Prophet, Echo, Commander: Karolina Pavlova’s German and French Translations of Pushkin

• In Event: 19th-Century Russophone Women Writers I: The Poets Bunina, Pavlova, and Rostopchina

Abstract

Some of the earliest and best translations of Aleksandr Pushkin’s poetry into German and into French are the work of one and the same person—the trilingual poet Karolina Pavlova (1807-1893). Her translations of Pushkin from the 1830s have been called unsurpassed by several twentieth-century scholars, who at the same time expressed regret that these translations were unfairly forgotten by posterity. This paper proposes a comparative analysis of Pavlova’s “German Pushkin” and “French Pushkin” by looking at her translations of the poems “Prorok” and “Ekho” into German and “Polkovodets” into French. Is there a “Pavlovian” translational approach that prevails irrespective of the target language? What prompted Pavlova to translate some texts into German and others into French? As I will argue, the translations discussed here form a translingual cycle devoted to the role of the poet in society, a topic dear to Pavlova’s own heart. As a translator, Pavlova strove not just to produce a “copy” of the original, but to compose a poetic text reflecting her own views and concerns.

Author

• Adrian J. Wanner, Pennsylvania State U