Imagery in Translation. Поскольку мне знакома страсть, Я предпочту в огне пропасть

Поскольку мне знакома страсть, Я предпочту в огне пропасть. Но если миру суждено Два раза смерть принять, То ненависти лед давно Мне довелось узнать. И, в сущности, не все ль равно, Как пропадать.

Перевод С. Степанова:

ОГОНЬ И ЛЕД

Твердят, мол, сгинет мир в огне Или во льду. По опыту, пожалуй, мне Приятней погибать в огне.

Но если дважды на роду Написано нам погибать, Я силу и во зле найду — Уничтожать Дано и льду.

Перевод Т. Казаковой:

ЛЕД И ПЛАМЯ

Кто ждет, что мир погубит пламя,

Кто ждет — что лед.

Мы так снедаемы страстями,

Что я поставил бы на пламя.

Но если дважды гибель ждет,

То ненависть — все та же страсть,

Хотя в ней не огонь, а лед,

Но как напасть

И он сойдет.

3 Зак. №50

Практикум по художественному переводу______

EXERCISES FOR COMPARISON

• Read about Robert Frost and his poetry. Read some other
ms by Frost and compare them with this one.

• Read the poem thoroughly and study the meanings of the
■ds to reconstruct their symbolic value.

• Study the metric pattern of the poem, its rhymes and phon-
rrangement

• Study the stylistic devices and imagery of the poem.

• Which words may or may not be omitted in the text?

• Comment upon the mood and poetic logic of the poem.
iat does it make you think about?

• Transform the text into prose and analyse the difference
he impression it produces.

• Think of any parallel to the poem with a similar or same
icept.

• Translate the poem word for word with special attention
ilternative lexical and grammatical equivalents.

• Reconstruct the rhyme scheme of the poem in Russian.

• Fill in the lines with suitable words within the rhyming
me.

• Check the stylistic equivalence of the translation to the
irce text.

• Work on the metric and rhythmic equivalence.

• Read the result aloud to make sure that the Russian text
iduces the proper rhythmic effect and creates a similar mood.

• Compare your version with the other translation variants
I comment on them.

sk for translation: tthing Gold Can Stay

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.

Imagery in Translation

Her early leaf's a flower, But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

EXERCISES FOR TRANSLATION

• Study the form of the poem, its metre and rhyme scheme.

• Compare the words in the rhymed pairs to assess their
enhanced expressive value. Try to make "a text within a text"
based on the rhymes.

• Study the style and imagery of the poem to reproduce
them in Russian. Which of the image patterns may be a problem
for translation? Why?

• What equivalents can you find for Eden? Which of them
will fit the text in Russian?

• Think over the meaning of the word gold in the context
of the poem to decide on its Russian equivalent.

• Translate the text word for word and consider the amount
of poetic information lost.

• Select and arrange rhyming words in Russian to make a
frame for the text.

• Complete the lines with words according to the metric
pattern reproducing as much of the source logic and imagery as
possible.

• Compare the result with the source text from the emotive
point of view.

• Read both texts aloud to compare the way they sound.

• Complete the translation and discuss the result.

• Look for other translation versions of the poem and com­
ment on them.

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________ Практикум по художественному переводу______

POETRYUNIT6:

TRANSLATING T S. ELIOT INTO RUSSIAN

Introductory Notes

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) belongs to the same generation of poets as Robert Frost, though both his life and poet­ry differ greatly from others. T. S. Eliot graduated from one of the best American universities, Harvard, in 1910 and moved to Eu­rope. He continued his education at the Sorbonne (Paris) and Merton College, Oxford. In 1927 he became a British subject and a member of the Anglican Church. He lived all his life in London where, eventually, he joined Catholic Church. Eliot established himself as a major figure in English literature in the 1920s. The Nobel Prize (1948) was awarded to him for progressive experi­ment in modern poetry, though Eliot was not just a poet but also an outstanding playwright, essayist and critic.

His first published poem, which brought him immediate success, was The Love Song ofj. AIfred Prufrock (1915), a piece of lyric poetry, irony and philosophy, impregnated with allusions, overt and covert quotations, and a keen sense of time. It was fol­lowed by his major poems The Waste Land and The Hollow Men and many others, which struck a new note in modern poetry, sa­tirical, allusive, cosmopolitan, at times really lyric and elegiac. In 1925 he became a director of the famous publishing house, Faber and Faber, where he published a series of modern poets who rep­resented the mainstream of the modern movement in poetry (W. H. Auden, G. Barker, E. Pound, etc.). From that time on he was regarded as a figure of great cultural authority. His mature po­ems, The Journey of the Magi (1927), Ash- Wednesday (1930) and especially Four Quartets (1935-42), reflect his pilgrimage in the world of spiritual values. He describes himself as "classical in

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Imagery in Translation

literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religior (1927).

Beginning with the 1930s Eliot turned to drama and wroi several verse and prose plays, Sweeney Agonistes (1932), Mu, der in the Cathedral (1935), The Cocktail Party (1950) and number of others. His book of verse for children, Old Possum Book of Practical Cats, became a classic. Among his most infh encial critical works may be mentioned The Sacred Wood: E. says in Poetry and Criticism (1920), Notes Towards the Defin tion of Culture (1948), Poetry and Drama (1951), On Poetry ar, Poets (1957) and others.

Two poems should be commented upon in more detail; characteristic not only of Eliot but also of major poetry general' in the twentieth century. The first of them, The Waste Land (1922 consists of five sections, "The Burial of the Dead," "A Game i Chess," "The Fire Sermon," "Death by Water" and "What tl Thunder Said", supplemented by Eliot's own "Notes", which e: plain his multi-cultural allusions and sources of imagery, "the Grc legend" and Frazer's The Golden Bough among them. The se ond (and practically, the last serious piece of poetry Eliot pr< duced), Four Quartets, was started as early as in 1935 but pu lished as a whole only in 1943. It includes "Burnt Norton," "Ea Coker," "The Dry Salvages," and "Little Gidding." The four qua tets represent the four seasons and the four elements, the fo places and the four fundamentals of Christian faith, and probab more. In this poem Eliot is concerned with time past and tin present, with despair and vision, with faith and reason.

Journey of the Magi (1927) was written as a Christm poem but it is far more serious than just a story about the Ma and the Nativity. It is a poem about how difficult the way to re Christian values is, how alien it may seem to manyj how triflii the important tokens of the truth may look. The po'em has bei translated by many Russian poets. It is written in free verse ai based on a certain syntactic rhythm. The first lines in quotatii marks belong to Anglican Bishop Lancelot Andrews (1555-162(

______ Практикум по художественному переводу_____

'he three trees," the white horse," "hands dicing for pieces of ver," and other details are allusions to the Gospels and other its of the Bible. It is a challenge to the translator into Russian, st, due to the principal difference in functions of vers libre in iglish and Russian poetry and, second, due to many allusions a religious and cultural character that are not so evident to a issian reader. At the same time, the task is very creative as the inslator is made to experience the potential of Russian syntax form new means of poetic expression. The main achievement this area might be the reconstruction of the rhythmic effect of 2 original text by means of Russian syntax varying from the rupt and tense rhythm of the dynamic development of the im-ery to the wide and flowing pattern of poetic contemplation or ophetic vision.

The poem for translation (The Hollow Men) includes many erary and cultural allusions and is marked by both irony and rrow. The poem differs from The Magi as it is based on the ntrast between the tragic theme and very lively, almost danc-g rhythm. The basis of its imagery is the idea of a disguise, a isk that separates man from man, soul from soul, and man >m himself.

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