Between poetry and translation: Translations from Russian in the German Democratic Republic (Sarah Kirsch and Anna Akhmatova)

The reception and translation of Russian literature plays a central role in the definition and in the development of the new literary field of the German Democratic Republic. From the beginning of the '60s to the end of the '70s an increase of translations of poetic works is to be registered: beside the canonical 'soviet' writers and poets, the contemporary and pre-revolutionary poems become more and more central. The activity of translation from Russian and, in particular, from Russian poetry of the 20th century, significantly intensifies, assuming specific connotations: a new generation of poets, which conventionally falls under the definition of Sachsische Dichterschule, engages in translating and rewriting Russian poetry, finding interstitial spaces of poetic and metapoetic confrontation. Between the '60s and the '70s, young German poets such as Sarah Kirsch, Rainer Kirsch, Volker Braun, Adolf Endler, Karl Mickel, Elke Erb, Heinz Czechowski, translate and rewrite Russian contemporary poets and above all poets of the first half of the 20th century such as Aleksandr Blok, Sergei Yesenin, Osip Mandelstam, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva. This activity contributes to the definition of a translation praxis, the so-called Nach-dichtung, as an authentic re-writing praxis that develops according to editorial and publishing strategies, assuming as importance as the model itself in the evolution of East German poetry. The poets seem to re-functionalize the received models in a new form of reception that interrogates both the own poetry and that of the translated poet. Through different processes of rewriting and manipulation of linguistic and poetic material, they interact in a mutual dialogue, questioning the poetic word from different horizons which, at the same time, seem to reveal new ones, contributing to the codification of a renewed literary field and of its poetics. One of the most prolific poets of this generation is Sarah Kirsch, who intensely engaged with Russian poetry, struggling with her own poetics: the intertextual relationships that permeate her work find in the praxis of translation a privileged channel of exchange with foreign cultures. While living in a regime of political isolation, translation becomes a cultural and a material need that the poet assimilates to her own process of poetic creation: translating, as writing poems, means to investigate the possibilities of language and to find the right position to each word. Sarah Kirsch's first encounter with translation and with Russian poetry coincides with her own poetic debut, at the beginning of the '60s: she contributes to the translation of the works of contemporary poets such as Bella Akhmadulina, Novella Matveeva, Bulat Okudz-hava, but above all of Marina Tsvetaeva, Alexander Blok and Anna Akhmatova. The activity of translation interacts with her poetics in a continuous exchange and in a mutual relationship between the original and translated text, which seems to be particularly productive in Sarah Kirsch's translations of Anna Akhmatova. The work of the acmeist poetess contributes to shaping Sarah Kirsch's poetic world that shares her same conception of poetry understood as adherence to the world of things. The reception of poetry and its translation assume a primary role in the re-definition of the literary field of East Germany and in the development of its poetry in the second half of the 20th century: the Nachdichtung becomes authentic poetry that finds in the dialogic and intertextual principle a productive space of interaction.

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