On the ‘Root’ Rhyme in Russian Poetry and Some Approaches to Reproducing It in Bulgarian Translations

Authors:

Pages: 173-183
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/XXAO2133

Abstract:

The ‘root’ rhyme (also called ‘left’, ‘new’, ‘pre-accentual’) is one of the most characteristic poetic features of Russian poetry from the 1950s to the 1970s: it is a calling card of a whole generation of poets perceived as spokesmen of the Thaw era in Russian culture. “New” about these modern rhymes is not their being ‘imperfect’, but their extension to the left of the stressed vowel. Thus, the beginnings of words (i.e., roots and prefixes) are emphasized rather than their morphological endings as in more traditional rhymes. The purpose of the present paper is to outline the possible approaches to reproducing this purely Russian phenomenon in Bulgarian translations and, on the basis of Bella Akhmadulina’s poetry, to highlight and analyze specific solutions of Bulgarian translators.

Keywords:

Russian poetry, poetry translation, rhymes, Russian root rhyme

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