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The present paper is devoted to the centenary of the remarkably popular poet and outstanding master of the Russian language, Alexander Tvardovsky (1910–1971). His artistic personality was marked by a peculiar double bind that caused him much anguish and risky conflicts despite all the honours he had received in his life. On the one hand, he cherished the idea of humanitarian communism compatible with democracy and the dignity of the individual; on the other, he was profoundly devoted to truth, and definitely insisted on his right and poetic duty to voice it. During the course of time he became more and more conscious of the illusory nature of his ideals. In his longer poems he represented the great turns in the life of Soviet society. Tvardovsky developed a flexible and terse style based on vigorous everyday popular speech; in post-war years this style has become loftier and more philosophic following (but not imitating) the tradition of Pushkin. Tvardovsky’s activities as the chief editor of the journal Novy Mir opened a significant turn in the literary life of his country promising the approach of an epoch of enlightenment and free speech.
The heroine of Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin, Tatyana became the prototype of a brilliant series of female characters in 19th-century Russian literature. Various interpretations of her image can be grouped around an idealizing pole (Dostoevsky: “apotheosis of the Russian woman”) and a realistic one (Belinsky regarding the figure in her evolution from an ardent but naive provincial damsel to a dame of the Muscovite high society). Chekhov narrates in his short story После театра [After the theatre] about a 16-year-old girl Nadya, who, having returned home from the performance of the opera Eugene Onegin, and effected by Tatyana’s writing to Onegin, starts to write a letter to a young man, who, as she thinks, is in love with her; then, suddenly she decides to write to another young man who also pays court to her. At the same time, she experiences rapid changes of her mood: she bursts out now into tears, now into laughter without any real reason; and gradually, she becomes filled with an incomprehensible feeling of joy. Chekhov, who was not only a sensitive writer but also a sharp-sighted physician, reliably describes in Nadya’s behaviour the psycho-somatic symptoms of early puberty when the estrogenic hormones come into action. The undercurrent of this story is apparently a delicate ironical hint at Tatyana’s juvenile rapture over Onegin. Chekhov does not deglorify Pushkin’s heroine, he just supplements her realistic interpretation with the psycho-physiological aspect of the formation of her personality.
The paper aims at a linguistically based analysis of one of the pearls of Russian love lyrics written by Tyutchev, and of its two Hungarian translations. Master of small forms, the poet concentrates his poetic devices (ambiguities, antitheses, repetitions, etc.) to a high degree, and attains to a harmonious fusion of different stylistic traits. The translation of the poem made by Lőrinc Szabó, a well-known Hungarian poet of the 20th century is handicapped by the use of an intermediate text, and some elements of his own poetical vision here and there outweigh essential features of the original. The translation of Árpád Galgóczy, one of the best contemporary translators of Russian poetry, comes in a lot of instances more close to the original.
A new generation of Hungarian poets appeared in the 1960s, among them such excellent translators of Russian poetry as László Lator, Zsuzsa Rab, and András Fodor. Fodor was in his early twenties when he translated Pushkin’s Ruslan and L’udmila. This paper displays some characteristic excerpts of the poem so as to show how the translator succeeded in finding means to reproduce the onomapoetic and lexical elements of the original, the art of portraying the heroes, depicting landscapes and erotic scenes, and conveying the author’s lyric and ironical disgressions from the narration.
Новая страница в хронике русско-венгерского поэтического перевода
Переводы Иштвана Баки
The publication of the poetic translations of the untimely deceased Hungarian poet István Baka opens a new page in the chronicle of Russian–Hungarian literary translation. The two volumes contain more than 630 translations from 30 poets, among them many (especially authors of “samizdat” and “tamizdat” literature) were not known until now to Hungarian readers not familiar with the Russian language. Baka’s selection of poets to be translated was determined by his intense affinity to the author based on the similarity of vital experience, poetic outlook on life, and artistic skill. Like the major poets of the “Silver Age” of Russian poetry, Baka had a special gift for transubstantiation, for creating a synthesis of his own individuality with those of several famous historical and artistic personalities and mythological figures. The paper displays some characteristic excerpts to illustrate the many-sided translatory art of Baka.
