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[HAMLET BY BORIS PASTERNAK] Gamlet, Prints Datskii. Tragediia [i.e. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark] / Translated by B. Pasternak

Shakespeare, W.

Item #2599

Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1941. 172 pp., 1 ill. 20 × 13 cm. In original wrappers with decorative frame. Light soiling of wrappers, extremities bumped, creases of corners, otherwise very good and clean pages.

First separate edition. Cover design, frontispiece, title page vignette, headpieces and tailpiece were engraved in wood by the most significant Soviet wood engraver, Vladimir Favorskii (1886–1964).
‘Hamlet’ has been translated into Russian many times since the 18th century. The earliest Russian translations were based on French translations. The original ‘Hamlet’ was first translated in Russia in 1828, nevertheless the structure of 19th-century translations still differed essentially. In the 20th century, Russia started to publish equirhythmic translations of ‘Hamlet’. The most famous Soviet translations were undertaken in the 1930s–1940s. It is a translation by M. Lozinsky (1933), which is considered more accurate, and more poetic versions by B. Pasternak published in 1941 and further. Literary critic V. Toporov summed up: “It was customary for Russia to read ‘Hamlet’ in Lozinskii’s literal translation but to stage, film and voice foreign film adaptations in Pasternak’s poetic translation”.

Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) dedicated himself to translation work from the late 1930s onwards. The Soviet authorities’ attitude towards Pasternak deteriorated in 1936 when he was reproached for having “a worldview out of step with the era”. This resulted in his initial alienation from official Soviet literature. Thus, translations had become his primary source of income in the 1940s. It was during this period that Pasternak produced his crucial translations of numerous tragedies by William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller, which went on to become classics in their own right.
The initial proposal to translate ‘Hamlet’ came from V. Meyerhold who, finding himself in disgrace and under threat, resolved to stage the tragedy at the Alexandrinsky Theater as the culmination of his artistic journey. The numerous existing translations didn’t satisfy Meyerhold. He deemed M. Lozinsky’s recent translation “too arid and earthbound in its precision”, while he described A. Radlova’s version as “lacking taste”. His aspiration was to produce the tragedy in the spirit of the Russian theater during its golden age in the second half of the 19th century. This concept greatly appealed to Pasternak, precisely because “it called for a distinctive, freely resonant adaptation that would be effective” in a theatrical, rather than
a literary, context. He agreed to the proposal and commenced work on the translation in January 1939.
The same year, Meyerhold and his spouse were executed. Continuing this translation became for Pasternak a matter of personal debt towards the victims of repression, while simultaneously posing a significant threat to his own safety. In late 1939, Nemirovich-Danchenko proposed to Pasternak grant the stage production rights to the Moscow Art Theatre (MKhAT). Pasternak was acutely aware that he could be arrested at any moment. He suspected that his name had been mentioned during Meyerhold’s interrogation and was racing to complete the translation as swiftly as possible, viewing it as his final work.
This sense of urgency resulted in the first version of the text, which was preserved in manuscript form and later published with minor alterations in the magazine ‘Molodaia Gvardiia’ (Young Guard; No. 5/6 for 1940). Then a separate act of the play appeared in the magazine ‘Tridtsat’ dnei’ (Thirty Days; No. 3/4 for 1940). The first significant alterations were made during early readings of the text by the MKhAT troupe in late 1940. At the same time, ‘Hamlet’ as a separate book started to be discussed, beginning the period of painful for Pasternak edits. The book was published on the eve of the war, decorated with Favorskii’s engravings, and turned out to be a memorable event for a long time. After that, during the translator’s lifetime, ‘Hamlet’ was reprinted 8 times, and this was always accompanied by a list of new corrections that were “necessary”, according to the editors. Pasternak’s translation deviates a lot from the original in some moments, and it was often criticized. For example, V. Nabokov considered Pasternak’s version “vulgar and ignorant”, he himself preferred the translation by Kroneberg, which he loved as a child. However, the work has made an immense impact on the history of Russian literature. After Pasternak’s translation appeared, no one dared to take up this translating task for a while.

Worldcat shows copies located in Davidson College, Duke University, Folger Shakespeare Library, UC Berkeley.

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