Palm-Reading

            A representative selection of poetry and essays, Palm-Reading, (Saint Petersburg, Akademiceskij projekt 2000) by Milan Rúfus has been published in a translation by Viktoria Kamenská and Oleg Malevich into Russian. It is quite a large selection, whose translators are authors themselves, and displays work from the whole of the author’s life in all its variety with a final slice from his essays. In his introduction Malevich moves from reference to the poet’s work to an affecting formulation of admiration for the poet’s work and personality. The translation is remarkable. The translators generally translate the variety of Rúfus’ poetry - from the different forms of rhymed syllabic-tonic verse through free verse to the Rúfus’ particular free verse forms. With regard to this there is obligatory transformation of the general meaning of his poetry. We welcome his understanding which allows at some levels certain freedom for translators. At a partial level a global sense of the poem is created often differently from that of the original. The text, chiefly in the regular verse, undergoes a certain reconstruction by moving images and motifs from one stanza to another, by adding motifs, transforming and modifying leading sometimes to paraphrase (Chrizantemy - Chryzantemy), by applying the Russian poetry translation context (for example, Achmatovovsky’s in the poem, Stichotvorenie - Verse). The translation is a long way from literal translation, and with the background of the present trend in the Slovak translation of poetry it even seems too free. Transformation and modification as principles don’t detract from the overall individual style of Rúfus’ poetry. In all cases it holds that translation as a poetical act, as translation in which the language competence of the translator connects with poetics and the poem. In translation it is interesting to follow how a poet influenced by Russian poetry, mainly from the work of Yesenin, has been absorbed and transformed in a another shape and returned into the context of Russian poetry.

Ján Zambor