Romanticism, Realism and Translator’s Dilemmas in the World of Phantasy and Horror

Abstract

Romanticism, Realism and Translator’s Dilemmas in the World of Phantasy and Horror The paper presents an analysis of several translations of two classic short stories from the Romantic era: The Golden Pot (Der goldne Topf) by E.T.A Hoffmann and The Viy (Vij) by Nicolai Gogol. The stories display many similarities as to their motifs and formal features: both main heroes, young students, encounter mysterious women equipped with magical powers; both have to struggle against mystic, daemonic creatures; furthermore, both of them balance on the verge of reality and a fantastic world populated by magic creatures. The coexistence of a realistic and an imaginary level in Gogol’s and Hoffmann’s texts poses a challenge for translators. One of them is the choice of equivalents of words and phrases referring to geographically, temporally and culturally specific objects anchored in the reality of Germany and Ukraine in the 19th century; furthermore, a careful translation strategy is needed in order to render the magic atmosphere of the supernatural world created by the author’s imagination, but inspired by local mythology. The paper analyzes and compares strategies and techniques employed in translations of the German novella into Russian, the Russian one into German, and in Polish and English versions of both stories.

Keywords

• fantasy
• domestication
• foreignization
• translation
• romanticism