Translation and untranslatability: The difficulties of metaphysics and of erotica

Abstract

Since the times of Peter the Great, when secular literature emerged, writers have experienced a lack of the metaphysical language capable of expressing feelings and sensuality. Translators especially confronted this problem, which, paradoxically, by the second half of the 18th century led to an abundance of translated erotic (libertine) literature as well as to various attempts to create love lexicons. In 1768, A. V. Khrapovitsky, a young graduate of the Land Forces Gentry Cadet Corps and later Cabinet Secretary of Empress Catherine II, translated and published anonymously The Dictionary of Love by Jean-Fran?ois Dreux du Radier. In the introduction, he indicated the purpose of the lexicon — to translate the “inexpressible” that love contained, and thus to avoid the many grave mistakes stemming from language insufficiency. Yet the result of Khrapovitsky's labors only remotely resembled the original. The double standard of romantic language and behavior proved alien to the Russian translator, as well as the “hidden agenda” formulas, which one must know how to decipher and which the French lexicon taught to the reader. Khrapovitsky translated the verbal strategy of those who perceived romantic relationships as a battlefield into the sphere of life experience; rather than translating the text, he was transforming French romantic rhetorics into a satirical, epigrammatical worldview more characteristic for the Russian spirit and the Russian tradition. The second part of this study is devoted to the problem of translating libertine novels into Russian. An additional question is posed: why were French libertine authors rather abundantly translated in late 18th c. — early 19th c. Russia, and why was such literature addressed not to freethinkers, featherbrains and debauchees, as one might expect, but rather — as a rule — to sensitive and virtuous people. The last section of the article focuses on the problems of contemporary translations of French erotic prose into Russian. The author faced these problems while working on a translation of The Libertine Art of Life by M. Delon and of a number of French libertine texts included in an appendix to this work. Acknowledgements. The research was conducted with the support of the RFBS grant programme no. “Alexander Pushkin: from polylingualism to translation”.