Parallel Translations of Two Ghazals of Hafiz in the Poetic Heritage of Ahatanhel Krymsky

The article is devoted to the translation work of the Ukrainian orientalist Ahatanhel Krymsky, thanks to whose scientific and creative work the poetic heritage of the Persian Sufi poet Hafiz Shirazi entered Ukrainian culture. Krymsky had been working on artistic translations of Hafiz’s ghazals for about thirty years, starting with the first interlinear translations, which were made by an orientalist student as early as in 1891. Among Krymsky’s translation works are parallel translations (in Russian and Ukrainian) of two ghazals (№ 255 and № 96). Both ghazals are examples of poetry that reflect certain worldview orientations of the author and demonstrate the philosophical and religious, largely mystical understanding of the universe developed in Sufism. In particular, in these ghazals, you can find indications of the main characteristics of Sufis: poverty, abstinence from sleep and loneliness, which contributes to the achievement of mystical union with God. Striving to convey the meanings of Persian poetry as accurately as possible, Krymsky, at the same time, tried to adapt them to the Ukrainian and Russian readers (for example, in the place of exoticism moqilān, the translator used the expressions evil thorn and prickly thorn, which cause similar associations). A detailed textual analysis of both Hafiz’s ghazals and both parallel translations of Krymsky allows us to assert that the scholar actively sought adequate linguistic means that would allow the reader to grasp the conceptual depth of the poems, the beauty of the images, subtle artistic techniques of Hafiz’s poetry. The textological comparison of the Russian and Ukrainian versions of the translations of two ghazals shows that the diligent work of the scholar-translator led to a deeper penetration into the complex world of Hafiz’s poetic lines precisely in the Ukrainian translations, which were made later than the Russian ones. In addition, from a stylistic point of view, Ukrainian texts seem more organic and integral in comparison with Russian versions. A significant merit of Krymsky in the field of translation is the combination of a creative approach with a scientific one: each translated text is accompanied by a passportization, as well as a Cyrillic transliteration of the first line, which opens up opportunities for a comprehensive comparison of both variants of ghazals and their translations in different languages.