ON ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF R. M. RILKE’S POETIC LANGUAGE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17072/2073-6681-2021-2-89-96Keywords:
Rilke, sonnet, original, translation, syntax, German.Abstract
This study aims to assess the adequacy of the form of German sonnets when reproduced in English translations. The focus is on interrogative sentences, which, together with the sonnet in the form of a macro-sentence, the shortened verse and enjambment, are the characteristics of the innovative features of Sonnets to Orpheus by R. M. Rilke. The lyrical cycle Sonnets to Orpheus is among the most translated into world languages of Rilke’s poetry works, as well as Duino Elegies. Both professional and amateur poets and translators have been competing to put the Austrian writer’s best poems into English. Here we examine more than twenty English translations of the Sonnets into English, made from 1936 to 2008. The importance of the comparative linguistic-stylistic study of the original and its translations is determined by the continuing interest in Rilke’s works in English-speaking countries and the necessity to understand the principles of reconstructing the features of Rilke’s poetics using the English language. The system of methods used in this work includes: historical and philological analysis, comparative linguistic and stylistic description, as well as comparative analysis of the original and translation in the form that was developed in the works of V. Bryusov (1905), N. Gumilev (1919), M. Lozinsky (1935), E. Etkind (1963), S. Goncharenko (1987). We have found that the innovative nature of German sonnets is not always reflected in English translations. In some translations, American and British translators significantly modified the form of the original: interrogative sentences dominating in XVII and XVIII sonnets of the second part of the lyric cycle were not reproduced in English translations made by G. Good, D. Young, C. Haseloff, N. Mardas Billias and others.References
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