MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO’S TRANSLATION ERROR IN THE INTERPRETATION OF HAMLET’S LAST WORDS VS META TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE’S TEXT

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of two works created by the outstanding Spanish philosopher and writer M. de Unamuno in 1920-1922. Based on Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, a poem (1920) and an article (1922) with the same title Repose is Silence were written. Their name is interpreted by Spanish researchers as a curious translation error of Hamlet’s last words: “The rest is silence”. The considered works are vivid examples of meta-translation reflecting the conceptual image of the artist’s world. The study and reconstruction of the context of the creation of two texts and the analysis of their ideological and artistic content allow not only to get closer to understanding the peculiarities of the linguistic consciousness of the Spanish philosopher and poet, but also to understand the huge potential of meta-translation as the realization of Bakhtin’s idea of the life of great works in the ‘big time’ of culture. These Unamuno meta-translations embody two artistic methods of mastering Shakespeare’s spiritual experience and at the same time are the result of Unamuno’s understanding of the Spanish (and wider European) reality of the turning point.