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НЕКРАСОВСКИЙ ВЧЕРАШНИЙ ДЕНЬ НА АНГЛИЙСКOM И АРМЯНСКOM
Беджанян К.Г.,
Институт литературы имени М. Абегяна НАНРА Заведующая отделом иностранной литературы, литературных связей и теории литературы Института литературы имени М. Абегяна НАН РА, кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры зарубежной литературы Армянского государственного педагогического университета им. Х. Абовяна
Маргарян С.А.
Институт литературы имени М. Абегяна НАН РА Заведующая отделом армянской классической литературы института литературы имени М. Абегяна НАН РА, кандидат филологических наук, доцент
NEKRASOV'S YESTERDAY AT SIX IN ENGLISH AND ARMENIAN
Bejanyan K.,
PhD,
NAS RA Institute of Literature after M. Abegyan Head of the Department of Foreign and Comparative Literature of NAS RA Institute of Literature after M. Abegyan, Armenian State Pedagogical University after Kh. Abovyan Associated assistant of the Department of Foreign Literature of ASPU after Kh. Abovyan, Margaryan S.
PhD,
NAS RA Institute of Literature after M. Abegyan Head of the Department of Classical Armenian Literature of
NAS RA Institute of Literature after M. Abegyan DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6575855
Аннотация
В статье рассматривается перевод стихотворения Николая Некрасова «Вчерашний день, часу в шестом» на английский (Брайан Рид) и на армянский (Ав. Исаакян - С. Таронци) языки. Проводится сравнительно-сопоставительный анализ композиции, строфики, ритмо-рифмического построения, а также переводов на армянский и английский языки, уделяется особое внимание одному из ключевых понятий в процессе перевода, проблеме эквивалентности.
В статье рассматриваются лексика и фонетика, грамматические формы, рифма и рифмовка, чтобы показать, насколько адекватны переводы и какие изменения претерпел оригинал.
Abstract
The article deals with the translation of Nikolay Nekrasov's poem «Yesterday at six» into English (Brian Reed) and Armenian (Av. Isahakyan - S. Tarontsi). A comparative examination of the composition of the poem, its stanza division, rhyme construction, as well as their translations into Armenian and English, paying a special attention to one of the key concepts in the translation process, the problem of equivalence is carried out.
In the article the lexics and phonetics, grammar and form, rhyme and rhythm will be studied to show how adequate the translations are and what changes the original underwent.
Ключевые слова: «Вчерашний день, часу в шестом», Брайан Рид, Ав. Исаакян, С. Таронци, Некрасов, перевод, сравнение, строфа, композиция, структура, рифма, четверостишие, сравнительный анализ, эквивалентность.
Keywords: «Yesterday at six «, Brian Reed, Av. Isahakyan, S. Tarontsi, Nekrasov, translation, comparison, stanza, composition, structure, rhyme, quatrain, comparative analysis, equivalence.
To speak about one of the greatest Russian poet, philosopher, public and political figure Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov, to give a true assessment of his literary and political activity, nowadays is a little bit difficult and maybe even it is «late» and «outdated» as in the sense of about a century and a half of discussions accompanying his work, peculiarities of his poetics and style peculiarities, various and contradictory assessments of his literary identity, a comprehensive literary and critical work has been created, where almost no question is left without a thorough examination and scientific formulation. The matter of our reference is the 200th birth anniversary of the poet, the subject is the translation of one of Nekrasov's most famous poems into Armenian and English.
Here we have tried to discover not only the peculiarities of the original that are specific to the author's style and his aesthetic worldview and to show the common features of the poem and its translations, but also to reveal the nuances of the distinctive characteristic features and individual reproduction that are typical to each translation.
Nekrasov as a poet and a citizen was born by the 19th century Russia, that made him a singer of Russian people's anger, protest, grief and sorrow. In the historical sense, he left an insurmountable mark in all the spheres where he carried out his activity with impersonal devotion, where he saw the life in its tragic depths with exceptional observation and delicacy, where he tried to overcome the almost millennial Tradition and Memory of Russian poetry, which was mostly rooted in the cosmic origins and somewhere below to put his hand inside the heart of Reality and forever to write correctly the name of Pain and Truth on it.
