Category Archives: Translation

Literary responses, Network News, Podcast, Reading Group, Translation

Professor Marina Tsvetkova, ‘The reception of Marina Tsvetaeva in Britain’ – Talk now available on YouTube

In our first seminar for Winter 2021-22, we were joined by Professor Marina Tsvetkova of the Higher School of Economics, Nizhni-Novgorod, for a fascinating (and somewhat provocative!) look at the reception of Marina Tsvetaeva in Britain. Professor Tsvetkova gave an overview of translations of Tsvetaeva, and then guided the group through a comparison of a particular English translation with the Russian original. This was followed by a long and varied discussion.

Literary responses, Network News, Reading Group, Translation

ARRN Reading Group: Marina Tsvetkova on the reception of Marina Tsvetaeva in Britain – online, 5pm 7 December

The Anglo-Russian Research Network is delighted to announce a talk by Professor Marina Tsvetkova (Higher School of Economics, Nizhnii Novgorod) on poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva in English translation.

Every writer, when translated into other languages, acquires new “faces” that resemble them no more than portraits resemble their model. Since Marina Tsvetaeva was introduced to the British literary scene by D.S. Sviatopolk-Mirskii in his Anthology of Russian Poetry (1924), she has acquired multiple “faces” in translations by Donald McDuff, Elaine Feinstein, Christopher White, and others. This reading group will conduct an interactive analysis, led by Professor Tsvetkova. It will consider Tsvetaeva’s poem “An Attempt at Jealousy” (Popytka revnosti) and its translation by Elaine Feinstein, to identify the transformations that happened to the Russian poem when translated into the English amd to pin-point one of the “faces” Tsvetaeva has received in Britain.

Professor Marina Tsvetkova is Professor of Literature at the Higher School of Economics (Nizhnii Novgorod). Her area of expertise encompasses different facets of Russian-British cultural interactions: the reception of Russian poetry and prose in Britain, and vice versa; translation of Russian literature into English; cross-cultural “inter-semiotic translation”, such as in film and comic book adaptation of literary classics. Marina Tsvetkova has taught as a visiting professor and given guest lectures in France, Brazil, Italy, USA, and Poland. This event will be held on Zoom.

Eventbrite registration is free, but, as always, essential. The details are here.

Professor Tsvetkova has prepared a primer, consisting of the Russian original of ‘An Attempt at Jealousy’ and the translation into English by Elaine Feinstein, along with some points she will be considering during her talk. It can be found below.

Tsvetkova – An Attempt at Jealousy – ARRN 7 DecemberDownload

Reading Group, Theatre, Translation, Travel

Reading Group: Claire Warden on ‘Translation and Travel: Rediscovering the Lost Women of Anglo-Russian Theatre’

claire warden photoThe Anglo-Russian Research Network will be holding its spring reading group at 17:00 on Friday 22 February at Pushkin House, Bloomsbury (www.pushkinhouse.org). This session will look at the intersections between British and Russian theatre through the work of some ‘lost’ women translators. The discussion will be led by Dr Claire Warden, Senior Lecturer in English and Drama at Loughborough University.

Claire writes: ‘Many British theatre makers travelled to Russia during the early to mid twentieth century, bringing back to Britain a range of interesting techniques and aesthetics. Their transnational experiences and subsequent practices, often infused with the ideas of the Russian stage, mark an interesting example of British avant-garde theatre and a challenge to the perceived dominance of realism or escapist music hall. However, as I conducted this work I was struck by the lack of female voices. Subsequent projects have sought to balance this. During this reading group we will examine the translation work of Elisaveta Fen, Christopher St John and Maria Potapenko (the latter two in conjunction with the women’s suffrage-supporting theatre company The Pioneer Players) in order to ask a range of questions about the fraught yet fruitful relationship between the Russian and British stage, the positioning of translators in this transnational exchange, and the importance of this Russophilia in challenging established parochial and/or patriarchal narratives of British theatre historiography.’

You can access the readings here: https://anglorussiannetwork.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/reading-group-materials-claire-warden/

Biography: Claire Warden is Senior Lecturer in English and Drama at Loughborough University. She is the author of three monographs, including the British Academy-funded Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels through Russia (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016). The research for this book won the 2014 Society for Theatre Research Anthony Denning Award. In an attempt to prove the fascinating links between Russian and British theatre, she has written articles on Basil Dean (Theatre Survey 2013) and Hubert Griffith (Comparative Drama 2015). She also writes on Russian theatre more generally, co-writing a chapter (with Jonathan Pitches) on Theodore Komisarjevsky for the Great European Stage Directors series, volume 3: Copeau, Komisarjevsky, Guthrie (Bloomsbury 2018), and writing a chapter on Alexander Tairov for Amy Skinner’s forthcoming Russian Theatre in Practice: A Handbook for Directors (Methuen 2019).

The Anglo-Russian Research Network organises termly reading groups for those interested in the interactions between British and Russian culture and politics in the period 1880-1950. These are informal events with plenty of discussion and wine, and are open to all. You can read more about the reading group and listen to podcasts https://anglorussiannetwork.wordpress.com/reading-groups/]. If you plan to attend, it would be helpful if you could let Rebecca Beasley (rebecca.beasley@ell.ox.ac.uk) and/ or Matthew Taunton (M.Taunton@uea.ac.uk) know. The discussion will finish at 7, and anyone available is very welcome to join us for dinner nearby.