Raný Mallarmé v českých překladech | Mallarmé’s Early Poetry in Czech Translation

• Main Authors: Záviš Šuman, Catherine Ébert-Zeminová
• Format: Article
• Language: ces
• Published: Univerzita Karlova, Filozofická fakulta 2019-06-01
• Series: Slovo a Smysl
• Subjects: Stéphane Mallarmé; Symbolism; French poetry; translation of a literary text; adaptation
• Online Access: https://wordandsense.ff.cuni.cz/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2019/09/Zavis_Suman_%E2%80%94_Catherine_Ebert-Zeminova_40-62.pdf

This article consists in a thorough analysis of various Czech translations of the early poems of French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. The main difficulties arise from Mallarmé’s omnipresence in Czech literary culture, together with a tendency to adapt his poetry to fit the mood of changing historical contexts and expectations. Many Czech poets — some of the most prominent — have dealt with Mallarmé’s poetry, and its influence cannot be limited to a simple matter of translation. Among other things, it has thoroughly permeated Czech poetry in a specifically political way, as we see for example with Hrubín’s historic address to the Convention of Writers in 1956. The overall aim of this paper however is to present a detailed examination of two Parnassian poems by Mallarmé as translated by F. Dohnal, E. Lešehrad, K. Čapek, V. Nezval, F. Hrubín, O. Nechutová, V. Mikeš and J. Pokorný. Based on a series of observations that have mainly to do with semantics, prosody and the translators’ overarching strategies, the authors come to the conclusion that the early Czech translations depend too much (if not word-for-word) on the French originals, and on Parnassian poetical principals. A sensible change comes with K. Čapek. It is, however, F. Hrubín, himself an acclaimed poet, who offers the most convincing translation, at least if we take into consideration such traditional or conservative criteria as precision and accuracy.