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Dressing Judita in English
Kristina Grgić
orcid.org/0000-0003-1767-651X
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Sažetak
Marking the fifth centenary of the first edition of Marulić’s Judita, the paper examines translations of it into English, which, symbolically at least, confirm Marulić’s status as an international classic and reinforce efforts to have his Judita suitably presented as “a supreme work of world literature” (H. R. Cooper). While the global dominance of the English language could well afford Judita a wider space of reception, including non-native speakers of that language, the English translations have primarily come into being as result of a dialogue between Croatian and anglophone literature and culture. Also important from this point of view are the potential points of contact with the receptive culture, such as Marulić’s being known in the English Early Modern period as a distinguished Christian humanist. Then there is the content of Judita/ Judith, a work of the common western Christian tradition, several times re-written and processed in anglophone literary culture.
In addition to the currently only integral translation of Judith by Henry R. Cooper, which was published in 1991 as an edition on its own, there are five more partial translations published in journals and anthologies. Three translations that preceded Cooper's were published by Thomas Butler (in the anthology Monumenta Serbocroatica, 1980), Antun Bonifačić (The Anthology of Croat Verse 1450-1950) and Ante Kadić (Journal of Croatian Studies, 1986). The translations of Butler and Kadić cover the same section from Canto 5 (with just a few lines different), containing the key scene of the murder of Holofernes and the preceding scenes of the intoxicated Assyrian army. Ante Kadić, in the article accompanying his version, translated short fragments from the beginning and end of the poem. Antun Bonifačić put into his anthology eight lines from the fourth canto, which are not as typical as the preceding lines, but contain one of the many Marulić similes.
The later translation of Graham McMaster, which has been published four times, in the journals Most / The Bridge (1999) and Journal of Croatian Studies (2004–2005), and in the anthologies The Marulić Reader (2007) and The Glory and Fame. Croatian Renaissance Reader (2015), provides a somewhat wider selection from the Marulić text: the dedication, rather longer fragments from the first, third, fourth and fifth cantos, and the concluding lines. The recent translation of Ivo Šoljan and Vinka Šoljan (the anthology of The Canon of Croatian Poetry, 1450–2000, 2015) is somewhat shorter, but also includes the beginning and end of Judith and the death of Holofernes, but without the preceding grotesque scenes.
Considering the symbolic links between translating and the semantic field of dressing, which were once established by Walter Benjamin, the English versions of Marulić’s writing can be looked at as a kind of form of its metaphorical “dressing” in the literary and linguistic garb of English. Analysis of the selected fragments shows that the individual examples of translatorly “changing clothes” have provided various interpretations of the original text and its characteristics in the new linguistic and literary context, with diverse variations at all levels of form and content, from the structure of the verse to individual words and phrases.
The four earlier translations gave up on transmitting the original verse forms and the use of any possible equivalent English form, such as iambic hexameter or pentameter. They place the emphasis on transmission of the content, also, to a certain extent, managing to retain certain formal and stylistic characteristics of the original, such as enjambment and various stylistic figures. H. R. Cooper archaised his translation, modelling it on the early modern linguistic idiom of the King James Version (1611), thus establishing a literary-historical analogy with the time of the production of the original.
Two later translations of Judita retain the form of the rhymed verse close to the original. The translation of Graham McMaster is a particular achievement in the body of English translations of Judita (and of Marulić’s poetry in general), for to the closest possible extent it imitates the original line and rhyme, i.e., the double-rhymed dodecasyllabics with transferred rhyme. Still, this is not a completely identical verse form (among other things, according to local exigencies the number of syllables in the line is varied, and so is on occasions the position of the caesura), which can in part be ascribed to the difference between the two languages and systems of versification. Ivo Šoljan and Vinka Šoljan also translate Marulić’s verse with dodecasyllabics with occasional variations in the number of syllables and without a firm caesura, but without the internal rhyme. These two translations accordingly present Marulić’s original as poetic text more completely, but in return are somewhat freer in transferring the content, bringing in as necessary new and/or modifying the existing poetic images. This tendency is particularly visible in McMaster’s translation, which in this manner in general enriches the poetic expression, achieving a similar result with the addition of phonic figures (particularly alliteration), as well as with occasional archaisms and an elevated stylistic register. The poetic expression in the translation of Ivo and Vinka Šoljan is a little simpler, but for this reason probably more apt for reception by contemporary readers.
The different versions of Marulić’s Judith in English ultimately confirm that it is a very particular challenge to the translator, not only because of the historical distance, but also because of the author’s poetic skills. The translations differ from each other in their approaches and accomplishments, in the extent to which they have managed to elicit the specificity of Marulić’s poetic expression.
Should in the future any new English translations of Marulić’s epic appear, either integral or partial, they might try out different translation approaches and provide new interpretations. For example, Judita might be translated with the mentioned analogous verses like iambic pentameter or hexameter, or even in modern prose. As far as the existing translations are concerned, it would be interesting to conduct empirical research among various strata of readers, showing which of all the actual and/or potential approaches recipients of different profiles consider the most successful and/or the most approachable.
Ključne riječi
Marko Marulić; Judita; literary translating; English language
Hrčak ID:
277983
URI
Datum izdavanja:
10.6.2022.
Posjeta: 1.397 *