AATSEEL 2007

[Edward M Dumanis]

It would be okay to create an original poem to convey the corresponding
meaning of the same gender. But one must strive to be as close to the
original as possible in translation. Heine's choice of the trees with
the opposite grammatical gender was an immanent part of his creation, and
the translator must try to carry it out for the "true and tried"
translation.
Of course, if a new Heine lives arround us now, s/he can make a different
choice of trees, and if you read contemporary poetry, you can find many
examples of that. And we do not need even to restrict ourselves to our
days. Sappho is an example.

Sincerely,


Edward Dumanis <dumanis at buffalo.edu>


On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:

> 4 April 07
> 
> Dear colleagues,
> This call for papers on a very interesting topic reminded me of lectures 
> Roman Jakobson gave at Brown University (this would have been in 1968 or 
> 1969, if memory serves). Professor Jakobson expressed admiration for 
> Tiutchev's translation of Heine's poem "Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam," 
> where the gender opposition of "Ein Fichtenbaum" (masculine) to "Die 
> Palme" (feminine) is maintained by use of "kedr" vs. "pal'ma" in the 
> translation (it somehow would not have been appropriate for a 
> grammatically feminine "el'" or "sosna" to be longing for a 
> grammatically feminine "pal'ma," he said, even though "el'" or "sosna" 
> would have been literally more accurate). Looking into the matter 
> further, I found that this example goes back to the work of philologist 
> Aleksandr (Oleksandr) Potebnia (IZ ZAPISOK PO TEORII SLOVESNOSTI, 
> Khar'kov: 1905, p. 69), and that there is a long tradition of citing 
> Russian translations of Heine's poem to illustrate the semantic 
> importance of grammatical gender in poetry (Veselovskii, Grigor'ev, 
> Shcherba, and others). See my "Potebnja, Shklovskij, and the 
> Familiarity/Strangeness Paradox," RUSSIAN LITERATURE 4 (1976, 175-198).
> 
> And what IF a "sosna" should long for a "pal'ma?" Nowadays that is 
> something we can talk about openly.
> 
> Regards to the list,
> 
> Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
> UC Davis
> 
> 
> mrojavi1 at SWARTHMORE.EDU wrote:
> 
> >Dear ALL,
> >
> >I'm organizing a panel for AATSEEL 2007 in Chicago (Dec. 27-
> >30) entitled  “Grammatical gender as a source of
> >metaphorical thinking.”
> >
> >
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