Enjambement in the Mounted Lyrical Poetry: the Untranslatable Translated?

Abstract

The article is aimed at studying some features of translation strategies used to convey the expressive potential of a poetic text with elements of mounting techniques, viewed through the prism of the rhythmic-syntactic level of organisation of the poetic text. The subject of analysis is enjambement, or verse (poetic) transference, which is a “dissonance” between the rhythmic division of poetic speech into poetic lines and the syntactic division of verbal material into syntagmas in verse, thereby affecting the rhythmic structure of the text. The poem by H.M. Enzensberger (born in 1929), “verteidigung der wölfe gegen die lämmer”, as well as the translation of the specified poem into Russian (“Protection of wolves from sheep”) made by Lev Ginzburg (1921-1980), are used as the factual material. The original poem is written in free rhythms and includes elements of mounting techniques. To achieve this goal, a complex methodology has been applied, which, in addition to structural-descriptive and comparative analyses, also involves elements of linguopoetic and linguo-stylistic approaches. The relevance of the presented work is primarily due to the translation perspective of the study, which required the involvement of the main provisions of the theory of dynamic equivalence by E. Nida, secondly, – to the fact that translation strategies are considered in terms of intercultural interaction, i.e. taking into account the culturally specific characteristics of the bearers of the source and target languages. Based on the results of the analysis, a conclusion has been made about the special role of verse transferences in the mounted lyrical poetry of H.M. Enzensberger, which are engaged in the creation of the “defamiliarisation” effect at the appropriate micro-level of the lyrical work. A comparative analysis of the texts in the source language and the target language indicates that the application of the main provisions of the theory of dynamic equivalence, as well as the relevant linguistic aspects of intercultural communication when translating poetic works, contributes to a most accurate preservation of the aesthetic effect and of the expressive potential inherent in the original poetic text with elements of mounting techniques.