Об изменениях в лексике русской лирической поэзии
On Changes in the Vocabulary of Russian Lyric Poetry
The paper intends to present the general tendency of lexical change in Russian lyrical po- etry during the last two hundred years on some arbitrarily selected examples. The odes of Lomonosov were accomplished in the lofty style based on Slavonic, rhetorical, and other “poetical” devices. In Derzhavin’s ode Felica, enthusiastic and ironical elements, pathos and everyday talk are combined. In Zhukovski’s romantic poetry the objective sense of words is overshadowed by their emotive overtones. In avoiding the grandiloquent romantic lexis, Nekrasov describes the hopeless hard life of Russian peasantry with deep sympathy, and reliably reproduces the popular speech. In the cited poem of Akhmatova, the psychic drama of the heroine is expressed by a peculiar connection of words belonging to different stylistic layers. The entirely prosaic lexis and syntax of Blok’s short poem suggests the poet’s feeling about the hopeless immobility of life in a condensed metaphoric shape. Vino- kurov’s poem relates an imagined accidental meeting of former lovers after thirty years of their separating in an entirely colloquial style. Since a poem of genuine aesthetic value appears as a complex artistic work, its components mutually strengthen, supplement, or compensate each other. Thus, the increase of colloquial elements in the poetic vocabulary does not necessarily indicate a process of “depoetization”.
Abstract
The present paper gives a positive answer to the question about the possibility of adequate poetic translation. It presents extracts of Russian poetry that contain various phonic devices (e.g. rhythmic variations, sound repetitions, vowel alternations, consonant clusters, etc.) which, in addition to other verbal means, make up the peculiar aesthetic value of a poetic work. The Hungarian translations of the extracts from Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman and Eugene Onegin, Tyutchev’s Autumn Evening, and Tvardovsky’s Vassili Tyorkin, made by the prominent poets and translators Lajos Áprily, Árpád Galgóczy, and Lőrinc Szabó, masterly reproduce the phonic qualities of the Russian texts, and prove the validity of the Pushkinian claim on the “alliance of sound, thought, and sentiment” in lyric poetry.
Баллада «Уэльские барды» Я. Араня и ее русский перевод Л. Мартынова
К двухсотлетию со дня рождения классика венгерской поэзии Яноша Араня
After the suppression of the Hungarian freedom fight in 1849 and the following period of repression, the preeminent poet János Arany was asked to praise the Austrian emperor on the occasion of his visit to Hungary. Arany rejected the request and wrote instead the allegorical ballad The Bards of Wales relating to 500 Welsh bards burned at the stake by order of the English king Edward I as they refused to praise the bloody conqueror of their country. Martynov’s translation successfully renders the idea of the poem and also its high poetic values: conciseness and dramatic dynamism of rhythm supported by inner rhyming.
Стихи о море в русской романтической лирике
Poems on the Sea in Russian Romantic Poetry
В статье предлагается несколько стихотворений русских поэтов на тему моря. Описательный аспект в них пропитан эмоциональными переживаниями авторов. При этом меняющийся вид моря, его богатство световыми и звучными оттенками и переливами нарисованы c высоким поэтическим мастерством, позволяющим ощущать определенный параллелизм между динамикой моря и изме-нениями в душевной жизни человека. Эти романтические стихотворения содержат явные элементы реалистического подхода к действительности, а вместе с тем и некоторые черты, свидетельствую-щие о склонности авторов к трансцендентальности.
Элегия Жуковского «Море» (1822) – прекрасный пример олицетворения: море рассматривается как мистическое существо, которое живет, дышит и исполнено тревожной мыслью. Реалистичное изображение моря содержит скрытую аллюзию на переменчивые настроения человеческой души.
В стихотворении Пушкина «Погасло дневное светило…» (1820) поэт вспоминает о своей поте-рянной бурной молодости. В его же стихах «К морю» (1824) море как символ абсолютной свободы напоминает судьбы двух великих мужей века: Наполеона и Байрона.
