"There is no shakier reflection of the word...": Shakespeare in the translations of Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik

Liubivaia Irina Yur'evna ORCID: 0000-0001-5452-043X PhD in Art History Associate Professor; Department of Art History; Higher Theater School (Institute) named after M.S.Shchepkin 6/2 Neglinnaya str., Moscow, 109012, Russia irinna555@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The theater combines different types of spiritual and practical human activity. Theatrical art organically intertwines the playwright's word, the director's vision, acting talent, the audience, music, audience response, the spiritual demands of modernity and much more, which allows us to comprehend reality, turn to the past or look into the future in an artistic form. However, there is an axiom: the text acts as a guide between the author and the audience in the drama theater.If we are talking about Russian drama, then we see the following combination: playwright-director-actor-spectator. The situation is different with foreign plays. When setting up the data, an interpreter is already involved in this bundle: playwright-translator-director-actor-spectator. This is due to the important role that translations of works of world drama play in the complex theatrical creative process.

The translation of works of fiction (epics, lyrics, drama) is based on the original text, but at the same time it has independence (sometimes growing to a free translation), since its object is not so much the text itself as its meaning, refracted in the mind of the author (and the translator, respectively). Researchers note such requirements for literary translation as accuracy, clarity, conciseness, and literariness ^{[1, pp.51-52]}. At the same time, the freedom of presentation is connected precisely with the subjective component, the desire to convey the author's idea, including the peculiarities of the national flavor. Nikolai Mikhailovich Lyubimov, the largest translator and one of the main representatives of the Soviet school of translation studies, wrote that "national flavor is achieved by accurately reproducing his portraiture, reproducing everyday features, lifestyle, interior decoration, and work environment.", <...> reproduction of the landscape of a given country, <...> reproduction of folk beliefs and rituals" ^{[2, pp.53-54]}.

The least studied aspect of literary translation is the translation of drama. The formulation of this problem arose during the period of active study of Shakespeare's drama as the pinnacle of world literature and world theater in the 1960s. However, it is worth noting that most of the research is devoted to the literary side of dramatic works. We proceed from the fact that the translation of drama is a type of literary translation that is of a dialogical nature: it has both literary and theatrical principles, in other words, in addition to observing the laws of the literary text, it must comply with the laws of the stage and the direction of the word.

Reader and viewer perception have their own specifics, and these differences determine the requirements for dramatic translation. Directors from the 19th century to the present have noted the importance of naturalness and simplicity of the language of stage dialogue: "Excessively literary translation can be detrimental to the text of the drama, since the translator, who tends to poetic beauty, rhythm, and lexical coloring of the text, may miss the technology of action necessary for directing" ^{[3, p. 19]}.

The translator finds himself in a dilemma: a literarily accurate text is necessary for thoughtful reading and perception of the material by the director and the actor, but communication with the listener requires transformations of the text, focused on the specifics of perception from the audience – one-time and instant, "here and now". This is due to the division of translations into different groups: intended for publication and further reading, and for stage editing and staging. Thus, the dramatic text is bifurcated and belongs to two semiotic systems at once – literature and theater.

The dramatic text for the stage was first identified as an independent problem by I. Levy. He identified four characteristics of stage dialogue.:

- "easy to pronounce", "intelligibility", stylized speech as features of stage dialogue;

- the complexity of the semantic structure: the preservation of stimuli for the actor's reaction (gestures, facial expressions, movements), focusing on the multiplicity of addressees (listeners) – that is, involvement in several contexts at the same time;

- verbal action is the principle of constructing a phrase that carries a charge of stage energy (tempo, rhythm, intonation);

- the content of characterization of characters in stage dialogue ^{[4, pp.40-42, pp.178-179]}.

These features make up the translation dominant, providing for the future production. The translator, on the one hand, should be guided by the leading idea of the work, and on the other – by conveying the subtleties of interpretation of characters when embodied on stage. In addition, in order for the translation to be complete, the relationship between the common language and the author's text must be preserved. In other words, what readers of the original source perceive as the original should also be perceived as the original by readers of the translation. The quote included in the title of this article is a fragment of a poem by the brilliant translator and poet Grigory Kruzhkov ^{[5, p.12]}, which accurately explains the problem facing the translator, who is responsible for transmitting semantic shades sewn into the fabric of the original text. The translator is a conduit between two cultures, so his handling of the word requires great jewelry skill.

In the context of the above, it is interesting to turn to the work of the brightest representative of Russian culture at the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, the classic of Russian translation Tatiana Lvovna Shchepkina–Kupernik (photo 1). She translates about 60 plays from the works of Western classics, which peaked in the post-revolutionary period. In particular, she has translated works by Rostand, Lope de Vega, William Shakespeare, Pedro Calderon, John Fletcher, Jean Baptiste Moliere, Carl Goldoni, Carlo Gozzi, Victor Hugo, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Tirso de Molina, Heinrich Hauptmann.

