დანტე და ბაირონი მთარგმნელობით სივრცეში - ქართული ნარატივი

Abstract

One of the famous Italian poets Dante Alighieri’s (1265-1321) masterpieces called “The Divine Comedy” (1320) has had a great influence on the creative work of the poets throughout the world for centuries. Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” was not only translated into various languages, but also it was expanded. The issue stated in the title can be divided into three sub-topics: 1. Dante’s biography and creative work according to the recently found archival material of D. Oniashvili in Georgia, a fragment of an unpublished letter; 2. Byron’s poem entitled “The Prophecy of Dante” (1821); 3. Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” for the history of the Georgian translation. The name of Dante Alighieri was known to the Georgian readership in XIX century and in XX century a great interest in his biography is related to the name of the Georgian repressed political figure, translator D. Oniashvili (1883-1937). David Oniashvili spoke many languages, read the works of prominent foreign writers in the original, translated them and tried to popularize them in Georgia. In the family archive of D. Oniasvhili’s descendant Maia Tvaradze we discovered the fragments of Dante Alighieri’s biography in the unfinished article of D. Oniasvhili. It is obvious that the author was well acquainted with both Dante’s biography and his creative work. “The Prophecy of Dante” consists of a dedication and four cantos. In his narrative poem Dante utters an opinion, appealing to the Italian nation to unify, otherwise a great calamity awaits the Italians. Byron’s poem “The Prophecy of Dante” was written in Dante’s rhyming verse form, in Italian entitled “Terza Rima”, which is a metrical experiment. The creation of Byron’s poem “Dante’s Prophecy” was associated with great difficulties. This poem has not been translated into Georgian yet. There is only an anonymous Russian translation of this poem (published as an e-book by Strelbitsky, a multimedia publisher, and requires a strict regulation of the copyright), but it is interesting in terms of a new understanding of Byron’s passionate spirit of freedom. As Byron himself pointed out, in the dedication, he echoed his poetic muse as an imitation of the great Italian poet, though the great romantic poet, Byron offered an individual interpretation of his poem. The writer, translator Konstantine Gamsakhurdia (1893-1975), who was in the discussion with D. Oniasvhili in the magazine “Mnatobi” in 1928, explained adequately how to translate a great foreign poet’s work into Georgian; namely, he pointed out that it was crucial to consider the style of the poet while translating from the source language into the target language. He resolutely rejected free translation. It is obvious that while translating Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy”, K. Gamsakhurdia uses the translation of the famous poet and public figure, Konstantine Chichinadze (1891-1960), who is considered to be the translator of the works of G. Gordon Byron in XX century. K. Gamsakhurdia offered the poet his word for word translation. As K. Gamsakhurdia noted in a footnote of volume IX of his selected works, “half of the translation named “hell” was translated by K. Chichinadze according to K. Gamsakhurdia’s word for word translation. The comments were made by K. Gamsakhurdia (K. Gamsakkhurdia, v. 9, 2007:157). The comments by K. Gamsakhurdia are made not only with great erudition, but also with deep knowledge and analysis of Dante’s life, creative work and the thoughts of his commentators. We have presented abovementioned three themes around Dante Alighieri in connection with Georgia and we think it should be useful to Dante’s specialists and translation analysts.