Mīts par Piramu un Tisbi no Ovidija “Pārvērtību” IV grāmatas. Atdzejojumu versijas

Abstract

This paper provides a chronological overview of the Latvian translations of the poem Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso with an in-depth look at its most frequently translated passage, “Pyramus and Thisbe”, from Book IV. The aim of the research is to reveal the journey of the interpretations of Ovid’s poem through the Latvian cultural environment by comparing the translation attempts of Ernests Dinsbergs (1851), Leimaņu Bernhards (1882), Nikolajs Vīksniņš (1920) and Augusts Ģiezens (1937). The theoretical basis of the comparison is Lawrence Venuti’s distinction between the strategies of domesticating and foreignizing. The empirical part of the research deals with the rendering of proper nouns, translations of Roman cultural realia, the transfer of artistic expression, and the treatment of the poem’s meter – the dactylic hexameter. The research found that although there are few translations of the poem and they demonstrate differences both in the understanding and interpretation of the source text, a tradition of translating Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” has indeed been established in the Latvian cultural environment. However, the finding of such a tradition does not exclude the possibility of creating new interpretations, especially considering that “Metamorphoses” are still not fully translated in Latvian, and the original text offers a very promising outlook for the application of various translation strategies in regard to content as well as form.