By a surprising coincidence, Nekrasov and a brilliant and wonderful constellation of his contemporary poets and public figures, such as Chernyshevsky, Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Gertsen and others, tried to pull the exhausted and tired, worn-out Russia out of the «ruins» of the social misery and existence and in their dreams and nation-saving activities they desired to give birth to a new perspective of Russia, renewed by the ideas of freedom and equality. Of course, this unique historical mission of Nekrasov and his ideological friends very soon spread beyond the borders of the Russian Empire and formed a huge circle of its influence and supporters, especially among the nations that were followers of Russian culture and literature.
The literary and cultural analysis of our creations proves that the Armenian history of this period was going in the completely different direction, and a rather complicated, unique Destiny was fated to the Armenians who appeared at the crossroads of West and East. Due to the miserable and inglorious physical and geopolitical condition of the Motherland, alongside with the existence of Armenian colonies, that grew up day by day, the Armenian intellectual and literary movement comes into from the outside, trying to give direction to the ideas of the national awakening and of the recovery of the economic and cultural life.
An interesting cultural environment was formed among the students of St. Petersburg universities. Due to a writer and journalist I. Panayev, whose mother was
an Armenian, young Armenians of St. Petersburg united around the «Sovremennik», developing ideas of patriotism, reserving a unique place in this universal movement of the renewal and renaissance for Nikolay Nekrasov, the editor of the magazine.
It should be noted that the unconditional fact of recognition and praise, which in the Russian reality had formed a surprising crown of light around Nekrasov's name, soon went beyond the Empire and made the writer famous abroad. And under such circumstances one of the first Armenians who responded to Nekra-sov's poetry was Michael Nalbandyan. He translated some literary, critical, philosophical, sociological and historical materials, published in the «Sovremennik» into Armenian. But already in the 1860-70s, almost all the representatives of the Armenian civil lyric poetry, such as S. Shahaziz, R. Patkanyan, H. Hovhannisyan, A. Tsaturyan and others were obviously influenced by Nekrasov and very soon the Armenian reality was «flooded» with the translations of the latter's poems [1: 128].
In this article, our task is to show that, regardless of the mutual influence and cultural interactions, literary translation is much more than a re-coding of one language into another, besides, it is obvious that it is closely connected with the individuality of the translator, with his thoughts, feelings, life and mentality, with the original realization of the language and style.
It is doubtless, that Russian literature aroused special interest not only among the Eastern Armenians, but also in the Western Armenian Diaspora, in the colonies, particularly, in the Mkhitarists' Congregation, where, starting from the first issues of the «Bazmavep», some translations followed by the information about the author appeared. It should be mentioned that the first translation of Nekrasov was done by Father Ker. Kush-neryan. For each new generation, Nekrasov's poetry was revealed with a new interpretation, reflecting in a unique way both the spirit of the time and the translator's personal handwriting. Therefore, not only Nekra-sov's themes and characters were new for this period, but also the nature of his creative work: his language, his rhythm, his rhyme as well as the internal structure. In this sense, of course, Nekrasov's work dismantled Pushkin's poetic tradition, creating a special page in the compilation of Russian poetry and dictating a new standard for translators.
The unpretentious, sometimes satirical stylization of the «narrative» that determines Nekrasov's poetic identity, his sharp and influential language, the narrow space and inner speed of a well-chosen, straightforwardly evolving plot and ideological lectures and poetical structure which was very often formed by sociopolitical pathos, undoubtedly posed serious difficulties for Armenian translators, especially, if we take into account our completely unstable, unstructured linguistic reality and the tightness of Armenian lexics of the 19th century.
