Gaspard Hauser and the Russian Verlaine: Transformation of the myth of the poet

The paper deals with five translations of Paul Verlaine’s poem “Gaspard Hauser chante” (1873): by Valery Bryusov (1911), Georgy Shengeli (1940s), Wilhelm Levick (1956), Ariadna Efron (1969), Ale­xander Revich (1970s). Russian translators transform the image of Gaspard, which is at the same time one of the author’s masks and a prototype of the Poète maudit, which also appears later in the “Scenario for a Ballet” from Verlaine’s “Memoirs of a Widower” (1886). In the process of russification Bryusov, who considered Verlaine his teacher in symbolism, only slightly changes the French poet’s transparent syntax. Shengeli, practicing a scholarly approach, treats Gaspard in the context of Verlaine’s entire legacy: he was the first to equate Gaspard with Verlaine and he makes him a victim of the century. Levick, incorporating the commentary into the translation of the poem and striving to bring him nearer to the Russian reader, converts Gaspard into a conscious individual. Efron, using the vocabulary and style of Pushkin and Tsvetaeva, offers a Christological image of a poet. Revich’s Gaspard is a sort of social activist, who reproaches humanity for being insufficiently humane. Consequently, the myth of the Poètes maudits is extended from the 19^th century into the future and into Russian literature; the poet becomes even more sacrificial then “The Prophet” of Pushkin. He has a tragic fate, just like the fates of the great Russian poets of the 20^th century: Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak.

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