V. Vladimirov's translation of Charlotte Bronte's ''Jane Eyre'' (1893): method and genre transformation

The article is devoted to the modifications of the artistic method and genre of Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre in the translation of V.D. Vladimirov. This novel was published in 1847 in Great Britain in the Smith and Elder Publishing House and was received with great curiosity. It may be attributed to the mysteriousness of Currer Bell (Carrer Bell, Correr Bell, Cerrer Bell in the translation of Russian critics), who was known to be the author of Jane Eyre. The reception of Currer Bell in Russia was similar: people who knew English read the original version and admired it. Irinarkh Vvedensky was the first translator, he published it under the title Jenny Eyre in 1849 in the section Slovestnost of the journal Otechestvennye zapisky ('Notes of the Fatherland'). I. Vvedensky transformed greatly the poetics of the original novel adapting it to the specificity of Russian natural school of the 1840s. In the course of time his translation did not conform to the needs of Russian literature that led to appearance of new translations of the novel. In 1857 in St. Petersburg A.F. Smirdin Publishing House Sofya Koshlakova, a teacher and philologist, published her Jenny Eyre; ili, zapisky guvernantky which was translated from the loose French translation Jane Eyre. Memoires d'une gouvernante. Appealing to French text-mediator, abridged greatly in comparison with the original novel and performed as the trivial love-story novel, did not allow the translator to create a real new version of the novel. It is also worthy to mention a curious drama rewriting of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Birh-Pfeifer in 1889. At this time in 1893 St. Petersburg M.M. Lederle Publishing House published a new full translation of the novel by V.D. Vladimirov. Vladimi-rov is the pseudonym of Vladimir Dmitrievich Volfson, a biologist, hygienist, critic, translator of philosophical papers and belles-lettres. In addition V. D. Volfson wrote historical novels, tales and stories. The translation of V.D. Vladimirov was well received by the critics. It includes 590 pages and is divided by the translator into 2 parts, though the original text consists of 38 successive chapters. Vladimirov apparently appealed to the translation of Irinarkh Vvedensky and was influenced by it, but despite this fact he made his translation closer to the original text. He fitted his translation to the genre of mature psychological realism and balanced it between the traditions of the Victorian autobiographical novel and the Russian educational one. The features of subjectivity and originally romantic emotional excess were smoothed over by the translator, but the general centripetal structure of the novel was saved. The psychological image of Jane Eyre was transformed as well, it became strongly motivated.

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