Poetics of the first Russian translation of F. G. Lorca’s play Yerma

The article deals with the first Russian translation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s play Yerma written in 1933. This translation was made by A. L. Kagarlitsky (prose) and F. V. Kelin (poetry) and printed in the collection “Selected” in 1944. In the play Yerma Garcia Lorca realizes the idea of creating a new national Spanish theatre and the desire to return tragedy to the Spanish stage. To solve these problems, the author turns to the poetics of the folk song art of cante jondo and the traditions of classical European theatre. Due to this, the poetics of the drama Yerma is characterized by a special lyricism, the action is focused on the inner world of the heroine. The main motifs of the play are: life and death, the motif of the fertility of the world as opposed to the sterility of the main character who is denied the natural right of motherhood. The inability to give a new life becomes the reason of her emotional stress and leads to tragedy. The aim of this paper is to identify peculiarities of the play’s poetics in its first Russian translation. Historical and literary method, methods of structural and motif analysis, as well as the comparative analysis method were used to achieve this aim. The article gives examples of comparative analysis of the original and the translation of the drama’s key scenes and reveals the peculiarities of perception and reconstruction of its poetics in Russian. Examples of the translators’ adherence to the original’s poetics and some deviations from the author’s intention are noted. The author of the article concludes that the translation is close to the original, the translators convey the general meaning, preserving the lyrical mood and the atmosphere of the play. However, the motifs associated with the pagan principle and the song foundation of cante jondo are not fully reflected in the translation, and the image of the protagonist seems to be more sublime and romantic.