«Шаги / Steps» Журнал Школы актуальных гуманитарных исследований

SHAGI/STEPS 5(3)

Ключевые слова: wit, Petrarchism/anti-Petrarchism, ‘poetics of doubleness’, inversion, sonnet, reflective genre, translation, Marshak, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne

Аннотация: In Elizabethan England, wit was associated with dignity, an attribute of a model courtier, and existed in various speech manifestations, anti-Petrarchism being one of them. During the European Renaissance the sonnet, the most influential genre of love poetry, had flourished for three centuries, and England was among the last to adopt it. This is why Petrarchism was inseparable there from its reverse — anti-Petrarchism — in the ‘poetics of doubleness’ (Brooks-Davies). For English sonneteers, the question “how to write?” was invariably transformed into “how to praise?” so that the language of true love would not be tinged with conventional flattery. Sir Philip Sidney was the first to draw on this motif in his witty inversions of the Petrarchan vertical when he toppled over the conventional comparison, and instead of looking for heavenly glimpses on earth found human qualities manifested in heavenly objects. Shakespeare, practically all through his sequence, instead of making fun of conventional praise (as he did so memorably in sonnet 130) explored the new depths of love relations. Among his favorite witticisms was a game of pronouns, when around the word ‘self’ he raised a whirlwind of repetitions as if sliding down into inwardness: “…that you were yourself, but, love, you are / No longer yours than you yourself here live” (sonnet 13). This wordplay, demonstrating an uncertainty of one’s own identity (practiced later by John Donne), is usually missed by Russian translators, who focus not on the reflective nature of the Renaissance sonnet but transform it into the much later lyrical genre of the ‘cruel romance’.

Для цитирования: Shaytanov, I. O. (2019). How to translate genre? Wit in the English Renaissance sonnet. Shagi/Steps, 5(3), 153–170. (In Russian). DOI: 10.22394/2412-9410-2019-5-3-153-170.