The Voice in the Snow: Rediscovering Olga Carlisle as a Mediator of Russian Culture

Abstract

This article evaluates, for the first time from a Translation Studies perspective, the cultural and humanitarian contribution of the Paris-born, ethnically Russian literary translator and editor Olga Carlisle. It identifies her as a mediator who transcended the gender norms of the time and diversified the modern Russian literary canon by her advocacy of Solzhenitsyn in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on Carlisle’s publications, archival and paratextual material, this article analyses the life events, interactions and dispositions that led Carlisle to advocate for Russian culture and political freedom, and explores Carlisle’s influence on twenty-first century female translators of Russophone literature.