ИСТИНА

Kunwar Narayan (born 1927) as a prominent poet representing modern Hindi literature. The problem of lexical norm as a concept (ideal therefore abstract). Marked and non-marked vocabulary. The three main layers of marked vocabulary in Kunwar Narayan’s works: Sanskrit, Urdu and colloquial/dialect variants (deshi/tadbhāva words). Traces of Sanskrit cultural heritage in his works. Poems based on Sanskrit legends: conscious choice of vocabulary (cf. selection of Urdu terms for poems on Mughal India history). Balanced use of Sanskrit, Urdu and deshi vocabulary, their poetic juxtaposition. Sanskrit vocabulary in non-legend-related poems: two main purposes of usage. 1) Vedic/Upanishadic reminiscences in philosophic poetry (usage of Sanskrit nouns or participles with a rich trail of cultural associations). 2) Sanskrit models of word formation used for creating new words, decodable for the reader, and for providing logical patterns within a poem. Problems of poetic translation into Russian. The balance between precision and art. The fine distinction of verse libre from prose, or from a line-to-line translation. The applicability of Sanskrit word formation model to Russian as an Indo-European flective language. Searching for the language of mythical past for a Russian reader. The archaic layer of Russian vocabulary: the language of Russian Bible in Church-Slavic and Russian as such, the poetry of the XVIII century. The proliferation of Sanskrit terms into Russian over the age-long cultural interaction. Models of creating decodable new words as explored by the XX century Russian poets. The limitations and things to be avoided: Christianisation of inherently Indian concepts, pompousness of speech associated with archaic vocabulary, overloading the text with Sanskrit-origin terms vaguely understood (or misunderstood) by the reader en masse, unclearness of the text. Particular examples of how these faults can be avoided. Knowledge of Sanskrit as a key to deciphering more layers of meaning in Kunwar Narayan’s poetry.