Translation as memoryscape and re-actualization of the canon: Mykola Bazhan’s poem “Blind Bards” in the Anglo-American translation by George G. Grabowicz

Abstract

Considering translation as a means of re-actualizing the proscribed Ukrainian literary canon to revive forgotten or deliberately silenced narratives in a global context and forming a new, world-open space of collective memory, this article presents an analysis of the «hermeneutical optics» and editorial framing of the English-language translation of Mykola Bazhan's historical poem «Blind Bards», prepared by George G. Grabowicz. Originally published only in two parts in 1930–1931 in the Kyiv magazine «Life and Revolution», under pressure from the regime, it disappears from the Ukrainian readership for several decades, and its actual «rediscovery» takes place in the 1990s during the years of Ukrainian independence, owing to the 1969 diaspora re-publication of the poem initiated by Bohdan Kravtsiv. The paper views the publication of the first English translation of «Blind Bards» in a bilingual anthology of Mykola Bazhan's early works in 2020 as a significant step towards rehabilitating this symbolic and "silenced" literary work for the world readership. The article then examines the translation from the perspective of its editorial integrity in three aspects: constructive, autopoetic, and prospective, encompassing the paratextual and intertextual links of the translation with the concept of anthology, the focus on the translator's inventio – disposition – elocutio – memoria – actio in the textual material of the translation edition, as well as the projection of the receptive context of the Anglo-American publication of the poem and its impact on the formation of the modern world canon of Ukrainian literature. The paper proves that laboratory of George Grabowicz as the translator of the poem «The Blind» became his milestone and transformative project in the course of his literary career. Both artistic vision, linguistic expertise, and a thorough scholarly analysis of Bazhan’s philosophy of writing in his preface confirm this.