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Abstract:

The article is concerned with translation practices as a technique furthering literary exchanges between the East and the West in the 19^th and the early 20^th centuries. In the West, the apology of the Eastern classics congenial for the period of rising Orientalism, i. e. in the first half of the 19^th century, was later replaced by its critique as not conforming to the ‘European taste’, and by reevaluation of Eastern masterpieces, followed by decline of fashion for Orientalist works. In the East, the awareness of singularities of artistic systems of different epochs, helped resolve differences between world literatures and ushered the renewal of national literatures. By mid–19^th and early 20^th century, a tendency to rethink the artistic principles employed by Eastern authors begins to take shape; the conditions for imbibing the traditions of the modern European literature become appropriate; translations of purely literary works inspire new interest, and the repertoire of texts chosen for translation gets rethought. Against this background, the article pays close attention to the lecture “Poetic imagination among the Arabs” (1929) by Tunisian poet Aboul-Qacem Echebbi (Abū ’l-Qāsim al-Shābbī).