POETIC INVERSION UNDER TRANSLATION

The paper aims at syntactic constructions under poetic translation, at the intersection of strategies in the initial Emily Dickinson's lyric and a Russian translated variant. With the cognitive basis in mind, the production of a translated variant needs a cognitive support in the textual composition, their linear and stanzaic strong positions of the beginning and the end. The translated version pursues the same communicative strategy in the imperative, exclamations and statements throughout the text but for two exceptions, grounded in the linguistic asymmetry of English and Russian word order (non-equivalence of communicative types of grammatical inversion, the second - poetic inversion). The initial text is loaded with double syntax and elliptical constructions, which remains uncompensated under Russian translation. The question is open: whether the extra emphatic loading of initial constructions could be rendered under translation or it belongs the aura of poetic diction specific to each language. Non-canonical constructions marked by subject-predicate modification may produce complex inverted constructions with dual interpretation. English word order is employed in four speech acts in the opening stanza of lyric № 187 How many times these low feet staggered , translated by Arkady Gavrilov. It is clear that communication is actual, the narration refers to the present: an exclamation in Line 1 and statement in the declarative in Line 2 introduce the Speaker. The Speaker's voice is directed to the partner as compulsion with the imperative try / (you) try (if) you can lift …. ( if with direct order of subject predicate is implied in an indirect question after the imperative). However, another noncanonical sentence with indirect word order in a general question can you stir… introduces the Speaker's expectation for an answer in a dialogue. Punctuation seems dislocated: exclamation mark follows the question, hyphen in the end of Line 2 is indicative of an incomplete thought in a statement, a hyphen follows a question, hyphens in the middle of lines are markers of the imperative. The communicative strategy is to involve the Reader into communication, the narrative strategy is to share the state of mind in a dialogue. Stanza 2 inherits the communicative vector from Stanza 1, which is textually represented by parallel imperative constructions in Lines 5-7; Stanza 3 provides syntactic complexity caused by inversion and paired by ellipsis. The double syntax effect in buzz the dull flies… arises if two speech acts overlap and are fused into one construction. Treating the initial buzz as an imperative leads us to a communicative gap: the subject dull flies in the imperative sounds absurd (* you buzz the dull flies ), the location of buzz produces full emphatic inversion in the line initial position and a statement in the inverted construction. The imperative is dictated by the perceptual and narrative inertia in the dialogue with the reader, prepared by the previous composition in 2-7. Lines 9 and 10 are identical with partial emphatic inversion models: brave shines the sun in prosaic version would be the sun shines brave , fearless the cobweb swings => the fearless cobweb swings .

Авторы
Издательство
Российский университет дружбы народов (РУДН)
Язык
Английский
Страницы
177-185
Статус
Опубликовано
Год
2019
Организации
  • 1 Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)
Ключевые слова
inversion; double syntax construction; communicative and textual strategies; cognitive support
Дата создания
20.02.2020
Дата изменения
20.02.2020
Постоянная ссылка
https://repository.rudn.ru/ru/records/article/record/57581/
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Другие записи

Смирнов А.В., Баринов Е.Х.
Декабрьские чтения по судебной медицине в РУДН: актуальные вопросы судебной медицины и общей патологии. Российский университет дружбы народов (РУДН). 2019. С. 178-181