''Italian playwrights are exceptional…'' Article 2. Translations fromG.B. Niccolini's tragedy Antonio Foscarini in A. Maikov's traveller's diary of 1842-1843

In spring 1843, Maikov makes a rough prosaic translation of fragments from two scenes ofG.B. Niccolini's tragedy ''Antonio Foscarini'' in his traveller's diary. In the first fragment, Antoniomeets his father after a long period of separation. The scene reveals the life stance and political beliefsof the characters and indirectly reproduces the contradictory image of the city that admires by itsunique nature and great cultural achievements existing side by side with the repelling dictatorship ofinquisition. The dialogue between Foscarini father and son filled with drama attracts the translator byits depth and versatility and potential of genre synthesis.The second scene is drastically different from the first one. It represents a conversation betweenAntonio's beloved one, Teresa, and her loyal friend, Matilda, the only person she can share her feelingswith. The psychological content of this fragment is very dynamic and intensely dramatic, which,obviously, attracts the translator's attention.Maikov transforms the rhythmic and syntactic pattern of the characters' speech, as well asseparate lexical units. The translation reproduces the content and some of the stylistic features of theoriginal. However, Maikov adapts the text to the Russian perception, sometimes smoothing theRomanticist pathetics, and generally following the trends of the development of contemporaryliterature, modifying the rhetorically overloaded speech towards a more lively colloquial style andmaking it more appropriate to the occasion. The translator perceives the deep drama of the conflict andreinforces its tragic content. This fact asserts the romantic keynote of the plot interpretation andexplains Maikov's emerging interest in artistic exploration of the contradictions of the person's innerlife and desire to reveal the true human content of the historical period, desire very typical for theliterature of the middle and the second half of the 19th century.The presence of the translations from ''Antonio Foscarini'' in Maikov's traveller's diary isexplained by the direction of the poet's creative pursuit in the given period, his increased interest toman and his inner world, which, according to Maikov, are a result of a complex interplay of immanentin-born features of a personality and a contradictory impact of the social environment. This idea issupported by the choice of the excerpts and the general underlying strategy of translation. Being aninherent part in the pattern of understanding the Italian Risorgimento drama, the translations specifythe meaning of the original and reveal Maikov's interest in the immediate and vivid depiction of life inthe works of art and in subjects that characterize the core of the current events and call for new artisticprinciples of representation without excessive declamation and melodrama.

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