The first fragments of the lost novel by Johannesen appeared
Mike Johannesen
Air Force
Fragment of the novel Mike Johannesen « Yugurt. A Tale of Old Kharkiv »which was considered destroyed, translated into Ukrainian literary critic Yarina Tsymbal. Now Site Rozstaje You can read the prologue and the first section.
About it reported Yarina Tsymbal on her Facebook page.
« Yugurt. The story of Old Kharkiv » became the last work of Johannesen. It was lost in the 1930s, when the author was arrested and shot by the NKVD.
However, the manuscript of the translation of the work in Russian in the archives of Pavel Zenkevich – a translator of Polish origin, who lived in Moscow in the interwar years, has been preserved.
”It is difficult to calculate the volume of the Russian text from which I translated because it is a manuscript, so we counted it. The translation is written in ink on large -format sheets of A3+. Pavel Zenkevich’s handwriting is quite legible, for which he thank him in a hundred years! Approximately the entire text is 7-8 printed sheets. In the finale in my Ukrainian translation, 47 302 signs were published, that is, in two weeks we translated one sheet « – Yarina Tsymbal wrote.
How continued work on translating the lost work of Johannesen
She noted that Johannesen has a rather complex language, and it is impossible to use artificial intelligence to simplify.
Yaryna, together with her colleagues, spent two weeks at the Voynovichi Castle, where the team translated and reconstructed Johannesen’s lost work. The translation group also entered Teresa KhlanavaMacieus Piorovsky, Sofia Ugla and Lucas Youra – translated a fragment of the work in Czech, Polish, Swedish and German, respectively.
However, the work has not yet been completed and the team will continue to translate the work.
A group of translators worked for two weeks in Voynovichi Castle
Mike (real name Michael) Johannesen – poet, prose writer, Translator, critic, linguist, screenwriter. He was born in Kharkiv in a family of German teacher. He was one of the founders of Vaplite’s literary association.
He lived in the House of the Word. In 1937, Johannesen was arrested by the NKVD employees allegedly for « participating in an anti -Soviet nationalist organization. » He was later shot in the NKVD prison in Kiev. The body was secretly buried in the Bykivnya forest.
