Translating philosophical aesthetics: Peritext as a win­dow into the translator's mind. Part 2

Providing space for elucidating key translational issues is not a mundane practice but a privilege only hand-picked texts enjoy, philosophical writings among them. The challenge of translating philosophical discourse is widely recognized but scarcely explored. In this article, translation of philosophical texts is regarded as a procedure of knowledge transfer from one intellectual space into another and of knowledge-making through reconceptualization of key terms. This process is made partly observable in various types of notes — a special cluster of additional information known as translational peritext where translators are given an oppor­tunity to explicate their decisions made in the course of translation. Among translation hur­dles in philosophical discourse are technical terms which are often either in­vented or re-conceptualized by the scholar and then need to be re-contextualized by the trans­lator. Seeking to reflect on translation as a heuristic process, this paper will focus on the reso­lution of the potential cognitive dissonance and the translator’s justification of sense-oriented strategies in dealing with such key concepts as ‘connoisseur’, ‘grace’, ‘sublime’, and ‘je ne sçai quoi’ in the translation of the seminal work on the philosophy of aesthetics Analysis of Beauty by the celebrated 18th century English artist William Hogarth.

Peritext of the Russian translation of William Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty: a case study

Translation of philosophical texts is a special challenge because of specific philosophical idiom and conceptual complexity of the narrative. It is not surprising that such translations are often accompanied by commentaries where the translator steps out of the shadows to justi­fy the translational decisions. This kind of supplementary text called the “translational peritext” is under study in this paper aiming to reveal the cognitive effort the translation process involves, and to explore the author-translator-reader relationship. The purpose of the article is to analyze paratextual elements in the translation of an essay on philosophical aes­thetics in search of answers to three main questions: What does the translator choose to com­ment on, and why? What is specific about the role and function of translational peritext in philosophical artistic discourse? How do the commented translational decisions affect, if at all, the reader’s understanding of the author’s stance? The problem of revealing the translator’s agency, his/her motivations and decision-making is investigated on the basis of the essay Analysis of Beauty by the celebrated 18th century English artist William Hogarth — an in­fluential philosophical treatise whose ideas have never lost their relevance. The paper starts with the brief account of the concept of paratext, its types and functions; it will then proceed to specificities of philosophical translation. In the main part of the article, the background information on the material under study precedes the analysis of the identified commented translational issues.

The leading ornamental motif koshkar muyiz in Kazakh ornamentation: in search of the primordi

The ornamental motif of Koshkar Muyiz – the legacy of the Ancient times – remains key in the traditional art of felt craft. The horn-shaped figures of the Kazakhs had been a centerpiece of scholarly discourses of Kazakh, Russian and Soviet science over the entire 20th century. The first attempts to find their meaning were made by the German ethnologist R. Karutz (1911), the Russian researchers S. Dudin (1928), B. Kuftin (1926), E. Schneider (1927), and others. The horn-shaped motif had been reviewed in the works of archaeologists, art historians and ethnographers since the second half of the 20th century. Scientists determined the time of its origin, its geography, and attempted to translate its semantic content. It was found that the curvilinear motif had not appeared earlier than the New Stone Age, but in the Bronze Age, it had developed in the form of various styled designs. This motif obviously played a key role in the ornamental complex of the Turkic-Mongol peoples. Based on the interdisciplinary approach, the author offers a number of reasons to explain its viability, including the internal form of the word - name of the ornamental motif, which is epic in nature since it can cause a special aesthetic reaction in viewers. The ornamental motif seems to play the role of a “figure of memories” and have the status of a “substantiative past”. It is preserved as a linguistic objectification (name) in an extra-linguistic format as well, in the form of an Iconic Model of a transcultural anagram that reproduces the ancient ideological content with symbolic and magical scope. Acting as a canon, the Koshkar Muyiz motif is a sort of a “Signature of the Era” with its artistic charm and is constructively based on the line called the “Line of Beauty” by William Hogarth.

