Problems of refrain translation in T. S. Eliot's ‘Old possum's book of practical cats’

The growing interest in the Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats poetic cycle by T. S. Eliot, associated with the theatrical release of the film Cats in 2019, which is based on the musical under the same name by E. L. Webber, as well as the lack of serious academic research on the poetics of the great modernist poet’s cycle, determine the novelty and relevance of this study. The article provides a comparative analysis of Russian translations (by A. Sergeev, S. Dubovitskaya, V. Betaki, S. Sapozhnikov) of poetic refrains in the poems included in the cycle. The research is based on the material presented in the annotated, authoritative edition of Eliot’s poetry full collection The Poems of T. S. Eliot (Volume Two, 2015), compiled and edited by one of the leading modern Eliot researchers Christopher Ricks. The analysis is focused on such aspects as the degree of translation accuracy, the refrain subject structure, professional challenges and translation decisions adopted by the authors to convey the typical characteristics of English children’s folk poetry (nursery rhymes), the traditions of which Eliot follows. This article also discusses various approaches to defining refrain. Existing in many forms and having various goals, the refrain is a universal graphic and expressive tool that is used to highlight the main theme of the work and create its structure, in order to bring any important points to the attention of the reader and to facilitate their memorization. The translators’ desire to reproduce all the signs of the original refrain: the poetic structure, graphic highlighting of components that are significant for the author, the rhyming methods and the refrain emotional reflection, makes it possible to embody the features of children’s folk poetry as a literary tradition on which the stylistic unity of all the texts included in the cycle is based.