Translation as Coded Critique

In 2017, a young boy was arrested while reciting Hamlet’s monologue to passersby on a central Moscow street. Why would a child reciting poetry on a public street be arrested? Does it matter that he was reading a translation of Hamlet? Aided by Russian-language news stories and accounts by independent journalists, I discuss the event and its framings in light of translation’s role in critiques of Tsarist and Soviet censorship.

K. Maya Larson is an ACLS Emerging Voices Fellow for the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication. Larson’s essays have appeared in Comparative Literature, Deleuze and Guattari Studies, and Amaltea Journal of Myth Criticism. Currently at work on a book about how Aesop’s translated Vita shaped Russian literature, Larson holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon with a specialization in Translation Studies.

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