Do We Need a “Reverse Translation”? Shakespeare’s Sonnets Translated by Samuil Marhsak and by Yves Bonnefoy

Abstract

The paper provides a detailed analysis of Yves Bonnefoy’s translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets XI to XXII into French (1996‒2007) in their discrete juxtaposition with Samuil Marshak’s translations of the sonnets into Russian (1949), the latter considered a “Russian” rather than an “English” version of Shakespeare. The methodological framework for the study is the “reverse translation” proposed by A.V. Mikhailov. The essence of this approach is that the translated work of literature has to reproduce the unique world of the author and their epoch in their totality, including their semantic connections. The analysis demonstrates that Marshak’s consistent simplification of Shakespeare’s complex metaphor reduces it to simple analogies, while leveling out the multifaceted image of nature connected with the categories of time and death, as well as with the image of the man gaining power over nature (at the cost of breaking the “great chain of being”). At the same time, Bonnefoy’s later translations (using free verse, enjambments and breaking the sonnet form) demonstrate much greater precision and provide an actual interpretation of the sonnet in the process of translation itself. The author of the article sees the approach offered by Olga Sedakova in her new translation of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, which corresponds to the idea of “reverse translation,” as one of the best approaches to contemporary translation of “Russian Shakespeare.”

Keywords

• shakespeare’s sonnets
• yves bonnefoy
• samuil marshak
• the translation issue
• reverse translation