Polish translation of Gavrila Derzhavin’s Ode to Felica – contexts and comments

Abstract

The article is a commentary to the new translation of Gavrila Derzhavin’s poem dedicated to Catherine II, entitled Ode to Felica. The translation was made by the author of the article herself. Until today, there has been only one known translation of the ode, created in the 19th century by a second-rate poet; therefore, it does not exist in the Polish poetic tradition.

The first part of the article recalls the creation and publication history of Ode to Felica along with some aspects of the previous translations of Derzhavin’s poetry into the Polish language. 

The next part describes the challenges and difficulties that the translator had to cope with during her work. The first challenge was the choice of the poem’s form (the metrical pattern). Ode to Felica is written in the most common metrical pattern in Russian poetry, namely iambic tetrameter, which is difficult to achieve in Polish prosody. In order to keep the original’s suprasegmental, the author of the translation decided to use iambic meter in most octosyllabic lines. To comply with the original text, the stress on the penultimate syllable was kept in the endings of nine-syllable lines as was the number of syllables in lines and the arrangement and type of rhymes. 

Another challenge was to maintain the stylistic diversity of the poem. Individual fragments of Derzhavin’s ode are characterised by stylistic heterogeneity. The style varies depending on the characters and objects described by the lyrical subject. Intertwining colloquial language with high style is one of the characteristic features of the poem; therefore, it was extremely important to recreate it in the translation. 

Some difficulties occurred also during the translation of cultural elements, such as Polish equivalents of one of the Russian folk games along with the titles of folk stories and the names of their protagonists. 

The translation of Ode to Felica into the Polish language is attached to the article.