Some of the plays translated by Shchepkina-Kupernik can still be seen on the stages of Moscow theaters today. The Russian Army Theater is hosting the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" directed by Andrey Badulin, and in 2019, the RAMT Theater presented Carlo Gozzi's "Zobeid" directed by Oleg Dolin. The performance is played in the Theater Courtyard, where the audience seats are located in the open air, thereby immersing the audience in the conditions of an Italian theater. The actors are one step away from the audience. Shchepkina-Kupernik's undisputed merit lies in the vivid linguistic flavor of translation as an essential component to understanding the entire play. The characters of the play do not speak, but enter into lively dialogues with each other. The theater critic Vadim Shcherbakov drew attention to this in his review of this performance: "<...> The clap of an opening fan, and with a stormy stream of elegant rhymes by Shchepkina-Kupernik, Anastasia Volynskaya's slightly insane Zobeid begins the holiday" ^{[6, p.13]}. The detail about the "elegant rhymes" was very accurately noted, since for the translator it was the rhymes that were one of the important components of stage translation.

However, the translation work of T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik often caused mixed assessments and became the subject of controversy. In this regard, it is interesting to refer to the memoirs of the theater critic, Professor Alexei Vadimovich Bartoshevich, about Boris Nikolaevich Lyubimov when he entered GITIS: "It was about Cyrano de Bergerac in Sovremennik. We suddenly heard an opinion that was exactly the opposite of what was accepted in Moscow intellectual circles, where, as it still seems to me, they rightly admired Yuri Eichenwald's translation. The young applicant suddenly began to say that he preferred Shchepkina's old translation, Kupernik. Moreover, he began to give very professional arguments" ^{[7, p.3]}. The episode described in the memoirs of A.V. Bartoshevich refers to the staging of Rostand's play in 1964 in a new, specially prepared translation by Y. Eichenwald. As critics noted, this translation "absorbed the air of the 1950s and 1960s": "The author of the translation was the first (even before the practitioners of the theater) to solve the problem of bringing the language, collisions and characters of the play closer to the present day" ^{[7, p.196]}. As a result, "the new Cyrano spoke in the words of a dissident" ^{[7, p.191]}, and Rostand's text was supplemented with lyrical poems by Eichenwald himself. It is not surprising that both the performance itself and the new translation caused controversy and an inevitable comparison with the Shchepkina-Kupernik translation, made back in 1898. As can be seen from the memoirs of A.V. Bartoshevich, B. N. Lyubimov defended the merits of the classical version.

So, what are the main features of T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik's translations of drama? When analyzing Shchepkina-Kupernik's translation activities, it is important to take into account the fact that she had experience working on stage as an actress, knew the theater well "from the inside" and personally collaborated with the directors. Shchepkina-Kupernik's theatrical experience as an actress and close communication with the masters of the stage could not but affect the attitude towards drama translations. She has performed 12 translations of Shakespeare's plays: "The Merchant of Venice", "All's Well that Ends Well", "King Lear", "The Tempest", "Romeo and Juliet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Merry Windsor Gossips", "Measure for Measure", "The Winter's Tale", "Much ado about nothing", "The Fruitless Efforts of Love", "As you like it", as well as sonnets and poems "The Lover's Complaint", which some experts also attribute to Shakespeare.

In 1939, director and outstanding theater teacher Maria Osipovna Knebel (photo 2) at the M. N. Ermolova Theater, she staged the play "As You Like it" translated by T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik. Archival documents have been preserved indicating that Shchepkina-Kupernik personally attended the rehearsals. In the process of working on the play, Knebel had some suggestions regarding the text, which she outlined in a letter to Shchepkina-Kupernik and which are now irrefutable facts about the role assigned to the translator in the work on the play. From Knebel's letter to Shchepkina-Kupernik: "Dear Tatiana Lvovna! Thank you so much for the songs. Jacques' song delighted us all! <...> Mikhail Mikhailovich gave us a ballad for the fool (the fool sings it to Audrey). If possible, <...> write it down in size – "clouds are rushing, clouds are curling". Biryukov says that this size is very convenient for him. <…>» ^[11]. The joint work of the director and the translator brought success to the play. According to the audience and critics, "the performance exposed the poetry of Shakespeare's plan" ^{[12, p.145]}.

