The Poetic Realization of Perceptual Images in the Poem “The Brotherhood of Believers” by O. Brezina (A Case Study of the Original and Translated Texts)

The article is devoted to the linguistic and stylistic analysis of the poem “The Brotherhood of Believers” in the context of the poetic and philosophical works of the Czech Symbolist poet Otokar Brezina. It focuses on how the key perceptional images are conveyed through the linguistic means of expression in the original text and its Russian translations and deals with the linguistic transformations that are caused by the author's individual worldview and poetic tradition. One of the tasks associated with the modern research in the field of text theory and its philological analysis is to compare the original text with the two versions of its Russian translations done by K. Balmont and O. Malevich. The first part of the article describes the connection between Brezina's poetic works and his philosophical views, such as his understanding of the true faith, the interdependence between life and death and the contraposition of what is here and beyond. Based on the material of the poems and essays included into different book collections, it is shown that, in Brezina's opinion, the true meaning of life is realized through the consolidation of the souls of brothers, i.e. companions or preachers of the true mystical faith that should lead the humanity to what lies beyond. The poet portrays the supernatural worlds with the help of complex metaphors, chains of abstract images with accented perceptual semantics and possible sensory associations. The comparative analysis, that is presented in the second (main) part of the article, has revealed that, at the semantic level, the Russian translations demonstrate either a “strengthening” or “weakening” of the perceptual component and a change of the “key” perceptional mode in each stanza. At the stylistic level, the poetic translations retain certain perceptual metaphors and synesthetic combinations that form the emotional tone of the poem. The translators tend to preserve the original understanding of life and death, which results in almost literal translations of the repetitions with the semantics of “unity”. Balmont's translation is based on the metaphorical reflection of reality and contains perceptual images associated with the hidden mystical meaning of the original text. Malevich's translation almost literally reproduces Brezina's poem in a number of stanzas, while the hidden metaphorical representation of reality, which was expressed by the Czech poet through the key perceptual images, is not always explicit. The results of the analysis indicate that studying the perceptual picture of the world, presented in the original text of the poem and in its translations, improves the knowledge of the conceptual and emotional component of “The Brotherhood of Believers”. The poem presents a mystical and philosophical understanding of the true faith that unites the poetic and philosophical works of Brezina.

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