This circumstance became the key for the literary critics to explain the fact why at first the Armenian authors simply imitated Nekrasov or create some poetical transmissions, just making some changes in the struc-
ture, grammar, rhyme and vocabulary of Russian classical poet, simply localizing the names, toponymity and the artistic environment. But even in the case of transmissions, Nekrasov created such a literary school, such an original creative direction, which could under no circumstance be divided, keeping the completely individual and recognizable signs of the form and content.
The translation of any artistic text, especially a piece of poetry, requires in-depth work from the translator, however, it is undeniable, that this process definitely bears the mark of his personality, sometimes revealing his own reality in that «adjustment» with the completely different strophic dimensions and lines.
The problem of translation equivalence is the most controversial for study but it is still the one that has not been fully developed into a complete concept. Is it really possible to transfer a literary original from one language to another identically or whether there is equivalence? This problem may seem a little incomprehensible or disproportionate to the historical fact that translation has existed since immemorial time. Let us see what problems might arise for the Armenian translators while translating Nekrasov?
First, we should mention the aesthetics of his poetry and his worldview in general. It was mentioned
But for the right comprehension of this poem, we have to turn to the character of Nekrasov's Muse. But first, let's recall the history of the creation of the verse. The exact date of writing «Yesterday at six o'clock» is unknown - Nekrasov dated it at random, from memory. He needed to write something in the album of Olga Ko-zlova, and rummaging in old papers, the poet found this sketch. Subsequently, Mrs. Kozlova published her album - it came out in a very small print run five years after Nekrasov had already passed away. This was the first publication of this poem. Nekrasov himself did not dare to publish it, because he believed that a comparison of the fate of modern poetry with the fate of serf Russia would surely receive a sharply negative assessment. Its next edition fell on 1892, when a charitable collection was published, and it became part of the collected works only after the revolution. Note that here the poet raises two topics at once - this is the plight of the peasantry, on the one hand, and the plight of poetry, which cannot be called easy either, on the other. It is interesting that for the poem he chose precisely the picture of the beating of a young peasant woman, because at that time corporal punishment was abolished (back in 1845), and they were very rarely applied to women, as they could lead to serious injury and even death. However, this was the period when the tsarist censorship was most rampant, and many of the poet's works returned to him, crossed out far and wide in red ink.
break poetical tradition of Pushkin and to move away from its «highly poetic» area and nice expressions, going straight towards «the poetry's a poetical start or towards the humiliation of lyrics.» It is meaningless to search harmony, consonance, luxurious beauty or lyrical outbursts in Nekrasov's lines. Thus, for almost all of Nekrasov's translators this circumstance became the most important and they tried to show the aesthetic perception more than the artistic form. Nekrasov cleared up «his poems from poetry», from lyrical effusions and emotions, bringing them to social, political and even sometimes to publicistical catharsis and trying to formulate the philosophical perspective of national salvation and repair. He clearly defines the details of the plot: its place, time, described the appearance of the person, his psychological state under certain circumstances. The translators, in fact, tried to reproduce the story, leaving as much as possible the original spirit, the author's intention, the purposeful, tendentious content of the message and the almost non-verbal written feeling that the poet expressed about the event in the center. We'll come back to that question a bit later but at this point the English translation should be studied and we have to state that in 1848, Nekrasov wrote a short iambic lyrical poem consisted of two quatrains and entitled
This could cause Nekrasov to associate it with the back, ripped to the blood with a whip. So here, in the person of a peasant woman, the author metaphorically depicts the plight of poetry, which is forced to remain silent while the censors beat her.
It should be noted that many stylistical devices are repeated from one poem to another alongside the poet's creative work, and here it is very unproblematic to find both similarities and differences (the source of inspiration this time as well is among the «humiliated and of-fended», but the image of a suffering peasant woman smoothly turns into «Muse muzzled with a whip» that means the poetry itself).
