Maximilian Voloshin – Wiktor Woroszylski (translation from translation)

The article considers Wiktor Woroszylski's translation of Maximilian Voloshin's poem Написание о царях московских, which is in itself a kind of translation of Ivan Katyrev-Rostovsky's poem into contemporary Russian. The 1626 original includes characters of Russian tsars and the events related to them, and the entirety is built in accordance with the "matrioshka structure" (a series of stories that are links in a poetic chain).

The "translation" basically reproduces the character of the original text. However, there are also features typical for Wołoszyn's work, such as the presence of Old Church Slavonicisms, outdated lexis and forms, as well as intertextual references. What is also worth paying attention is the rhythmic composition of both texts, which is conducive to melorecitation.

Both the characteristic features of the work from 1626 and the features of Voloshin's work undoubtedly influenced the Polish version of the text. The analysis proved that the semantic and stylistic plane of the poem translated by Woroszylski were substantially preserved. At the same time, the translator made use of the possibilities offered by the Polish language, primarily the functional equivalents. He has also reproduced the non-numerical structure of the poem but with the use of Polish characteristics of free verse. The transmission of intertextual references present in Voloshin seems to be the least successful here.

The analysis conducted has proven that thanks to the strategy adopted by Woroszylski, the Polish reader understands he has a historically stylized text in front of his eyes and accepts its form. In addition, it has allowed us to look at the translation of a particular composition, that a poetic cycle is.