POETIC INVERSION UNDER TRANSLATION

The paper aims at syntactic constructions under poetic
translation, at the intersection of strategies in the initial Emily
Dickinson’s lyric and a Russian translated variant.
With the cognitive basis in mind, the production of a translated
variant needs a cognitive support in the textual composition, their
linear and stanzaic strong positions of the beginning and the end.
The translated version pursues the same communicative strategy
in the imperative, exclamations and statements throughout the
text but for two exceptions, grounded in the linguistic asymmetry
of English and Russian word order (non-equivalence of
communicative types of grammatical inversion, the second –
poetic inversion). The initial text is loaded with double syntax
and elliptical constructions, which remains uncompensated under
Russian translation.
The question is open: whether the extra emphatic loading of
initial constructions could be rendered under translation or it
belongs the aura of poetic diction specific to each language.
Non-canonical constructions marked by subject-predicate
modification may produce complex inverted constructions with
dual interpretation.
English word order is employed in four speech acts in the
opening stanza of lyric № 187 How many times these low feet
staggered, translated by Arkady Gavrilov. It is clear that
communication is actual, the narration refers to the present: an
exclamation in Line 1 and statement in the declarative in Line 2
introduce the Speaker. The Speaker’s voice is directed to the
partner as compulsion with the imperative try / (you) try (if) you
can lift…. (if with direct order of subject – predicate is implied in
an indirect question after the imperative). However, another noncanonical sentence with indirect word order in a general question
can you stir… introduces the Speaker’s expectation for an answer
in a dialogue. Punctuation seems dislocated: exclamation mark
follows the question, hyphen in the end of Line 2 is indicative of
an incomplete thought in a statement, a hyphen follows a
question, hyphens in the middle of lines are markers of the
imperative.
The communicative strategy is to involve the Reader into
communication, the narrative strategy is to share the state of mind
in a dialogue.
Stanza 2 inherits the communicative vector from Stanza 1, which
is textually represented by parallel imperative constructions in
Lines 5-7; Stanza 3 provides syntactic complexity caused by
inversion and paired by ellipsis. The double syntax effect in buzz
the dull flies… arises if two speech acts overlap and are fused into
one construction. Treating the initial buzz as an imperative leads
us to a communicative gap: the subject dull flies in the imperative
sounds absurd (*you buzz the dull flies), the location of buzz
produces full emphatic inversion in the line initial position and a
statement in the inverted construction. The imperative is dictated
by the perceptual and narrative inertia in the dialogue with the
reader, prepared by the previous composition in 2–7. Lines 9 and
10 are identical with partial emphatic inversion models: brave
shines the sun in prosaic version would be the sun shines brave,
fearless the cobweb swings => the fearless cobweb swings.
Keywords: inversion, double syntax construction,
communicative and textual strategies, cognitive support