An exhibition dedicated to the 110th anniversary of the birth of translator Nikolai Lyubimov was opened in Moscow

Unique photos and autographs

On November 2, an exposition in honor of the outstanding translator, writer and memoirist Nikolai Mikhailovich Lyubimov opened in the Russian capital. The venue for the exhibition was the House of I.S. Ostroukhov in Trubniki.

Among the exhibits you can see unique ones, for example, the first edition of the book by the greatest Russian philologist of the 20th century Mikhail Bakhtin “The Works of François Rabelais and the Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance” with a dedication to Lyubimov: “To Dear Nikolai Mikhailovich with deep respect, love and immense gratitude for the amazing translation of Rabelais “.

Let’s give the floor to the project curator, leading researcher of the Ostroukhov House Olga Zalieva:

– Nikolai Lyubimov introduced monuments of foreign literature into the space of Russian culture from Bocaccio’s Decameron to the cycle of novels In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. This pantheon of world classics is presented in books, illustrations, posters, sketches of scenery and theatrical costumes. Many of the works of foreign classics translated by Lyubimov were remembered by us thanks to theatrical productions of the Russian Academy of Theater Arts, the Vakhtangov Theater, the Satire Theater, and the Moscow Youth Theater.

In a conversation with an MK correspondent, our interlocutor revealed the main message of the exhibition. Since Lyubimov called life itself the source of his creativity (“… the writer’s creative laboratory is life with its sometimes tedious, but joyful and iridescent whirlwind,” he wrote), the museum space was organized based on this premise, showing connoisseurs of the writer’s heritage, that behind the texts of great classical works stands the translator’s personality and the history of his formation, proportionate to them.

“Rare photographs from the family archive, the first editions of translations, books with dedicatory inscriptions of authors from his circle of friends, which were compiled by David Samoilov, Arseniy Tarkovsky, Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Bakhtin, Samuil Marshak, Eduard Bagritsky, Ariadna Efron, tell about the personality and fate of the outstanding writer , Leonid Grossman, Boris Slutsky, Boris Griftsov,” says Zalieva.

It turns out that handwritten signatures and inscriptions have become, as it were, stretched out through the decades to shake hands with the hands of the great witnesses of the era when Soviet readers were just discovering the masterpieces of world literature. And this idea is confirmed in the Museum of the History of Russian Literature named after V.I. Dahl.

– Our artists have found a visual solution to show how Lyubimov approached the work of a translator. How to convey a play on words? How to translate a proverb? The installation by Evgenia Ionova demonstrates how Lyubimov answered these and other difficult questions for himself, what methods he used in his work on translating specific fragments of foreign texts.

Word-selection sheets written by the master’s hand are an amazing opportunity to see how Russian was spoken and became a living part of the literature of Rabelais, Cervantes, Beaumarchais and many others.

And the point here is not only in the great names – already mentioned, or not mentioned – Flaubert, Stendhal, Moliere, Maupassant, Schiller, Proust, Cervantes. And in the fact that in the first half of the 20th century in Russia there was an acute longing for world culture, indicated by Osip Mandelstam. In practical terms, it resulted in the creation of translation institutions in the USSR, and it is not known whether yesterday’s and today’s Russia would have been the most reading country if great translators such as Nikolai Lyubimov had not appeared. And if you are not an impressionist artist, how to express longing? Probably, today this can only be done by means of objects and artifacts taken from history and placed in one location.