Academic literature on the topic 'Bulgakov, Mikhail, 1891-1940 Master i Margarita'

“The Master and Margarita” is generally considered Mikhail Bulgakov’s literary masterpiece. It is a “melting pot” of literary genres, motives, themes, imagery and intertextual references. All these elements cooperate in creating a “polyphonic” novel, in Bakhtin’s sense of the word, not only when it comes to the different nature and “voice” of single characters but also with reference to the “poly-structured” construction of the text itself. The paper will illustrate the peculiarity of Bulgakov’s novel and the semiotic and semiosic character of his creation. The adjective “semiosic” derives from “semiosis” as defined, among others, by C.S. Peirce, who stresses the meaning-making “power” of some semiotic processes. The paper aims also at answering the question why this novel has been translated several times into Polish and Italian since 1967 (when the first edition of the novel was published in Western Europe). Due to the very specific construction of the plot and of the formal aspects of the novel, translators had to deal with a significant number of problems of “untranslatability” that they could solve only by using their creative potential. It was Roman Jakobson who through his linguistic analysis reached the conclusion that for the untranslatable—poetry for example—“Only creative transposition is possible”. Using creativity translators were also able to discover further interpretations of Bulgakov’s literary work and to perform a culture-formative act as their efforts offer new points of view on reality and its perception, wider knowledge of the social life not only in Soviet times but in a more universal perspective as well as new models of text and literariness. That’s why a novel like Bulgakov’s masterpiece has been translated so many times and it is still translated in the two languages selected for the purposes of this research and all over the world. And this is also the reason why it can be considered a meaning-generative and culture-formative text even if its first edition appeared in 1940.

The problem of evil and the devil as a representative of evil has long existed in the religion and culture of different nations. This article attempts to find similarities on this issue in the novel “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) and in the approach of some Islamic Sufis, such as Mansur al-Hallaj (858-922) and Ain al-Kuzat Hamadani (1098-1131), etc. What is common in the image of the devil in the pages of the novel of a Russian writer of the twentieth century, a native of the Orthodox environment, and in the texts of medieval Islamic mystics? Common to representatives of these different cultures and eras is the desire to comprehend the problem of the existence of evil in the world and its embodiment in the form of the devil. The similarity is in the fact that the problem of evil and its bearer is posed by Bulgakov and Sufis both in a purely religious context, and in philosophical, Gnostic. In both Islam and Christianity, the devil (“Satan”, “Shaitan”) is the main opponent of the heavenly forces, which is the highest personification of evil and pushes a person on the path of spiritual death. In addition to the religious context, the devil is seen as the result of a Gnostic and mystical approach by different thinkers in the form of an artistic image.

La présente étude, qui se fonde sur la méthodologie de critique de traduction d'A. Berman, tente d'explorer l'« horizon traductif» dans la Bulgarie communiste et d'examiner comment, et si, il a influencé les« projets de traduction» de certaines œuvres littéraires du russe et du français. «Horizon» et «projet» sont, ici, deux notions empruntées à A. Berman, qui sont précisément définies et nous permettent de cerner, d'une part, le contexte dans lequel s'inscrivent la théorie et la pratique de la traduction pendant la période étudiée et, d'autre part, la manière dont les traducteurs abordent la traduction et effectuent la « translation» des œuvres étrangères. A travers un parcours historique, conventionnellement délimité en périodes, nous tentons de faire surgir des tendances. Et cela sur deux plans : la manière dont on fait de la critique de traduction et les critères à partir desquels on choisit et « transfère » les œuvres traduites dans le contexte littéraire bulgare. Ainsi, nous voudrions définir « ce-à-partir-de-quoi » (Berman : 1995) on traduit en Bulgarie durant les années communistes. Nous voudrions particulièrement savoir s'il existe un « canon traductif » et comment il influence la pratique et la théorie de la traduction. Pour ce faire, nous avons exploré, l'horizon et le projet de traduction de deux œuvres concrètes : le recueil de poèmes de P. Éluard, Pesni za vsicki (Chants pour tous) et le roman de M. Boulgakov, Le Maître et Marguerite. Le choix de ces œuvres nous pennet de saisir des exemples pris aux cultures russe et française et de nous arrêter à différentes sous-périodes des années communistes
This thesis uses Berman's methodology of translation critique to explore the 'translation horizon' in communist Bulgaria, with particular emphasis on the way that the 'translation horizon' might have influenced the 'project of translation' in relation to particular literary works translated into Bulgarian from Russian and French. Berman's notions of 'horizon' and 'project' allow us to study the context of the theory and practice of translation during the period in question. Furthermore, these notions also allow us to study the way that translators approach the process of translation and how they introduce foreign literary works. By dividing the communist era into historical sub-periods, this thesis aims to reveal the tendencies which characterise the translation critique and also the criteria used for choosing and transferring literary translations into Bulgarian. This thesis considers the question of whether there was a 'translation canon' and how this might have influenced the practice and theory of translation. The reflections in this thesis are base on an analysis ofthree translations : Paul Eluard's political poems, from the book Pesni za vsicki (Songs for everyone), and two translations of M. Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita