MISAK METSARENTS AS A TRANSLATOR

Abstract

For the first time a noticeable and valuable part of Misak Metsarents’ literary heritage, that is, translations and adaptions taken from English-American literature became the subject of a separate study.  It has been proved that even fragments of the materials available to us testify the prematurely deceased poet's good knowledge of English, high literary taste and range of interests and, finally, his ability to master translation skills.

“The sick, gifted youth”, who only lived his 22 springs, was first of all fascinated by the works of English writers containing deep psychology and impressive artistic images: on one hand, it is the humanized animal world of R. Kipling or O. Wide’s philosophical mind, on the other hand, it is G. Chaucer’s and T. Peacock’s sharp pain of love or E. Field’s soulful lullabies.

As a translator Metsarents managed to completely penetrate into the psychological sublayers of the literary works of his choice, to convey to the target language the emotions that were raging in his own inner world: he achieved this by making   original omissions-additions, sometimes reasoned mitigations or changes.