The Art of Translation: Dialogues

The Russian American Cultural Center presents:

The Art of Translation. Dialogues
The author and the host: Irina Mashinski
Dialogue #5: with Grigory Starikovsky

Video recording on the RACC/Roman Khidekel YouTube channel

A series of conversations in the RACC movable studio: the poet and essayist Irina Mashinski in dialogue with masters of the ancient art and craft of translation, as they discuss the place of translation in today’s world and reflect on their work.  
What is translation, after all? What is the nature and the role of the ‘original’ in each particular case? What is actually being translated? And why is it relevant today, of all times?

A conversation with Grigory Starikovsky about his translation of classics into Russian. Among the themes of the dialogue are:  Russian Odyssey, classics in new translations, translation of classics and the current events, and the place of classics today.
In Russian

Grigory Starikovsky – Russian poet, translator, essayist. Born in Moscow in 1971. In US since 1992. PHD in Classics (Columbia University). Recent verse collections “Levites and Singers” (2013), “The Autonomous Source” (2017), and "The Fragmented Bird" (2022). Starikovsky translates from Ancient Greek (Homer, Sophocles, Pindar), Latin (Vergil, Propertius, Persius), and English (Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney). He teaches Latin at a public school in New Jersey.
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Григорий Стариковский – поэт, переводчик, эссеист. Родился (1971) и вырос в Москве. В США с 1992 года. Закончил Колумбийский Университет (кафедра классической филологии).  Переводил Пиндара, Вергилия, Авла Персия, «Одиссею» (песни 9-12), Софокла ( «Царь Эдип») а также стихи Уолта Уитмена, Уильяма Карлоса Уильямса, Луиса Макниса, Дерека Уолкотта, Шеймуса Хини и др. Сборники стихов «Левиты и певцы» (2013), «Автономный источник» (2017), «Птица разрыва» (2022). Живет в пригороде Нью-Йорка. Преподает латынь в школе.

Irina Mashinski was born and raised in Moscow. She graduated from Moscow University, where she studied theory of landscape and completed her PhD in paleoclimatology. In 1991, she emigrated to the United States, where she taught high school mathematics as well as literature, history, and meteorology at several universities. Mashinski is the author The Naked World (MadHat Press, 2022) and of eleven books of poetry and essays in Russian. She is co-editor, with Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk, of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin Classics, 2015) and of Cardinal Points, the journal of Brown University’s Slavic Department. Her work has been translated into several languages and has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies both in the US and internationally. Her second English book, Giornata (Červená Barva Press), is forthcoming in the fall of 2022. Website: www.irinamashinski.com

This program is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Cojeco and Tianaderrah Foundation.