Authors

Tomi Huttunen¹;  ¹ Department of Languages, University of Helsinki, Finland

Discussion

Mental Wall in Translation: History of (dis)continuity in the Literary Relations between Russia and Finland

 The history of translating Russian literature in Finland began in 1812, when two Finnish students received a politically binding scholarship to study Russian in Moscow. During their visit, they translated Nikolay Karamzin’s poetry to Swedish. After their return home, the Russian language appeared a highly popular subject in the Academy of Turku, Finland, but in fifteen years, the attitude changed completely. In Finland, the relationship with Russia and attitudes to its culture have always been politicized by geographical proximity. Every 10 to 15 years there is an obvious ‘mental wall’ between the cultures, preventing productive change of information or translation activity, for example. Since the beginning, only a few intellectuals have mastered Russian language enough to translate Russian literature. In my presentation, I aim to discuss and analyse such cases of discontinuity in the history of 19^th century Finnish and Russian literatures.