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е. Certainly, onecannot expect that every formal detail of ource text istranslatable but the task is to define which of may be neglected withthe least negative effects.

To put intowords the main difference between Russian and ish traditions of poetry translation, we may concede that Rus-translators often fall into the sin of "making the foreign poet d better in Russian," while their British/American counter-may feel a.t ease in making him (or her) not sound at all by il throwing off the original versification pattern, as too rigid, the sake of a new order." Which is probably no less a sin. results are dubious: in Russia, non-English speakers (read-read, know and love a whole host of British/American poets, >r as well as major, while to the average American reader the es of major 20^lh — century Russian poets are at best obscure actually known only to the university public.

Some poets are renowned in the English-speaking USA, :xample, not for their poetry as translated into English but ;r for their tragic fates — like Marina Tsvetaeva or Osip delshtam. Quoting Susan Miron from her review on Tsvetae-y Viktoria Schweitzer, "Outside the former Soviet Union, ina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) is far better known today for her ide by hanging than for her poetry." This is due to translation certain extent. Tsvetaeva without her dashing rhymes, ner-j but well-arranged metre, and alliterative links between key ds, the unsurpassed play on sounds, which makes the very t of her poetry and gives a clue to the associative and imagi-¹ content, is a mere Jane Doe or some other decent poetic lan with no voice of her own. The purely semantic principle anslation is definitely inadequate in the case of Tsvetaeva.

There is a possible productive way for the theory of trans->n and translators of poetry, the comparative generative pros­it may serve as the basis for the theory of poetic translation will allow predicting the variety of actual prosodic parallels veen English and Russian systems of versification or recon-cting the basic model by its variants. There are some approach-

Imagery in Translation

es to such a theory in the studies of prosody from both general and national positions'. The concept of kernel rhythmic struc­tures and their direct and indirect connection with the cognitive and emotional processes is very important in understanding, in­terpreting and translating poetry². Anyhow, when translating po­etry, we should consider the form as more than a surface or liter­ary decoration. In fact, in true poetry, it is as integral a part of its content and imagery as is its syntactic structure or stylistic devic­es. To undertake a comparative study of the national peculiarities of the relationship between the prosodic form and contents in Russian and English literary traditions will definitely contribute to the theory of poetic translation. Yet a translator can make his own observations in the practical work on translating poetry from this point of view. For example, if a poet, classical or modern, uses the iambic tetrameter, it is only sensible on the part of the translator to consider the possible semantic, aesthetic and psy­chological functions of that verse form.

There is yet another obstacle for a translator of poetry, the one of cultural symbols, that is, words that have wide and impor­tant associative force in the source culture but are obscure, if at all comprehensible, for the culture of translation. When working in prose, such symbols may be commented upon, transformed by means of description, or replaced by some synonymous phrase. However, the verse space is limited, and one cannot enlarge the number of units in a line where each word needs weigh heavy. Actually, one of "national features," this phenomenon is untrans-

¹ M. Halle. On meter and prosody // Progress in linguistics. - Mouton,
1970; M. Halle, S. Keyser. English stress: its form, its growth and its role in
verse. - N.Y., 1971; M. Лотман. Генеративный подход в метрических шту­
диях // Русская филология. Вып. IV. 1975; М. А. Краснопсрова. Основы
реконструктивного моделирования стихосложения. - СПб., 2000.

² Andrey Bely addressed to the close relationship between rhythm,
metre and meaning in poetry in his famous book "Ритм как диалектика и
'Медный Всадник'. Исследование." (1929). Following many Russian scholars
Bely indicated different types of such relationship, which may be useful for

the translator.

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latable in poetry; yet translators somehow manage to reconstruct even such "thorns" in the flesh of a poetic text. The rule is, you may omit an illusion or two, if untranslatable, but you should detect them in the source text so as not to misinterpret by a wrong substitution. The main problem about them is that they carry a strong emotive charge for the native readers of the source text and lack it in the perception of the readers in the target language when distorted, or misinterpreted. The famous poem by Man-delshtam Мы живем, под собою не чуя стрешы does not direct­ly name Stalin but introduces him through the easily recognizable descriptive phrases:

А где хватит па полразговорца, Там припомнят кремлевского горца.

