Prose Parts Research Articles

«Новая жизнь» Данте в русских переводах

The author of the article conducts a comparative review of three translations of Dante’s The New Life (Vita Nova). Translations by M.I. Liverovskaya (1918), A.M. Efros (1934) and I.N. Golenishchev-Kutuzov (1968) were made in different historical periods by representatives of different translation schools, but at the same time they turn out to be paradoxically close to each other in terms of freedom and accuracy, as well as in terms of basic translation principles. Liverovskaya works in the paradigm of her time, and Efros, maintaining the basic principles of the “literalist” program in the prose parts, in the poetic parts returns to the experiences of his translation debuts, i. e. to the Silver Age. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, although he belongs to the next generation by birth, did not survive the generational breakdown, since he spent a significant part of his life in emigration. He returned to the USSR in the mid-1950s, in the era of the already absolute monopoly of the so-called “creative” translation school: his New Life is a kind of combination of official translation and the traditions of “Balmont’s” translation.

15. Yüzyılda Bir Şair ve Şârih: İlâhî ve İki Eseri

There are two known people who used Ilâhî pseudonym in the Anatolian commentary literature of the 15th century. One of them is Abdullah Ilâhî and the other is Ahmed Ilâhî. Both are commentaries and naqxi. There are many works attributed to both in the sources. The works named Rûşenî-nâme (878/1473-74) and Müşkil-güşâ (884/1479- 1480) that we have were also attributed to someone with Ilâhî pseudonym according to the library records. However, the works to be discussed in our study are not among the works of other known Ilâhî's. This suggests the existence of a different person. In our study, it was concluded that this person, whose life was not found in the sources, was probably someone who was attached to Dede Omer Rûşenî or who followed his path, by trying to reveal who he was by looking at his works. In this study, the prose parts of the two works of Ilâhî that we have are compared. Thus, we tried to determine whether both works belong to the same person. When the poetic parts of the works discussed in this study are also examined, it is seen that the similarity in the prose parts is also in these parts. As a result, with this study, we tried to reveal the existence of a third Ilâhî who lived in the 15th century and who was different from Abdullah Ilâhî and Ahmed Ilâhî, to prove that the works named Rûşenî-name and Müşkil-güşâ belong to the same author and that this author is Ilâhî. 

Translation as Commentary in the Sanskrit-Old Javanese Didactic and Religious Literature from Java and Bali

This article discusses the dynamics of translation and exegesis documented in the body of Sanskrit-Old Javanese Śaiva and Buddhist technical literature of the tutur/tattva genre, composed in Java and Bali in the period from c. the ninth to the sixteenth century. The texts belonging to this genre, mainly preserved on palm-leaf manuscripts from Bali, are concerned with the reconfiguration of Indic metaphysics, philosophy, and soteriology along localized lines. Here we focus on the texts that are built in the form of Sanskrit verses provided with Old Javanese prose exegesis – each unit forming a »translation dyad«. The Old Javanese prose parts document cases of linguistic and cultural »localization« that could be regarded as broadly corresponding to the Western categories of translation, paraphrase, and commentary, but which often do not fit neatly into any one category. Having introduced the »<i>vyākhyā-style</i>« form of commentary through examples drawn from the early inscriptional and didactic literature in Old Javanese, we present key instances of »cultural translations« as attested in texts composed at different times and in different geographical and religio-cultural milieus, and describe their formal features. Our aim is to document how local agents (re-)interpreted, fractured, and restated the messages conveyed by the Sanskrit verses in the light of their contingent contexts, agendas, and prevalent exegetical practices. Our hypothesis is that local milieus of textual production underwent a progressive »drift« from the Indic-derived scholastic traditions that inspired – and entered into a conversation with – the earliest sources, composed in Central Java in the early medieval period, and progressively shifted towards a more embedded mode of production in East Java and Bali from the eleventh to the sixteenth century and beyond.

