Lost and found in translation: the case of alliteration

The paper examines the transmission of alliteration in Estonian and Russian translated verse. The main focus is on the translation of alliterative epic, on the one hand, and more recent literary alliteration, on the other hand. Various alliterative techniques in different genres are observed, as well as various strategies in conveying alliteration: rejection of alliteration, transmission of alliteration, compensatory translation, for example, with functional equivalent and eventually, saturation with alliteration, to signal alliteration in a tradition without corresponding framework

The Accentual Structure of Estonian Syllabic-Accentual Iambic Tetrameter

This paper is part of a project aimed to analyse the rhythm of Estonian binary verse metres. It is the first complex analysis of Estonian syllabic-accentual iamb. The analysis is comprised of poetry by 20 prominent authors from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, and, all in all, more than 9000 verse lines. In order to find out which regularities are specific to poetry in general or to a particular poet, these data were compared with pseudoiambic segments extracted from prose. Differently from the earlier studies, stress is treated as a phenomenon of gradation, with altogether five different degrees of stress distinguished. The performed study showed that the rhythmical structure of iambic poems allows the clear distinction between two groups of poets, whom we conditionally call Traditionalists and Modernists

The derivatives of hexameter in Estonian poetry and their link with the traditional hexameter

The sources of the theory of the Estonian hexameter can be traced back to 17th century Germany, where the long syllables of ancient hexameter were replaced with stressed ones, and short syllables with unstressed ones. Although such understanding is clearly inadequate, to a great extent it still holds ground in contemporary approaches. Hexameter, like any other verse metre, can be treated from two angles. First, as an abstract scheme which is realized in different texts, while the degree of realization can vary. Second, hexameter can be viewed as a prototype and actual texts create a certain space further from or closer to the prototype. In both cases questions arise, first, about the limits of hexameter, and second, whether a given text has features of a random hexameter or reflects the author's conscious intent

Peter Grzybek (22.11.1957 – 29.05.2019)

Peter Grzybek (22.11.1957 – 29.05.2019

Breaking the Syllabic-accentual Monotony

Ants Oras’s innovation was not confined to the sphere of language, he also has an important role in the enrichment of Estonian metrics and systems of versification. His sources were mainly the forms of different European poetic cultures, which he introduced in his translations. In the paper, two meters are studied, which Oras tried to create in his translation of Goethe’s Faust, in order to adequately convey the original’s rhythm. These verse meters are German national form, Knittelvers, and adoneus derived from ancient and medieval verse. One common characteristic for these meters is the breaking of syllabic-accentual monotony