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Abstract:

If we compare “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” and Balmont’s translation, we can conclude that the translation is adequate to the original in the majority of cases. A poetic license is allowed in eleven lines, in general the ballad contains one hundred and nine. Basically, when the poet translated the work, he saved the most of the characteristics of the literary structure. There were the repetitions and color epithets. It was important to show the philosophical idea of Wilde’s ballad. The 25 lines of the poem contain a difficult philosophical context, but only three stanzas were translated by Balmont with significant semantic changes. The main thing of these changes is to emphasize a universal meaning of the original. Oscar Wilde recognized his personal tragedy and he shared it with other suffering people, all of the prisoners of the Reading Gaol. Balmont directly addressed the philosophical meaning of the text, giving it a parable sound. Finally, the article presents examples showing that Balmont’s method of the translation is multi-faceted and also surpasses the translation of V. Bryusov in a number of ways.