At the time when Tatiana Lvovna was working on translations of Shakespeare, there were strict directives for translators, where equilateral lines acted as a tuning fork, sometimes to the detriment of the meaning and the author's message: "<...> meaning, intonation, musicality, and Shakespeare's most precious metaphors were often sacrificed to balance" ^{[13, p.10]}. However, in order for a translation to be complete, it must preserve the relationship between the common language and the author's principle. In the language of any work of fiction, idiostyle can be distinguished, that is, expressive and pictorial means that distinguish the style of a particular author from the style of other writers to whom this author gives special advantage, and general linguistic (conventional) means. The translator must be able to convey the author's vision, because without reproducing these forms in translation, it is impossible to reproduce the idiosyncrasy as a whole. Especially when it comes to the stage reading of the work. Shchepkina-Kupernik believed that the purposeful use of dialectal forms by the author of a literary text is an integral part of his idiosyncrasy. In her deep conviction, in addition to literary talent and knowledge of the language, a translator must have a special flair for language in order to achieve high-quality literary translation. In the article "On Shakespeare's Translations," she formulated her main translation task as follows: "<...> To preserve the artistic truth, which does not deviate into naturalism" ^{[12, p.11]}.

As an example of the implementation of this translation strategy, the author of this article will consider the prologue and individual scenes from the play "Romeo and Juliet", as well as Jacques' famous monologue from the aforementioned play "As you like it".

Prologue (Original text):

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents’ strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love, And the continuance of their parents’ rage, Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Translated by T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik:

In two families of equal nobility and fame,

In Verona, the magnificent flared up again

The enmities of the past days are a bloody discord,

He forced the blood of civilians to flow.

From the loins of the enemy, under the ill-fated star,

A couple of lovers have happened.

By the grace of their terrible fate

The enmity of the fathers died with their death.

The whole course of their love, their doomed death,

And the fierce anger of their loved ones that has faded away

Only after the death of the couple in love, -

It might take you two hours.

If you give us your attention,

We'll fix all the flaws with an effort.

It is known that the prologues to the first and second acts, as well as some scenes of the play, are written in sonnet form, which gives a special color to the action, including emotional. In the prologue to the first act, in fourteen lines (the form of an English sonnet), not only the further action of the play is revealed, but also the participants, their social status, the main conflict, the location, the sequence of events with the background. In the sonnet "castle" (or the so-called "coda"), an appeal is made to the viewer, as if setting his attention to the "courageous", "serene" listening [... with patient ears] of the play. Shakespeare's conversation with the audience through the prologue is an important component of the author's idea. The Globus audience was mostly listeners of the play (there were no decorations or theatrical attributes), so the emotional connection with the audience was achieved through the power of words and the audience's imagination. A striking example of this is the prologue to the chronicle play "Henry V": "Make up for our imperfections, And turn us into a military force with the power of thought" (translated by E. Birukova).

Next, consider a scene from Romeo and Juliet:

Act I, Scene 5 (Original text):

Romeo. If I profane with my unworthiest handThis holy shrine, the gentle fine is this, –My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready standTo smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

Juliet. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.

Romeo. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

Juliet. Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

Romeo. O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Juliet. Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.

Romeo. Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take. Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purg’d. (Kissing her.) ^[14]

Translated by T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik:

Romeo (to Juliet)

When an unworthy hand is rude

I desecrated the holy altar, I'm sorry.

Like two humble pilgrims, lips

With a kiss, they can sweep away the trace of sin.

Juliet

Dear pilgrim, you are being overly strict.

To his hand: there is only piety in it.

Saints have hands: they can have them, right,

To touch the pilgrim with his hand.

Romeo

Are the mouths of saints and pilgrims given?

Juliet

Yes, for prayer, good pilgrim.

Romeo

Holy one! So let my mouth

Cling to yours– don't be implacable.

Juliet

Without moving, the saints listen to us.

Romeo

Unmoving, give an answer to my pleas.

(He kisses her.)

Your lips take away all sin from me. ^[15]

Shakespeare often used alliteration to enhance the meaning of the characters' lines and the so-called sound design of the play. The sound of Shakespeare's plays, in our opinion, is a separate subject of research. As can be seen from the comparison of fragments, Shchepkina-Kupernik paid special attention to the accuracy of rhymes and the preservation of poetic rhythm. In addition, the translation is quite accurate, which indicates a careful attitude to the original. Here is our literal translation (subscript) for comparison:

Romeo

If I have desecrated this holy shrine with my most unworthy hand,

then a good punishment (gentle fine) will be

My lips are like two confused pilgrims (blushing pilgrims),

They will erase (to smooth) that rough touch with a gentle kiss.

It should be noted that the translator's absolute merit lies in the fact that the linguistic atmosphere of the work suffered little during the translation. The play of consonant words is precisely observed: this is a kiss (and twice). As you know, Shakespeare very often used lexical repetitions, which undoubtedly refers to his author's style. Thus, we see a live conversation of the characters, close to the original. The text is followed by the kiss of Romeo and Juliet, preceded by the following lines:

Romeo

Oh, lovely saint, let your mouth do what your hands do.;

(that is, to touch the mouth)

They ask you to allow yourself, so as not to turn faith into despair.

