“Translating in a 'Minus' Mode…”: Grigory Dashevsky’s Poetic Translations

This article is devoted to the analysis of translations made by contemporary Russian poet Grigory Dashevsky (1964—2013). Working on translation, Dashevsky tries to convey the contents of the original by means of the Russian language and places it in a modern context. At the same time, to a greater degree than one can expect from a poet, he endows translations with features of his own poetics and includes them in poetry collections on a par with his own poems. This makes the translations by Dashevsky, at least at a first glance, far from the original, and makes one doubt whether it is possible to call them translations at all. Paradoxically, these Dashevsky’s texts become a truly accurate version of Catullus’ poems: such strategy helps Dashevsky to convey important meanings for the author, which are practically impossible to reflect using traditional translation methods.