Expressionist Discourse in Texts by Kurt Pintus and Kazimir Edschmid: the Problem of Reception
The study looks at one of the most remarkable periods of German-speaking culture, the era of Expressionism. The phenomenon is generated not so much by the intuitions of art itself, as by social and historical necessity. The whole of Europe was clearly aware of the inevitability of the crisis. Expressionism emerged on the threshold of the First World War and on its rise expressed the most difficult experiences of people who foresaw the degeneration of the humanist world. The relevance of the work lies in the possibility of finding hidden typological similarities in the interpretation of modern events and events of a century ago. The research material was two programmatic manifesto texts, which are still considered canonical in defining the phenomenon of expressionism: an essay by German journalist Kurt Pintus “Twilight of Humanity” (German: “Menschheitsdämmerung”) and a manifesto by writer and critic Kazimir Edschmidt “On Expressionism in Literature and new Creativity” (“Expressionismus in der Literatur und die neue Dichtung.” In their texts, the authors formulated the main stylistic and ideological principles of expressionism and compared it with other literary trends: naturalism, symbolism, and impressionism. Seeking to achieve their main goal, the hope to convey the “collapsing, seething, chaotic integrity” of their time, the authors turned to the metaphorical and allusive form of the essay, and a significant part of the present research project is dedicated to the discussion of this important genre: this, too, along with the problem of reception, forms the theoretical thrust of the study. The novelty of the study lies in providing a comprehensive analysis of expressionism from the perspective of literary and translation studies, with a focus on the peculiarities of translating these texts into Russian. For a modern reader who does not know German, acquaintance with the works of Pintus and Edschmidt can be helpful both in terms of scholarly interest and general education. At the same time, translation is considered to be one of the more complex forms of reception, and the authors provide examples of Pintus’s and Edschmidt’s translators dealing with complex tropes and concepts and describe the techniques used in solving translation problems. A comparative analysis of the original authors’ texts and their translation demonstrates that in practice “re-constitution” and “re-creation” are interrelated, since in the process of translation the original is refracted in the mirror of the national literary tradition. The translator inevitably edits morphology, syntax, and artistic techniques and genre, but this transformation seems necessary in order for the recipient to be able to penetrate deeper into the features of expressionist discourse.