translation studies - Facultatea de Litere - Dunarea de Jos

Elena Bonta and Raluca Bonta
Translation within Reception (Oscar Wilde’s Reception in Romania – A Documentary Perspective –)
is included in a volume under the title of Cântecul din urmă. Poeme în proză. Balada
temniţei din Reading (1946), but the name of the translator is not mentioned.
Under the second title, Parabole, it appeared due to the work of Nicolae Davidescu,
in two editions: 1916 (Minerva) and 1927 (Cartea Românească).
Both A. Stamatiad and Nicolae Davidescu were writers themselves; they
manifested their talent in their own works (Stamatiad wrote poems, prose and theatre,
while Davidescu was a symbolist poet). Besides several interpretations from the world
literature (Chinese, Japanese and French literature), he offered us translations from
Maeterlinck, Wilde and other foreign writers. Maybe the admiration for Wilde’s poems in
prose made him write Cetatea cu porţile închise, which is in fact a collection of parables,
but written in an artificial manner. Under these circumstances, the translation of Wilde’s
Poems in Prose gets sense and finds its motivation.
Nicolae Davidescu’s predilection towards Wilde cannot be interpreted so clearly.
The attraction towards Wilde’s work may be integrated within a profound interest in the
world literature, in general, and in writers like Gautier, Villiers de l’isle-Adam and others,
from whose works he translated.
The two translators offered quite similar Romanian versions. It is only the
translation made by Stamatiad that gets feedback from the part of a contemporary critic:
“Al. I. Stamatiad succeeds in giving independent Romanian existence/life to Oscar Wilde’s
complicated and spiritual art…” 4
Wilde’s short-stories enjoyed great popularity in our country. The first translation
was made in the first half of the 20 th century and the number of translations appeared
before 1944 is almost equal with that appeared after this year, until 1989.
Ranking the difficulties that the works of English writers present for a Romanian
translator, Leon Leviţchi 5 decided to include Oscar Wilde’s short-stories among the works
of the second degree of difficulty (besides most of Robert Browning’s poems and
Shakespeare’s sonnets). His decision was based on the idea that though easy to understand,
Wilde’s style is difficult to be reproduced.
The first short-story that was translated into Romanian was The Fisherman and His
Soul (Pescarul şi sufletul său) due to the work of Dimitrie Anghel (1911). A writer himself
(a poet), Dimitrie Anghel translated from Verlaine, Gautier, Goethe, Lenau, Heine,
Lermontov and Oscar Wilde. It is possible that the translations made from Wilde and
Verlaine are a direct consequence of the fact that Anghel met them in Paris and was
impressed by the sick Verlaine and the corrupt Wilde. What is sure is the fact that Anghel
evoked them in his Povestea celor necăjiţi 6 . Anghel tried to give an air of poetry to his
translation and implicitly, a certain – although pale – musicality. This is easy to notice
when comparing Anghel’s translation with that made by Eugen Boureanu later, in Casa cu
rodii (the translation of The House of Pomegranates); the year of this translation is not
mentioned. Generally speaking, Anghel’s translation follows more closely the English
original than that of Boureanu.
The Devoted Friend (Prietenul devotat) was translated for the first time by Igena
Floru, in 1923 and it was included in a volume together with some other short-stories
written by Wilde: The Happy Prince (Prinţul fericit), The Nightingale and the Rose
(Privighetoarea şi trandafirul), The Selfish Giant (Uriaşul cel egoist), The Remarkable
Rocket (Un artificiu cum nu sunt multe). Other translations of the same short-story belong
to I. Ştefanovici-Svensk (1929 – in the volume Prietenul devotat şi alte povestiri), Eugen
Boureanu (1945 – Prietenul cel bun) and Ticu Arhip (1967 – Prietenul credincios). If the
texts of the different mentioned translations are analysed, the general conclusion is that, no
matter the title, the body text follows quite closely the English version and there are not
striking differences between/among the Romanian versions.
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