“Unimaginable simplicity”, or How shall ancient literature be translated?

Abstract

The article discusses the purposes and the criteria of modern translations / re-translations of ancient texts. Currently the most urgent task is to fill in the gaps in our vision of other people's culture (untranslated due to either ideological restraints, or to a lack of familiarity with the original texts) and, therefore, to create a maximally adequate translation that conveys the substance — the poetics and the specific features of the “foreign text”, taking into account time, space, and cultural stadialism. The article deals with medieval texts: primarily texts possessing one common feature or communicative task — they were written for public consumption in the 12th–13th century in either vulgar Latin or in one of the Romance languages. The insights of B. I. Yarkho and S. S. Averintsev into translation of ancient literary monuments make it possible to regard the special “simplicity” of these texts as one of the markers of their peculiarity, provided this “simplicity” is understood as an attribute of poetics rather than an evaluative epithet. The material for its study and demonstration includes fragments of translations of El cantar de mio Cid made by B. I. Yarkho and Yu. B. Korneev, as well as the translations from the Legenda Aurea by Jacob of Voragine made by I. I. Anik'ev, I. V. Kuvshinskaia and M. L. Gasparov.