Towards Translator's "Excesses": The Sweet-Scented Name by F. Sologub in the Context of Authorial Aphorisms

The research is conducted within the scope of receptive aesthetics and deals with the analysis of one of the first Fyodor Sologub's collections of stories translated into English. The focus of the study is the content of the collection composed by the translator through selecting the stories according to his own preferences. The texts investigated in the course of the research include the lifetime edition of fairy tales within Sologub's collected writings issued in 12 volumes, the reprint of English-language collection of stories The Sweet-Scented Name, and Other Fairy Tales, Fables and Stories translated by S. Graham and published in 1915, Sologub's "Aphorisms" and "Things' Worth and Value" that remained unpublished during his lifetime (the latter two are considered to be pretext). The first collections of stories by Sologub were translated into English and published in 1915. The Old House and Other Tales was translated by J. Cournos, who also translated the writings by A. Remizov and L. Andreyev. Cournos and Sologub were in correspondence; therefore, it is possible to trace back how the texts were selected and how some of the translation choices were made, as a rule, in discussion with the author of the original texts. The collection of stories translated by S. Graham comprises a noticeable number of fairy tales (15 out of 29 texts in total). Despite the fact that the translator did not choose the most famous writings and the tales were selected based on the translator's preferences, the comparative analysis of Sologub's aphorisms and his writings translated by Graham shows a number of mutual points. Graham gave an unpopular fairy tale in the title of the collection, which indicates his profound artistic intuition as a translator. Firstly, Graham clearly understood the idea of Decadents' art, which A. Blok metaphorically formulated as follows: "Decadents are angels who did not forget their supervisor but left their home". Secondly, the title of the collection emphasized the concept of word, which was crucial for the Russian author. The main topics in the translated collection are the absurdity of the earthly life, an attempt to comprehend oneself, the relativity of good and evil, the invalidity of "one's own truth", the sacral meaning of word. The texts of the collection emphasize the topics which were particularly important for Sologub and reflect the principle points of his art. In the course of the research, it has been revealed that the texts Graham selected are artistic illustrations to Sologub's aphorisms that remained unpublished during his lifetime. The fact that the translator turned to the genre moderately presented in Sologub's writings allowed emphasizing the writer's ideas traditionally considered as marginal within the scope of his art.

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