Already at the very beginning of his career, Ne-krasov acted as a master of a consistently built-up fabule. Almost all of his poems are plot-based. They always contain an event, a kind of history. That is why the reader is impatient to find out what will happen next, what is the following topic, what gloomy or touching plot is hidden behind the landscape which is oftenmost dull, autumn, flat. In 1848, he first took his Muse to the Sennaya Square (a market square in St. Petersburg; but there were no public punishments, there just was a police precinct, in which they (secretly from prying eyes) flogged the servants, drunkards, petty thieves, etc. with rods) [6: 564], showed, without disdaining terrible details, the scene of the beating with a whip, and only after that turned to the Muse: «Look!
that the content of Nekrasov's poetry demanded to «Yesterday, at six o'clock».
Вчерашний день часу в шестом, Yesterday at six
Зашел я на Сенную; I stopped by Hay Square;
Там били женщину кнутом, They were whipping a woman,
Крестьянку молодую. A young peasant, there.
Ни звука из ее груди, Not a sound from her breast,
Лишь бич свистал, играя... Just the lash, playing, whistled...
И Музе я сказал: «Гляди! And I said to my Muse:
Сестра твоя родная!..», (1848) [5: 69] «Look! It's your sister!» [3]/Tr. by Brian Reed
Here is your dear sister». In the last poem (written in 1877) there are no details, all the narrative circumstances are omitted, and the picture is compressed to a capacious poetic symbol - a pale, covered with blood, excised with a whip. It is especially necessary to point out the most important detail - the Silence. The inexperienced reader may suppose that she keeps silence out of pride. However, it is known that Nekrasov, being a child, witnessed corporal punishments many times and knew perfectly well that the very first blow of the whip causes a spasm of the throat muscles and a person simply became unable to scream. Thus, he wanted to show that poetry is silent, not out of pride, but because it, like this poor peasant woman under the blows of a whip, is simply not able to say anything.
It is interesting to review the translator's explanation. Brian Reed stated: «Hay Square (Sennaia Ploshchad') is an extension of Garden Street in Petersburg where from 1737 onwards hay, firewood, and cattle were sold. One of the largest, most popular markets in the city, in pre-twentieth century times it was also a place of punishment, where criminals and other evildoers were flogged in front of large crowds. Nekrasov informs us about one such whipping. Notice, though, that he fails to provide any backstory. All we hear about is a «young peasant» who does not cry out when the lash (bich) strikes her. He concentrates his attention solely on the act itself and the cruel way that the whip, cat-like, seem to «play» with her, as if she were prey.
One can easily turn the poem into a political allegory. It's nearing nightfall, which stands for the drawing-near of the end of an oppressive regime. The peasantry will be liberated from the landlord's yoke. Until then, as long as the lower classes are unable to speak for themselves, the poet will step in and use verse to provide a voice for the voiceless. Instead of a whip, a pen; instead of an aimless whistle, a song; etc.
It's still a poem about flagellation, though. Nekra-sov erases the woman's agency. She's mute suffering flesh. Instead of being moved by the desperate circumstances that led her to this moment, he is inspired by the sight of her body under assault.
Of course, the poem is supposed to provoke outrage, not titillate. It's a melodramatic scene featuring a damsel in distress: where is the manly man who can save her from such humiliation? To enjoy the proceedings would be to identify with the sadist, to cast oneself as the villain of the piece. You're supposed to recoil from that role and - what, become a ventriloquist?
Nekrasov's primal scene for the writing ofpolitical poetry is peculiar. The poet does not actually do anything, in the sense of saving the damsel/ the downtrodden. He spreads the news about it. He - emphatically he, not she, woman are muses and silent objects - risks being associated with the powers-that-whip by retelling their actions and thereby seeming to take a voyeuristic pleasure in them. <...> the poet seeks to speak for the young woman, but he succeeds only in restaging her silencing. Nekrasov has the reputation of an engage poet. He clearly understood that gender, sex, and class were bound up in a perverse relation in the Russia of his day. To sing of such perversity, though, is to inflame listeners, perhaps in precisely the ways one would never wish» [4].