В стихотворении «Море и утес» (1848) Тютчев выражает свою веру в миссию России как защит-ника христианства. Помимо аллегорического смысла, мастерство изображения яростных бурь волн против «спокойного и уверенного в себе утеса» предлагает прекрасную параллель с известными морскими картинами Айвазовского. В его стихотворении «Как хорошо ты, о море ночное» (1865) непрерывное движение моря намекает на трансцендентальное. Последние строки этого стихотво-рения говорят о неутолимой скорби поэта, вызванной недавней смертью его возлюбленной. Его же стихи «Волна и дума» (1851) представляют эмблематический символ взгляда поэта на аналогию природы и человеческого духа: наши мысли – это то же непрерывное, тщетное и обманчивое явле-ние как бушующие и отступающие волны моря.
Бунин посвятил два стихотворения морю. В одном из них (1895) вид спокойного ночного моря вызывает у наблюдателя восхищенное предчувствие вечной красоты и неземной истины. В другом стихотворении (1897) описание бурного Северного моря напоминает унылое настроение поэта. Па-раллель между этим зрелищем и подавленным состоянием души поэта проявляется в уничижитель-ных семантических тонах эпитетов и предикатов.
В стихах Бальмонта «У моря ночью» (1903) вид ночного моря возбуждает у поэта отчаянное ви-дение нависающей смерти.
В своем коротком стихотворении (1884) Надсон сравнивает море с мощным органом в величе-ственном соборе, но вместе с тем оно приводит видение кого-то «безумно смеющегося и грозящего».
При этом цитированные романтические стихотворения содержат явные элементы реалистиче-ского подхода к действительности, хотя в то же время некоторые их черты свидетельствуют о склон-ности авторов к трансцендентальности.
The paper presents a selection of poems about the sea, written by Russian lyric poets in the 19th century. The descriptive aspect in the poems is imbued by the emotional experience and actual mood of the authors. At the same time, the changing sight of the sea, the abundance of its luminous tints and sounding modulations are shown with high poetic mastery suggesting a certain parallel between the dynamism of the sea and the alternating states of the human mind. Parts of the texts indicate the authors’ disposition to transcendence.
Zhukovsky’s elegy Море [The Sea] (1822) is a fine example of personification: the poet addresses the sea regarded as a mystical being that lives and breathes, filled with anxious thought. The realistic portrayal of the sea contains a hidden allusion to the changing moods of the human soul.
Pushkin’s poem Погасло дневное светило… [The Day Star is Gone] (1820) recalls reminiscences of his lost turbulent youth. In the poem К морю [To the Sea] (1824), the sea as the symbol of absolute freedom reminds of the fates of the two outstanding men of the century, Napoleon and Byron.
Tyutchev’s poem Море и утес [The Sea and the Cliff] (1848) pertains to the Western European revolutionary events of 1848. In the form of an allegory, the poet expresses his belief in the mission of Russia as the defender and stronghold of genuine Christianity. Apart from its allegorical sense, the mastery of depicting the furious storms of waves against the “calm and self-confident Cliff ” offers a fine parallel to the well-known maritime paintings of Ayvazovsky. The poem Как хорошо ты, о море ночное [How Fine is You, the Sea at Night] (1865) includes a hint at transcendence in the description of the continually moving sea. The last lines of this poem allude to the unappeasable grief of the poet caused by the recent death of his beloved. The poem Волна и дума [The Wave and the Thought] (1851) is an emblematic symbol of Tyutchev’s view on the parallelism of nature and the human mind: our thoughts are regarded as just the same incessant, idle, and deceptive phenomena as the storming and receding waves of the sea.
Bunin devoted two poems to the sea. One of them (1895) presents the sight of the tranquil nocturnal sea, arousing a delighted state of the observer, his presentiment of everlasting beauty and “unearthly truth”. The other poem (1897) describes the stormy Northern Sea with its piercing wind and heavy waves. The parallel between this sight and the depressed state of mind of the poet appears in the pejorative semantic tones of the epithets and predicates.
In Balmont’s poem У моря ночью [At the Sea by night] (1903), the sight of the sea by night stirs up in the poet a desperate vision of imminent death.
In his short poem (1884), Nadson compares the sea with a powerful organ in a majestic cathedral but at the same time a vision appears to him of “somebody insanely laughing and threatening”.
In the cited poems, the romantic (i.e. individual and emotional) attitude to the sea is integrated with superior skill in describing elements of reality, and reveals a certain inclination of the poets to transcendental experience.
