About an Ossetian Translation of a French Poem

Abstract

The article analyzes an Ossetian translation of A. Rimbaud’s (1854-1891) sonnet Vowels performed by Sh. Dzhigkaev. Assuming that a translated text is a form of artistic perception, the researchers reveal the means for reconstructing the differing national and cultural worldviews through translations, including the meaningful points in A. Rimbaud’s poetic view of the world, and opportunities for its preservation and recoding. The paper considers versions for the interpretation of the ‘color’ sonnet introduced by researchers and translators in the 19th-20th cc., proposes a new original representation proceeding from the dynamics of Rimbaud’s poetic search and constant features of his world perception. Rimbaud reinterprets the idea of synthesis - a key idea of French Symbolism - into a thoroughly elaborated and deeply gцeneralized unity of material and spiritual existence. The sonnet is a sequential and logically immaculate unfolding of the topic of the way as an ascension: from spontaneous and unconscious desires - through their purification in awareness - to the ultimate harmonious completeness of the universe. The extreme point of the ascension, his ‘Omega’, is expressed in images of the Apocalypse as both the last foresight and foretell. The order of sounds / letters in the sonnet also aligns with the theme of overcoming and ascension - from A to O (Alfa and Omega). It is color which is central to the chain ‘sound - color - idea’. The world created by the demiurge-artist is being transformed through his visualizations; such feature of picturesqueness expresses not only the diverse aspects of the perceived world but rather shows its concealed, unevident and generalized essence. This approach to the theme is expressed in the title of the poem. The phonetic word ‘voyelles’ combines sound (‘voix’ - voice), optics (‘voir’ - to see) and the image of the way upstairs (‘voie’ - way, path). The final semantically meaningful word of the poem - Eyes (‘Ses Yeux’). The Ossetian text of the sonnet clearly tends towards the ultimate syncretism of the spontaneous existence and awareness elegantly and intently created by the French author. This deals with the color symbolism of the sonnet particularly. The syncretic meaning of the Ossetian ‘цъæх’ unites ‘кæрдæгхуыз’ - color of the grass and ‘арвхуыз’ - color of the heaven which corresponds to the images of Omega in the original text. Sh. Dzhigkaev’s interlinear translation is considered to be closest to the philosophy of the symbolic myth of Vowels.