Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

Lecture 1

HERMENEUTICS

· derived from the Greek word ερμηνεύω (hermeneuo, “translate, interpret”), from ερμηνευς (hermeneus, “translator, interpreter”)

· Places its origins with HERMES, the mythological Greek god who was “the messenger of gods” and had to master the language of the gods, understand and interpret what these immortal beings have in mind, and translate and articulate their intention to the mortal beings

· Hermeneutics was initially applied to the interpretation, or exegesis, of Scriptures (A divine message must be received with implicit uncertainty regarding its truth)

· In its barest sense, hermeneutics can be understood as a theory, methodology and praxis of text interpretation

· As this working definition suggests, hermeneutics has three different layers of meanings and concerns

1) theory, which is concerned about the epistemological validity and possibility of interpretation;

2) methodology, which is concerned about the formulation of reliable systems of interpretation;

3) praxis, which is concerned about the actual process of interpreting specific text.

· 1) romanticist hermeneutics, 2) phenomenological hermeneutics, 3) dialectical hermeneutics, 4) critical hermeneutics, and 5) post-structural hermeneutics.

· Such categorization of the diverse hermeneutic systems into just five groups is specified by the variations of the structural components of interpretation itself, of which there are three: namely, 1) the interpreter, or the subject; 2) the thing being interpreted, or the object, which is either a text or a text analogue; and 3) the goal of the interpretive act, which is either truth or meaning.

 

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

· Universal hermeneutics

· Lecture Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Uebersetzens (1813)

· Article Genealogies of Translation Theory: Schleiermacher by Lawrence Venuti (1991)

· For Schleiermacher, “the genuine translator” is a writer “who wants to bring those two completely separated persons, his author and his reader, truly together, and who would like to bring the latter to an understanding and enjoyment of the former as correct and complete as possible without inviting him to leave the sphere of his mother tongue.”

· A. Berman calls attention to the hermeneutical paradigm introduced here, the emphasis on translation as the object of textual interpretation

 

Schleiermacher’s translation concept

· Schleiermacher in fact finds only two methods of effecting the target language reader’s understanding of the source-language “author”:

“Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him (PARAPHRASE); or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him ” (IMITATION)

· Schleiermacher privileges the first method!

· Schleiermacher intended that the goal of [romanticist] hermeneutics is to capture the author’s intention.

Schleiermacher: Hermeneutic Circle

· one’s understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts; one’s understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another – it is a circle.

Reading Hermeneutically

· The hermeneutic circle refers to the circle of interpretation that is involved in the understanding of knowledge. This approach to reading acknowledges that understanding and knowledge is a circle of exposure to information (texts), interpretation, then re-exposure to texts.

· Subsequent to a text offers closer inspection (рядочка не видно)

Grammatical vs psychological understanding

He distinguishes two types of understanding that form the basis of his hermeneutics/

(1) grammatical: Human begins learn language and come to understand the meaning of words.

(2) psychological: Schleiermacher used a divinatory (дівінаційний, інтуїтивний) method in which one individual is able to get inside the perspective of another individual based upon the common elements of humanity shared by all individuals.

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911)

· Deeply influenced by Schleiermacher but rejects his reliance on intuition and feeling as the mean to access the inner aspects of life and proposes historicality of human life instead. Human beings live in temporal space and create expressions of their lived experiences. Dilthey understood man as a historical being.

· History is not described in terms of object of the past, but “ a series of world views ”.

· Dilthey wants to emphasize the “ intrinsic temporality of all understanding ”, that man’s understanding is dependent on past worldviews, interpretations, and a shared world.

 

 

Romanticist Hermeneutics

Authorial Intention

Romantic system of interpretation

 

 

 

Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976)

Heidegger believed that understanding was ontological; his major work "Being and Time" (1927): Language is the house of Being

"The Anaximander Fragment" - Early Greek Thinking: raises the question whether the fragment can speak to us after all these years?... by being in tune with the language, a "bond" which is "broader and stronger, but far less apparent"

· Thus, man is the subject of language and disappears in it. Heidegger wanted language to speak for itself.

· For Heidegger, because of the relation between thinking and translating, and the relation of both to language, it is not thinker's words, but rather the translator's thought, that is translated when he attempts to render a text in his own native language. The resulting text is a recomposition of the original text, not the exchange of words between the vocabularies of two natural languages.

· Translation is viewed as an action, an operation of thought, a translation of our selves into the thought of the other language, ///

Horizontverschmelzung

- Both the text and the interpreter find themselves within a particular historical tradition, or ‘horizon’.

