Abstract
The need for a comprehensive semiotic understanding of poetic translation is at the heart of the present paper. This task is framed in terms of a multidisciplinary theoretical framework termed semiosic translation that I apply in this article to the translation of Holocaust poetry. This type of poetry is characterized as a distinct sign system that poses a number of challenges to both translators and semioticians. One of the most conspicuous problems is the ineffability of nothingness, which is particularly evident in the poetry of Paul Celan. Building on the notions of abductive inference (Charles S. Peirce) and rule-following (Ludwig Wittgenstein), I introduce a method for the translation of two key poems Schwarze Flocken (‘Black Snowflakes’), corresponding to Celan’s early period, and Weggebeizt (‘Worn down,’ a poem written in 1963). The semiotic method applied shows that the underlying Firstness of Holocaust art (an anti-semiotic sign system) is the driving force behind Celan’s poetry. It is also suggested that iconicity and indexicality are not peripheral semiotic processes but central elements to elucidating how the translation across sign systems takes place.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Ejecting protestors, interpellating supporters: The interactional pragmatics of expulsion at Trump’s campaign rallies
- What is political semiotics and why does it matter? A reply to Janar Mihkelsaar
- Iconic processes and intermediality in the photobooks Silent Book and Sí por Cuba
- From shipwreck to constellation: Rethinking Meillassoux on Mallarmé from a semiotic perspective
- Umberto Eco’s semiotics of the text: Theoretical observations and an analysis of the parable of the banquet
- The search for the imperfect language
- Semiospheric translation types reconsidered from the translation semiotics perspective
- Voicing control: A child resource for “growing a head taller”
- Kenneth Waltz talks through Mark Rothko: Visual metaphors in the discipline of International Relations Theory
- The cultural transformation of the proprioceptive senses
- On the embodied meaning of emotional responses to music: A semiotic perspective
- Asemic typography in kinetic design
- Topological and networked visibility: Politics of seeing in the digital age
- A semiosic translation of Paul Celan’s Schwarze Flocken and Weggebeizt