Nicanor Parra — Guest of the USSR and Translator of Russian Poetry

Abstract

The article examines the interaction of the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra with the Soviet Union, his visit there in 1963, and his creative projects related to Russia. Relying on the report of L.B. Shleifer about N. Parra’s trip to the USSR in October–November 1963 (Fund of the Foreign Commission of the Union of Soviet Writers, RGALI), as well as the Soviet press of the 1950s–1960s (Literaturnaya Gazeta, Vechernyaya Moskva, Kommunist (Yerevan), etc.), the article reconstructs the poet’s route and the history of his collaboration with Soviet literary institutions, as well as numerous personal contacts. Particular attention is paid to the Russian poet and translator Margarita Aliger, whom Parra met in Chile in early 1963, they became friends and later interacted in the USSR. Aliger suggested Parra a translation of the verses by contemporary Soviet poets into Spanish, which resulted in the publication of a bilingual anthology of Russian poetry, Poesía soviética rusa (Moscow, Progress Publ., 1965; Chilean reprint — 1971). The article traces the history of the poet’s work on these translations, studies the reception of the anthology in Chile (based on publications in El Mercurio), and examines poems from the collection Russian Songs (Canciones rusas, published in Chile in 1967). Parra’s trip to the USSR contributed to the appearance of the first Soviet editions of his poetry; the article briefly reviews the main publications of his poems in Russian. The appendix contains the plan for N. Parra’s stay in the USSR in 1963 and the report on the trip with the Chilean poet to the cities of Moscow, Leningrad, Tallinn, Tbilisi and Yerevan in October 1963, prepared by L.B. Shleifer.

Keywords

• nicanor parra
• soviet-chilean literary contacts
• union of soviet writers
• ussr
• chile
• latin america
• margarita aliger
• archival documents