER TWO Bowra as a Classical Sc
Page 33 and 34: company of a Russian friend's siste
Page 35 and 36: who initiated him into the art of t
Page 37 and 38: made possible his election to the O
Page 39 and 40: the United States, that he discusse
Page 41: intuitions, was able to recognize i
Page 45 and 46: (tiny little corner): 'это то
Page 47 and 48: of the existing anthologies of Russ
Page 49 and 50: (unchanged) in 1947 and then follow
Page 51 and 52: Pindar or Alcaeus.’ 21 In his bri
Page 53 and 54: Уединенная душа. 26 A
Page 55 and 56: К закатным пристан
Page 57 and 58: succeeds in conveying the power and
Page 59 and 60: Dimitrii, who also omit all referen
Page 61 and 62: all a great personality in contact
Page 63 and 64: ight now it’s impossible to deter
Page 65 and 66: covering several pages; 16 distichs
Page 67 and 68: to the task of translation. A key t
Page 69 and 70: connection advanced by Ivanov and p
Page 71 and 72: you, poet, so much sympathy, compre
Page 73 and 74: mutans carmina in aes raucum’) in
Page 75 and 76: conventional morality. These aspect
Page 77 and 78: Bowra's interpretation and admired
Page 79 and 80: members of a common humanist tradit
Page 81 and 82: details of his meetings with Akhmat
Page 83 and 84: of Svet Vechernii back to Oxford, t
Page 85 and 86: he was clearly anxious to define in
Page 87 and 88: the way in which his generation of
Page 89 and 90: έστίν. 79 This Christian versi
Page 91 and 92: These are not just empty truisms. I
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Bowra were discovered in Wadham Col
Page 95 and 96:
[To C. M. Bowra, Oxford high-priest
Page 97 and 98:
prospere vigeant! 12 Iam ante quinq
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Dear Sir, 3 Ivanov - Bowra 1 Octobe
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Praestantissime poeta, 28 4 Bowra -
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5 Ivanov - Bowra 9 December 1946 33
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survival. 38 I am glad that you hav
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implies. 47 How hard it is, for ins
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Dear Professor Ivanov, 7 Bowra - Iv
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With all good wishes to your family
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compatriotes non-initiés. 64 Vos t
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Dear Professor Ivanov, 10 Bowra - I
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your book. 81 I have also written t
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His subsequent support for the publ
Page 121 and 122:
Works by V.I. Ivanov 1 SELECT BIBLI
Page 123 and 124:
Ivanov, Vyacheslav, Dionis i pradio
Page 125 and 126:
Berlin and Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verl
Page 127 and 128:
Bowra, C.M., Early Greek Elegists,
Page 129 and 130:
London: Duckworth, 1974, 48-85. Aub
Page 131 and 132:
Vena 1998, ed. Sergei Averintsev an
Page 133 and 134:
Konovalov, S., ed., Vyacheslav I. I
Page 135 and 136:
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, Atalan
Page 137:
INDEX OF NAMES AND WORKS 137
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