Video: Forgotten name in Russian culture: Poetess-translator Sofia Sviridenko
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Today we know very little about the life of this amazingly talented woman. Her name is known only to a narrow circle of specialists - translators and music critics. However, researchers of her legacy are sure that if at least a small part of Sofia Sviridenko's works is published, then. In the meantime, we all know from childhood only one creation of her - the song "Sleep, my joy, sleep."
The translator was born in St. Petersburg around 1880 in a very wealthy family - her father was a real state councilor. We know practically nothing about the youth and education of a talented girl. This tragic figure, unfortunately, did not wait for her biographers, and rare fans and researchers of her life today are forced to compose a puzzle in which most of the details are lost. However, it is absolutely obvious that Sofia Alexandrovna Sviridova was a very developed and educated person. Even if we simply outline the circle of her interests and positions in life, a very unusual figure appears before us, who was probably quite eccentric for her time.
Sofia Sviridova was fluent in 15 languages and was a real specialist in the field of Scandinavian culture. In addition to literary translations, she was the author of scientific works on history, philology, history of music and the occult. Probably, the latter greatly influenced her worldview. So, for example, in adulthood, she began to deliberately create a masculine image for herself. The pseudonym S. Sviridenko - deliberately not carrying information about the author's sex, served these purposes (the name was deciphered as Sophia or Svyatoslav). It is known that the study of mystical teachings and experiments with human mental capabilities were for her an important component of creativity.
The beginning of the 20th century became the most fruitful time for the young poetess, translator and critic: under the authorship of S. Sviridenko, many articles and books were published about the work of R. Wagner, R. Schumann, F. Liszt, J. Brahms, historical stories and poetic translations, she collaborated in the "Big Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron", in the magazines "Russian wealth", "Peace of God", "Spring", "Contemporary World", "Sun", in the "Russian Musical Newspaper", newspapers "Novosti", "Poltava region”And others. In different years, Alexander Blok, M. Shaginyan, academicians I. Grevs and F. Brown came into creative contact with her.
The main sphere of creative interests of this amazing woman was North German mythology and its reflection in art. The main work of her entire life was the poetic translation of the Elder Edda, a poetic collection of Old Icelandic songs about gods and heroes. The uniqueness of this work lay in the fact that it was performed in the poetic dimensions of the original. Equirhythm translators are a very peculiar and narrow specialty, this special gift is required mainly for the translation of songs, and few people have worked like this with large opuses. In addition to the unique translation, Sviridenko prepared an extensive scientific commentary on a difficult historical work. For a work unique in scale, she received the Akhmatov Prize of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1911. This work was perceived by the society of writers as an important event in the cultural life of Russia. It seemed that a successful creative destiny awaited the young author, but history added its own nuances to this cloudless picture. A huge collection was prepared for publication, and the first part of the Edda was published. However, the year was already 1917, and for many years translations of German classics in our country have become far from the most popular material.
For Sofia Alexandrovna, very difficult times began. Having lost everything, she was frankly living in poverty, being below the poverty line. There is evidence that during these years she corresponded with Alexander Blok, who took part in her fate, it is known that after the Revolution Sviridenko collaborated with the publication "World Literature". However, most of the letters sent to Blok were written from the hospital for the mentally ill on Udelnaya. It is possible that this place was just a haven for an author who did not find a place for himself in a changed country.
During this period, she wrote about herself as follows:
The second part of the Edda, translated by Sviridenko, was never published, like most of the works of this unique author. Having converted to Catholicism, Sofia Alexandrovna once again changed her name, now to Gilberte. Post-revolutionary life became for her a slide, quickly carrying her life downhill. Today very little is known about the subsequent years of the life, work and death of the talented poetess, with the exception of one fact. In 1924, a small and, in comparison with the giant of Scandinavian poetry, insignificant work appeared in its translation in Russian - a lullaby by Johann Fleischmann and Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter, often incorrectly attributed to Mozart.
S. Sviridenko performed the translation carefully as always, reverently preserving the literary style and size of the original: - exactly according to the German text. The simple children's song turned out to be an incredibly happy fate. The text, however, changed a little several times, but her other translations did not take root in our country, and almost 60 years later, in 1982 at the Soyuzmultfilm studio, the cartoon "True Means" was released, where the song was performed by Klara Rumyanova. And a few years later, all the kids in the vast country began to fall asleep after their favorite screensaver "Good night, kids", in which such simple and familiar words sounded: "Sleep, my joy, sleep." By the way, when the song was changed in 1995, the indignant viewers bombarded the channel with complaints, they had to return their favorite song, to which a whole generation had grown up by that time.
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