Shakespeare's poetry into SpanishSonnet XXX: priority to content or language and verse?

  1. Ruiz, José María
Revista:
ES: Revista de filología inglesa

ISSN: 0210-9689

Año de publicación: 1998

Número: 21

Páginas: 15-40

Tipo: Artículo

Otras publicaciones en: ES: Revista de filología inglesa

Resumen

Two authoritative but contradictory opinions about poetry and its translatability: Goethe considers rhythm and rhyme as primitive and special features in poetry, nevertheless for him the most important and fundamental and the most deeply moving in poetry is that which remains of the poem after having been translated into prose. S.Y. Coleridge, his contemporary, maintains the opposite view: "Whatever lines in poetry can be translated into another words are so far vicious in their diction". He defends the untranslatability of poetry. Shakespeare's poetry and his sonnets have been translated, as a matter of fact, into many languages, and also into Spanish for more than a century. Should priority be given to content or language and style? An answer to this seminal question as exemplified in a number of contemporary Spanish translators of Shakespeare's Sonnet XXX.