The semiotics of phonetic translation

This article is devoted to translations of poetry that are not equivalent to the original on the lexical level, but attempt to reproduce the sound, rhythm and syntax of the source text. The Russian formalist Yuri Tynianov was presumably the first scholar to discover this phenomenon, which was later referred to as “phonetic facsimile” (George Steiner) and “homophonic translation” (Lawrence Venuti). The present discussion of the linguistic, semiotic and cultural aspects of (homo)phonetic translation is exemplified by translations made by Russian poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Notes on the metrical semantics of Russian, French and German imitations of Janus Secundus’s Basium II

This article links Konstantin Batiushkov's poem Elysium (1810) to the tradition of poetic imitations of Janus Secundus's Basium II. A French equivalent for this poem's pythiambic distichs was invented by Ronsard (Chanson, 1578), who used cross-rhymed quatrains with regular alternation of dodecasyllabic and hexasyllablic lines. However, the French translators of Basia of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries could not use this metre, because its semantic aura was drastically changed by Malherbe's Consolation à Monsieur du Périer (1598). Batiushkov's Elysium as well as its Latin and French sources are poems about a delightful death and the union of lovers in the afterlife; yet the metre, which was used in Malherbe's poem, was for more than two centuries a metre of mournful elegiac stanzas about eternal separation. The question of a metrical prototype for Batiushkov's poem still remains undetermined. His "anacreontic" trochaic tetrameter does not have analogues in the Latin original or its French translations, but coincides with the metre of G. A. Bürger's Die Umarmung from 1776 (of which Batiushkov was hardly aware in 1810), and finds parallels in some eighteenth-century Russian imitations of Basium II which were most likely forgotten by the beginning of the nineteenth century

Rhythmical Ambiguity: Verbal Forms and Verse Forms

In undertaking the statistical analysis of the rhythm of Russian syllabic-accentual verse, one confronts a problem: how to accentuate words whose natural-language stress is weaker than that of fully-stressed words. Zhirmunsky called such words “ambiguous” and formulated a rule: they should be considered stressed in “strong” (ictic) positions and unstressed in “weak” (non-ictic) positions. Gasparov, who accepted and elaborated on Zhirmunsky’s rule, pointed out that “this difference in the quality of stress in strong positions [...] has a significant impact on the rhythm of verse, especially that of ternary meters.” The main point of the present paper is that this ambiguity equally impacts Russian binary meters. In the case of iambic tetrameter, for example, fully-stressed lines that contain rhythmically ambiguous words are often isomorphic with the predominating rhythmical form. In the present paper, this phenomenon is explored in connection with Jakobson’s hypothesis that rhythmically ambiguous words gravitate toward “weak” (i.e. less frequently stressed) ictuses. Although Jakobson’s view of accentual ambiguity was different from Zhirmunsky’s, and Jakobson’s calculation was, in fact, methodologically inaccurate, a cross-pollination of their approaches may prove fruitful

“Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam” and the typology of the Russian dolnik (following Osip Brik’s, Boris Jarcho’s and Andrei Fedorov’s remarks on the Russian translations from Heine)

This paper develops some of the ideas that were expressed at the meeting of the Translators’ Section of the Soviet Writers’ Union (28 December 1934) where Osip Brik’s talk on new Russian translations from Heinrich Heine was presented and discussed. Brik argued for equirhythmical translations of Heine’s dolniks and maintained that equimetrical translations are impossible due to the differences between the Russian and the German systems of verse. His opponents, on the contrary, argued for equimetrical translations and maintained that equirhythmical translations are impossible due to the differences between the accentual systems of the Russian and the German languages. Boris Jarcho, who presided the meeting, developed a theory, according to which every versification system is characterised by primary and secondary features. The primary features represent a determinist norm and should be reproduced in translation to the full extent, while the secondary features represent a statistical norm: they may be reproduced in a proportion that the language and the poetic tradition can afford and that is at the same time similar to the proportion found in the original text. The authors of the present paper discuss three Russian poetic translations of Heine’s celebrated “Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam...” from the point of view of their equimetricity/equirhythmicity, and compare their metrical and rhythmical structures with various rhythmic types of the Russian dolnik