«Кремлевский горец» turns into a vague "the mountain man of the Kremlin" in the translation of Richard Dauenhauer (though it would perhaps have been more appropriate to use the Kremlin Highlander or the Highlander in the Kremlin or the Cau­casian in the Kremlin becusc it also impies some national idea while Highlander is almost exclusively associated with Scotland), and the translator feels it necessary to supply the poem with a commentary where the name is mentioned: "When this poem fell into the hands of Stalin's secret police, Mandclshtam was arrest­ed..." This poem became a symbol of anti-Stalinist resistance for generations of Russian intelligentsia, and every word in it has an association with this or that political figure or feature of those hard times. Another example of misinterpretation of a symbol in this poem is the line Тараканьи смеются усища translated as His moustache laughs like a pair of cockroaches. Meanwhile, the word «тараканьи» refers to the one Cockroach (also «Тараканище» from the famous poem of Chukovsky), the dread­ful notorious Stalin himself, and definitely not to "a pair." Thus interpreted, the image lacks its nightmarish metaphorical quality and becomes a mere simile with a mildly comical effect.

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Imagery in Translation

To sum up, when translating a poem we are dealing я only with the surface contents of it conveyed through the sema tics of words but with a cluster of interacting components, frc metre and rhyme to cultural symbolism, where every subtle d tail contributes to the imagery of the whole text. Alter the meti abandon the rhyme, or neglect the cultural symbol - and the r suit is a text that differs from the original in its basic qualitie Some translators try to justify such transformations with refe ence to the target reader's interests or preferences but the arg ment lacks cogency as, more often than not, it reflects the inte ests and preferences of the translator himself. The cogent argi ment should be the one that results in better understanding tl unique achievements of the source poetry.

This section includes classic as well as modern poets wi; samples of translation for comparison. Each unit begins with ii troductory notes containing some biographical data, commen on the works of the poet and on the particular problems of tran: lating them. Tasks for translation are supplied with directions an recommendations for the translator.

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Imagery in Translation

POETRYUNIT1: TRANSLATING WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE INTO RUSSIAN

Introductory Notes

William Shakespearewas and is the most mysterious au-of the brilliant Elizabethan age in English literature. From ifetime to the present day his name, the dates of his birth and h, and the very authorship of this or that work attributed to have been disputed. Some scholars stand firmly on the Strat-ian position and say that the great Shakespeare was born and . in Stratford-on-Avon (1564-1616), did not have any univer-education, spent a few years in London as a second-rate actor ie Globe Theatre, during which time he managed to write the dramatic works in the history of European literature and a sury of the most delightful poems.

Some would still dispute this tradition and say that Shakes-re was the greatest mystification of the time perpetrated by a jp of aristocratic poets. They would mention a variety of les, from Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex (1566-1601) to ;er Manners, the Earl of Rutland (1576-1612), and bring ar-lents for the co-authorship of Elizabeth Sidney, Countess of land, in the works that go under the name of Shakespeare¹. h a line of argument may be quite strong when applied to the of great poets, adventurers, explorers and rebels. Suffice it to ill a few names, like Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe,

' И. Гилилов. Игра об Уильяме Шекспире, или Тайна Великого икса. - М.: Международные отношения, 2000; Марина Литвинова, ичная воительница, потрясающая копьем / Столпотворение, 2001, N° М. Д. Литвинова. Задачи, стоящие перед переводчиками, в свете пос-шх открытий в шекспироведении / Вторые Федоровские чтения. Уни-:итетское переводоведение. Выпуск 2. - СПбГУ, 2001.

Ben Johnson, Sir Walter Raleigh, and others who liked to play both with life and death, with art and poetry, as well as with time and space.

Whoever their real author was, Shakespeare's Sonnets oc­cupy a place apart among his works. It was for them that Shakes­peare was called "mellifluous and honey tongued" by his con­temporaries, though, later, rejected and sharply criticised by John Dryden and George Stephens in the 18"¹ century only to be resur­rected in the age of Romanticism.

First published in 1609 as a complete sequence of 154 son­nets, nowadays, in terns of the number of researches and popular­ity amang readers, the Sonnets are second only to Hamlet. Some features of Shakespeare's poetry make him sound quite unusual for his time. His style was more direct and natural than that of many of his contemporaries, who paid tribute to bookish stylistic devices and conventional imagery. The best of Shakespeare's son­nets are filled with a sense of reality.

The basis of his imagery, like in most poems of the English Renaissance, was comparison. According to the aesthetics of the era, a subject should not be named directly, or even described; it should be expressed through some likeness between it and any oth­er subject thus making a conceit to be guessed. Shakespeare was particularly skilful at that and especially resourceful in inventing ever new similes and metaphors. Some of them were quite high-flown, others were almost prosaic. Death and life, the sun and the moon, Time and Love, the friend and the beloved, all of these eter­nal topics would appear in his sonnets in a diversity of forms, mo­tions, colours and relations. The inner world of his lyrical hero is affectionate, bright and somewhat sad. He plays with the reader; he asks questions to puzzle him and gives tricky answers to obscure the obvious. Many hints, allusions and enigmatic formulas have remained quite a mystery to the present day. A thoughtful reader may find his own answers to the mystery of Shakespeare's sonnets, as have many of his translators.

