The first Russian translations of Thomas Hardy's "Jude the obscure"

The paper analyzes the first Russian translations of Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure, which were made in the 19th century. The first translation by Barbara E. Kardo-Sysoeva was published in the Russkiye Vedomosti newspaper in 1896. She translated the first chapter of The Simpletons, which was the first title of the novel that appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1894. Russian readers became familiar with it as a short story with Jude and Arabella being the main characters, since no further translation was to be continued. However, the translator succeeded in rendering emotions, thoughts, ambitions and personal traits of Jude by making full and adequate translation of the novel's fragment. The Russian translation focuses on Jude, with the role of the all-knowing author, typical of Hardy, being reduced. According to Hardy, Arabella represents earthy sexual substance. Thus, to highlight this idea the author used a naturalistic style while describing her appearance and behavior. This manner is opposed to the romantic style he used to introduce Sue. The opposition of these characters creates one of the geometric elements of the novel's structure. However, there is no such opposition in the fragment translated into Russian. Perhaps, it may be one of the reasons for Kardo-Sysoeva to have presented Arabella's appearance in a milder manner. Thus, she eliminated Hardy's naturalism in the translated text. The second translation by Ivan V. Maynov was published in 1897 and is considered the first full Russian translation of the novel. Nevertheless, there are a lot of abridgments, some parts are retold rather than translated. The title was translated as Dzhud neudachnik, which means "Jude the Loser" or "Jude the Failure". This fact proves that Maynov substituted the author's concept of the main character and the whole novel with his own one. In fact, the translation by Maynov is focused on the plot of the novel, with the deeper layers of Hardy's work being mostly disregarded.