"Lenin" by Vladimir Mayakovsky: translated by Angelo Maria Ripellino

в переводе Анджело Марии Рипеллино

Abstract

This article focuses on the translation of the poem Lenin by Vladimir Mayakovsky, carried out by Angelo Maria Ripellino commissioned by the Einaudi publishing house in Turin in 1967. Ripellino’s translation is a clear example of a work undertaken not out of the translator’s personal choice but at the invitation of the publisher. Under such circumstances, it can be assumed that there is a relatively low degree of congeniality between the translator and the author. This is confirmed not only in Ripellino’s preface to the translation but also in a letter he wrote to the editor, Guido Davico Bonino, while working on the translation of Lenin. Despite this, Ripellino’s translation is extremely interesting. In his approach to poetic translation, there is a marked difference from his earlier translations of B. Pasternak (1957) and A. Blok (1960), and later of V. Khlebnikov (1968). For Lenin, Ripellino employs as many rhymes, assonances, consonances, etc., as possible. Without a doubt, Ripellino aims to draw the reader’s attention more to Mayakovsky as a “revolutionary poet” than to Mayakovsky as a “poet of the Revolution.”