Not Quite a Juggler of Identities: Joseph Brodsky's Translations within the American Literary Tradition

Abstract

This thesis discusses the difficulties in bringing Joseph Brodsky's poetry in English. It also attempts to locate Brodsky's poetry in relation to the multilingual American literary tradition by considering the factors that resulted in Brodsky being exceptionally successful in English, and the negative criticism of his translations and the original English poems. This research explores translation by considering the linguistic, literary and cultural factors involved in the transition of the poems from Russia (and Russian) to America (and English). It raises a set of broader issues connected with questioning the authority of the native speaker, the nature of the American literary tradition, and defining a good translation. Yet, it also considers the particularities of the literary niche of the exiled writers, the extend and the approaches to the transformations of English done by the authors-representatives of ethnic minorities, the appropriateness of Brodsky's manipulations with English and the connotations of certain elements of prosody in English and Russian. The thesis approaches the subject by discussing the difficulties of poetry translation specifically in the context of the Russian poetry translated into English with the main focus placed on Brodsky. It provides the overview of the debate around...

This thesis discusses the difficulties in bringing Joseph Brodsky's poetry in English. It also attempts to locate Brodsky's poetry in relation to the multilingual American literary tradition by considering the factors that resulted in Brodsky being exceptionally successful in English, and the negative criticism of his translations and the original English poems. This research explores translation by considering the linguistic, literary and cultural factors involved in the transition of the poems from Russia (and Russian) to America (and English). It raises a set of broader issues connected with questioning the authority of the native speaker, the nature of the American literary tradition, and defining a good translation. Yet, it also considers the particularities of the literary niche of the exiled writers, the extend and the approaches to the transformations of English done by the authors-representatives of ethnic minorities, the appropriateness of Brodsky's manipulations with English and the connotations of certain elements of prosody in English and Russian. The thesis approaches the subject by discussing the difficulties of poetry translation specifically in the context of the Russian poetry translated into English with the main focus placed on Brodsky. It provides the overview of the debate around...