Abstract:

Many poets have turned to free verse, believing that only such a form can adequately embody modern reality and the poet's perception of this reality. By examining the translations of the poem Erich Maria Remarque's "Er starb vor Mohaiszk "("He fell at Mozhaisk"), written in free form, vers libre, the authors of this article attempt to trace how the translators, working with this form of foreign language poetry, incorporated the main features of the original in the language of translation. The comparative analysis of the original and its translations demonstrates that this form of verse, balancing between prose and traditional versification, requires the translator to focus on all levels of text: lexical, syntactic, and rhythmic and intonation-wise, and deviating from an adequate recreation of even one of these elements leads to distortion of the entire work. The results of the research can be used in special courses and seminars on the theory of literary translation, in courses of comparative stylistics of the Russian and German languages, in creative seminars of translators as well as in the critical evaluation of newly created translations of poetic texts by E. M. Remarque.

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