ИСТИНА

Three-ictic dolnik (Dk3) is the most common form of non-classical Russian meters and its rhythmical features have been analyzed more than once. The most famous study was realized by Mikhail Gasparov (1963, 1968, 1974) who examined Russian Dk3 of the 1890–1950s, identified its rhythmical variations (forms) and proposed a typology of the main rhythmical types of Dk3 (i.e. combinations of the most frequent rhythmical forms): “Yesenin’s type”, “Tsvetaeva’s type” and “Gumilev’s type”. In the last decade, the analysis of the metrical structure of Russian dolnik has yielded new results, in particular, it has been shown that the typology of Dk3 requires further elaboration (see Плунгян 2008, 2010; Ляпин 2011; Левашов — Ляпин 2012; Ляпин — Пильщиков 2014, Liapin — Pilshchikov 2015, etc.). Dolnik verse arose in Russian poetry of the 19th century from translations and imitations of German tonic versification, but the structure of the dolnik in translated poetic texts is less studied than the structure of original Russian dolnik. There are two exceptions: the earliest Russian examples of this meter (translations of German romantic poetry by Zhukovsky, Lermontov, Tiutchev, Fet, Apollon Grigoriev, and Mikhail Mikhailov) and translations from Heine. In the 1930s, the rhythmical features of German and Russian dolnik were discussed by Russian scholars such as Osip Brik and Boris Yarkho in connection with the contemporary translations of Heine’s works into Russian (Брик и др. 1934/2012; Полилова 2014; Liapin — Pilshchikov 2015). For example, Brik argued for equirhythmical (rather than only equimetrical) translations of Heine’s dolniks, that is, for reducing the number of disyllabic unstressed intervals within the line in accordance with the rhythmical structure of German dolnik verse. Not only scholars, but also translators themselves recognized the importance of reproducing the original structure. For example, as James Bailey showed in the article “Blok and Heine: An Episode from the History of Russian dol'niki” (1969), the rhythm of Alexander Blok’s translations from Heine is significantly different from the rhythm of Blok’s original dolnik poems. In Blok’s translations the proportion of Form IV [(0/1/2) × 1 × 1 × (0/1/2/3)], which is not typical for Russian Dk3, but is popular in German dolnik verse, is much higher. Russian translators used Dk3 not only for equimetrical translations of German poetry, but also as an equirhythmical analogue of Spanish Romancero verse. In Russian translations, Dk3 replaced trochaic tetrameter, which was traditionally used to render this Spanish form in the 19th century (Polilova 2018). In the 1930-1940s, Valentin Parnakh began to use isosyllabic Dk3 (8 syllables in the lines with a feminine clausula and 7 syllables in the lines with a masculine clausula) in translations of Federico García Lorca’s romances. Soon, other translators also mastered this form (although their Dk3 was not always isosyllabic), and began to use it not only in the translations of Spanish 20th-century octosílabos, but also in the translations of the old Spanish romances. The rhythm of Dk3 in the Russian translations from Spanish is studied fragmentarily (Goncharenko 1980; Kamelina 2007) and it has never been compared with the rhythm of original Russian Dk3. I analyzed the translations of Lorca’s Romancero gitano and old romances (60 texts, translators: V. Parnakh, I. Tynianova, M. Zenkevich, A. Geleskul, O. Savich, P. Grushko and others) and compared the rhythmical structure of Spanish original texts with the rhythmical structure of its Russian versions. I discovered the main feature of the rhythm of Russian Dk3 used in translations from Spanish: it is characterized by an almost complete absence of lines with trochaic cadence (whose proportion in the Spanish originals varies from 26% to 56%). In this paper, I will present my observations on the rhythmical specificity of Russian Dk3 used in the translations of Spanish romances. Its rhythm will be compared to the rhythm of original Russian dolniks and the dolniks from the translations of Heine.