August Belovsky and features of Slavophile translation of the first half of the XIX century in Galicia

Abstract

The article
presents the role of A. Belovsky’s work in the formation of the translation heritage of
Galician Slavophiles of the first half of the XIX century. Attention is drawn to its
connection with oral folk works of various genres – thoughts, carols, historical songs
and ballads. The stylistic transformations of the originals, the peculiarities of their
adaptation to the Polish language environment are pointed out. Most of Belovsky’s
translations from the Ukrainian language are known, although examples of Serbian,
Czech, Slovak, German, and Russian literature were equally important.
Belovsky chose for the translation works in which the Slavic identity was most
vividly expressed. Due to its common roots, it united several peoples into a single
community – the Slavic world. Among the outstanding examples of antiquity in
Croatian culture, the writer included folk songs, Slovak achievements included
sonnets by Jan Kollar, in Czech writing a special role was given to the work “Royal
Manuscript”, although he translated only a fragment – “Court of Lyubushi”.
Among Russian lyric poetry, Belovsky singled out the work of O. Bestuzhev
and A. Podolinsky, a student of O. Pushkin. A special place in his translation work
was occupied by samples of Ukrainian folk art, among which Dumas predominated.
This is evidenced by the collection “Duma”, published jointly with L. Semensky with
renditions of ancient Ukrainian lyrics. The most significant achievement of the
translator was the adaptation of “Words about Igor’s Regiment” to the Polish reader.
The paper analyzes the translation of Belovsky’s “Words about Igor’s
Regiment” and points to its literal character. No less important were the Cossack
songs, examples of Christmas rituals and the spring cycle.
Parallels have been made with the translations by other authors and it has been
proved that there are peculiarities of the Galician Slavophile translation of the period
of early Romanticism. These include semantic authenticity, syntactic and metric
transformation of texts, emphasis on Cossack themes, and affinity with Ukrainophile
ideas.