“The Broken Jug” oF Heinrich von Kleist: HISTORICAL AND LITERARY CONTEXT

Abstract

The article deals with the artistic peculiarities of Ukrainian-language versions of H. von Kleist’s play “The Broken Jug”, namely: an excerpt from I. Franko’s processing, performed in 1884 for the “Ruska besida” theater and “The Broken Jug” by Yu. Andrukhovych performed in 2017 for the I. Franko theater and the preconditions that preceded their implementation in the historical and literary context.
Comedy “The Broken Jug” (“Der zerbrochne Krug”) is one of the most famous works of the German writer Heinrich von Kleist. For the first time, the comedy was performed on stage in Weimar on March 2, 1808, in the J.V. Goethe Theater. However, the aforementioned production on the stage of the Weimar theater was a fiasco, since he changed a lot in accordance with his director’s plan. The Ukrainian version of the play in 1884 was made by I. Franko at the request of the director of the Ruska Besida I. Hrynevetskyi, which was for the first time performed on the Lviv stage almost 20 years later. The manuscript is likely to be lost, and information about a possible publication was not found. To date, only a handwritten version of the role of the protagonist of the comedy Danka (original Rupprecht) has been revealed, which is stored in the fund of the theater “Ruska besida”, the CIA of Lviv and negative feedback on the staging of the play. Primarily the author’s identity and a pronounced Ukrainian national coloring mark the adaptation of the play. Analyzing the handwritten passage of I. Franko, it is worth noting that the translator has resorted to changes in the epochs (the period depicted in the work of H. von Kleist), the locality, the names of the characters, and this deprives the Ukrainian version of the national specificity of the original version.
The real breakthrough of the Ukrainian “kleistiana” of the 21st century is the translation of the comedy “The Broken Jug” (2017) performed by Andrukhovych at the request of Ostap Stupka. The translator uses stylistic techniques, that is, the replacement of elements of the text of one functional style by elements of another and expressive means of language. Thus, the neutral vocabulary in the text has been changed to stylistically colored, even modernized (actively used vulgarism, slang). It is worth noting that in the Ukrainian versions of the play “The Broken Jug” by H. von Kleist we can observe a bright creative individuality of interpreters, their translation style is felt. Thus, I. Franko was inclined to concentrate on the first creation, and Yu. Andrukhovych successfully modernized the text using modern stylistically colored vocabulary, which contributes to a better comic impression.