It is necessary to take into account the fact that the commentary of the narration is ensured by the size of the poem - a four-feeted with a masculine rhyme in odd lines and three-feeted with a feminine in even ones (the translator also used differential iamb). In its turn, the cross rhyme create a clear rhythmic pattern of the piece. Unfortunately, this was not reflected in the translation, but Brian Reed managed to keep the spirit of the original, following the author «on the heels» on the lexical level. Let us compare, for example, the first stanza, which is descriptive: there is only one epithet - молодая/young, while in the second stanza, emotionality is supported by several techniques. Firstly, the exclamation when referring to the Muse, secondly, the inversion «сестра твоя родная»/ «sister of your own» and thirdly, numerous hissing consonants (вчерашний, шестом, зашел, сенную, женщину, крестьянку, звука, лишь, бич, свистал, музе, сказал, сестра) and the repeated sounds «i», which reproduce the whistling effect. It seems to us that for this very purpose the word «кнут»/ «lash» from the third line was replaced in the sixth by the synonym «бич»/ «whip». The translator retained the alliteration (yesterday, six, stopped, square, peasant, sound, breast, just, lash, whistled, said, muse, sister), but slightly changed the assonances, although the appearance of these ай [ai] / ей [ei] in the English text creates the effect of groaning in pain (yesterday, I, by, hay, they, playing, my). We should add that the personification «бич свистал»/ «the whip whistled»/ and the contrast with the silence of the tortured woman greatly enhance the emotional effect, evoking compassion for the female protagonist.
Brian Reed has translated the poem with maximum accuracy - every word is in its place. And the words in this work are chosen in the most careful way. It is known that the poet introduced entire lexical layers into Russian literature, which were practically absent in the literary Russian language before, which is natural, since it was pointless to write about serfs in the language of the salon poetry. The most common words were chosen - «вчерашний день», «часу в шестом»/ «Yesterday at six»/ «yesterday», «at six o'clock» /». Especially surprising here is the appearance of the verb «зашел» /»entered»/, which evokes associations with expressions such as «зашел по дороге»/ dropped by»/, «зашел по пути»/ stopped in»/, «зашел случайно»/ came by accident»/, etc. In this case, the translator chose the verb stopped by (stopped at, near somewhere, around/ остановился у, рядом где-то, около), although the colloquial called in would be closer to the meaning. It is due to this verb that the following lines (Там били женщину кнутом, Крестьянку молодую»/ They were whipping a woman, A young peasant, there) draw not any exceptional situation, but a rather familiar one. However, the following lines «switch off» the theme of the entire poem, sharply transferring the reader to a new, «higher» level, which is especially emphasized not only by the lexics, but also by the intonation. The words with stable poetic associations («звуки», «грудь»/ sounds, breast) come to the fore. This, to some extent, reminds the reader of the work of Gustave Courbet, who, as it is known, did not like to embellish his paintings. Let us remember, for example, his scandalous canvas «The Bathers». Likewise, Nekrasov did not like to embellish his poems. It is this that gives rise to a completely new image of the Muse in Russian poetry: not a muslin young lady or an
ancient inhabitant of the Olympus, but a patient, unyielding, strong-willed, such as the young peasant woman with a whip raised over her. For the sake of the completeness, it should be noted that the real plan of the poem was combined with the metaphorical one: everything that happens to the peasant woman is transferred to her «own sister». Thus, in this miniature, a simple street scene takes on a symbolic meaning. The poet, as it is already noted, was going to sing not about lofty and beautiful feelings, but about people's suffering. This is what prompted the poet to create another Muse, this time a «tenderly singing and beautiful»/ «ласково поющей и прекрасной» (1852) one [5: 479], who very soon turned into a muse of «revenge and sorrow»/ «мести и печали» (1855) [5: 597], whom the poet asks to shut up.
As for the translations into Armenian it should be mentioned that two prominent Armenian poets translated this poem: Avetik Isahakyan [2: 127] and S. Ta-rontsi [1: 378].
Even the non-specialist eye notices that we have before us two poems that are almost different: if we compare the grammar, the rhyme, the poetic expression according to its structures, as well as the emotional charge, the choice of words and the sign of the translator's personality in general.