(don't be sorry)

Juliet

The saints do not move, despite their pleas.

Romeo

And you don't move until I reach the goal of my prayer.

(He kisses her.)

Now, through your mouth, my sin has been removed/excluded (purg'd = expel – exclude. A similar explanation is given in the Oxford Dictionary of Shakespeare's Plays, edited by David and Ben Crystal ^[16]).

Analyzing translations of Shakespeare's plays, it should also be borne in mind that Shakespeare's plays contain jargon unique to that time, and sometimes to a specific place. It is also known that Shakespeare courageously dealt with words using new lexemes, which later became part of the English language (at the beginning of the 16th century, the early New English language "Early Modern English" began to emerge). Of course, this fact adds difficulties even to the most experienced translator. Metaphors are particularly difficult. Shchepkina-Kupernik wrote the following in her article about her work on Shakespeare translations: "<...> He often comes across <...> terms or comparisons in which the modern reader runs the risk of not finding meaning <...> In such cases, I replace <...> or I compare it with a direct meaning" ^[13]. She also noted the difficulties caused by the most important requirement for translators of that time – equinearity (observing an equal number of lines with the original), sometimes for the sake of images and meanings. "I had to talk about these topics with editors and to my questions: "do I really have to sacrifice a thought, an image, a painting in the name of equality?" I received a strict answer that it is better to shorten, destroy the comparison, release the image than to allow an extra line...". Let's see how this is implemented in Mercutio's last monologue (Act III, Scene 1).

The original text:

Mercutio. No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough, twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. – A plague o'both your houses! – Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic! – Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm. ^[14]

Translated by T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik:

Mercutio. Yes, it's not as deep as a well, and it's not as wide as a church gate. But that's enough.: She'll do her job. Come back tomorrow and you'll find me a calm person. I got my resignation from this world, I guarantee it. A plague on both your houses! Damn it! A dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat scratched a man to death! A braggart, a scoundrel, a scoundrel who fights according to the rules of arithmetic! "What the hell are you doing between us?" He hurt me because of your hand! ^[15]

Literal translation for comparison (made by the author of the article):

Mercutio. No, it's not as deep as a well, it's not as wide as a church gate; but it's enough.: She'll do her job. Ask about me tomorrow, and you'll find me at peace. I'm getting out of this world, I know for sure. A plague on both your houses! Heck! (According to the Oxford Dictionary of Shakespeare's Plays, edited by David and Ben Crystal, Zounds has the following meaning: "God's blood!" – "Damn it!"). A dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat scratched a man to death! A braggart, a scoundrel, a scoundrel who fights according to arithmetic textbooks! "What the hell are you doing between us?" I was injured by your hand!A comparison shows that the translations of T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik are characterized by simplicity and clarity, accuracy due to excellent command of foreign languages, careful attitude to the author's style, the desire to preserve the author's idiosyncrasy, and poetic grace. At the same time, they are distinguished not only by their attitude towards the reader's perception of the text, but also by their focus on the subsequent utterance of the text from the stage.

Next, consider Jacques' monologue from the play "As You Like It." For greater clarity, in the table below, those lines that match the original as closely as possible will be highlighted in bold.

Jacques' character is melancholic, his speeches are saturated with dark irony. Of course, it was important to convey to the audience exactly the mood that was set by Shakespeare himself. Indeed, the translation is distinguished by its semantic accuracy and melodiousness, as well as by its high artistry. The combination of different stylistic registers in the Shchepkina-Kupernik translation becomes an expression of the synthesis of the "sublime" (like, for example, Jacques' philosophizing about the world "The whole world is a theater. There are women, men – all the actors...") and the everyday: "With a rounded belly, where the capon is hidden ...", which was reproduced quite accurately in the Russian version. Thus, her own acting experience, constant communication with theater directors and actors, a deep understanding of the laws of the stage and a constant focus on subsequent stage implementation ensured the demand for Shchepkina-Kupernik translations. Thanks to the consistent implementation of these principles, the director and actors have the opportunity to work with ready-made material that does not require literary refinement for convincing presentation in stage conditions. Shchepkina-Kupernik – translator-actress. This is her main difference from other great literary translators.

Photo 1. T.L. Shchepkina-Kupernik, 1930s. Photo by L. Raskin. Public domain

Photo 1. T.L. Shchepkina-Kupernik, 1930th. Phot. L. Ruskin. Public domain

Photo 2. M. O. Knebel. The 1930s. Public domain

Photo 2. M.O. Knebel. 1930th. Public domain