Nina Debolskaja: From the experience of the French translation of Maksim Bagdanovich’s poems

(Abstract, magazine “CULTURE, NATION”, December 2016, issue 16, pp. 46–57)   

 I became interested in working on translations of Maksim Bagdanovich’s poems 15 years ago after taking part in the International scientific-practical conference in Minsk Literature Museum of Maksim Bagdanovich. The poet himself, obviously, attracted to French poetry – translated poems of Paul Valery, Emile Verhaeren, Alexis Felix Arveyres and took lines for epigraphs from Boileau, Hugo, Sully-Prudhomme, Sainte-Beuve, Verlaine. My job allowed me to reveal deeper meanings and melodies of poetic works of Maksim Bagdanovich. Very valuable clues in the translation I received from the Belarusian poetess Nina Matyash and from poet-translators Sergey Paniznik and Ivan Bursau. My experience shows that it is much easier to translate into French from Belarusian than from Russian language, as in the Belarusian language there is not only common Slavic basis, discarded the unnecessary complex shapes, but also Latin lining and, dare I say, Latin logic of thinking. Flowers from “Wjanka” (wreath) of Belarusian poet Maksim Bagdanovich do not fade, his vasilki (cornflowers) decorate a wreath of European poets of the early twentieth century. Not surprisingly, that you want to transfer and in the twenty-first century its beautiful poetic works.

Categories: Літаратура