Shakespeare's sonnets usually follow the classical English

pattern (less sophisticated than its Italian counterpart): 14 lines of

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iambic pentameter arranged in three quatrains and a concluding couplet. Deviations from the standard form are rare. What is spe­cial about his sonnet is its paradoxical development. According to the sonnet rules, a sonnet should be devoted to a chosen theme, which had to be formulated in the very first line, while the rest of the poem was a path throuth to the conclusion. Shakespeare au­daciously broke the rules, making his thoughts run in contradic­tory manner, and his concluding couplets are very often unex­pected.

Considered as a whole, Shakespeare's sonnets remind one of a romance in poetic letters; we can find certain cycles in them devoted to one and the same topic, written in a particular mood, or concerned with one image.

The history of translation of these sonnets into Russian is very long and complicated. The sonnets were not translated into Russian before the 19^th century, the best translations were done in the 20^th century. The most famous and widely published transla­tions are the work of Samuel Marshak (1930s), who translated the complete set of all 154 sonnets. Boris Pasternak tackled only four of them but his translations are, as always with him, quite individual, subjective and expressive. One of the latest (but not the least) Russian translators of Shakespeare is Sergey Stepanov, a writer, poet and translator from St. Petersburg, who has re-searcheed the chronology of the Shakespearean sonnets. Stepanov, an ardent supporter of the Rutlandian version of the Shakespeare mystery, has done much to identify the part of Elizabeth Sidney, Duchess of Rutland, in the sonnets².

The sonnet under consideration is known as Sonnet 73 (the true chronology is questionable, though). It is one of the best and, probably, most lyrical of the cycle. The poet creates a cosmic landscape in words comparing his life first to the late autumn, then to the fading light of sunset, and at last to the failing fire. The final couplet of the sonnet is a paradox in itself, while it also

³ С. Степанов. "Жалоба влюбленной" - шифр к порядку Шекспи-ровых Сонетов // Перевод и межкультурная коммуникация. - СПб.: ИВЭ-СЭП, 2002.

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Imagery in Translation

contradicts the theme of the poem. Death is there, but there also love. Between this death and this love, stand two human soul alone in that vast and cold universe, fragile and yet capable < resisting the power of it.

The three Russian translations we include here view th poem as if from different positions, thus providing different v sions of it. You may try to detect the translator's position wi regard to the original poem in each version. The one by Marsh* is marked as it were by a well-arranged cosmic view, wise ar unhurried. Human, visible and almost palpable is the realm tran lated by Pasternak. Tragedy and irony dominate in Stepanov version through the choice of words and nervous prosody. In tl Task for Comparison we shall come back to all these and oth differences to compare and evaluate them.

A general problem for translating the Sonnets is the arch ic diction: one has to decide whether to follow the elevated sty in Russian or to use contemporary style with only subtle hig flown components. The first approach will make the text sour solemn and remote in time (as we can observe in Marshak's tran lation), while the second admits that Shakespeare himself w much ahead of his time in both poetic diction and imagery, ai not archaic at all (in Pasternak's and Stepanov's versions we c< find the second principle in action).

Chosen as the task for translation, Sonnet 102 is more tran parent, if such a description is appropriate to Shakespeare's рое ry at all. Its imagery is not very sophisticated, though again mark» by irony. Translating it, one may come across such problems the poetic name Philomel for the nightingale, which further e hances the difficulty with the feminine gender of the image English, whereas соловей is masculine in Russian. Neither is easy to transfer the array of such key words in the sonnet as lay hymns, song, pipe, music altogether into Russian. Difficulty m; be caused by such archaic forms as doth and burthens, and n only by the forms but also by their functions, too. We have decide whether to translate them in a way that reflects the poel

2 3;ik. № 50                                                                                                                                                                   \

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tion of the early 17^th century or to present them in contempo-y Russian as turns of phrase natural and not especially poetic Shakespeare's time. As to the basic metaphor of the text, it is у important to balance between such terms as merchandize 1 sing, and to retain the parallel between doth publish every ere and burthens every bough.

sk for comparison: nnet 73

SONNET 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west; Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consumed with that which it was nourisht by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

ревод Б. Пастернака:

To время года видишь ты во мне.

Кргда из листьев редко где какой,

Дрожа, желтеет в веток голизне,

А птичий свист везде сменил покой...

Во мне ты видишь бледный край небес,

Где от заката памятка одна,

И, постепенно взявши перевес,

Imagery in Translation

Их опечатывает темнота.

