PROPHET, ECHO, COMMANDER: KAROLINA PAVLOVA'S GERMAN AND FRENCH TRANSLATIONS OF PUSHKIN

Some of the earliest and best translations of Aleksandr Pushkin's poetry into German and into French are the work of one and the same person-the trilingual poet Karolina Pavlova (1807-1893). Her translations of Pushkin from the 1830s have been called unsurpassed by several twentieth-century scholars, who expressed regret that these translations were unfairly forgotten by posterity. Adopting a theoretical framework based in feminist translation studies, this article proposes an analysis of Pavlova's "German Pushkin" and "French Pushkin" by looking at her translations of the poems "Prorok" and "Ekho" into German and "Polkovodets" into French. All three poems explore the role and mission of the poet in society. Translating these texts at a time when she had not yet published any Russian poetry of her own allowed Pavlova to reflect on her budding literary career in dialogue with an author who had already gained recognition as the foremost Russian poet. More specifically, the translations shed light on Pavlova's own precarious status as a woman poet in a man's world and as an author of perceived foreign origin struggling to gain recognition in an era of nascent Russian nationalism.