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Some Notes on the Translation of Poetry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2017
Extract
Receipt from Australia of a volume of new translations of Pushkin's lyrics suggests some observations on the problems of translating poetry. Mr. Morrison, the author of the book, begins his prefatory note by quoting one of the wise and charming remarks of Don Quixote: “Translation from one language into another … is like looking at Flemish tapestries on the wrong side; for though the figures are visible, they are full of threads that make them indistinct, and they do not show with the smoothness and brightness of the right side.” I think that Mr. Morrison had a good idea in protecting himself with Don Quixote's Flemish tapestry. Traduttore-traditore is an old slogan. It is a known fact that there is nothing more difficult than a poetic translation. Leibniz went even farther; he maintained that in general it is impossible for one language to reproduce another with equal force and adequate expression. Very close to this idealistic conception of language is Croce in his Aesthetics, based on the absolute unity of form and content.
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- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1952
References
1 Morrison, R. H., Lyrics from Pushkin (Melbourne, 1951), v + 32 ppGoogle Scholar.
2 Croce, Benedetto, Breviaire d'esthetique (Paris, 1923)Google Scholar; see also my monograph on Pushkin's “Bronze Horseman”: Jezdziec Miedziany A. Puszkina, Przeklad J. Tuwima, Studium W. Lednickiego (Warsaw, 1932), p. 34.
3 Przeglqd Warszawski, II, No. 7 (1921), pp. 33–34.
4 Pushkin's letter to L. S. Pushkin, beginning January, 1824, from Odessa.
5 His letter to Prince N. B. Golicyn, November 10, 1836, from Petersburg.
6 Čukovskij, K., Vysokoe hkusstvo (Moscow, 1941), p. 107 Google Scholar. Compare also šiŠkov's remarks about the “poverty” of the French language: “The French, because of the poverty of their language, use the word taste everywhere; for them it is applicable to everything: to food, to clothes, to poetry, to shoes, to music, to sciences, and to love.” See ProfessorVinogradov, V. V., Očerki po istorii russkogo literaturnogo jazyka XVII-X1X vv. (Leiden, 1949), p. 160 Google Scholar.
7 Raymond, Marcel, Paul Valéry, etc. (Paris, 1946), p. 69 Google Scholar.
8 Valéry, Paul, Tel Quel (Paris, 1941), p. 158 Google Scholar.
9 Hommage des écrivains étrangers à Paul Valéry (Maestricht, 1927), p. 78.
10 From the “Prefatory Note.”
11 Cf. Putškin i ego sovremenniki, Issue XXXI-XXXII (Leningrad, 1937), pp. 3–14. I agree with Izmajlov's comments, despite the fact that the first published text of this poem contained the word “Tsar” instead of “prince,” and despite the correspondence between Pushkin and Benckendorff connected with this poem. This poem has ties with Coleridge's Remorse (Pushkin's manuscript contains two lines from Coleridge about the “poison-tree”) and it might also have some ties with George Colman “the younger.” See also Jakubovič, D., “Zametka ob Ančare.” Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, XVI–XVIII (Moscow, 1934), pp. 869–76Google Scholar.
12 Tytler, A. F., Essay on the Principles of Translation (London, 1797), Chapter XGoogle Scholar.
13 Ibid., Chapter XV.
14 Hommage des écrivains étrangers à Paul Valéry, p. 82.
15 The outstanding Russian literary critic and historian of literature, K. Čukovskij, in 1941 devoted an interesting book (which I mentioned above) to the problem of translation. He called his book “The Lofty Art.” In the preface he stressed the exceedingly high level which the art of translation has reached in Soviet Russia. (There is no doubt that Russia is a country with a well-established and rich tradition of translation.) Čukovskij emphasized that this level invites creation of a theory. And still his book of 250 pages is filled with innumerable examples of all kinds of distortions and disfigurations of the translated texts. The foreign authors have been subjected to terrific losses, they have lost essential words and epithets, their charm, their characteristic intonations, national character, and peculiarities of style. It appears that in modern Russian translations Shakespeare has become particularly “impolite,” Shelley has lost his light and free poetical diction because his rhythmical schemes are too narrow for Russian verse, Dickens has become too Dickensian, etc. Čukovskij asserts that a poetic translation may be called truly precise only when, besides the meaning, style, phonetics, and rhythm, the intonational peculiarities of the original are also rendered. Without this a translation is hopeless. On the other hand, he maintains that preservation of the number of lines and the rhythm of a poetical work may lead to a loss not only of the meaning, but also of the beauty, poetry, and inspiration of the original. As a paradoxical answer to his preface, Čukovskij stresses how obnoxious and dangerous all kinds of ready recipes of good translation in poetry may be. “Such recipes do not and cannot exist.” Cf. Kornej Čukovskij, op. cit.