He was a classic of Ukrainian translation: the translator of “The Hobbit” and “Ulysses” Oleksandr Mokrovolsky died

He was a classic of Ukrainian translation: the translator of “The Hobbit” and “Ulysses” Oleksandr Mokrovolsky died

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Ukrainian translator, journalist, poet and artist Oleksandr Mokrovolsky died on December 22 at the age of 77. One of his most famous works is the translation of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” by John Tolkien.

This was reported in the National Union of Writers of Ukraine.

“Aleksandr Mykolayovych Mokrovolsky left for Solstice to a better world… And the completion of Ukrainian Ulysses by Joyce after Oleksandr Terekh, and selected Gini and Yeats, and Tolkien, and exceptional textbook collections of foreign poetry for schoolchildren, and original author’s poetry, and Gadamer’s “Truth and Method” and Geising’s “Homo Ludens” and more and more will remain in our culture. But nothing can replace the warm communication with which you gifted so many. Bright memory and earth with a pen, Master “, – wrote writer and translator, member of NSPU Dmytro Chistyak.

Oleksandr Mokrovolsky was fluent in English, Spanish, German, French and Polish. He was one of the last representatives of the “classical” Ukrainian translation school, which arose in the 1970s on the basis of the foreign literature magazine “Vsesvit”.

Oleksandr Mokrovolskyi. Photo: “Nettle”

For 11 years, Mokrovolskyi worked as an editor in the publishing house of children’s literature “Rainbow”. It was there in 1985 that John Tolkien’s first work in Ukrainian was published – “The Hobbit, or Journey to the Misty Mountains”, which was adapted for children.

“Now this work causes complaints from some purists – they say that it is heavily authorized and the names are not translated that well – but then, in 1985 and later, “The Hobbit” became a shock for many Ukrainian teenagers, opening their way to the world of Middle-earth.” , – wrote “Historical Truth” about the translation of the novel

While working on The Hobbit, Mokrovolsky violated the common practice in the USSR of translating English-language works on the basis of Russian translations – he worked with the original. Mokrovolsky decided to endow “The Hobbit” with a fairy tale, so Gollum received the comic name Gum-Gum from him.

Also among the selection of his translations are William Shakespeare “Venus and Adonis”, John Tolkien “Lord of the Rings”, Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”, James Joyce “Ulysses”, Neil Gaiman “Coraline” and many others.

In addition, Mokrovolskyi has his own poetic works – “Deep Summer” (1983), “Yavir i Palma” (1986), “Sonnet against the EMPIRE” (2023).

In 2016, Mokrovolsky published a collection of his own research on Ukrainian symbolism, “Circle of Ideas”. This is an illustrated book, the illustrations for which he created independently in his own drawing technique. Mokrovolsky called it “painting of the soul” – drawing with closed eyes.

In recent years, he taught a professional translation course to students of the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”.

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