AATSEEL 2007
Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
darancourlaferriere at COMCAST.NET
Thu Apr 5 06:34:52 UTC 2007
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.”
>
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
> options, and more. Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
> http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
options, and more. Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
More information about the SEELANG
mailing list