A DANCE IN TRANSLATED RHYTHMS: LÁSZLÓ NAGY’S “BULGARIAN DANCE” IN TWO BULGARIAN VERSIONS

Abstract

This article compares two Bulgarian translations of László Nagy’s “Bulgarian Dance” (Bolgár-tánc) – one by Nino Nikolov (1976) and one by Svetla Kjoseva (2005) – to illustrate how the same poem can sound and signify differently in another language. The two versions offer distinct aesthetic interpretations, shaped by their cultural and historical contexts as well as by the translators’ individual choices. The theoretical framework draws on the concepts of domestication and foreignization, along with the contrast between formal and dynamic equivalence. Particular attention is paid to how each approach affects the transfer of rhythm, imagery, historical symbolism, and culturally marked elements, and thus the poem’s integration into Bulgarian literary space. Nikolov largely domesticates the text, aligning it with Bulgarian folkloric and poetic conventions through regular metre, musicality, and pronounced national-liberation pathos; he also specifies the dance through the culturally recognizable code of the rachenitsa and enriches the imagery with additional metaphors, which intensify emotion but diverge from the original’s stark, expressionist style. Kjoseva adopts a foreignizing strategy: through archaisms, dialectal forms, and freer metrе she preserves the poem’s mythopoetic complexity and cultural otherness, conveying its expressionist force and material concreteness while sustaining historical distance and а Balkan atmosphere. Both translations not only broaden the Bulgarian reception of László Nagy’s poetry but also reflect changing aesthetic attitudes and translation practices over several decades.