Abstract

Love poetry has been translated systematically through the ages. and the question arises whether and how the implications following from a source version are enhanced, weakened or simply survive in target versions. The research aims at highlighting ways of shaping disillusionment in a love poem (1925) by Russian lyric poet Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin (1895-1925), which has been translated into Greek (2015) and English (2018, 2020, 2021).  The analyst’s view on how disillusionment is shaped in target versions of the poem is followed by a questionnaire (addressing 15 respondents) enquiring about the relational dynamics the poet seems to develop with the beloved, which differs in target versions. Questionnaire results seem to confirm the initial findings on the implications the target versions generate. Results show that suffering and disillusionment are shaped differently in the four versions pertaining to the type of relationship the poet lover assumes with the beloved. They also reveal a different perception of what love is. The significance of the research lies in that it utilizes im/politeness theory to account for the relational dynamics between ex-lovers which may be undercover in the source text and the English target versions. The higher explicitness favoured in Greek (a positive politeness device) may be threatening in English target versions. Hence, love poetry translators should be made aware of the psycho-social implications they allow through target options to avoid threatening implications.

Keywords: interpersonal distance, perception of love, suffering, disillusionment, poetbeloved, Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin

1. Introduction

Poetry translation transfers compact messages cross-culturally, which are rich in implications and potential meaning variation. The question arises whether and how implied meaning is transferred in love poetry, and if modifications occur, what shape they probably take. How have translators renegotiated meaning and interpretation of it, in the second decade of the 21^st century? The study has selected a poem entitled ‘You don’t love me’ by one of the greatest Russian poets of the modern era (Kahn 2011), Sergei Yesenin (1895-1925), which deals with the poet’s disillusionment after a romantic separation. Communication of emotion-related information and whether emotion expression has an impact on translation performance is a topic which has attracted the attention of translation scholars (Hubscher-Davidson 2017). A question Hubscher-Davidson (2017) asks is how well the emotional component may be transferred into another cultural context, because reader emotions and ways of expressing them vary across the world.

Translators seem to construct different relational dynamics between the ex-lovers, in versions of the poem, and the question arises how present-day translators felt they should renegotiate the interpersonal dynamics between the ex-lovers and the conception of love.

Yesenin experienced the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the consequences of industrialization that followed in the 1930s, made artists less optimistic about their future. He was one of the most popular poets, participating in various literary groups (e.g. New Peasant Poets), founding the Russian literary movement of Imaginism[1], which the Bolsheviks were critical of, for its anarchic ideology (Kahn 2011: 41-43). Yesenin wrote about love and beauty, in addition to love for nature (Perunovich 2011). Love for the homeland, tenderness and sincerity are ubiquitous in his work. He even suggested, ‘Ι need no paradise, just give me my homeland’ (1914).

The study examines how sadness and disillusionment are rendered cross-culturally and expressed through the interpersonal dynamics between the poet and the beloved. Then it parallels etic analysis results with results of a questionnaire assessing perception of implicatures following from the Greek version of the poem. It discusses the theoretical significance of the findings, potential limitations of the study and suggestions for further research.

2. Literature review

As “politeness is a universal phenomenon of human society” (Leech 2014: 3), being polite means “speaking or behaving in such a way as to give benefit and value not to yourself but to the other person(s), especially the person(s) you are conversing with”. Politeness is not compulsory, and just like impoliteness, it displays gradation.  The study intends to examine what value and benefit the poet gives to the beloved in the Greek version.

Relational dynamics is crucial in achieving communicative goals of the poem, e.g., expressing emotion and shaping the interpersonal distance between the ex-lovers. The concept of face is also crucial in the assumed interaction with the beloved, with negative face being related to a person’s independence, and the positive face related to social connectedness (Brown and Levinson 1978).

In moments of disappointment and misunderstanding, the speaker-poet may experience “identity-based frustrations and emotional vulnerability” (Ting-Toomey 2017: 126). In referring to the beloved, the poet may make the beloved lose face or enhance it (Ting-Toomey 2017: 158). When power, distance and imposition occur between individuals, the risk of face threat and its subsequent face damage is high (Brown and Levinson 1978) and should be avoided, unless intended.

On the other hand, impoliteness (Culpeper 1996, 2011) occurs either when the speaker produces an intentional face-threatening act or when the addressee perceives it as such. Impolite behaviour can be successfully achieved through face-threatening acts (FTAs) that may lead to what Leech calls “conversational irony or sarcasm”: what a speaker says may seem to be polite, but on a deeper level it may be an impolite face attack. As the Irony Principle suggests, “if you must cause offence, at least do so in a way which doesn’t overtly conflict with the addressee but allows him/her to arrive at the offensive point of your remark indirectly, by way of implicature” (Leech 2014: 232).  The study will examine whether the Greek target version presents the poet to be making use of covert impoliteness or mock politeness, whether he implicitly attacks the face of the beloved or enhances her face, by showing respect.

