Dienstag, 28. November 2017, 18:00 - 19:00 iCal
Vortrag Prof. Douglas R. Hofstadter
"The Very Heart and Soul of Russian Literature: Alexander Pushkin’s Novel-in-Verse Eugene Onegin"
Österreichische Gesellschaft für Außenpolitik und Vereinte Nationen / Hofburg
Eingang Reitschulgasse 2/2 OG, 1010 Wien
Vortrag
Die Forschungsgruppe COSY der Fakultät für Informatik der Universität Wien lädt Sie herzlich ein zum Vortrag "The Very Heart and Soul of Russian Literature: Alexander Pushkin’s Novel-in-Verse Eugene Onegin" von Prof. Douglas Hofstadter (Professor für Cognitive Science und Comparative Literature - Indiana University, USA)
Die Forschungsgruppe COSY der Fakultät für Informatik der Universität Wien lädt Sie herzlich ein zum
Vortrag "The Very Heart and Soul of Russian Literature: Alexander Pushkin’s Novel-in-Verse Eugene Onegin" von Prof. Douglas Hofstadter (Professor für Cognitive Science und Comparative Literature - Indiana University, USA)
Anmeldung erforderlich per eMail an cosy@cs.univie.ac.at
Abstract
Virtually universally, the Russians consider Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin to be the highest peak in the vast mountain chain of their noble literature, and yet weirdly enough, outside of Russia almost no one knows this great work, let alone loves it. To be sure, vast numbers of people are familiar with the opera bearing the same name, but the truth is that Tchaikovsky’s opera and Pushkin’s novel have little in common other than the story line, which is only a small part of the effervescent creation that sprang from Pushkin’s pen in the latter half of the 1820’s. My purpose in this talk is to expose non-Russians to the astonishing beauty of this work of Russian literature through a tiny sampler that will include small bits of the original, but that mainly will feature high-quality translations into English, German, and French. I will take just a handful of my very favorite stanzas (the work consists of roughly 400 fourteen-line “Onegin stanzas”, all sharing the same structure) and will do my best to show how intoxicating they are — thanks to their precise meter, their elegant rhymes, their profound lyricism, their pungent humor, and their intangible, magical musicality.
All the translators who will be showcased have done something that Russians consider to be self-evidently impossible: transplanting their most beloved work of art from its native linguistic soil into an alien soil, while preserving both content and form. Clearly, this is a very hard set of hoops to jump through simultaneously, but is making such a leap really impossible? Obviously, I don’t think so. To carry out such a delicate artistic transformation requires not only a highly poetic soul, but also a truly devoted and patient one — and luckily, in each culture, such souls exist. What is sad, however, is that the products of these ardent souls’ blood, sweat, and tears have met with such little recognition that Eugene Onegin, novel-in-verse, is still virtually unknown outside its native soil. One day, maybe this will change. One can always hope!
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Veranstalter
Forschungsgruppe Cooperative Systems, Fakultät für Informatik
Um Anmeldung wird gebeten
Kontakt
Prof. Peter Reichl
Fakultät für Informatik
Forschungsgruppe COSY
01/4277/79410
cosy@cs.univie.ac.at
Erstellt am Freitag, 24. November 2017, 14:24
Letzte Änderung am Montag, 27. November 2017, 15:28