21st Century prose and freedom – from the issues of proza środka

The main aim of the article is a consideration the problems connected with this part of contemporary literature which is called “proza środka” (“prose of the middle”). 21st century novels treated as the examples of this phenomenon (e.g. Lubiewo written by Michał Witkowski, Poczwarka by Dorota Terakowska, Kurator by Zbigniew Kruszyński) and their reception prove that new political situation after 1989 changes the rules of common literary perception. The readers expectations support origination of textes which are ambitious, attractive but also easy to assimilation. The main theme of that part of prose is freedom, especially freedom of the indyvidual.

Рецептивна реакція на роман Ф. Сологуба “Мелкий бес” на драматургічному зрізі

The article highlights two opposing opinions on peculiarities of modern methods of stage interpretation of epics. The first one (T. A. Shakh-Azizova, I. L. Vyshnevska, V. Ie. Khaliziev): today theatre and literature interact without stage-players, translation of prose into action language makes the text poorer without taking into consideration narrative part of prose, without presenting author’s voice and style. The second one (B. O. Kostelianets, M. I. Turovska, A. P. Svobodin, G. O. Tovstonogov): modern art possesses sufficient means of stage embodiment of narrative discourse, characters’ inner monologues – generally – means of prose dramatization. The assertions by contemporary cult directors: P. Brook, T. Suzuki, S. Zhenovach, K. Ginkas are another argument in favor of creative character of stage interpretation. Based on these assertions it is stated that stage interpretation is such a process where literary image stops to be final embodiment of recipient’s imagination, but produces the next alive immediate experience. The article also analyzes two attempts of dramatization of the novel “The Little Demon” by F.Sologub – the author’s one (play “The Little Demon” by F. Sologub) and modern one (play “Beast” by V. Semenovskyi). Drama interpretations, separated by almost a century distance are compared. The main problem of interpretation is absence of fantastic and realistic topics combination in the stage action. Instead, in his play V. Semenovskyi combines text with the reader’s personal experience which touches upon the problems of the Russian backwoods of the early 20 th century actualizing them from the distant offspring’s standpoint. Thus, the problem of prose dramatization is considered in connotation with the problem of individualized reception act. Changes of paradigm “stage interpretation phenomenon” are analyzed in the context of combination of dramatization as a receptive script with the postmodernism practice on the basis of play “Beast” by V. Semenovskyi (by the novel “The Little Demon” by F. Sologub).

EDGERTON, FRANKLIN : Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary (I: BHSG, II: BHSD); Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Reader (BHSR). New Haven (Yale University Press)-London (Cumberledge, Oxford University Press). 1953. (In the William Dwight Whitney Linguistic Series.)

Abstract Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is the appellation used by Professor Franklin Edgerton to design the peculiar religious language employed in the Buddhist texts of Northern India that have become known to us during the last 125 years in manuscripts found chiefly in Nepal, Japan, and Chinese Turkestan. Indologists will know this very curious idiom by other names, such as Buddhist Sanskrit, Mixed Sanskrit, the Gatha-dialect. The last term, which was the first to be used, when the linguistic individuality of the idiom was realized, suggests the fact that scholars investigating the texts first believed that the verse portions (or some of them) were composed in another dialect than the prose parts, which were thought to be simply Sanskrit, rather poor Sanskrit most of it, and badly treated by scribal tradition. However, as early as 1882, when Senart published the first volume of his edition of the Mahavastu, one of the oldest texts, it was made generally known that also the prose portions of at least this text belonged to the Gatha-dialect, for which term Senart substituted the designation “Mixed Sanskrit”. In his widely read History of Indian Literature (Vol. I, 1905), Winternitz expressly states that an old Middle Indie dialect is employed in verse portions and also in large parts of the prose of this literature.

