BORYS KHARCHUK’S NOVEL «KREVNYAKY» IN RUSSIAN TRANSLATION

Abstract

The role of the Russian translation of the works of Soviet writers of the national republics in the formation of the socio-political status of the author in the ideological structure of the USSR was extremely important. The presence of such a phenomenon, along with the fact of membership in the Union of Soviet Writers, testified to the official recognition of the author, his right to the corresponding benefits. The novels, short novels and short stories of the Ukrainian novelist Borys Kharchuk were translated many times into European languages (English, German, Spanish, Polish, Hungarian) and the languages of the peoples of the Soviet Union (Belarusian, Armenian, Tajik), but first of all – into Russian. The creative and socio-political biography of the writer was ambiguous, the reputation of the author in the reader's reception still does not correspond to the objective aesthetic and social value of his works. One of the last works of the writer, the novel "Krevnyaky", was published in Russian translation in 1987, the jubilee year for the Soviet government, the year of the century of the October Revolution. This factor obviously negatively affected the aesthetic quality of the translation made by W. Rossells. The expressiveness, depth and poetic tension of the original Ukrainian text did not find an adequate counterpart in the Russian-language version. The reason for this was, from the very beginning, a wrong method of artistic translation based on literal translation, without proper knowledge of the original language. The Russian-speaking reader never understood the uniqueness of the artistic world of the author of the Ukrainian epic, remaining under the imposed influence of interpretation in the spirit of the ideas of socialist realism. In fact, the translation into Russian of the works of the Ukrainian novelist Borys Kharchuk significantly discriminated the aesthetic and social value of his creative heritage in the modern artistic and social perception, where the writer is among the ranks of numerous regional writers, in particular those of Volynia.