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Cold War literary modernists in a dialogue under oppression
Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky in Anglo-American translations during and after the “Thaw”
- Source: Translation and Interpreting Studies. The Journal of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association, Volume 15, Issue 3, Nov 2020, p. 380 - 398
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- 26 Aug 2020
- 26 Aug 2020
- 16 Sept 2020
Abstract
Abstract
The article deals with selected aspects of the cultural appropriation of post-Stalinist Soviet poetry by Anglo-American poets and translators. The article focuses on Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky, two eminent representatives of Russian lyric poetry of the “Thaw.” English translations of Yevtushenko’s and Voznesensky’s poems are discussed in relation to Cold War issues and imagery, such as the themes of the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the rediscovery of America. The article demonstrates that the Soviet-Russian authors and their Anglo-American translators appealed to their governments and audiences over the moral and aesthetic barriers imposed by the Cold War. The opportunity for independent, liberal, romantic, or leftist English-speaking authors to collaborate with the post-Stalinist Russian poets of the Thaw was made possible by the latters’ willingness to break the cultural isolation of the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death.