Chronology of the English translations of Alexander Blok's works: history and modernity

The history of English translations of Alexander Blok’s poetry and prose (primarily the former, but interest in the latter is increasing nowadays) covers a lengthy and colourful period of nearly 100 years, beginning when the poet was still alive. In case with Blok’s works there are two main sources for translations into English: the first (and the richest) is represented by native English speakers (and among them are multitudinous professional literary workers, such as poets, literary journalists etc.) and the second relies on Russian immigrants (White émigrés and later) involved in the literary process, living in the UK, the US or elsewhere outside Russia. Although the first attempts at translating Blok’s poetry for the Western audience were not very successful, the actual work never fully died away, but rather diminished, for a variety of reasons (primarily non-literary). As a literary figure, Blok is not so vividly recognisable in the West as he might be: although his works are gloriously famous inside Russia, he is not a common subject for academic research. Partly, the problem lies inside the difficulty of translating his works, because they are complex, overpowered by the Symbolist philosophy and stylistically exquisite. But despite that, professional translators continue their efforts, and our main aim in this paper is to show the most significant of them, to systematise and to reveal which ones can be identified as the closest to the original, and widely quoted.