• Mr. Raef, when did you first come across the works of Ivan Franko?
I became acquainted with the artistic legacy of Ivan Franko more than twenty-five years ago, when I was still a student. I considered the first poem I read, “My Song”, a poetic pinnacle. Last year, when I was working on a series of articles called “Eurasian Poetic Songs”, I came to that poem once again, but this time with a good knowledge of the Ukrainian language. I was captivated by Franko: the writer, the researcher, the poet and the linguist. There is a city, as well as streets and scientific institutions, named after him; his statues stand on streets and squares of Ukraine, and his portrait is on banknotes and post stamps ... However, an average Arabic reader is unfamiliar with the works of Ivan Franko. Moreover, not a single translation of his works into Arabic has been produced over the century!
• So, you ventured to correct this cultural misun- derstanding?..
Precisely. In March 2017, I was invited by the Embassy of Ukraine in Lebanon, Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine and the Lebanon Cultural Center in Ukraine to present my Arabic translation of the stories by Ahatanhel Krymsky in the library’s Academic Council room. Afterwards, I visited the National Museum of Ukrainian Literature in Kyiv. My “museum tour” turned out very fruitful: I was so impressed by Lesya Ukrainka and her journey to Egypt, by Ivan Franko, by great Ukrainian artists that I decided to study their works.
Incidentally, two months before my trip to Kyiv, I met online a researcher, Solomiya Vivchar, who works in the Ivan Franko Museum in Lviv. She drew my attention to Franko’s numerous works, sent me electronic versions of his books and collections of poems. I read them again and again until finally I decided to translate into Arabic the lyrical drama “The Withered Leaves”, which struck me with its true emotional catastrophe ... I reread the collection over and over again, trying to assess the possibility of translation and consider the difficulties lying in metaphorical and rhetorical expressions, feel the rhythm and compare it to the Arabic poetic meter. In the end, I plucked enough courage to translate this collection, which the poet composed over a decade and which came out 121 years ago.
• Tell me more about what it is like – translating the songlike Ukrainian language into the unique Arabic?
Only after several months of research and translation, having completed the poetic translation, can I talk about my method of working on the poetry, the translation and the editing. First, I translated the collection “The Withered Leaves” completely in prose. The collection consists of 61 verses and is divided into three parts. The first part contains 21 verses, and the other two are twenty verses each. The translation was done, but the way Franko used some question marks in words and expressions was quite peculiar and strange, and this led me to research the poems deeper and in more detail.
After that I did a second translation. In order to overcome the obstacles that prevented me from clear understanding of certain poetic techniques expressing the changes in the mood of the poet and his emotions, I returned to the numerous remarks made in the past three years while I was working on the texts of A. Krymsky, to the study of the Ukrainian language dictionaries and, in particular, to the dictionary edited by A. Krymsky. Another thing that helped me was long conversations with Ms. Vivchar, who kindly wrote an introduction to this book and to whom I am truly grateful.
I made a great number of notes on Franko’s poetic style, comparing the original text with electronic publications. A real breakthrough in the understanding of the structure of the poetry came with the materials of the conference “The Withered Leaves: texts, materials, research”, which took place in 2007 at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv.
The smallest possible number of footnotes was made: the explanation of words, names or geographic places. This way I gave the readers the freedom to come in contact with the Ukrainian metaphors contained in the poems.
I chose appropriate Arabic meters for Franko’s poems to convey all of his temperament in rhythms and rhymes, the differences in the degree of image identification between different narratives, the complexity of phrases and philosophical dimensions. I am not afraid to say that at times it is necessary to depart from the medieval norms of Al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad and to use new Arabic methods in translations, since the goal was to preserve the ideas of the poet in an Arabic translation, and I very much hope that I managed to do that. Although I did my best translating “The Withered Leaves”, editing and commenting on the works as was necessary, I would not go as far as to claim that the collection is absolutely error-free.
The one thing I can say with confidence is that I worked on Franko’s texts for many months with most sincere feelings, trying to understand his every word, and this selfless translation resulted in a collection of poems whose mission is to bring the ingenious poetry of Ivan Franko to the Arab reader.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine in the Lebanese Republic, Professor Ihor Ostash and his wife, academician Maryna Hrymych, for their invaluable help in the making of this book. The draft translation of “The Withered Leaves” collection was completely agreed with Mrs. Hrymych – from A to Z. By the way, the book, containing parallel Ukrainian and Arabic texts, was published in Kyiv by the Embassy of Ukraine in the Lebanese Republic and the NGO “Ukrainian Community in Lebanon” based on the design of Maryna Hrymych. My thanks also go the Association of Ukrainians of Lebanon, the Association of Ukrainian Graduates in Lebanon, the Association of Graduates of the USSR Higher Education Institutions in Lebanon, the Lebanese Cultural Club in Ukraine and all the friends who helped me with materials and otherwise supported the project.
WELCOME on board, № 3, 2018