The Adventure of Laeghaire Mac Crimhthainn

THE 'Adventure of Laeghaire son of Crimhthann to Magh Mell,' as it has been called, belongs to the general class of stories about a journey to the Otherworld or the Earthly Paradise (Magh Mell), which are so characteristic of early Irish literature.' This tale seems to have attracted less attention than the others, perhaps because the prose parts have only twice been edited and exactly translated, and the poems only once; in both instances in rather out-of-the-way places.2 O'Grady's edition Silva Gadelica was taken from the Book of Lismore,3 fols 125a 1-125b 1. He seems not to have been aware that there is a much older and better copy in the Book of Leinster, pp. 275b 22-276b 24, which contains in addition to the prose three poems, none of which appear in the Book of Linsmore. T. P. Cross printed the whole Book of Leinster text as it stands, and appended the Book of Lismore version copied by himself from the original Ms. There follows below a critical and annotated edition and translation of the Book of Leinster tale (from the Facsimile), with all the variants of any significance from the Book of Lismore. I have not had access to this Ms. itself, as it is of course in private possession; but luckily Cross's transcript compensates for that, and the readings from the Book of Lismore given below are taken thence (called C in the apparatus criticus; L or LL is the Book of Leinster). Up to the present, no detailed attempt has been made to date this tale (but see note, p. 378). Apart from modernizations, the language of the prose parts is still good Old Irish, probably of the second half of the ninth century. Its state is much the same as that of the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick4 (ca 900), or somewhat earlier. The neuter article is still fully preserved (a hduinad, acc.sg., 11. 67, 68; a ndurn, acc.sg., 1. 76; isa sid, acc.sg., 1. 128); dun is still a neuter o-stem (duiin, g.sg., 1. 13; du'n d.sg., 11. 74, 129; but duine, g.sg., 1. 76); the superlative -em still exists, 1. 7; all of which taken together point to a terminus ante quem hardly much later than about 900. On the other hand, two instances of the perfect for the nar-

The Prakrit underlying Buddhistic Hybrid Sanskrit

A Sanskritist who reads for the first time a Buddhistic Sanskrit text such as the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka is struck at once by peculiarities of vocabulary and style which differentiate it from normal Sanskrit. If he limits himself to the prose parts, ignoring the verses, he will rarely encounter forms or expressions which are definitely ungrammatical, or at least more ungrammatical than, say, the Sanskrit of the epics, which also violates the strict rules of Pāṇini. Yet every paragraph will contain words and turns of expression which, while formally unobjectionable (if, perhaps, non-Pāṇinean), would never be used by any non-Buddhist writer.

Poetry and Prose in the Arts (I)

I Shall begin by a distinction which will limit my subject. I propose to speak only of beautiful poetry and beautiful prose, or if the phrase be preferred, artistic poetry and prose. The distinction I wish to draw is between art and craft, between making a competent and useful thing which exactly fits its purpose and making it beautifully, between technical skill and artistry, between good workmanship and design and that touch of rareness which makes not merely good but fine and lovely. The boundaries are difficult to draw. For much craft is also beautiful, and the craftsman is always in doing his best, striving to be an artist and often succeeding. But they are not the same things. Mere technical skill will not make a work beautiful but only correct, and on the other hand art may possess beauty, even if not of the highest order; though it fails in skill, the conception in some degree makes up for the defect of skill, as for instance much primitive Italian painting or Greek sculpture, which is defective in drawing or modelling and yet beautiful. Now a large part, perhaps the greater part, of what is called art is not art at all, but craft, good correct painting or drawing or sculpture; pleasing, but not pleasing with the pleasure or even rapture which beauty gives. It is so with prose and poetry. Many poems are not poetry, though written in impeccable verse, and long poems are always apt to drop in places into what is only not called prose because it is metrical. By far the greatest part of prose is merely good workmanlike writing, and in no sense art. I am not intending to depreciate craft, and still less the value and difficulty of attaining it.

A New Manuscript of the “Récits D'un Ménestrel de Reims”

The charming collection of legends, anecdotes and fables known as the Récits d'un ménestrel de Reims is one of the gems of Old French literature,comparable,in its naïveté and grace, to the prose parts of Aucassin et Nicolette. It has been published three times under different names. The latest, and the only critical edition is that by N. de Wailly, entitled Récits d'un m. mestrel de Reims au treizième siècle.