Zviad Gamsakhurdia – a Researcher and a Translator of American Poetry

Abstract

The author's English summary from the article:

The early 70s of the 20th century is considered as the vital stage in the history of Georgian American studies. This is the period, when Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s collection of translations “American Poets” (1971) and the research “20th Century American Poetry” (1972) were published. Before the release of the above mentioned books, the interest towards American poetry and prose had had a spontaneous nature and had been regarded as a branch of English literature. Translations were mainly made not from original but Russian texts. In Georgian consciousness information about America was established through the “filter” of Russian ideology. Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s researches and translations, made from the texts in the original, have changed the situation drastically.

Georgian reader was the first in the Soviet cultural sphere who was given opportunity to get acquainted with a new American World, which was completely unfamiliar to him previously. Owing to the deep erudition not only in literature, but philosophy, theology and occultism, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, as a researcher and a translator, could understand the poetry of American authors with totally different ideology and aesthetics. He managed to point out those aspects which were peculiar for the works of each separate author. Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s translation heritage is divided into two parts. Free interpretation is peculiar for the verses of those authors, which Georgian reader was more or less acquainted with through Georgian and Russian translations, though the form was mainly preserved (Walt Whitman), close correspondence with the original is characteristic for the translations of those authors, who were not translated previously (Ezra Pound, Thomas Eliot and etc).

The language of Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s translations varies in accordance to the relation of an original verse towards the tradition of literary English. Correspondingly, the translations of 19th century poets are modestly archaic; the same can be said about some of Robert Frost’s and Thomas Eliot’s verses. On the other hand, the translations of Carl Sandburg’s, Vachel Lindsay’s and other’s verses are released from the ornamentness of a language. From the viewpoint of rhythmic structure, the translated poetic texts are various. Not only ten-syllabic, but in addition rhythms, the tradition of usage of which lasted for a short period in Georgia, are chosen for conventional verses.

The translations of American vers libre are worth mentioning. Before the publication of Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s research, in Georgian translation theory there existed a wrong supposition that “Vers libre or free verse in Georgian language can exist only within the frameworks of a strict rhythmic structure. Zviad Gamsakhurdia singled out this issue in his research, formed the definition of a free verse, which still plays a decisive role despite some imprecise terms in verse studies. Based on this definition, he approached the material for translation and produced a number of previously unknown types of free verse, which served as a proof that it is possible in Georgian to exist several types of vers libre and this set forward the new perspectives for the development of free verse.

Published in the journal Sjani, vol. 10 (2009), pp. 180–189. Open the paper