Во мне ты видишь то сгоранье пня,

Когда зола, что пламенем была,

Становится могилою огня,

А то, что грело, изошло дотла,

И это видя, помни: нет цены

Свиданьям, дни которых сочтены.

Перевод С. Маршака:

То время года видишь ты во мне, Когда один-другой багряный лист От холода трепещет в вышине — На хорах, где умолк веселый свист.

Во мне ты видишь тот вечерний час, Когда поблек на западе закат И купол неба, отнятый у нас, Подобьем смерти — сумраком объят.

Во мне ты видишь блеск того огня, Который гаснет в пепле прошлых дней, И то, что жизнью было для меня, Могилою становится моей.

Ты видишь все. Но близостью конца Теснее наши связаны сердца!

Перевод С. Степанова:

Во мне такую пору видишь взором, Когда листвы закончились пиры, Почти сметенной холода напором, На голых хорах смолкли птиц хоры.

Во мне ты видишь сумерки такие, Когда закат уже почти угас,

Практикум по художественному переводу

И ночь, как смерть, кладет свои слепые Печати, запечатывая глаз.

Ты видишь головню на пепелище, Что теплится в золе минувших дней, Чья некогда живительная пища Теперь ложится саваном над ней.

Ты видишь все и все ты понимаешь — И любишь крепче то, что потеряешь.

EXERCISES FOR COMPARISON

• Read more about William Shakespeare and his sonnets.

• Read about the sonnet, its history, structure, forms and role
in English poetry. Compare this poetic form with other kinds of verse.

• Read this sonnet attentively, make sure that you can un­
derstand every word and sentence structure in it. Mark the key
words of the sonnet and their links with the other words.

• Analyse the grammar of the sonnet, mark archaic forms
and vocabulary.

• Define and analyse the pattern of the verse: the type of
poetic form, rhythm, metre, rhyme scheme.

• Experiment with the text: change its versification pattern
(i. e., cut off a foot from every line and make it sound an iambic
tetrameter). Note the difference in rhythm and expressive power.

• Reconstruct the logical structure of the sonnet and its
major concepts.

• Reconstruct the imagery of the sonnet and the stylistic
means used to create the images.

• Think of some possible Russian parallels, either in form
or in contents.

• Translate the sonnet word for word. Think of Russian
equivalents for the archaic forms and vocabulary. Decide wheth­
er they should be as archaic in Russian.

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Imagery in Translation

• Think over the concepts of the sonnet and try to connect
them in Russian in the form of a coherent text.

• Create the preliminary scheme of rhymes in Russian, i. e.
collect important words which would make a rhyming basis for
the Russian substitute of the sonnet.

• Fill in the lines within the rhyming frame with words as
close to the source text as possible. Try to save the stylistic devic­
es of the source text.

• Decide which words and structures seem too heavy or
dull in Russian. Try to make the Russian text easier: omit some
words, change the type of stylistic devices, etc.

• Read the resulting text aloud to make sure it echoes the
rhythmic impression of the source text.

• Compare your text with those of other translators.

• Comment upon the difference in translation principles.
Discuss the results.

Task for translation: Sonnet 102

SONNET 102

My love is strenghten'd, though more weak in seeming; I love not less, though less the show appear: That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming The owner's tongue doth publish every where. Our love was new and then but in the spring When I was wont to greet it with my lays, As Philomel in summer's front doth sing And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:' Not that the summer is less pleasant now Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, But that wild music burthens every bough And sweets grown common lose their dear delight. Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue,

Because I would not dull you with my song.

———

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EXERCISES FOR TRANSLATION

• Read the sonnet aloud to feel its rhythmic and phonic
anity.

• Study the words and syntactic structures of the text to
nake sure that the logic and content of it are clear to you. Identi­
fy the key words and their function in the sonnet.

• Study the imagery of the text and stylistic means used to
:reate the imaginative world. Identify the units that may cause
problems for translation.

• Think of how to transform the word Philomel. Does the
pronoun her have a special meaning in this text?

• Study the metric pattern of the text to detect both weak
and strong positions in their connection with the content and im­
agery of the sonnet.

• Study the rhyme scheme of the sonnet; consider the words
that make rhyming pairs as meaningful units to explore their func­
tion in the text.

• Reconstruct the metric scheme and rhyming of the son­
net in Russian; choose pairs of rhyming words as close in mean­
ing to the source text as possible.

• Complete the lines with Russian words according to the
logic and emotive development of the text within the frame of the
metric pattern of the sonnet.

• Read your Russian text aloud to check how it sounds.

• Complete the translated text and discuss the translated
versions of the sonnet.