Poets are never alone in the production of a literary work because they always address a reader. “[R]eading is a dialectic process” (Mey 2001:237) based on the interdependence between author and reader. Poets guide the audience into an imaginary universe, the readers do not accept the literary product in a passive manner. Readers turn into active participants, co-producers who co-construct the meaning with the author. In the same vein, translators co-construct meaning with the target audiences and reshape the relationship with the beloved. As verbal meaning is not always explicit, the poet may intentionally resort to indirectness and implicitness and the question arises how the poet’s behaviour is shaped in a target version. Indirectness is characterized by universal principles, like the “relative power of the speaker over the hearer, the social distance and the relative rights and obligations between them” (Searle 1979: 124).

Translators can understand the deliberate ambiguity of indirect speech acts and the implicitness of certain notions but may decide to render them otherwise to appeal to a target audience. As target versions indicate, implied meaning may be linguistically expressed through metaphors, because they also produce ambiguous meanings. To recognize ‘hidden’ meanings, the reader relies on background schemata, inference-making and rationality. The study will examine how background schemata of interpersonal relations and conceptions of love may shape the universe of the Greek target version.

The study also uses Willcox’s (2017) “Feeling Wheel” as a tool helping the study to identify emotions involved in the target versions of the poem. It has originally been intended as a tool “to aid people in learning to recognize and communicate about their feelings. It consists of an inner circle with 5 sectors and two outer concentric circles. The sectors are each labeled with the name of a primary feeling, viz., mad, sad, scared, joyful, powerful, and peaceful” which are represented in the inner circle of the model (Willcox 2017: 274).

Figure 1. Emotions in the inner circle of Wilcox’s (2017) ‘The Feeling Wheel’

3. Methodology

The study selected a romantic Russian poem and Greek and English versions of it, because it hypothesized that the relational dynamics between the ex-lovers will have to be reshaped in a target culture, which may be threatening in another. The analysis juxtaposes selected lines of four versions of the poem, one into Greek (2015) and three into English (2018, 2020, 2021), with emphasis on the Greek version. As expected, and shown later, the target versions render the loneliness and disillusionment of love, which the poet is overwhelmed with, after the separation, differently.

The research takes both an etic (the analyst’s view) and emic approach to the data. In implementing the emic perspective, the study designed a questionnaire addressing 15 bilingual and trilingual participants who were asked to judge the implicatures generated by the versions of the poem, which shape the feeling of disillusionment and his interpersonal distance from the beloved. Respondents were not shown the Russian source version, for avoiding trilinguals’ judgements motivated by appreciation of the source, and had respondents concentrate on the Greek and English target versions.

One question of the questionnaire asked about a potential explicitness and directness assumed in some lines of the poem, another two questions enquired about how the interpersonal dynamics between ex-lovers were shaped and a last set of two questions enquired about perception of love in the target versions.

Respondents were only expected to use their insight into Greek and English, in order to answer the questions. Questionnaire results which seem to confirm the results of etic analysis about target interpretations.

4. Data analysis and questionnaire results

This section presents (a) the researcher’s own view as to what implications are generated by TT options and (b) the respondents’ score in assessing these options. Out of the four versions, the Greek version presents a more critical poet, in that he juxtaposes two contrasting situations describing the behaviour of the beloved, namely, the paradox of her not loving the poet, but being willing to join him romantically. In TTa (the Greek version), the contrast highlighted through the connector ‘although’ (αν και) heightens awareness of the inexplicable behaviour of the beloved, which makes the TTa poet more aggressive towards her. The English versions may be implicitly ironic but are not explicitly critical.

The poet’s disappointment is depicted in example 1.

Εxample 1

The questionnaire gave respondents example 1 and asked which version is more impolite towards the beloved and the poet most critical. Two thirds of the respondents (10/15) suggested that TTa presents a most critical poet. In TTc, the irony was thought to be more implicit through the rhetorical question (Am I not a little handsome?). This explicitness in highlighting contrasts seems to be a cultural preference, a positive politeness device, i.e., contributing the underlying contrastive perspective, which was found in abundance in various other translated genres into Greek (Sidiropoulou 2004).

Examples 2 and 3 give evidence about the interpersonal dynamics assumed between the ex-lovers. In example 2, the poet is mourning the loss of his love; TTa refers to the sweet and sour experience the poet has had with her, who ‘he passed the love gate’ with. TTa connotes more suffering than the English versions do, and respondents seemed to acknowledge this by 76 percent. They perceived the Greek version as most powerful and pain-provoking, conveying a sense of profound disappointment. The feature seems to affect perception of their interpersonal relationship across the versions: in TTa, the interpersonal relationship sounds closer, because the poet reminisces their shared experience of ‘passing the love gate together’. No shared experience appears in the English versions

Example 2

In example 3, the lines also set interpersonal distance between the ex-lovers. The English versions show the poet to be making it clear to the beloved that he does not love her much. By contrast, TTa says that the poet loves her a little – the comment is made positively, rather than negatively. Here, too, the English versions highlight interpersonal distance (respondents confirmed this by 71 percent), whereas the Greek version sees the ‘half-full version of the glass’ suggesting closeness.

