Tradurre la Commedia in russo

The Russian-speaking reader has four complete translations of Dante’s Commedia at their disposal: the canonical version by Mikhail Lozinsky, completed at the beginning of the 1940s, was followed by three versions that appeared in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union: the translations by Aleksandr Ilyushin (1995), Vladimir Lemport (1997) and Vladimir Marantsman (1999) differ in terms of reception and translation approach, but they all seem to stem from the same desire to reread (and thus re-translate) the great classics fixed until then in monumental and seemingly untouchable translations. In the 2000s, the poet Olga Sedakova instead proposed a new translation project of the Commedia that draws from the will to render the intentio of Dante’s work. This contribution provides a brief account of the four integral versions and Sedakova’s latest proposal.