Imagery in Translation

POETRY UNIT2:

TRANSLATING JOHN KEATS INTO RUSSIAN

Introductory Notes

JohnKeats (1795-1821) was supposed to become an apoth­ecary but abandoned the profession for the sake of poetry. From 1816 he devoted his life purely to writing. Keats was close to such poets as Leigh Hunt and Haydon, and met with Shelley, Hazlitt and Wordsworth whose poetry and views particularly in­fluenced him. One of his favourite writers was Shakespeare whom he highly praised for the utmost openness and unselfishness in poetry and whose sonnets were a model for the novice poet. Keats was always happy with friends, who loved him and his poetry and did much to support and defend him from sharp and unde­served criticism. Fragile and weak, he fell seriously ill with tu­berculosis in the winter of 1819. It became clear that he would not live out another winter in London. In 1820 Shelley invited him to live with his family in Italy. Keats went there, but he did not join Shelley, settling in Rome, his health in a very poor state. There, in Rome he died in February 1821.

Like many other English poets, he started with Ancient Greek and Roman mythology, classical literature and allegoric ways of formulating the idea of the beautiful. However, this turned out not to be enough for longer poems. He came to nature and undertook a journey round the Lake District, Scotland and North­ern Ireland In 1816-1817. For him it was like a pilgrimage to places of sacred beauty. The mountainous landscape of those plac­es awoke his imagination and was a step towards his poetic ideal, the union of the Picturesque and the Sublime. His imagination thus stirred, in December 1817 he moved to Hampstead and set-

38

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tied in what is now known as the Keats Memorial House. There he met Fanny Brawne with whom he fell deeply in love and who became his fiancee. He had only two more years of life at his disposal, though he could not have known it then.

What can a poet do within such a short period of creative activity? John Keats did so much. He wrote a quantity of lyrics and longer poems that placed his name among the immortals. The most productive period for his poetry was 1818, and he himself referred to it as the Great Year. It was in 1818 thai he wrote, con­secutively, "The Eve of St. Agnes," "The Eve of St. Mark," "Hy­perion," "Lamia," and his major odes such as the "Ode to Psyche," the "Ode to a Nightingale," the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "To Autumn." For a young man as he was, the style of these pieces was powerful like the brush of a great painter. It is incredible to find such a diversity of colours, forms and shades of human feelings and nature in Keats's major works. The wind, the grass, the roof of the house, the colour of the path in autumn, the form of a flower in the vase, the voice of a village girl, the sound of the cart wheel, all these details together make his poetry rings out like a mighty sym­phony arranged in words and metre.

His favourite poetic forms included the sonnet. He was the first of the Romantic poets to rediscover the form that was con­sidered superfluous, naive and too platonic for serious poetry. Byron treated Keats's sonnets with contemptuous superiority as "trifles" but came to revise his own attitude later, after Keats's early death.

In his best sonnets Keats's diction is simple, the tone is natural for he found the beautiful everywhere, even in such "tri­fling" matters as the voice of a grasshopper or the sand on the seashore. He might start with a detail, as he did in the sonnet "On Visiting the Tomb of Burns":

The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun, The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem, Though beautiful, cold — strange — as in a dream,

___________ I dreamed long ago, now new begun.___________

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Imagery in Translation

Then those details will stir the poet's fantasy and take h away to the realm of beauty. However, he could also start wit philosophic maxim, as in the sonnet selected here for сотр. son, which would uncoil its sophisticated structure in lovely i tails.

In Russia, the poetry of John Keats was not accepted as rea ly and easily as that of Byron's. Though one of the greatest poets English Romanticism, to Russian readers he remained for a k time in the shadow as it were of Byron, Shelley and Wordswort Some critics try to explain this as being to his extreme "Engli ness" that is almost impossible to translate. So, he came into be in Russian translation and literary studies² only in the 20^th cent when his poetry found brilliant and ardent readers and interpret* such as Marshak, Pasternak, Sukharev, and others. While Marsl and Pasternak belong to the first half of the 20^th century, Serj Sukharev is our contemporary, a talented poet and translator fr St. Petersburg, who has done much research on John Keats and poetry and is the first to translate and publish the complete sei Keats's sonnets (1998) in Russian.