Vyacheslav V. Ivanov (1929–2017) and his Studies in Prosody and Poetics

Vyacheslav V. Ivanov was an outstanding scholar who excelled in almost all disciplines related to linguistic and literary studies. This article analyses his accomplishments in the fields of prosody and poetics

заседание московского лингвистического кружка 1 июня 1919 г. и зарождение стиховедческих концепций О. Брика, Б. Томашевского и Р. Якобсона

Les comptes rendus des séances du Cercle linguistique de Moscou (CLM) sont conservés à l’Institut Vinogradov de la Langue Russe (Moscou). Une discussion des plus fructueuses eut lieu le 1er juin 1919, autour de l’exposé d’Osip Brik « Sur le rythme poétique ». La réunion était présidée par Roman Jakobson, premier président du CLM, et a été consignée par le secrétaire du Cercle, Grigorij Vinokur. Y participaient Boris Tomaševskij, Mixail Peterson, Ivan Rozanov et d’autres. Cet article est composé d’une introduction, du procès-verbal de la réunion, et de notes explicatives. L’introduction établit le lien entre la discussion et les problèmes de la théorie moderne du vers, comme la question des relations entre les aspects métro-rythmiques et lexico-grammaticaux du vers, le problème de la sémantique du mètre, et la question des limites dans lesquelles le rythme d’un poème peut diverger de son schéma métrique. Les notes commentent différents aspects du contexte historique et intellectuel de cette discussion.The proceedings of the Moscow Linguistic Circle (MLC) are kept at the Vinogradov Institute of Russian Language in Moscow. One of the most fruitful disputes took place on 1 June 1919, when Osip Brik’s talk entitled “On Poetic Rhythm” was discussed. The meeting was chaired by the first president of the MLC, Roman Jakobson. The minutes were recorded by Grigorij Vinokur, the secretary of the Circle. Among the discussants were Boris Tomashevsky, Mixail Peterson, Ivan Rozanov and others. This paper consists of an introduction, the minutes from the meeting, and explanatory notes. The introduction links the dispute with the most vibrant problems in contemporary verse theory, such as the question of how meter and rhythm are bound up with vocabulary and grammar, the problem of the semantics of meter, and the question of the limits to which the actual rhythm of a poem may diverge from the pattern of metre. The notes comment on various aspects of the historical-intellectual context of this debate

The Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics: A transnational perspective

This paper seeks to situate the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics of the 1960– 1980s within the larger European intellectual-historical context from which it sprang, and in which it played a vital role. Analysing the school members’ engagement with their peers throughout Europe, we outline an “entangled history” (histoire croisée) of multi-directional scientific and philosophical influence. In this perspective, we discuss the most productive concepts and methods of Tartu-Moscow semiotics in the fields of general verse theory, intertextual theory and cultural theory

Quantitative Poetics of Russian Formalism

Este ensaio aborda a teoria formalista russa de uma perspectiva quantitativa. Seu foco está nas teorias sobre a arte verbal conforme desenvolvidas por Boris Tomachévski, Boris Eikhenbaum, Roman Jakobson e especialmente por Boris Iarkhó. Aborda o pioneirismo de Iarkhó quanto ao estudo quantitativo de aspectos do texto artístico e dos usos da estatística para tal. Além disso, trata-se do primeiro estudo sobre as contribuições de Iarkhó no contexto do Formalismo Russo publicado no Brasil. This essay approaches Russian Formalist theory from a quantitative perspective. It is focused on the theories of verbal art developed by Boris Tomashevsky, Boris Eikhenbaum, Roman Jakobson, and particularly by Boris Yarkho. The author discusses Yarkho’s pioneering approach to the quantitative study of various aspects of the artistic text and the use of statistics in poetological analyses. It is the first study of Yarkho’s contribution to poetics published in Brazil

Kiril Taranovsky and his Greatest Work

Kiril Taranovsky and his Greatest Wor