Isahakyan's exceptionally beautiful and talented translation completely conveys all the energy and emotional depth of what the original has to say. He never focuses on words. First he tries to see the inner movement, the psychological culmination (the peak), and only then the solution. Word-for-word translation splits the movement, making the text lifeless and boring. Isahakyan freely manages the internal transitions of the event. The image, present in his translation, brings together the inner contrasts of the poem and as in lens gathers, concentrates all the emotional burden: see first two lines - ЪрЬ^ dutfp ^kgfrh dthmty UUgUnttf tfr tu UtUUujn^- • •
Isahakyan is more faithful to the whole text, as a reference to «himself», more than to its separate parts. We are dealing with flexible equivalence, when the translator paid attention not to the individual points of the poem, but to the content, to the core of the text, which he tried to preserve. And the core forms the psychological depth of the poem that is carried by the pairs of word combinations tfnium - pnijp / muse-sister, Jmrnmq qt^Unihfr - ^mpmqmh/ the young peasant woman - a beating whip, and by the sentence bu mumg^ Jntumj^U, - Stu, иш pnijph t fn hmpmqmrn / I told my Muse, - See, this is your dear sister.
Isahakyan goes a little further: by «exerting maximum pressure» on the original text, it seems to completely overcome the pre-created cultural environment and get a poetic text in its entirety with the obvious signs of the Armenian one. By using one or two words typical of his own poetic personality - libhul}/ alone, tluinimi дЪщ^тЪр / a young peasant, ]Ъц£/poor, Аш]ЪЪфпиУno voice is uttered, the translator not only received this deeply melodic and touching piece of poetry, but also «brought» it closer to the Armenian national psycholinguistics and ethnic signs of thinking.
Tarontsi kept literally the sound equivalence, when the translator tries to preserve the sound units in noun-noun, verb-verb, adjective-adjective pairs. This circumstance, of course, molded the inner movement of the poem to some extent, pushing into the background the nuances of feeling and psychological capacity that are not given to the word. His version of the Armenian translation is a neutral description, which almost minimized the artistic-emotional impact of the image, passing the possibility of reproduction, but not a lyrical (emotional) feeling.
In both cases, iambic verse is left, but Isahakyan used four-feeted verses and Tarontsi used three-feeted verses. As it has been noted above the original was written with combined form: a four-feeted with in odd and three-feeted in even lines. It is a well-known fact that when translating Russian poetry the Armenian translators have a problem with the meter, the rhyme, the form, even the proportions and the size and other delicate details that are necessary to preserve. The intellectual and mental basis of the worldview is formed by pauses of silence in Isahakyan's text and in Tarontsi's case the movement is more unstoppable, without any sounds of silence.
Anyway! With one or two questions revealed in this article, we tried to refer to the problem of intercultural communication, fiction, poetry translation of, and mutual penetrations of historical and cultural heritage. This is a continuous process. But when we talk about such great personalities as Nikolay Alexeychich Nekra-sov, it is necessary to emphasize that their historical mission, with its social, literary, cultural and national commitment, goes beyond time and opens up enlightened ideas to generations, even long after him, even later, to other nations.
References
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2. Isahakyan Av. Collected works in 6 volumes. Yerevan.: Louis. 1950. Volume 1. 378p. (in Armenian).
3. Nekrasov N. A. Anthology of Russian Poems. [Electronic resource]/ - Access mode: https://ruverses.com/nikolay-nekrasov/yesterday-at-six/
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5. Nekrasov N. A. Complete collection of works and letters: In 15 volumes / USSR Academy of Sciences. Institute of Russian literature (Pushkin house); editorial board: M.B. Khrapchenko (editor-inchief) and others. Volume 1. Poems 1838-1855/ comments V.E. Vatsuro, A.M. Harkavy. Leningrad.: Science: Leningrad department. 1981. 719p. [Electronic resource]/ - Access mode: http://lib2.pushkin-skijdom.ru (in Russian).
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