The task for comparison includes one of the most popi Keats's sonnets in Russia, On the Grasshopper and the Crici The three Russian versions of the sonnet differ considerably < reveal the translators' personalities, their poetic and translati principles and skills³. Of special interest is the choice of wo for the opening line, the key phrase for the whole text. We n

¹ In the Russian press his name was first mentioned as early as 1
(in the magazine "Вестник Европы"), and the very form of his name in F
sian had still not become fixed: "Джон Кеатс" or "Кете". The first Rus
poetic version (the sonnet To My Brothers) was published tn 1895. Since
1970s, John Keats has become quite popular in Russia, not least thanks to
brilliant translations of Sergey Sukharev:

² H. Я. Дьяконова. Ките и его современники. - М.: Наука, 1973;
же. Английский романтизм. - М.: Наука, 1978; С. Л. Сухарев. Ките и
сонеты. - Джон Ките. Сонеты. В переводе Сергея Сухарева. - СПб., 1!
Г. Г. Подольская. Джон Ките в России. - Астрахань: Изд-во АГПИ, 19!

³ М. Новикова. Ките - Маршак - Пастернак / Мастерство nepi
да. - М.: Сов. Писатель, 1971.

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npare the three sentences in Russian to see the difference in le, manner and rhythm of the three Russian Keatses.

Free stanzas as a pattern for a poem, alongside with the ; and longer narrative poems, were very popular among poets Romanticism. They allowed freedom of metre, rhyme and or-of ideas andimages. Our task for translation features the Stan-in a Drear-nighted December, a charming poem, rather play-in rhythm, which makes it sound more lively though the topic 1 verbal imagery are rather sad. The poem has not been a hit :h translators. Probably the main problem is in its metric and jnic arrangement, especially that of the rhyming scheme when the three stanzas are linked by one rhyme, which puts the last г of every stanza in the strongest position and creates an inner nzaofakind.

sk for comparison:

i the Grasshopper and the Cricket

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE CRICKET

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;

This is the Grasshopper's — he takes the lead

In summer luxury, — he has never done

With his delights, for when tired out with fun

He rests atease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

Imagery inTranslation

Перевод С. Маршака:

Вовеки не замрет, не прекратится Поэзия земли. Когда в листве, От зноя ослабев, умолкнут птицы, Мы слышим голос в скошенной траве Кузнечика. Спешит он насладиться Своим участьем в летнем торжестве, То зазвенит, то снова притаится И помолчит минуту или две.

Поэзия земли не знает смерти. Пришла зима, в полях метет метель, Но вы покою мертвому не верьте: Трещит сверчок, забившись где-то в щель.

И в ласковом тепле нагретых печек Нам кажется — в траве звенит кузнечик.

Перевод Б. Пастернака:

В свой час своя поэзия в природе: Когда в зените день и жар томит Притихших птиц — чей голосок звенит Вдоль изгородей скошенных угодий? Кузнечик — вот виновник тех мелодий, Певун и лодырь, потерявший стыд, Пока и сам, по горло пеньем сыт, Не свалится последним в хороводе. В свой час во всем поэзия своя: Зимой, морозной ночью молчаливой Пронзительны за печкой переливы Сверчка во славу теплого жилья. И, словно летом, кажется сквозь дрему, Что слышишь треск кузнечика знакомый.

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Практикум по художественному переводу

Перевод С. Сухарева:

Поэзии земли не молкнет лад:

Не слышно среди скошенных лугов

Сомлевших в зное птичьих голосов,

Зато вовсю гремит поверх оград

Кузнечик. Обессилев от рулад,

Он сыщет под былинкой вольный кров,

Передохнет — и вновь трещать готов,

Раздольем лета верховодить рад.

Поэзия земли не знает плена: Безмолвием сковала мир зима, Но где-то там, за печкой, неизменно Сверчок в тепле стрекочет без ума, И кажется — звенит самозабвенно — Все та же трель кузнечика с холма.

EXERCISES FOR COMPARISON

• Read about John Keats and his poetry. Read some other
poems by John Keats to appreciate the peculiarities of his dic­
tion.

• Read the poem thoroughly and study its vocabulary, style
and imagery.

• Analyse the poetic pattern of the sonnet, its rhyming
scheme and metre.

• Reconstruct the logic of the text and compare it with its
imagery.

• Compare this sonnet with the one by Shakespeare (Po­
etry Unit 1). Comment upon the difference.

• Think of the impression produced by the poem. Does it
coincide with or contradict the surface content?

Imagery in Translation

• Pick out the key-words of the text and analyse their s>
bolic value. Which of them may be difficult to reconstruct in tra
lation and why?

• Study the possibilities of Russian vocabulary to prov
equivalents to the source text.

• Translate the poem word for word paying special att
tion to the key-words and those intended for rhyme.

• Reconstruct the rhyming scheme and choose the rh>
ing words for the whole text.

• Fill in the lines within the rhyming frame with due we
to retain the metric pattern of the poem in Russian.

• Look through the choice of words and stylistic device
ensure they meet the requirements of sense and style in Russi

• Read the text aloud to see if it is compatible the sou
rhythm in Russian.

