Georg Heym in the translations of Kyiv neoclassicists: on the history of early reception of expressionism in the USSR

this article examines the publication of works by the German poet and prose writer Georg Heym (1887-1912), which was carried out in the Ukrainian language in 1925 by the Kyiv publishing house "Slovo". The initiative was undertaken by three writers belonging to the group of "Neoclassicists": V.P. Petrov (1894-1969), M.F. Rylsky (1895-1964), and O.F. Burghardt (1891-1947). In their translations, Burghardt, Petrov, and Rylsky attempted to develop the melodic possibilities of the Ukrainian language while conveying Heym's anti-aesthetic style, seeing in him a continuation of the French Symbolists. The material for the study included the publication of G. Heym's book and other publications by individuals involved in its preparation; literary-critical materials on Expressionism from Russian and Ukrainian periodicals of the period under investigation; and historical-bibliographic studies of the book industry in the Ukrainian SSR during the 1920s. Comparative-historical and comparative-stylistic methods were used. The book is examined in the context of the publishing industry and the censorship restrictions of the era. This publication represents an interesting chapter in the history of the reception of avant-garde art in the USSR and has not been accounted for or described in scholarly literature until now.

Georg Heym, expressionism, neoclassicists, translation, reception