Irish writers and Russian Literature: Translation and Adaptation as Forms of Privileged Conversation with Authors
This essay discusses the encounter between Irish writers and Russian literature which took place, firstly, in the first half of the twentieth century, resulting in important essays and statements about the reverberations of the Russian short story by Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev on Irish short fiction; and more recently in translations, adaptations, versions, transcreations by several Irish playwrights. The focus of the following text will fall on Tom Murphy’s The Cherry Orchard - after Anton Chekhov (2004) and on Thomas Kilroy’s The Seagull - after Chekhov (1981, 1993) with the objective of examining different ways in which the intertextual dialogue takes place, and the different results of the process.