Russian School of Poetic Translation: the path from letter to Image

Grunina Yuliya Aleksandrovna ORCID: 0000-0002-3144-6211 Senior Educator, the department of Foreign Languages, the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 117198, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Miklukho-Maklaya, 6 grunina-yua@rudn.ru Other publications by this author

Terentieva Ekaterina Dmitrievna ORCID: 0000-0001-9654-5192 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, the department of Foreign Languages, the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 117198, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Miklukho-Maklaya, 6 terentyeva-ed@rudn.ru Other publications by this author

"We respect the peoples for their discoveries, inventions, for their creative participation in world history. But we begin to truly love and understand an unfamiliar people only after we are captivated and touched by their art," these words of S. Ya. Marshak, an outstanding poet and translator, surprisingly accurately reveal the essence of cultural communication between different peoples, because it is art that absorbs all the most valuable things that the people own - his spiritual heritage, which embodies the character of the nation ^[9].

Translations of foreign authors have long been on a par with the masterpieces of Russian literature. For many great poets, such as V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin, M. Y. Lermontov, they have become an inseparable part of creativity.

Mountain peaks

they sleep in the darkness of the night... –

is it possible to imagine these lines outside of Lermontov's poetry? But this is, as you know, although free, but a translation from Goethe.

Nekrasov also wrote about the difficulties of this difficult craft: "To transmit the poems of a foreign poet in Russian poems closely... it is often more difficult than writing Russian poems directly" ^{[12, p. 54]}.

Translation in Russia began a long time ago, so today literary translation has become an independent science. The first theorists of "high art" were V. Trediakovsky, V. Zhukovsky, the problem of translation was also touched upon in their works by V. Belinsky, N. Dobrolyubov, A. Tolstoy, etc. 

Letter or spirit? – this is an age-old question that both theorists and translation practitioners are asking. What is more important – to reproduce the original verbatim or, to use the definition of A. Tolstoy, to convey an impression?  ^{[12, p. 92]}.

The "literal" translation tries to plunge the reader into the same era in which the translated author worked. The "free" translation makes the translated writer a contemporary of the reader, allows the author to sound naturally in another language.

In his book, K. I. Chukovsky, a master of literary translation, angrily attacks the literal translation. His statement: "slavish" translation cannot be an artistic translation" ^{[13, p. 6]}. Following him, translator and editor Nora Gal sarcastically ridicules the "ill-fated translations of literalists". "Mediocre craftwork" – this is her verdict on literalist works ^{[2, p. 190]}.

 One cannot but agree with the statement that a literal translation cannot claim to be an artistic one, it must exist, as the Russian poet and translator Sergei Goncharenko notes, "only for purely utilitarian purposes or for a highly specialized purpose" ^[4]. When literalists claim the artistic value of their translations, taking up the translation of a foreign-language writer or poet, the lines that amazed the reader in the original language, in Russian turn, according to Chukovsky's witty remark, into "bloodless and lifeless cripples" ^{[13, p. 69]}.

According to M. Gasparov, the whole history of literary translation in Russia is a struggle between "accurate" and "free" translation ^{[3, p. 349]}. He identifies five periods of the history of translation that coincide with "five periods of the spread of education in Russian society." The scientist writes about the epoch of the twentieth century: "The Soviet era is a reaction to the literalism of modernists, a softening of extremes, a program of clarity, lightness, loyalty to the traditional values of Russian verbal culture; if you need to name a typical name, it will be the name of Marshak" ^{[3, p. 349]}. A fundamentally new approach has made the task much more complicated: it is much easier to translate a word than to convey a feeling.

Differentiating translations according to the above principle, we should not talk about "free" and "literal" translations, but about "artistic" and "non-artistic" translations.

Many recognized masters devoted their works to the study of the problem of literary translation – I. A. Kashkin, L. V. Ginzburg, A.V. Fedorov, E. G. Etkind, K. I. Chukovsky, etc. Each of them has his own, purely individual view of the art of translation, each in his own way defends his principles, but the method formulated back in 1905 by V. Bryusov in the article "Violets in a crucible" is common for translators. Highlighting the main constituent elements of a poetic work – "the style of language, images, size and rhyme, the movement of verse, the play of syllables and sounds" – V. Bryusov defines the general principle when working with a foreign text: "It is unthinkable to reproduce all these elements fully and accurately when translating a poem. The translator usually tries to convey only one or at best two (mostly images and size), changing others (style, movement of verse, rhymes, sounds of words). But there are poems in which the predominant role is played not by images, but, for example, by the sounds of words [...] or even rhymes [...]. The choice of this element, which you consider the most important in the translated work, is the method of translation" ^[1].

So, let's outline a few basic principles of the modern translation school.

First: in Russia, poems are traditionally translated in verse, so that the work of a translator is equated with the work of a poet. "Only a poet can translate a poet," V. Zhukovsky wrote back in 1810 ^[4].

Secondly, the verbatim nature of the poetic translation is not only not its merit, but most often ruins the artistic text. As I. Kashkin rightly noted in his article "On the method and school of Soviet literary translation", "for a person starting to translate a literary text, the basis should not be an isolated and conditional sign and not the structure of the language in which the original is written, but first of all the work itself as a whole, its living image, illuminating all the details" ^{[7, p. 23]}.

Free handling of poetic material allows you to creatively approach the task of translation. The translator does not need to cling to every language element of the original, but it is enough to find an adequate version using the means of his native language. But here special care is required from the translator: excessive Russification erases the national identity of the original.  

Another important principle is an adequate transfer of the style of the original. The translator is obliged to preserve the author's individuality, which, of course, requires certain sacrifices on his part. "Such art," we read in Chukovsky, "is available only to great masters of translation – those who have the precious ability to overcome their ego and transform into the translated author" ^{[13, p. 40]}. At one time, Chukovsky attacked Konstantin Balmont for "rewarding" the English lyricist Percy Bysshe Shelley with a "haberdashery, romantic style" and "generous sweeping gestures", which are not in sight in the original ^{[13, p. 51]}.

One of the serious problems of literary translation remains open to this day: how to transmit in Russian the folk speech found in foreign writers? This question arose before translators in the last century. Some have decided to use it as equivalents of Russian folk speech. Such attempts at Russification of foreign writers were made by translators of the last century almost everywhere, and in the fifties this phenomenon received an unprecedented scale (O. I. Senkovsky and B. I. Ordynsky even tried to translate Homer's Odyssey into a peasant way).  Criticism resolutely rebelled against such vulgarizing techniques.  Nowadays, this problem is still a topic of discussion. "It is not by chance that there are always several versions of the translation of a poetic work on an equal footing: each of them has its own losses and its own victories" ^{[8, p. 106]}.

As an example of solutions to this translation problem, consider the translations of the "Poem about One Day" by the Spanish poet and thinker Antonio Machado. In this work we find the poet at the moment when he is sitting at the window, looking at the streams of rain, sorting through his favorite books... a clock is ticking monotonously on the wall... The most ordinary day of a "modest rural teacher". 

 It should be noted that the simplicity of expression is a fundamental feature of the poetic language of Antonio Machado. His image is surprisingly concrete and clear. Ornate epithets are not Machado's element. His epithets are simple and transparent, but at the same time they carry an important semantic meaning. In his later poems, the poet will get rid of any verbal embellishments.

We propose to conduct a comparative analysis of the translations made by Russian Spanish translators I. Tynyanova and N. Gorskaya.

Inna Yuryevna Tynyanova (1916-2004) – literary critic, translator of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American prose and poetry (H. Manrique, P. Calderon, L. Camoens, A. Machado, F. Garcia Lorca, M. Hernandez, R. Alberti, R. Dario, H. Marti, etc.). 

In the "Poem ..." there are lines in the translation of which it is necessary to preserve the style more than ever. We mean the transmission of live colloquial speech. So, the passage where the street speaks. What are the people making noise about? Everything is as usual: complains about the crop failure, wonders what the weather will be like, sighs about his hard lot...

Es de noche. Se platica

al fondo de una botica.

– Yo no s?,

don Jos?,

c?mo son los liberales

tan perros, tan inmorales.

– ?Oh, tranquil?cese ust?!

Pasados los carnavales,

vendr?n los conservadores,

buenos administradores

de su casa.

Todo llega y todo pasa.

Nada eterno:

ni gobierno

que perdume,

ni mal que cien a?os dure.          

– Tras estos tiempos, vendr?n

otros tiempos y otros y otros,

Y lo mismo que nosotros

Otros se jorobar?n.

As? es la vida, don Juan.

– Es verdad, as? es la vida.

– La cebada est? crecida,

– Con estas lluvias...

Y van

las habas que es un primor.

– Cierto; para marzo, en flor,

pero la escarcha, los hielos...

– Y, adem?s, los olivares

Est?n pidiendo a los cielos

Agua a torrientes.

–  A mares.

?Las fatigas, los sudores

Que pasan los labradores!

En otro tiempo...

Llov?a tambi?n cuando Dios quer?a.

– Hasta ma?ana, se?ores.       

^{[15, p. 191]}.      

Night and the streets are dark,

someone's voices are heard:                           

– Don Jose, what are we going to do?             

Liberals are evil people,                           

irresponsible people,                     

just a rabble.                                         

– Soon we will forget about them!                   

Other days are coming.                               

The Conservatives will come                             

and they will restore order.                                 

It doesn't matter,                                                   

everything always changes,                               

nothing lasts forever on earth:                    

evil cannot last long,                

everything has to change.                    

– And for these years                                    

new years will come,                                 

and it will happen again then                                  

what we have suffered.                        

– How we live, we don't know ourselves.                  

– What to do, life is like that.                

– We will wait for the harvest.                        

– Really, with these rains...                  

– Beans grow well.                            

– Of course! They will bloom in March.                    

– In this cold they have risen...                        

– Don Juan, there is not enough water                    

  And the olives are all in the dust,                              

   everything is almost wilted.                     

– The master's life is difficult!                       

– Yes, dry times!                             

– And once, on other days...               

– It also rained heavily.                  

– Goodbye, gentlemen.                          

^{[11, p. 132]}.                                                               

   Here is a substring:

                 Evening came. From the depths of the pharmacy

                 a conversation is heard.

                 "Who knows, Don Jose,

                 after all, these liberals

                 real dogs, but just scoundrels.

                 – Oh, come on!

                 Carnivals will die off,

                 conservatives will return,

                 that's who the real boss is

                 in my house!

                 All the bad things come and go,

                 nothing lasts forever,

                 not a long - standing government,

                 and the grief will not last a hundred years.

                – These times will pass,

                 they will be replaced by others,

                 and they won 't be for us anymore

                 annoy.

                 That's life, Don Juan.

                 – That's true, that's true.

                 – The crops have already sprung up.

                 – Yes, with these rains...

                 Well, the beans have risen soon.

                 – Yeah. No matter how they bloom in March,

                 and then it's freezing, that's the trouble!

                 And besides, the olives are waiting for the rain. 

                 – My mouth is full of troubles!  The life of a hard worker

                 pure hell! – God willing, it will rain.

                 – Goodbye, senores.     

Paired rhymes give this polyphony liveliness and fervor, the rhythmic structure contributes to the fact that the replicas of the participants in the conversation sound like a tongue twister or a joke: "Yo no s? // don Jos? ..." The translator coped with this task quite successfully: the rhythm and selected rhymes of her translation convey the enthusiasm of Machado's lines, but in general this street noise and din is conveyed dryly, the translation lacks the salt of folk speech.

If the beginning of the passage to some extent conveys the sharpness and accuracy of the folk word: "Liberals are evil people, // irresponsible people, // just rabble," then parasitic words appear, a kind of "verbal husk" that does not carry much meaning, does not add color to the line, but only introduces heaviness: "Don Juan, there is not enough water, / and the olives are all in the dust, / everything around is almost withered," this stanza was weighed down by the small but cumbersome word "after all." "Everything around is almost withered," also sounds a little tense. 

And further: "It doesn't matter, // everything always changes, // nothing on earth lasts forever: // evil can't last long, // everything has to change..." etc. In the original, there is a proverb in these lines: No hay mal que cien a?os dure (lit. There is no such evil that would last a hundred years). At Tynyanova, she sounded, although not quite clearly: "evil cannot last long, everything must change." But the phrase is too long for a saying, it should be shorter. Let us recall the words of the poet himself from the outline of the introductory speech to his election as an Honorary member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Language and Literature in 1927: "The printed word, which has not preserved the naturalness of living speech, makes me sad" (O. Savich's translation) ^{[10, p. 102]}. From this we can conclude that the contrivance and unnaturalness of poetic speech are infinitely far from Machado's poetics. 

Natella Vsevolodovna Gorskaya (1928-2008), a poet, translator from Spanish, Hungarian, and Czech, will cope with this task in a later translation.

Here is a small excerpt from her translation:

          There is a conversation going on.

–        ...Don Jose, by God, it's a shame:

          the liberals have lost their temper,

          these pigs, these impudents!...

          – Uh, dear, liberals are nonsense!...

          ...Everything has its turn,

          everything will pass, everything will grow,

          as they say, even grief does not last a hundred years.

          – Yes, years will flash by over the years...

          And the porridge will be brewed again.

          I think the children are ours

          they'll drink from ours, too.

          There is no escaping fate, Don Juan!

          – Oh, you won't leave! You will not escape from fate!

          – Have you seen it in the field? – rye is rising.

          – The rain is painfully good...

          And the beans?

          So they climb out of the ground!

          – Before the time, as if they had not bloomed,

          suddenly – frost, cold...

^{[6, p. 243]}.

       A few lines are enough to feel how the lines have come to life: the people have spoken. But in this version of the translation, it is worth pointing out the mass of typically Russian vernacular words that the translator boldly wields (by God, they are not sweet, they will grow, porridge will be brewed, they will drink from our, etc.) Of course, the lines have become more "juicy" from this, but excessive Russification appears in the text.

I. Tynyanova's style is rather neutral, sometimes bookish, even dry, and the language of the second translation is lively conversational. Tynyanova deliberately avoids vernacular words, while Gorskaya is not afraid to use them, actively including sayings and jokes in her speech. Much better she managed to translate the saying: "As they say, even grief does not last a hundred years." A word well chosen by K. I. Chukovsky would be suitable for its translation – "animated" speech ^{[13, p. 127]}.

Probably, the "golden mean" will be the exit suggested by K. I. Chukovsky. "It seems to me," he writes, "that the style of translation will not be violated and there will be no "omuzhichenie" if we moderately and with tact in our translation will convey foreign sayings and proverbs – in Russian, especially in cases when the literal translation comes out clumsy and verbose" ^{[13, p. 79]}.

In any case, live folk speech should not fade in translation.  To turn the unusual into the ordinary, to smooth out the roughness of the vernacular, translating it into a neutral literary language, means to impoverish the original. But, in order not to fall into the other extreme, – to "omuzhichit" – the translator must have a sense of proportion.

Russian Russian translators strive to ensure that the work of a foreign-language poet becomes a part of Russian culture, so that his poems sound as natural in Russian as in his native language. Of course, translators had to make certain sacrifices, but "without deciding on losses and transformations, one cannot engage in single combat with foreign-language poetry" ^{[14, p. 234]}.

In general, there are no universal criteria for artistic translation, if we are talking about "high art".  The translator is not a craftsman, but an artist. And he has a huge responsibility on his shoulders, because he decides the fate of foreign-language writers. How the life of a foreign writer will develop outside of his native country depends largely on the translator. 

To sum up, it is worth using the words of the Russian Spaniard and translator Valery Sergeevich Stolbov from his preface to the anthology of Spanish poetry "Land and Song": "Our poets-translators have different voices and different temperaments, as poets should, but they all have qualities that I. S. Turgenev considered necessary for a translator of poems. These are "high exactingness", "love for one's model" (i.e., for the poet being translated) and, most importantly, "talent, creative gift" ^{[5, p. 18]}.