Cultural Intertexts (Oct 2019)
The Complete Works of Shakespeare in Ukrainian: A Breakthrough or a Slowdown?
Abstract
During the times of the USSR, only four of its states managed to publish complete works of Shakespeare in their local languages. The first edition to include 37 plays of the Great Bard appeared in Russian SFSR in 1937 – 1945. Among other Soviet nations, Estonia was the first to publish the complete works of Shakespeare in its native language (its seven volumes were released from 1957 to 1975); in the 70s Georgia followed. The Ukrainians were the last to join the “elite” club, with their six-volume edition published from 1984 to 1986. The publication was a remarkable feat of a team of translators, editors and literary scholars and is widely regarded as a cornerstone of the Ukrainian Shakespeareana. The paper focuses on the history of the multi-volume editions of Shakespeare in Ukrainian, showing the wide cultural and political context that led to the appearance of the complete works of the Bard in the Ukrainian SSR. The author shows the directions of critical re-evaluation of this edition that in the independent Ukraine has acquired the critical immunity which resulted in the shift of this set to the periphery of readers and literati’s interest. The reconsiderations of the translations and critical apparatus of the complete Ukrainian Shakespeare would intensify the creation of new Ukrainian versions of Shakespeare’s plays and undermine the well-established image of the Bard as an antiquated and pretentious playwright.
