Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky about the Russian translation reception of Shakespeare (article two)

The first half of the 20th century in the Russian translation reception of Shakespeare was marked by the emerging of translations by B.L. Pasternak, S. Ya. Marshak, A.D. Radlova, W.V. Levik, I.B. Mandelstam. Characterizing their transcriptions, K.I. Chukovsky not only substantiated the artistic manner and creative position of the translators, but also presented his understanding of individual shortcomings and, conversely, successful findings. The articles «The Crippled Shakespeare», «Asthma in Desdemona» (1940) reflect his sharp rejection of the approach of A.D. Radlova to the interpretation of Shakespeare’s plays, he notes the mistakes made by the translator when working with the original texts. K.I. Chukovsky positively spoke about «Richard II» by I.B. Mandelstam; he considered its undoubted merit to be his free style and the absence of a formalist approach in observing certain parameters of the original text. The most complete features of the translation concept of K.I. Chukovsky are disclosed on the example of his translation of Shakespeare’s comedy «Love’s Labor’s Lost» (1945), which has been repeatedly staged in the theater.

“An American bitch”: Beckett’s Love’s Labor’s Lost

Samuel Beckett is not often thought of as a love poet, but much of his early poetry explores such personal relationships in intimate terms. In Shakespeare’s most poignant plays, love is almost always lost (except for his most formulaic comedies), as it is in Beckett’s poetry, despite one’s labors. This essay explores that thread of love in Beckett’s poetry, and, more importantly, its return in his late media experiments as a series of hauntings, a preoccupation that Derrida would call hauntology. The principal fi gures of Krapp’s Last Tape, “Ohio Impromptu”, “...but the clouds...”, “Ghost Trio”, and “Eh, Joe” remain haunted by failed love as they replay, time and again, the separation and its ghostly aftermath after one of the partners either dies or leaves to pursue what at the time was deemed a higher goal, art, of one form or another. This treatment of Beckett’s writings on love was originally delivered as a keynote address, “Beckett’s Love’s Labor’s Lost”, for the University of Gdańsk Samuel Beckett Seminar, “Beckett’s Faces”, and for the BETWEEN.POMIĘDZY 2018 Festival and Literary Conference as something of a backstory to the laboratory fi lm made during and sponsored by that conference and called Beckett on the Baltic: Love’s Labor’s Lost. Its world premiere was held at the BETWEEN.POMIĘDZY 2019 Festival and Literary Conference.

Children of Fancy

This chapter argues that the fanciful trifling featured in Love’s Labor’s Lost explores the epistemological utility of imagination, does so by deconstructing the prevalent view that imagination is a sort of intellectual idleness. Francis Bacon and others wrote that imagination is little more than childish cognitive toying, distinct from the more systematic labor of discovery. In his comedy, Shakespeare parodically recasts these prejudices by conceiving a pedagogic courtly academy devoted only to fancy, run not by scientists but fops, pedants, and children. In so doing, the play weighs the importance of courtesy, collaboration, novelty, and invention in the making of scientific knowledge.

Bright Spirits: Bard in the Valley's Love's Labor's Lost

For the production: Love's Labor's Lost (2015, Bard in the Valley, Canada).