Donskoy, Mikhail Alexandrovich

Born in 1913 in St. Petersburg. He is a mathematician by education, until 1954 he published textbooks on higher mathematics and published scientific articles. Mikhail Donskoy did not even write serious poems, but only comic ones, "just in case." He learned foreign languages ​​himself ^[1] .

Wife - Leningrad translator of Spanish and Portuguese poetry Inna Chezhegova ( 1929 - 1990 ) ^[2] .

He was buried in the cemetery of the village. Repino ^[3] .

His first work as a translator was the youthful poems of Anatole France , translated at the request of Sofia Donskoy, who was his wife at that time, wrote a dissertation on the early period of France's work and included his translation in her dissertation. He chose his wife's last name as a literary pseudonym. The first published translation of Donskoy is a poem by Victor Hugo “The Last Word” (“ Star ”, No. 2, 1952 ). According to Donskoy’s own admission, he “came to the poetic translation as self-taught”, his early works in this area were examined by Mikhail Lozinsky and the famous literary critic, professor Alexander Smirnov. Then he “learned a lot at the meeting of the translators section of the Leningrad Writing Organization” ^[1] .

Donskoy considered his translation of Hugo's ballad “The Hunt of the Burggraf” ^{[1] to be} his greatest success. The difficulty of the translation was that in a very large poem, long lines are constantly rhymed with only a short two-syllable word ^[4] . In his report, George Shengeli cited the ballad as an example of an untranslatable poem. Present at the report of Donskoy, whose work on the translation of The Hunt of the Bürgraph was almost completed, he did not dare to tell the master about this. An excerpt from the translation of the ballad was included in the collection of Victor Hugo's “Poems and Journalism” (L., 1954 ), but the full translation was published only in the collection of Hugo's “Lyric” (M., 1971 ), after which it was reprinted more than once ^[1] .

Donskoy wrote, "that sometimes a new translation is born out of a desire to argue with its predecessors." So, he translated Edgar Poe’s “Raven” in order to convey the end-to-end rhyme in all eighteen stanzas, not finding it in other translations ^[1] (in the sixth original rhyme the second, fourth, fifth and sixth lines; this rhyme goes through all the stanzas) ^{[ 5]} . Donskoy considered the through rhyme not only as a technical device, he found in it aesthetic importance, “forcing the sinister atmosphere of the poem”, compared it with Ravel’s “ Bolero ”. The reason for the polemic translation of Shakespeare’s tragedy “ Anthony and Cleopatra ” was the interpretation by Boris Pasternak of this play as the novel “Cuticle and Seductress” (Donskoy expressed his thoughts on this subject in the article “Shakespeare for the Russian scene” - “Translation Mastery”, No. 10). Dartsky translated the comedy Moliere “ Tartuffe ”, polemicizing with Lozinsky, who strove to “create a work covered with the patina of antiquity”, to make “Tartuffe” the same as it looks for modern Frenchmen. Donskoy wanted to free comedy from archaic, return to the modern stage, preserve only the aroma of antiquity ^[1] .

In addition to the translation of Molière’s comedy, Donskoy owns translations of the French contemporaries of Molière who lived in the 17th century - comedians Paul Scarron and Jean Francois Renyar , masters of the classic tragedy Pierre Cornell and Jean Racine , Spanish playwrights - Lope de Vega , Tirso de Molina , Pedro Calderona . Donskoy collaborated with the Vakhtangov Theater , where in 1971 he staged the play "Anthony and Cleopatra" in his translation (the main roles were played by Mikhail Ulyanov and Julia Borisova ). For the 1976 performance , he specially translated Richard III (the main role was again played by Ulyanov) ^[1] . Shakespeare's “ Storm ” translated by Mikhail Donskoy was staged by Declan Donnellan at the 2011 Chekhov Moscow International Festival ^[6] .

Donskoy considered his most difficult work to be the translation of the epic poem of the Argentine classic Jose Hernandez “Martin Fierro”. The complexity consisted of a large size (7210 lines), and the fact that the original was written in the stylized Gaucho folk language, and in everyday realities unknown to the reader, and in the deep philosophical sense of the poem. Donskoy was greatly assisted by a native of Argentina, the linguist S. P. Glovko and the famous translator Anatoly Geleskul ^[1] .

He collaborated with the director Jan Freed - at first only as the author of song lyrics (“ Dog in the Hay ”, 1977 , based on the play by Lope de Vega translated by Mikhail Lozinsky) ^[7] , and then as a co-author of the script (“ Pious Martha ”, 1980 , by a play by Tirso de Molina, lyrics by Donskoy and Inna Chezhegova ^[8] ; Don Cesar de Bazan , 1989 , based on a play by Philippe Dumuman and Adolph Philippe D'Anerneri , lyrics by Donskoy and Kim Ryzhov ) ^[9] . In the song lyrics for the films of Jan Fried, Mikhail Donskoy used his translations of Spanish poetry; Thus, the song “Don Dublon” from “Don Cesar de Bazan” is based on the translation of the fiction of Francisco de Quevedo ^[1] .

Don's work ceased in 1990 , after the death of his last wife, Inna Chezhegova. His many years of work - the Spanish poem of the XIV century "Book of Good Love" by Juan Ruiz was published a year later in the Leningrad branch of the publishing house " Science " ^[10] . The last film by Jan Fried “ Tartuffe ” was shot on the translation of Donskoy, but he did not participate in writing the script, and the lyrics were also written by others ^[11] .

Mikhail Donskoy is also the author of articles on the theory and practice of literary translation ("How to translate a classic poetic comedy?", "Shakespeare for the Russian scene", etc.). Donskoy believed that "the translation of poetry is a combination of art and science "; he even allowed the collaboration of the scientist and poet “only with the high qualifications of both employees ... and with their full contact” ^[1] .

Donskoy wrote that he would not be surprised at the new translations of Shakespeare's plays that he had already translated or the famous poems of Edgar Allan Poe. But about French and Spanish comedies, he hoped that his translations would suit readers and viewers in the foreseeable future ^[1] .

• MIKHAIL DONSKOY
• Guitarra Antiqua - F. Quevedo - Resenting Beggars (inaccessible link)
• The list of funds of personal origin, adopted in 2009 in TsGALI St. Petersburg