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

creation (the creative impulse and the created form) and in the process of translation (which
echoes the two forms of the original text in a new ‘twin’ version). Pushkin had already made the
distich famous in this last way by using it for his two addresses on Gnedich's celebrated
translation of Homer's Iliad (one address exudes respect, while the other is full of biting
sarcasm). 20 Ivanov is echoing this precedent in the adoption of the same form for his address to
Bowra, a skilful translator of the classics as well as of Ivanov's own verse.
Already, in the very title of his poem, Ivanov addresses Bowra as the ‘Oxford high-
priest of the art of poetry’ (he knew from Konovalov that Bowra was the Oxford Professor of
Poetry). Later, in the first couplet, this address is echoed by the apostrophe to Bowra as a
‘learned poet’. Here he is deliberately going far beyond Konovalov's rather dry account of
Bowra's external achievements as a prominent scholar, academic and translator, and elevating
him to the highest rank of poet; according to Ivanov's understanding and own experience, the
activities of scholarship and translation are rooted in the poetic impulse, represented as an act of
religious theurgy.
In the first couplet Bowra is addressed as a learned poet who lends his tongue to foreign
Muses who would otherwise remain ‘mute’ and have no voice in other cultures. Although this
could be construed as a broad reference to Bowra's role as an interpreter of other cultures
(through a variety of means, such as scholarship, literary criticism, translation, or the publication
of editions of verse), it seems much more likely that it is a specific reference to Bowra's role as a
translator of foreign poets. This reading fits well with the second couplet, in which Ivanov offers
a remarkably condensed poetic summary of his understanding of the creative process as applied
19
Wjatscheslaw Iwanow, ‘Ein Echo: Aus einem Brief an Karl Muth’, Mesa, 2, 1946, 21-2; reprinted in Ivanov,
Sobranie sochinenii, III, 647.
20
Aleksandr Pushkin, ‘Na perevod Iliady’ (1830) and ‘K perevodu Iliady’ (1830), in A.S. Pushkin, Sobranie
sochinenii, ed. D.D. Blagoi and others, 10 vols. (M.: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1974), II, 254, 266.
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