Maksym Rylsky

Maksym Rylsky
Maksym Tadeyovych Rylsky was a Ukrainian poet, translator, academician,

Doctor of Philological Sciences.
Rylsky's lyric poetry grew out of the best achievements of Ukrainian poetry at his
time, and out of his broad knowledge of world poetry, French writers in particular
(especially the works of the Parnassians). He often used motifs and images from ancient
mythology and adhered to classical forms, which practices linked him to the group of
Neoclassicists. In many other respects, however, his philosophical and contemplative
lyric poetry, with its wealth of moods and motifs of nature and of the individual
becoming one with nature, did not fit the narrow definition of Neoclassicism. Rylsky's
apolitical poetry provoked fierce attacks from official critics.
He was arrested for a brief period in 1931, and then declared himself reformed
and proclaimed his acceptance of the official Soviet view of reality in his collection
Znak tereziv (The Sign of Libra, 1932). He alone of the Neoclassicists managed to live
through the Stalinist terror and become one of the main poets in the ranks of the official
Soviet versifiers. He became a member of the Party in 1943. In contrast to other official
poets, however, he often expressed himself ambiguously in his eulogies of the
Communist party, especially in those of Joseph Stalin.
However, Rylsky was not only an excellent poet, but also a consummate
translator and a deep theorist in the translation work. He considered translations as
important political and cultural matter. He enriched Ukrainian literature with numerous
translations of works by different authors and genres. The poet-academic died in 1964
and left eight dozen books of poetry, prose, translations, literary criticism and essay
writing. As a translator, Rilsky has not only lived longer than other neoclassics, but has
substantially outperformed them by the amount of work done.
Maxym`s Rylsky heritage organically unites the qualities of the scholar and poet,
translator and the theorist of the translations. He did translations of the poetry beginning
from the 1920th until the last day of his life. The translations became for him a dialog
between him and an author. His personal experience in the translation work gave him
the right to create his own theory on translations, to write a set of article on the subject:
"What is a good translation?" A big amount of translations done from Slavic languages
gave him the necessary material for the description of the general problems of
translation process.
Maksym`s extensive creative experience and encyclopedic knowledge formed the

basis of a number of speeches, reviews on both general problems of translation theory
and applied theory. Maksym Rylsky is the author of scientific papers such as "Problems
of literary translation", "Art Slavonic translation from one language to another," and
other. He emphasized that each translator must find creative dominant - the most
significant that is characteristic only of work concrete poet.
The main focus of Rylsky`s translation interests is French, Russian and Polish
poetry. Working on Russian poetry was a way of raising the level of Ukrainian literary
language for him. Work on Pushkin`s works Rylsky continued until the last months of
his life. His work includes more than 60 Pushkin`s lyrical masterpieces, as well as
translations of great poems – “The Bronze Horseman”, “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray”
and “A Feast in Time of Plague”, tales and, finally, a novel in verse “Eugene Onegin”.
The Rylsky`s translation is thoroughly aphoristic. The lines that are included in
Russian literature as aphorisms are translated by phrases that may be Ukrainian
aphorisms. The translator has shown tremendous resourcefulness in situations where
direct translation is impossible. He has successfully found Ukrainian equivalents.
Rylsky`s translations from Russian are not limited to Pushkin. He also translated
the lyrics of Ryleyev, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Fet. Pyotr Yershov's "The Humpbacked
Horse (Konyok-Gorbunok)", which became a favorite reading of several generations of
Ukrainian children, first appeared in his version in 1938.
A large part of Rylsky's work is translations of Polish literature. The biggest and
the most famous one is poem “Pan Tadeusz” written by Adam Mickiewicz. Rylsky
started this work at the beginning of 1923, first published in 1927 and perfected until the
last year of his life. His translation of "Pan Tadeusz" is still unsurpassed at the global
level. It caused a sensation in both Ukrainian and Polish communities.
French poetry was the third most important field of Rylsky`s interest as a
translator. A special place in his translation heritage is occupied by works of French
poetry and dramaturgy of the 17th-20th centuries, such as Pierre Corneille, Racine,
Boileau, Voltaire, Beranger, Hugo, Verlan, Rostan, etc.
Rylsky also translated William Shakespeare, Hans Christian Andersen, Johann

Wolfgang von Goethe, Mihai Eminescu, Heinrich Heine, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian,
Latin, Turkmen, Bashkir, Jewish, Armenian poets.
Opera occupied a prominent place in Maksym Rylsky`s life. The poet was not
only an admirer of music and a friend of many great singers of his day. He also took a
direct part in the creation of a highly artistic corpus of texts and translations of libretto of
the major operas and operettas of the world repertoire. He transleted modern literary
editions of libretto of such classic Ukrainian operas as “Taras Bulba”, “Christmas Eve”,
“Natalka Poltavka”, “Zaporozhets za Dunayem”. About 20 translations (or revisions) of
such classic operas, as “Eugene Onegin”, “Ruslan and Ludmila”, “The Queen of
Spades”, “Snegurochka”, “The Tsar's Bride”, “Mazepa”, “The Bells of Corneville” also
belong to Rylsky.
Rylsky's translation style, his attitude to translation as a creative act, in the process
of which the interpreter passes the work through himself and fills with his aesthetic
essence, corresponds to some provisions of the modern theory of "egocentric
translation". In such type of translation, the individuality of the reader is particularly
pronounced, and the main component is "the creation by the translator's artistic
techniques of an emotional field capable of enhancing or reproducing the poetic thought
of the original", since this phenomenon "reproduces the purely national peculiarities of
the literary, the epic nature of the situation, which somehow affect the creative life of the
individual. Then both the choice of the work and the method of translation will retain the
characteristics of his talent, aesthetic tastes, thinking, what constitutes his style.
To sum up, during his life he translated into Ukrainian more than two hundred
thousand lines of poetry. In addition, he translated stories, novels and plays. He owned
more than 50 books of translated works. There is also Maksym Rylsky`s premium for
the best literary translation in Ukrainian.
Список використаної літератури:
1. Internet encyclopedia of Ukraine [Електронний ресурс]. Режим

доступу:http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages
%5CR%5CY%5CRylskyMaksym.htm
2. Руда Т. Максим Рильський як теоретик перекладу [Електронний ресурс].
Режим доступу:
http://dspace.nbuv.gov.ua/bitstream/handle/123456789/42989/01-Ruda.pdf?
sequence=1
3. Стріха М. Максим Рильський – перекладач оперних лібрето[Електронний
ресурс]. Режим доступу:
https://musicinukrainian.wordpress.com/2019/12/15/rylsky-vocal-translator/
4. Стріха М. «Український художній переклад: між літературою і
націєтворенням».

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Maksym Rylsky

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Maksym Rylsky

Maksym Tadeyovych Rylsky was a Ukrainian poet, translator, academician,

Maksym`s extensive creative experience and encyclopedic knowledge formed the

Rylsky also translated William Shakespeare, Hans Christian Andersen, Johann

Список використаної літератури:

1. Internet encyclopedia of Ukraine [Електронний ресурс]. Режим

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