Raný Mallarmé v českých překladech
Mallarmé’s Early Poetry in Czech Translation

Summary/Abstract: This article consists in a thorough analysis of various Czech translations of the early poems ofFrench Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. The main difficulties arise from Mallarmé’s omnipresence in Czech literary culture, together with a tendency to adapt his poetry to fit the mood of changing historical contexts and expectations. Many Czech poets — some of the most prominent — havedealt with Mallarmé’s poetry, and its influence cannot be limited to a simple matter of translation.Among other things, it has thoroughly permeated Czech poetry in a specifically political way, as wesee for example with Hrubín’s historic address to the Convention of Writers in 1956. The overall aimof this paper however is to present a detailed examination of two Parnassian poems by Mallarméas translated by F. Dohnal, E. Lešehrad, K. Čapek, V. Nezval, F. Hrubín, O. Nechutová, V. Mikeš andJ. Pokorný. Based on a series of observations that have mainly to do with semantics, prosody and thetranslators’ overarching strategies, the authors come to the conclusion that the early Czech translations depend too much (if not word-for-word) on the French originals, and on Parnassian poeticalprincipals. A sensible change comes with K. Čapek. It is, however, F. Hrubín, himself an acclaimedpoet, who offers the most convincing translation, at least if we take into consideration such traditional or conservative criteria as precision and accuracy.

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