Awarded the ‘Rossica Translation Prize’ in March, 2014
Reviews
- “Translated into English for the first time by one of the outstanding English scholars of Russian Literature, Marina Tsvetaeva’s Phaedra is a thrilling discovery.”
Carol Rumens, Gwynedd, 2012
- ” . . . a readable, flowing English version of Tsvetaeva’s inimitable verse drama that will at last bring this powerful work about the cravings of female passion to an Anglophone audience . . . The substantial introduction, which presents Tsvetaeva’s play in the dual contexts of her overall poetics and of the creative history of the Phaedra theme (in classical myth, Seneca, and Racine) is a gem of informative, insightful clarity . . .This slim volume offers something for everyone – both the seasoned Tsvetaeva specialist and the poetry-loving, non-Russian-speaking reader.”
Alyssa Dinega Gillespie The Russian Review, 72/3, July 2013
- “Having no Russian, this is the first time I have had the chance to make the play’s acquaintance, and I am absolutely overwhelmed by it! . . . There are the varied kinds of quasi-choric writing for the Young Huntsmen and for Phaedra’s Serving Maids. There is the wonderful almost witch-like language of Phaedra’s Nurse, and the strangely powerful innocence of both Phaedra and Hippolytus. Above all, there’s the force and clarity with which [A.L.] communicates Tsvetaeva’s remarkable imagery . . .”
Glyn Pursglove, Acumen, September, 2012
- “[A.L.] always puts her own passionate linguistic precision at the service of the poets she translates. Her aim is fidelity . . . and she not only honours the rhythmic shape of the original, but avoids any attempt to smooth out Tsvetaeva’s rich wilderness of images. This is a decision particularly evident in the long poems here. . . [The play Phaedra] is a paean to erotic love, all the more powerfully felt in rejection . . . The purity of the language in this translation seems to me altogether admirable.
Elaine Feinstein, PN Review, 2013
- ” . . . The long poems also hold many examples of sensitive renderings. ‘New Year’s Letter’, unusually for a Russian poem, is almost entirely composed of couplets with feminine rhyme, not at all easy in English. Here, too, [A.L.] combines scrupulous attention to meaning with prioritization of sound texture. . . . ‘Poem of the Air’ and ‘Attempt at a Room’ may present even more challenges to the translator . . . but the reader will find beautiful and persuasive sections along with the requisite difficulty. . . The informative value of [A.L.]‘s richly footnoted introduction and appendices describing her translating work enhances the value of this volume . . .”
Sibelan Forrester, Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. LV, nos. 1-2. March-June 2013
- ”Not just an extraordinary and sustained translation, but poetry in its own right. Livingstone’s Phaedra is Tsvetaeva’s Phaedra: Livingstone pulls out all the stops in making this drama come to life with the same brilliance that prompted an American translator to call her version of Tsvetaeva’s Ratcatcher ‘the very pinnacle of the art of translation.’”
Adjudicating panel on awarding the Rossica Translation Prize 2014 to Angela Livingstone for her translation of Phaedra
- ”This volume offers a wonderful opportunity to gain an informed sense of Tsvetaeva’s work: through beautiful translations, carefully supplied context, and perceptive commentary on translation and the process of translation itself. Livingstone’s translation of Phaedra deserves no less praise than her Ratcatcher. The long poems included alongside the drama are similarly successful. Putting the play and the poems together foregrounds the common threads in Tsvetaeva’s oeuvre, encouraging readers to discover connections for themselves.”
Emily Lygo, Translation and Literature 24, 2015
Perfomances
A Rehearsed Reading of selections from my translation of Tsvetaeva’s ‘Phaedra’ was performed by professional actors Ben Livingstone and Kristin Hutchinson to an audience of about seventy people at Pushkin House, Bloomsbury Square, London, on October 2nd 2012.