Филологический класс (Oct 2022)
Chekhov in the Context of the Literary-Theatrical Culture of Iraq (A re- view of the book: Abbaskhilmi A. Ya., Larionova M. Ch. The works of A. P. Chekhov in Iraq: Receptions and Interpretations. Rostov-on-Don: Publishing House of the Southern Scientific
Abstract
The review covers the main content of the book, which includes three semantic blocks. The first block, a historical-literary one, is devoted to the perception of the personality and creative activity of A. P. Chekhov by Iraqi criticism. The second one analyzes the performances of Chekhov’s works on the stages of Iraq. The third block contains the Russian translations of the texts of the plays written by the Iraqi writer A. Naim, based on the works of Chekhov. The review highlights the range of problems analyzed by the authors of the book and the methodological aspects of comparative analysis and receptive poetics. The author of the article notes the specific features and peculiarities of the intercultural translation of the texts of Chekhov’s works from one artistic lan- guage into another in the situation in which the author and the readers belong to different cultural traditions. The review focuses on the fact that the study of the Arab perception of Chekhov’s personality and creative activity al- lows the researcher to see the Russian culture in a new light and to better understand the Arab culture. Attention is drawn to the fact that the presentation of Chekhov’s plays on the Arab stage takes place in a completely different cultural-historical tradition. This tradition is based on the folk theater and religious mysteries. They determine the apperceptive background and cultural experience not only of Iraqi audience, but also of the authors acting as retranslators of Chekhov’s works. The article emphasizes the significance of the appendix with the texts of five plays by Naim in Russian translation, which are remakes of Chekhov’s works. The advantage of the book is the absolute novelty of the material, a new vision of the problems and a heuristic approach to them, and the semantic expansion of the content of well-known literary works.
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