본문 바로가기
  • Home

Notes on the translation of Blok's lyrics : Experience and Problems of Korean Translation of Russian Symbolist Poetry

Choi Jong Sul 1

1상명대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on problems of korean translation of russian symbolist poetry on the basis of my recent translation of Blok's lyrics. "Resettlement" of poetry on other cultural soil is a difficult task. It is not simply a problem of linguistics (semiotics). As S. Marshak, a famous russian poet and translator of the XX-th century, has told, in translation activity "it is the most important to transfer original shape of the translated poet, his time, a nationality, his will, soul, character, temperament". Two episodes, connected with difficulties of transfer of language images and poetic thoughts of the poet-symbolist, have arisen at aspiration to an adequate translation. The first episode is from practice of transfer of the poem "Unknown lady". The problem is the equivocality of image "в вине". Similar to the given episode forces the translator of symbolist poetry to pay attention on the equivocality of poetic motives and images in the context of the given poet and poetic culture in general. The second episode is connected not only with a context of the individual poetic world and art school as a whole. Here the context of national culture is important also. It is a question about transfer of the poem "О, весна без конца и без краю...". Special difficulties have arisen while translating the word "колодцы", that seems particular, but all the same important from the point of view of culturology. In the final part of this article importance of transfer as channel of cultural dialogue is underlined. In this aspect problems of the translation of poetry are inseparable from problems of comparative literary criticism and culturology. It is a problem of the future researches.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.