Quelques aspects du débat sur la traduction littéraire à Moscou au début du XIXème siècle

Abstract

At the beginning of the XIXth century, the translations of the English or German poets by Joukovski, or Greek and Latin by professor Merzliakov, the Fables of Krylov translated from La Fontaine (etc.) are considered as literary works, the name of the translator has so much importance, otherwise more, as that of the author of the original. The debate which bursts into 1816 about two translations of Bürger's Leonora, that of Zhukovski and that of Katenin, revealed clearly that they are considered as representative works of the poetic system of each of the writers - translators. Ludmila, of Zhukovski, is a ballad in the style of the karamzinien pre-romanticism. The style of Zhukovski is smooth and without harshness, the tone is meditative. On the contrary, the translation of Katenine, Olga, highlights the possibilities of the Russian language and mix registers by using the words of folk popular, as on the slavonismes of the highest "style". A deep change occurs in the Russian educated society in the middle of the twenties of the XIXth century. The translator - Poet becomes a scientist who must respect the author of the original, according to the spirit of the romanticism and the myth of the genius- prophet. Then he becomes a popularizer, who has to be accountable to the reader, or rather to the critic, who monopolizes, in the name of the mass of the readers, the monopoly of the esthetic sense what lets anticipate the advent of critical realism