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Abstract:

The article examines the Soviet edition of the novel “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands” (1966) by the Brazilian writer Jorge Amado in the context of the Khrushchev Thaw in the USSR. Jorge Amado, who began as a social writer, in the second half of the 1950s came to a new poetics. His novels no longer met the requirements that were imposed on literature in the USSR. This applied both to the narrative itself, which centered on the personal lives of characters who were just ordinary people, and to the carnal love, which was now in the foreground. Analysis of fragments describing love scenes from the works of V. Aksyonov, N. Dementiev and Iu. German reveals the novelty of Amado’s book and the language of its descriptions for the Soviet context. The study of the editorial review and comparison of the Russian translation with the original in Portuguese allow us to understand how it was possible to publish the Soviet edition in 1970. The reviewer presented the text as a satire on bourgeois mores, while the translator developed a special strategy based on the use of metaphors and high stylistic register. In spite of censorship and editing, the translation was published, becoming part of the turn to private life and the processes of formation of “everyday prose” in the USSR.