ჯოისის „ულისეს“ ქართული თარგმანი

აბსტრაქტი

სტატიიდან აღებული ავტორის ინგლისურენოვანი რეზიუმე:

Key words: Ulysses, Joyce, translation, Kiasashvili.

The aim of the present article is to analyse the linguistic and stylistic issues that Nico Kisashvili, the translator of James Joyce’s Ulysses, had to deal with. One of the major difficulties is to render the allusions which serve as an intertext of Ulysses. Besides using Homer’s Odysseus as a structural and organizing element, Joyce’s text abounds in various 1This work was supported by Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation (SRNSF) grant ‘James Joyce Translations and Studies in Georgia’ (№FR17_220). literary, mythological and biblical allusions among which allusions to Shakespeare’s works are of utter importance. Thus to translate a multi-layered text like Ulysses it is not enough to have a good knowledge of the source and target languages.

It also requires the knowledge of numerous studies on the text, as well as a broad knowledge of English (and not only English) literature and Irish culture and history. When Kiasashvili started his work on Ulysses he was already an established scholar of English Literature and particularly of Shakespeare, had edited Shakespeare’s Works in Georgian and written extensively on Shakespeare, so was well familiar with Shakespeare’s texts both in the language of the original as well as its translations into Georgian. This background is apparent in the successful handling of the problem. The present article gives several examples how these allusions are translated into Georgian: in most cases the translator uses already existing translations (which can be easily identified by a Georgian reader because of their popularity) or if the existing translation differs from the original text Nico Kiasashvili translates the text himself and explains in the notes what was lost in the established translations of Shakespeare.

Another, most obvious, and possibly the most straightforward problem is an extremely scarce use of traditional punctuation, especially speech markers, not to mention Molly Bloom’s final monologue that is completely devoid of any punctuation. The seemingly formal organization of such prose is practically unimaginable in Georgian, which uses more punctuation marks, especially commas than English. With very few exceptions, the translator followed Joyce’s choice ignoring the norms of the Georgian language. Apart from other things, Joyce experiments with words, coining new ones, joining two or three words, turning composite nouns or even phrases into verbs, e.g.: dewsilky, seawardpointed ears, gumheavy serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, smiledyawnednodded, etc.

In these cases, the translator was lucky because he could use the ability of the target language to create composites which are characterized with the freshness of the original text thus achieving the desired effect. The same applies to Joyce’s syntax, such as: ‘Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly glancing, a merry puritan, through twisted eglantine.’ Having maintained the first composite, the translator treated the second phrase more freely, making a pun of the proper name. Often body parts seem to have a life of their own, e.g.: ‘His hand turned the page over’, ‘His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air’, or ‘His eyes sought answer from the river’ – in all these cases, the Georgian translation maintains the same structure.

Although each episode presents its own unique difficulty to a translator and a reader, Oxen of the Sun, the fourteenth episode of Ulysses is acknowledged as one of the most complicated parts of the book. Its difficulty lies mostly in the abundance of various styles and allusions characteristic to this episode. In Oxen of the Sun Joyce attempts to explore the history of the development of the English language and literary style by parodying it. This evolution is represented by nine sections which correspond to the period of nine months from conception to birth. The setting of the episode, a maternity hospital, where the two protagonists Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom meet, also emphasizes Joyce’s concept of the episode: to express the development of the language from its birth to his present time.

Needless to say that the success of the translation depends not only on the subtlety and skills of the translator but also on the literary standard of the receptive language, its resources and ability to express a variety of styles and how it can handle the wordplay, alliterations, cultural overtones, allusions, linguistic games and many more. No wonder that any translator of Ulysses finds this episode particularly difficult, as it is impossible to imitate a parody of the evolution of the English literary style in another language, even when the source and the target languages belong to the same language family or branch and the literatures created in these languages have more or less similar cultural and historical backgrounds.

The difficulty increases when it comes to rendering Oxen of the Sun into a completely new cultural realm, namely in Georgian whose historical timeline differs greatly from the trends apparent in most West European literatures. So that when rendering a particular style in English, say alliterative prose or Addison-Steel’s journalistic style, it is impossible to use the Georgian language and style of the same century as that of the source language. The translator has to find an equivalent of the phenomenon according to the style and not to the dating which surely would have worked when translating into French or German where Enlightenment, Romanticism, etc.

existed more or less in one and the same period and shared a lot of common features. Nico Kisashvili found an ingenious way to create an equivalent effect by parodying the evolution of the Georgian language and literary style beginning from the first hagiographic texts (the birth of Georgian Literature – 5th century) up to the language of the first half of the 20th century. By using parody on both lexical and syntactic levels, by creating new composites and using wordplay the translator creates a text which re- creates Joyce’s experimental prose in a different language. By translating Ulysses, as well as by writing about Joyce and modernism, by giving public lectures and readings, Nico Kiasashvili introduced the writer whose aesthetics was contrary to the accepted or prescribed norms and standards of literary language and style.

Kiasashvili’s translation expanded the boundaries of the Georgian language by following Joyce in creating new words, allowing into the text colloquialisms, slang, by exploring various styles, introducing interior monologue and stream-of-consciousness technique. kulturis paradigmebi / Paradigms of Culture Dr. Konrad Gunesch (United Arab Emirates) The Total Artwork in Comparative Literature Analysis: Belletristic and Scientific Positions from Wagner’s Operas and Tolstoy’s Art Philosophy to Business Branding and the Olympic Games 1. Introduction The total artwork has been defined since the mid-1800s as the artistic integration, within one piece of artwork, of all (or at least many) of the major art forms, such as drama, music poetry, dance, and architecture.

Its definition and application is currently, in the 21st century, afresh debated in international scholarly literature from various academic fields (such as comparative literature, art history, philosophy, linguistics, and music). This research studies the total artwork under theoretical, methodological, and empirical key aspects, via a comparative literature analysis and transdisciplinary investigation. This research coincides with the renewed scholarly interest, an ever more widespread access of artists to potential media of expression, and a rising popular demand for works of art that might be considered as “total”. Therefore, the area of this research is located in both comparative literature and contemporary art history, the nature of the research is both theoretical and applied, while the methods of the research are firmly taken from comparative literature, Comparative literature’s methodological potential is shown with references to systems theory as well as to feminist and cultural studies, supporting this research to include the relationship between artworks, literature, and society.

Conceptually, the research first develops a comprehensive and itemized definition of the total artwork, which also allows to engage with its contentious aspects, before molding it into a concise and compact working definition for subsequent empirical applicability; all of which is based on critically reflected and transparent criteria. Empirically, a selection of examples of total works of art, as exemplified and referred to in scholarly literature. is then assembled and compared according to the developed definitions and the conceptual framework, and cataloged in an expandable list for which theoretical and structural alternatives are also offered.

Then, recent scholarly claims of total works of art are investigated from academic areas that have by tradition considered to be outside of the field and of the understanding of art, such as business and sports. Presented are two literary voices that hold their cases worthy to be considered works of art, namely firstly the branding of an automobile, and secondly the athletic achievements in the context of Olympic Games.

გამოქვეყნებულია ჟურნალში „სჯანი“, ტ. 21 (2020), გვ. 199–216. ნაშრომის გახსნა