D.P. Oznobishin and Hafez: problems of Sufi poetry translation

In this article problems of translation of the medieval Sufi poetry into Russian by poet, professional translator in the 19th century D.P. Oznobishin are investigated. The artistic heritage of D.P. Oznobishin gives us rich material for analysis of oriental codes of Russian Romanticism. His translation known as ''Ode of Gafits (From the Book "Dal" of his Diwan)'', a free translation of Hafez's ghazals, made in 1826 from the Persian original, is one of his most representative works. Translating Hafez Oznobishin had both a complex and contradictory aim: firstly, to present the poetry of Hafez closer to the Persian original and, secondly, to avoid excessively alien Persian words. The analysis of the poetics of ''Ode of Gafits'' shows that the composition of this poem is characterized by a clear tone and a single logic of thought that can be traced throughout the entire text. In the article reasons for the increase of the volume of secondary text is investigated. Why instead of six couplets as in the Persian original do we see seven strophes containing five verses? This is because the author needed to add Anacreontic epithets to his Russian text. For example, the image of rose mentioned repeatedly in the Russian text is not pleonasm. Instead of the chaos of semantic relations, we see the unfolding of a coherent system of meanings. In the article the Ode and the Ghazal are compared in the aspect of genre. The Ode as a European genre was used in the Western European tradition of translation in the 19th century. Very often translators called their translations ''Ode'' or ''Eastern Ode''. The Ode and the Ghazal were close in the sphere of rhetoric (the sublime pathos) and complex of themes (they were based on ''high matter''). In addition, the article points out that in the context of the Sufi poetry on the language of the ''second level'', i.e. on the metaphorical level of reading of ''Ode of Gafits'', we can see the transformation of all artistic and visual systems of the text. In this process artistic elements developing erotic themes become religious and philosophical concepts. According to the Sufi poetry this transformation is not the last transformation of the semantic system. With the first transformation we find a second one, which is no less important. Second text requires new thinking in terms of concrete reality and natural paradigmatic views. New concepts updated the meaning of mystical terms. The conclusion to the article is the following statement: in the translation from Persian D.P. Oznobishin was able to preserve the system of mystical thought of the Persian text not only in the most typical features of the Sufi poetry but also in the ''key words'' of the text, signaling the possible symbolic reading.

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