The elusive meanings of translation: J. de Nerval’s sonnet “El Desdichado” from the “Chimeras” cycle

Abstract

The study of the inversion of meaning, which inevitably occurs during translation, has become one of the priorities of both domestic and world comparative studies in recent decades. This problem formed the basis of the theory of cultural transfer, which began to be developed in the mid-1980s among French historians-Germanists. The methodology of cultural transfer, which has taught us to see the phenomenon rather positive in those transformations of meaning that occur during direct translation from one language to another, has retouched the question of the “archaeological” side of this phenomenon, which has long received the designation “reverse translation” in science. The article is devoted to the analysis of the first sonnet in Nerval’s poetic cycle “Chimeras”. A detailed analysis of the intertextual allusions concealed by the extremely hermetic sonnet “El Desdichado” is accompanied by a parallel analysis of two translations of this sonnet into Russian, made respectively by N. Ya. Rykova and Y. M. Denisov. Despite the high quality of translation, the method of “slow reading” of the sonnet shows how in the translation, even if seemingly close to the original, the semantic trajectories of the original and translated texts diverge. Such a comparative analysis allows us to reactualise Alexander Mikhailov’s 1990s idea of reverse translation, which turns out to be absolutely necessary when reading and perceiving especially translated poetry.