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“No text is an island”

Translating Hamlet in twenty-first-century Russia
  • Aleksei Semenenko
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Contexts, Subtexts and Pretexts
This chapter is in the book Contexts, Subtexts and Pretexts

Abstract

This chapter discusses recent Hamlet translations in Russia in the context of the history of translation theory and canonicity. The introduction provides a short description of the history of Hamlet translations in Russia, while the main part focuses on the analysis of the translations that have appeared in the period from 1999 to 2008. As the article demonstrates, the Russian Hamlets of the twenty-first century are closely linked to previous canons of Hamlet and depend not really on the source text but on the complex intertextual (and intersemiotic) relations primarily among translations within the target culture.

Abstract

This chapter discusses recent Hamlet translations in Russia in the context of the history of translation theory and canonicity. The introduction provides a short description of the history of Hamlet translations in Russia, while the main part focuses on the analysis of the translations that have appeared in the period from 1999 to 2008. As the article demonstrates, the Russian Hamlets of the twenty-first century are closely linked to previous canons of Hamlet and depend not really on the source text but on the complex intertextual (and intersemiotic) relations primarily among translations within the target culture.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. Notes on contributors ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part I. Contexts
  7. Shifting contexts 19
  8. Nation and translation 33
  9. Vasilii Zhukovskii as translator and the protean Russian nation 55
  10. Romania as Europe’s translator 79
  11. Translating India, constructing self 97
  12. The water of life 117
  13. Translation trouble 137
  14. Part II. Subtexts
  15. Between the lines 149
  16. Translation theory and cold war politics 171
  17. The poetics and politics of Joseph Brodsky as a Russian poet-translator 187
  18. Squandered opportunities 205
  19. Meaningful absences 219
  20. Part III. Pretexts
  21. Translated by Goblin 235
  22. “No text is an island” 249
  23. Russian dystopia in exile 265
  24. Between cosmopolitanism and hermeticism 277
  25. The other polysystem 295
  26. Translation as condition and theme in Milan Kundera’s novels 317
  27. Index 323
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.89.20sem

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. Notes on contributors ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part I. Contexts
  7. Shifting contexts 19
  8. Nation and translation 33
  9. Vasilii Zhukovskii as translator and the protean Russian nation 55
  10. Romania as Europe’s translator 79
  11. Translating India, constructing self 97
  12. The water of life 117
  13. Translation trouble 137
  14. Part II. Subtexts
  15. Between the lines 149
  16. Translation theory and cold war politics 171
  17. The poetics and politics of Joseph Brodsky as a Russian poet-translator 187
  18. Squandered opportunities 205
  19. Meaningful absences 219
  20. Part III. Pretexts
  21. Translated by Goblin 235
  22. “No text is an island” 249
  23. Russian dystopia in exile 265
  24. Between cosmopolitanism and hermeticism 277
  25. The other polysystem 295
  26. Translation as condition and theme in Milan Kundera’s novels 317
  27. Index 323
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