The Lyrics and Their Translatability. Goethe and Prešeren

Abstract

The practice of translating lyric poetry allows us to draw certain conclusions that indicate the difficulty of transposing the most subjective types of literature into other languages. These conclusions are further confirmed by the general experience of translating into two languages: from a Germanic into a Slavonic language and vice-versa, which reveal a broad spectrum of possibilities. On the one hand, we have translations in the true sense of the word, where the various elements of the original poems find in the other language many essential correspondences. The less foreseeable divergences from the original are primarily the consequence of profound differences in linguistic structures which exceed translators’ abilities and, as such, remain insurmountable. On the other hand, internal divergences within the common external framework of lyric poetry are so great that translating becomes a process of poetic recreation and the translation a poetic creation. Identification is no longer a concept substantially denoting an association between an original and its double. Identification itself is replaced by the aspiration to create something that is identical, an aspiration that also depends on the creative abilities of the translator. Irrespective of the diverse quality of translations or of poetic re-creations, this activity has an irreplaceable social role, particularly in the present time of globalization. Nothing can replace the completeness of original poetry, but the opposite is also true. Only by means of translation, or poetic re-creation, can lyric poetry transcend the limits of a national language and become of value to world culture.