Die Südseeblase in der englischen Kunst des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts

When in 1720 the English stock-market crashed, the so-called South Sea Bubble, many people were suddenly faced with financial ruin. How has this early financial crisis been handled in 18th and 19th century arts? Kathleen Löwe’s comprehensive image analyse reveals the presence of the South Sea Bubble in media such as print-graphics by William Hogarth, playing cards and collectible picture cards.

The Analysis of Beauty, I

In The Analysis of Beauty (1753), William Hogarth builds his theory of aesthetic judgment around the technical know-how of the practitioner. Early in the treatise, he recommends that his reader model her encounter with the visual world on the artist’s method of reproducing and enlarging an image by means of a superimposed grid. Artistic techniques for perfecting the two-dimensional rendering of three-dimensional perception become, for Hogarth, tools, both real and virtual, for understanding spatial form. Given his investment in practice as a model for perception, Hogarth is especially sensitive to the advantages and obstacles of language as an expressive medium. The chapter closes by exploring Hogarth’s treatment of verbal media—discussions of letter forms, protestations of his own writerly ineptitude, decoding of painters’ jargon—and arguing on that basis for a nascent conception of medium-specificity at work in the Analysis.

The Bourgeois Revaluation of Tragedy

This chapter continues the argument begun in the Introduction, proposing a revised, reparative approach to the earliest bourgeois tragedies. It focuses especially on George Lillo’s landmark drama, The London Merchant (1731), and examines its unique re-interpretation of neoclassical theories of tragedy and poetic decorum. This chapter narrates its debut alongside burlesques and satires on the middle and lower sorts by Edward Ravenscroft, John Gay, William Hogarth, Henry Fielding, and John Kelly, making a case for Lillo’s radical valorization of ordinary life and a new aesthetic of identification. Its argument thereby describes the beginnings of a new appreciation for the trials of these social ranks in the era’s art, and offers a substantive reading of the text and its paratextual apparatus in light of this shift.

The Modern City Streets

This chapter explores the way in which early comics established a legacy emphasizing urban street life. It begins by detailing the connection of comics with urban environments, themes and circulation patterns in eighteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century London, England, Geneva, Switzerland, and New York, USA. For this discussion, A Harlot’s Progress by William Hogarth, the caricature and urban themes of Rodolphe Töpffer, and Richard F. Outcault’s The Yellow Kid and Hogan’s Alley serve as paradigmatic examples. Attention then turns to Winsor McCay’s vibrant Sunday-page color Little Nemo comics, which harnessed suburban dreams at the dawn of the twentieth century. Finally, an example from the twenty-first century demonstrates how these earlier themes are important for understanding the continuing legacy of urban comics. Contemporary Canadian artist Sophie Yanow’s War of Streets and Houses recalls the graphic and stylistic innovation and spatio-historical context of Töpffer’s comics production.

The Faustian and Mephistophelean Worlds in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress

Created by Igor Stravinsky, in collaboration with W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, the Faustian opera The Rake’s Progress (1947–51) was inspired by a series of engravings by William Hogarth. The collaboration between Stravinsky and Auden is a fascinating study, not only because of the way in which these luminaries interacted to produce this masterwork, but also because it provides insights into Stravinsky’s compositional process for his first dramatic work that involved the setting of a text in English. This chapter provides a glimpse into the process for specific musical passages in The Rake’s Progress and considers certain parallels between the storyline of Auden’s text and that of Goethe’s Faust.

Graphic Satire

This chapter explores the influence of Scriblerian satire within the practice of visual satire during the eighteenth century, specifically viewed within the graphic works of William Hogarth and James Gillray. What Hogarth took from the Scriblerians, particularly Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, is the bathetic logic of satire, which assumes an entropic narrative of decline, marked by the irreversibility of time. Such can be seen not merely in his moral progresses, but in virtually all of his works, even those not typically seen as progressive, like The Four Times of the Day (1738). Gillray, by contrast, adapted the scatology of the Scriblerians into a complex visual grammar—now central to modern political caricature—wherein the lowness and porousness of the body serves as a metaphor for the insubstantiality of words and rhetoric.