• Compare your version with the other translations.

• Discuss the results.

Task for translation:

Stanzas in a Drear-nighted December

I

In a drear-nighted December,

Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember

Their green felicity: The north cannot undo them With a sleety whistle through them, Nor frozen thawings glue them

From budding at the prime.

II

In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook,

44

Практикум по художественному переводу

Thy bubblings ne'er remember

Apollo's summer look; But with a sweet forgetting They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

Ill

Ah! would 'twere so with many

A gentle girl and boy! But were there ever any

Writh'd not at passed joy? To know the change and feel it, When there is none to heal it, Nor numbered sense to steel it,

Was never said in rhyme.

Imagery in Translation

• How will you cope with the metric difference between
the line of words too happy, happy tree and its Russian counter­
parts like такое счастливое (беспечное, беззаботное) дерево!

• What other translation problems can you detect in the
text?

• Complete the draft of your Russian text and read it aloud
to hear how it sounds.

• Complete the translation and compare its imagery, logic
and emotive values with the source text.

• Discuss the results and compare different versions of the
translation.

EXERCISES FOR TRANSLATION

• Study the logic and emotive features of the poem to dis­
cover down the key words of the text.

• Study the imagery and stylistic devices used to create it.

• Study the metre and rhyming scheme of the poem and
their functions.

• Reconstruct the intrastanza based on the rhyming last lines
of all three stanzas and think of its associative force.

• Play with the source text changing its metric or rhyming
features to see how it influences the perception of the stanzas.

• Reconstruct the rhyme scheme of the text in Russian with
words as close in meaning to the source rhyming words as possi­
ble.

• Complete the lines with Russian words following the met­
ric pattern of the source text.

—                 ;                                                         ___

47

Практикум по художественному переводу

Imagery in Translation

POETRYUNIT3:

TRANSLATING PERCYBYSSHE SHELLEY INTO R USSIAN

Introductory Notes

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was bom into a noble family in Sussex and went to University College, Oxford. From his early youth and througout his life, his behaviour was marked by extreme eccentricity. He was a rebel by nature and in his poet­ic vision of life. He was expelled from Oxford for circulating his own pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, in 1811. Then he eloped to Scotland with 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook and they married in Edinburgh in August 1811. Three years of nomadic existence followed, and in 1814 the marriage broke down despite the birth of two children. Later, he married Mary Godwin who would also become a famous writer and with whom he lived to the end of his life. In 1818 they went abroad and spent most of their time in Italy where they made friends with Byron. That period was both the most productive and unhappy in Shelley's life; his little daughter died at Venice; then his favourite son William died at Rome, and Mary Shelley suffered a nervous breakdown.

Yet the period of time from the summer of 1819 saw the peak of Shelley's creative activity. He completed his long poem Prometheus Unbound and wrote The Mask of Anarchy, Ode to the West Wind, such lyric pieces as To a Skylark, The Cloud; he also completed his drama The Cenci. In 1821 he wrote Adonais in memory of John Keats and his untimely death.

In August 1822 Shelley drowned, together with his friend Edward Williams and a boatboy, under very strange circumstanc­es, on a return trip from visiting Byron and Leigh Hunt in Livor-no in his small Ariel. In keeping with Italian law, his body was

48

burned on the shore, but his heart was returned to England later buried in Poets' Corner Westminster Abbey.

Apart from being an outstanding poet and dramatist, SI ley was also a gifted translator. He translated prominent autr from Greek (Plato and Homer), Latin (Spinoza), Spanish (( deron), German (Goethe), Italian (Dante) and some other langu es. He was also considered one of the most profound writer: his age; his Defence of Poetry is recognised as one of the gi documents in the history of English criticism. In this book SI ley makes a distinction between imaginative and mechanical thi ing and underlies that only imaginative thinking, that is, a con nation of reason with imagination, is truly creative, while mecr ical thinking is prosaically analytical. From his paradoxical pi of view, Plato and Bacon are creative thinkers and, thus, poets

Among the English Romantics, Shelley had the reputai of being an undoubtedly major figure, a poet of volcanic anc ery aspirations and hope for a better world.

His lyric poetry was always very melodical and full off sion, though sometimes rather sad. The piece in the task for c< parison, To — (One word is too often profaned.!.), is a free sta form, written in 1821, supposedly to Emilia Viviani, daughte the Governor of Pisa, a very talented girl with whom Shelley' in Platonic love. Emilia inspired Shelley to a series of poems, finest of them and the greatest of his personal lyrics was Ерц chidion ("soul within the soul," in Greek), a torrent of roma love poetry unmatched in English, where he describes the i( love as everburning "inconsumable" flame in which bodies spirits blend in one. One word, a much smaller piece, opens other side of ideal love, its cosmic character that ranges fi human beings to planets and space.

