The Tragedy of Macbeth and its Russian translations in the 19th century
статья по английскому языку (9 класс)

The Tragedy of Macbeth and its Russian translations in the 19th century

Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, first performed in 1606. It dramatizes the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambitions on those who seek power for its own sake.

It should be emphasized that at the beginning of the XIX century almost all Russian translations of Shakespeare were made in prose from the French and German versions. Michael Vronchenko (Михаил Вронченко) (1802-1855) was a military geodesist and geographer by profession. He was the first to recreate Shakespeare's plays in Russian in their true form, without arbitrary changes. He completed his translation of Macbeth in 1836, but it was never published. The scene of the regicide made this tragedy of Shakespeare particularly suspicious in the eyes of the tsarist censors.

Among the Russian writers of the early 19th century Wilhelm Ludwig von Kuchelbecker (1797-1846) (Вильгельм Людвиг фон Кюхельбекер) might be the most ardent admirer of Shakespeare. Kuchelbecker translated Macbeth in 1828. Later the poet radically reworked the translation of the first three acts of the tragedy.

Kuchelbecker assessed Macbeth in the preface to his first translation. New translation principles suggested a scientific approach to the original. Kuchelbecker considered it necessary to thoroughly study the original. But during his exile he could not do this in proper way.

Kuchelbecker’s main principle is accuracy in rendering both form and content [2, с. 31]. Translating poems in verse, and prose in prose, Kuchelbecker sought to reproduce the exact poetic meter. He tried to convey them in his native language unchanged, literally, at the same time preserving authentic poetic imagery.

Sometimes the eccentricity of Shakespearean poetic image confused Kuchelbecker. The words of Lady Macbeth: "But screw your courage to the sticking-place" (I, 7, 60) – were first translated: «Только утверди неколебимо Свое бесстрашье» – and only in the second edition they took the form: «Сердце завинти в груди покрепче» [2, с. 31]. In this respect, one cannot but remember the expressive metaphors of the American “antistratfordian” – Henry James – who claimed that Shakespeare possesses the “power of constitutive speech quite as if he had swum into our ken with it from another planet” and rightly called it “outpoured treasure” [1, с. 196]. Surely, such abundance of imagery never has made a translator’s task easier.

In the second act of Macbeth he came across a difficult word play – the famous monologue of the gatekeeper, based on puns. Kuchelbeker coped with their translation only partially: he could not recreate the game with two meanings of the word "goose" (гусь, портновский утюг) - and his phrase: “Enter, a tailor, here, I suppose, you roast your goose” [2, с. 32] («Войди, портной, здесь, небось, гуся своего зажаришь») – is devoid of any meaning, although it formally conveys the English text exactly.

Archaization combined with literalism and the desire to observe equilinearity had their detrimental consequences. Striving for brevity, Kuchelbecker used rare short forms of words like «свободить», «спех» or else he invented non-existent abbreviated forms: luxurious – «роскошствую» (instead of «роскошествую). As a result, many passages of translation became heavy, clumsy, and unreadable.

Gradually, Kuchelbecker seemed to understand limits of this method of translation. Trying to convey the "soul, poetic meaning" of Shakespeare, Kuchelbecker revised his translations of Macbeth. Comparison of passages shows how the speech of Shakespearean characters becomes much more natural and poetic. The archaization was consistently done with, the vocabulary simplified and modernized.

Kuchelbecker tried to eliminate Russianisms, which were current in the first edition. «Царь» becomes "король" or "правитель". And yet, contrary to the deliberate desire of the translator to avoid Russification, «барыня» (for “mistress”; II, 1, 31) or «холоп» (for "servant"; III, 4, 132) hold on as concepts off Russian life.

The translator’s attempt (almost the first in Russia) to render English names into Russian according to their pronunciation, and not spelling, should be emphasized – thus, Дункан (Duncan) of the first edition turns into Донкэн.

To sum up, Kuchelbecker among other Russian translators of the early 19th century made a great breakthrough in incorporating Shakespeare into Russian culture. Kuchelbecker’s fundamental approach to the translation includes: accuracy in rendering both form and content, word play based on puns, rethinking about archaization and more natural speech, also translations of English names into Russian according to their pronunciation.

Литература

1. Анцыферова О.Ю. Антистратфордианство Генри Джеймса. Знание. Понимание. Умение. 2018. № 2. С.191- 198.
2. Дуринова Н.Н. Перевод сложных метафор в трагедии В. Шекспира [Текст] Вестник Челябинского государственного университета. 2013. № 37. Вып. 86. С. 143-145.
3. Левин Ю.Д. «Макбет» Шекспира в переводе В.К. Кюхельбекера [Текст] Памятники культуры : Новые открытия : Ежегодник. — Л., 1983. — С. 30-58.
4. Новый большой англо-русский словарь: в 3 т. / под ред. Ю. Д. Апресяна. М., 1993. Т. 2. 829 с.
5. Ожегов С. И., Шведова Н. Ю. Толковый словарь русского языка: 80 000 слов и фразеологических выражений. — 4-е изд., М., 1997. — 944 с.