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Comrade Katya: Katherine Mansfield’s Russian translations

Kimber, G. (2010) Comrade Katya: Katherine Mansfield’s Russian translations. Paper presented to: The Author-Translator in the European Literary Tradition, University of Swansea, 28 June - 01 July 2010. (Unpublished)

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Abstract: Katherine Mansfield is recognised today as one of the leading exponents of the modernist short story. Interest in her work is at an all time high and her collections of short stories have never been out of print since her death at the age of 34 in 1923. Her literary debt to the Russian writer Anton Chekhov is well documented; perhaps less well known was her lifelong obsession with all things Russian, culminating in her death whilst at an émigré Russian community in Fontainebleau, headed by George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. In 1914 she met the Russian émigré Samuel Solomonovich Koteliansky (1880-1955), to whom she remained devoted (despite the occasional period of estrangement), until her death. Together they worked on translations from the Russian. Unpublished collaborations included ‘Maxim Gorky’s Journal of the Revolution’ in 1918. In April 1919, the first of a thirteen part series of collaborative translations of Chekhov’s letters appeared in the Athenaeum. In 1922, the pair worked on a translation of Gorky’s Reminiscences of Leonid Andreyev which was eventually published in a limited edition in 1928. This paper will examine the impact of Russian culture on the life of Katherine Mansfield, demonstrating how her experience of translating Russian texts came to embed itself in her own modernist inventions within the realm of the twentieth-century short story
Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics > P101 Language. Linguistic theory. Comparative grammar > P306 Translating and interpreting
P Language and Literature > PR English literature > PR8309 English literature: Provincial, local, etc. > PR9639.3 New Zealand literature
P Language and Literature > PG Slavic, Baltic, Albanian languages and literature > PG2900 Russian literature
Creators: Kimber, Gerri
Faculties, Divisions and Institutes: University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing
University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Research Centre > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Faculties > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing
Research Centres > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Date: 1 July 2010
Date Type: Presentation
Event Title: The Author-Translator in the European Literary Tradition
Event Dates: 28 June - 01 July 2010
Event Location: University of Swansea
Event Type: Conference
Language: English
Status: Unpublished
URI: http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/id/eprint/4925

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