COGNITIVE STRATEGIES FOR CREATING, INTERPRETATION AND TRANSLATION OF ONE POETIC NEOLOGISM

Abstract

The article is about the word ‘panache’, which refers to the main characteristic of the protagonist of the most popular play in the French theater - Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. This word, being the last word in the play, and also in the life of Cyrano, is a semantic neologism of a complex - both metonymical and metaphorical - nature, in the base of which lies a specific noun panache with the meaning of ‘plumage’. Reinvented panache is connected metonymically with the image of Henry IV, who ordered his troops to look up to his white plumage during the battle, and metaphorically - with the visual image of this colorful and always in motion vestimentary attribute. This neologism was needed to be explained, which has been done by the author himself, on the meeting of French Academy, to which he had been elected. However, his explanation, done in a neo-romantic way, stressing that panache is a “spirit of courage”, was not exhaustive, which can be suggested judging by numerous interpretations of this word from different points of view (literary, philosophical, psychological, etc.). Soon after the phenomenal success of the play followed a Russian translation of it, made in a phenomenally short time (only within a month after a premiere in Paris) by T.L. Schepkina-Koupernik, and then translations by V.A. Soloviev, Yu.A. Aihenvald and E.V. Baevskaya. These remarkable examples of translated literature showed the untranslatable nature of the word panache. Thus, T.L. Schepkina-Koupernik made it “a plumed hat”, E.V. Baevskaya - “a pride” (which does not fully express the idea of panache, as there are also reckless courage, humble nobility and ingenious eloquence and in it). V.A. Soloviev and Yu.A. Aihenvald do not mention this word at all: the final of the play is constructed in a way to avoid the translation of panache. Still remaining untranslatable, panache by its semantic energy stimulates theoretical re-thinking of the problem of how to translate the untranslatable.