Example 3

TTa (ex. 2 and 3) favours interpersonal proximity, rather than distance, in contrast to TTc-d.

Examples 4 and 5 show a different understanding of what love is. In example 5, the poet urges the beloved to not get involved with ‘unkissed’/’young’/ ’unburned’ men because love appears once in a lifetime, and they may miss their opportunity to meet it. TTa presents the ‘young’/ ‘unburned’/’immature’ men as ‘unmarried’ or ‘not bearing a ring’, which presents a rather naïve version of romantic bonding assuming a ‘happily ever after’.

Example 4

Likewise, example 5 refers to the poet’s conviction that if someone has loved once, they cannot love again, which may be another naïve perception of bonding. TTa uses a metaphor being in love means ‘to have love’s wish’, which allows people to feel its unique strength. In contrast to TTb, TTc and TTd, which play with the fire-burning imagery, following the original, TTa was thought to be the most romantic version (70 percent).

Example 5

The analysis shows that versions of poems make choices which generate implications, relative to the themes permeating a poem, but each version may heighten awareness of a different theme.

If TTa favours the implication of the poet

• supporting the ex-lover (reminiscing her untouched heart, ex. 1)
• suffering from the separation, but reminiscing their shared experience (of passing the love gate together, ex. 2)
• confessing that he loves her a little, not being completely detached (ex. 3) and
• is being blessed by ‘love’s wish’ and has felt its unique strength

TTa seems to be very different from TTc-d, where the poet

• has been sensed as ironic (ex. 1),
• admits detachment from her (that he does not love her much).

Table 1 summarizes the themes highlighted in the Greek TT, per example.

Table 1. Features heightened in TTa

5. Discussion and significance of research

The study examined shifts in the Greek version of Yesenin’s poem ‘You don’t love me’ (1925), to appeal to a Greek audience, vs. three English target versions which were closer to the Russian ST. TTa (Greek) was more explicit about the contrast between her sexual experiences and her pure heart and assumed a closer interpersonal distance with the ex-lover, highlighting shared experiences and heightening togetherness. The features manifest a positive politeness culture (Sifianou 1992, Brown and Levinson 1978) and aiming at ‘idealizing women’ assuming a perception of romantic bonding, where love occurs once in a lifetime.

There seem to be different emotions emerging from the Greek version vs. the ones appearing in the English versions. Sadness is intensified, in TTa, and the poet feels ‘depressed’ and ‘lonely’ after the separation. The Greek version also shows more appreciation for the ex-partner but is also critical of her.

In terms of Wilcox’s (2017) ‘The Feeling Wheel’, the poem may be anchored on the ‘sadness’ compartment of Figure 1, but the TTa translator manifests additional conflicting feelings which emerge in the Greek version and spill over to the ‘madness’ compartment. In addition, he is being more ‘critical’ of his ex-partner (drawing on the ‘Mad’ compartment of the figure) and prefers interpersonal proximity with the beloved, which paints her more ‘valuable’ and more ‘appreciated’.

The figure suggests that target versions may highlight different emotions in order for the poem to appeal to a target audience. The Greek version is more romantic and emotionally loaded, unlike the English versions are very close to the source text. If we assume there is a ‘conflict situation’ between the ex-lovers implicitly arising from the context of the poem (‘you don’t love me’ ‘Am I not handsome’?), in the Greek version, the poet minimizes interpersonal distance as conflict management may differ cross-culturally (Jackson 2019). Greek discourses, not only in poetry but in various genres, are different (in that they favour positive politeness) – this is manifested through translation (Sidiropoulou 2021), in addition to monolingual research (Sifianou 1992). Volchenko (2022), for instance, in examining relational dynamics in translating English fiction into Russian and Greek, found that power distance was highest in Russian and lowest in Greek. There seem to be dimensions of culture (Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov 2010) which permeate various genres and may be worth examining.

The research may be valuable for instructors who analyze, teach and translate verse: it shows psycho-social variables which may improve reception of a literary piece by a target audience. This is what Mey (2001) means by saying that translators co-construct textual meaning.

The study advances understanding of ‘interculturality’ (Kecskes 2020), an interactionally constructed phenomenon which relies on cultural models and norms that represent the speech communities to which the interlocutors belong. Achieving communicative goals and communicating successfully is possible, as long as we are more attentive to the ‘pragmatic scent’ of any conversation in any genre (Yule 1996: 88), making us pragmatically aware of the way we use language.

A potential limitation of the study lies in that conclusions arise from examining one single poem by Yesenin, although findings about discursive performance are in agreement with previous research findings.

About the author(s)

Eleni Sichidi holds a Bachelor's degree in English and Russian Language and Literature, and a Master's degree in 'Translation: Greek, English, Russian' from the School of Philosophy, National Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her interests lie in cultivating a nuanced understanding of cross-cultural communication and becoming a skilled and adaptable professional in the realm of language, literature and translation.

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