Pasternak's translations of Shakespeare: Towards a definition of Pasternak's poetics as translator (Boris Pasternak, William Shakespeare, Russian text)

In Russian. The dissertation examines Pasternak's translations of eight of Shakespeare's plays: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, two parts of Henry IV, and King Lear. It consists of an Introduction, four chapters (I--survey of criticism; II--grammatical and stylistic peculiarities of the translations: lexica, phraseology and syntax; III--humor, imagery, wordplay, and individualization of the characters' language; and IV distortions and Pasternak's treatment of Shakespeare's obscenities), and the Bibliography.; The dissertation reveals that critics focused only on randomly-selected excerpts of translations and paid attention to translations' vocabulary; their conclusions were contradictory. It, furthermore, finds that Pasternak shortened the plays, simplified their syntax and imagery, ignored non-standard words (neologisms, malapropisms, slang, etc.), and mitigated Shakespearean bawdiness. Pasternak adapted his translations for contemporary stage productions and, in so doing, deviated from the originals. Simplification of the texts served to elucidate places requiring commentaries. Russification of translations facilitated the distinctiveness of characters' speech and discerned the folklore elements in King Lear and in Ophelia's songs. Modernization of the texts--allusions to Stalinism and World War II--helped to recreate the time and atmosphere of the plays, characteristic of war scenes, bloodshed, and cruelties. Pasternak's preponderance of substantives and nouns used with appositions contributed to the condensation of his translations.; Pasternak compensated the unavoidable loss of some Shakespearean stylistic features with his own singular style. Thus, he used colloquialisms profusely to individualize characters' language more distinctly than Shakespeare. Colloquialisms were also used to enhance the expressiveness of imagery. Pasternak replaced numerous metaphors with simplified similes making Shakespeare's florid imagery more accessible to the Russian audience. He counterbalanced his disregard for obscenities with non-obscene vulgarisms. Pasternak preserved Shakespeare's energetic rhythm by shortening sentences and simplifying their structure--despite the fact that Russian words are longer than English. He frequently used idioms in his toying with words substituting Shakespeare's homonymic puns difficult to translate.