Shelley's poetry was not often translated into Russia the 19^th century. Konstantin Balmont was the first Russian po< translate the complete poems of Shelley; his views on poetic tn lation were very idiosyncratic. He proclaimed Russian "a s tongue", in comparison with English, and, translating, enlar

Практикум по художественному переводу_____

original text, adding feet, lines, or even stanzs. In any event, version of this poem was very melodical and unusual, though ler far from the source metre and melody. Boris Pasternak chose poem for translation, evidently attracted by the particular com-ation of diction and imagery in it, both wrapped in the master-erse. Perhaps, like Keats, Shelley is hyper-English in his mode ;xpression, which makes his poetry quite a challenge for a lslator.

The task for translation features Shelley's masterpiece of a met, Ozymandias, written in 1817. The image of the poem is ed on a famous description of the statue of Ramses II by Di->rus Siculus: "... It is not merely for its size that this statue rits approbation, but it is also marvellous by reason of its artis-quality and excellent because of the nature of the stone... The cription upon it runs: 'King of Kings am I, Osymandyas. If /one would know how great I am and where I lie, let him sur-;s one of my works.' " The poem has been translated into ssian many times. Famous, though not quite perfect were trans-ions by Balmont, Minsky, Chemena, and others. The statue is t directly named by a word in Shelley's poem, but only through ;h metonymic features as legs of stone, visage, pedestal, wreck, lich sound clumsy in the Russian syntax; so in translation this named object is interpreted as статуя, исполин, истукан, мятник, руина, мавзолей — all the words being rather long d too exact for the poetic image in Shelley's world.

sk for comparison:

"ie word is too often profaned

TO —

1

One word is too often profaned

For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdained <

Imageryin Translation

For thee to disdain it, One hope is too like despair

For prudence to smother, And Pity from thee more dear

Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,

But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above

And the Heavens reject not: The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow?

Перевод К. Бальмонта:

Слишком часто заветное слово людьми осквернялось,

Я его не хочу повторять, Слишком часто заветное чувство презреньем встречалось,

Ты его не должна презирать. И слова состраданья, что с уст твоих нежных сорвались,

Никому я отдать не хочу, И за счастье надежд, что с отчаяньем горьким смешалось,

Я всей жизнью своей заплачу.

Нет того в моем сердце, что в мире любовью зовется,

Но молитвы отвергнешь ли ты? Неудержно вкруг солнца воздушное облачко вьется,

Упадает роса на цветы, Полночь ждет, чтобы снова зари загорелося око,

И отвергнешь ли ты, о мой друг, Это чувство святое, что манит куда-то далеко,

Прочь от наших томительных мук?

51

Практикум по художественному переводу

Перевод Б. Пастернака:

К...

Опошлено слово одно И стало рутиной. Над искренностью давно Смеются в гостиной. Надежда и самообман — Два сходных недуга. Единственный мир без румян — Участие друга.

Любви я в ответ не прошу, Но тем беззаветней По-прежнему произношу Обет многолетний. Так бабочку тянет в костер И полночь к рассвету, И так заставляет простор Кружиться планету.

EXERCISES FOR COMPARISON

• Read about Percy Bysshe Shelley and his poetry.

• Read the poem, analyse its imagery and mood. Mark the
stylistic devices used in the text.

• Identify key-words in the text and note their role in the
imagery and logic of the poem.

• Reconstruct the verse pattern of the text: its rhythm, me­
tre, rhyme scheme and form of stanzas. Think of how it may be
connected with the imagery and mood of the poem.

• What impression does this poem produce on the reader?
Would you classify this text among more emotional or more log­
ical poetry?

52

Imagery in Translation

• What other words may be put in line with the worship,
the desire, the feeling, the devotion, lovel What connects them in
one group? What is different about them?

• Try to change this text into a sonnet. Seeif the results
influence the character and mood of the poem.

• Translate this poem word for word into Russian. See what
grammar transformations are necessary to make the text sound
more "poetic" in Russian.

• Make your own decisions about what toretain and what
to omit in translation of this poem.

• Reconstruct the rhyming frame of the textto place the
most important words in the strongest positions connected by
rhymes.

• Fill in the lines within the rhyme scheme with the rest of
words to save the source metre.

• Work carefully on the grammar and vocabulary equiva­
lents and transform the source units if and when necessary.

• Read the result aloud to see if the rhythmic pattern of the
translation is similar to that of the source poem.

• Compare your version with the other translations of the
same poem. Comment upon the difference.

• Discuss the results.

Task for translation: Ozymandias