Mikhail Lermontov’s “The Demon”: Reverse Translation as a Source of Intertextuality

This article examines the English translation of “The Demon”, one of the masterpieces of the great Russian poet Mikhail Yu. Lermontov, in a version done by Avril Pyman (born 1930), a renowned British scholar in the field of Slavic studies. The intertextual relationship between the original text and its translation is drawn throughout the parameters of the verse form, the plot, the artistic content, and the emotive resonance. Within the field of translation studies, our approach dissects the changes in genre and style, and it resorts to literal reverse translation as the most efficient device to trace the intertextuality between the original poem and its translation. Then, based on its findings we peruse the aesthetics in the rendition of the naming resources of the poem, mainly the naming of the Demon, of the poetic forms of speech manners, of the biblical anaphora, the alliteration, the colour epithets, and the Caucasus realia . The article determines that Avril Pyman’s translation serves as a prime example of a careful treatment of the meter, sense, and aesthetics of Lermontov’s masterpiece. The unavoidable meaning displacements in the translation did not alter the artistic message of the poem. Therefore Avril Pyman’s translation of “The Demon” is valued as the object of a meaningful aesthetic experience by the English reader.

Lermontov, “The Demon”, poetic discourse, English translation, Style, intertextuality, aesthetics