The Notion of Metaphysical Language and the Policy of Translation by Pyotr Vyasemsky

Abstract

The article focuses on the notion of metaphysical language which appears periodically in some texts by P. Vyasemsky and A. Pushkin (as well as E. Baratynsky) through the 1820s and up to 1831, when Vyasemsky publishes his translation of Benjamin Constant’s novel “Adolphe.” We attempt to elucidate this rather vague and ambiguous notion, which functions in Constant and Vyasemsky as a product of the “dialectics of reason and emotions.” The language that expresses this dialectics would be metaphysical insofar as it conveys the “truth.” Less poetical than practical, this language of “contemporary” metaphysics aims at solving political, philosophical and military tasks and belongs to newborn Russian elite, both national and cosmopolitan. Such a language could be formed only by confronting other languages, i. e. by means of “translation” which presupposes a deconstruction of semantic and syntactical structures of the mother tongue.

Keywords

• metaphysical language
• vyasemsky
• pushkin
• constant
• translation