The horizon: an essential part of the ‘hermeneutic situation’ which limits our possibility of hermeneutical vision, or understanding. It includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point, and nothing more.

- “ When reading a text it is understood not simply by making sense of the words on the page but by permitting the horizon of the text to fuse with the horizon of the reader in a way that the reader in a way that the reader is effected by the text. ”

- “Understanding is always a fusion of horizons”

- Gadamer does not, however, argue that for historical understanding, ultimately, we need to place ourselves into the different horizon of a particular historical situation, because this would be an impossible and absurd task.

- We can neither leave our own horizon, nor would it be desirable. As the effective history of a continuing tradition depends on constantly new assimilations and interpretations.

Exemplifying:)

- An anecdote told by Steven Kemper (1991:136)

may exemplify what Gadamer means:

“..restoring sacred places created a ‘fusion of horizons’ in quite a literal sense. I began to think about this fusion after visiting a relic mound with a Sinhala friend. When I asked him whether the place was ancient, he said ‘Yes, it was restored just last year ’.”

- “Tristan and Isolde” in the Ukrainian interpretation by V. Koptilov

«Трістан та Ізольда»: переспів-реконструкція

« Поставивши собі завдання відтворити українською мовою найдавніші давньофранцузькі поетичні варіанти легенди, сучасний перекладач напрапляє на серйозні труднощі. По-перше, всі тексти фрагментарні, по-друге, вони різностильні. Отже, перекладач має вибирати між близьким до тексту першотвору відображенням уривків назавжди втраченого поетичного цілого (але такий переклад може придатися хіба що фахівцям із зарубіжної літератури) і реконструкцією змісту й стилю цього поетичного цілого, що може зацікавити вже не лише фахівців, а, сказати б, і звичайних читачів. Саме другий шлях і обрав автор цих рядків» В. Коптілов

 

Fusion of horizons

Horizon - Horizon

Historical moment - Historical moment

Language- Language

Inner thought - Inner thought

 

…temporal distance is not something that must be overcome. This was, rather, the naïve assumption of historicism, namely that we must set ourselves within the spirit of the age, and think with its ideas and its thoughts, not with our own, and thus advance towards historical objectivity. In fact, the important thing is to recognize the distance in time as a positive and productive possibility of understanding. It is not a yawning abyss, but is filled with the continuity of custom and tradition, in the light of which all that is handed down presents itself to us. (Gadamer)

 

Dialectal hermeneutics is not interested in capturing a single and unified meaning, but instead in an existential meaning, the meaning of the here and now.

 

Phase IІ

Другий етап – пошук в мові перекладу і в традиції літератури, що існує цією мовою, адекватних засобів відтворення найважливіших рис оригіналу [1972, с.72]. Дослідники перекладу згідні, що навіть за умови рівноцінного прочитання одного й того ж твору (перший етап) художні переклади відрізняються ступенем мовної обдарованості перекладача, особливостями мовного опрацювання першотвору. Тому суть праці перекладача на другому етапі – це «визначення шляху, що ним піде перекладач, вибір засобів, які він подалі використовуватиме».

Phase III and IV

 

Третій етап праці перекладача, за аргументацією В. Коптілова, протилежний аналізові, «це – синтез у нове художнє ціле рис, виділених в оригіналі й трансформованих відповідно до особливостей літературної мови перекладу»

 

Четвертий етап – «момент аналітичної перевірки ступеня відповідності перекладеного оригіналові», коли перекладач виступає в ролі критика й дослідника власного перекладу. Ц. стадію названо «новим етапом аналізу», що стає новим витком спіралі творчих шукань перекладача.

 

 

Conclusions…

 

- Hermeneutics as theory, methodology and praxis of text interpretation (from exegesis to universality)

- Schleiermacher & Dilthey: authorial intent & hermeneutic circle

- Heidegger: language as being; (tradition of phenomenology from Husserl)

- Gadamer: horizon and effective-history principle

- Umberto Eco: intentions, overinterpretation, model reader.

- George Steiner: hermeneutic motion

- Hermeneutical translation competence

- Victor Koptilov: phrases of interpretation

Lecture 1

HERMENEUTICS

· derived from the Greek word ερμηνεύω (hermeneuo, “translate, interpret”), from ερμηνευς (hermeneus, “translator, interpreter”)

· Places its origins with HERMES, the mythological Greek god who was “the messenger of gods” and had to master the language of the gods, understand and interpret what these immortal beings have in mind, and translate and articulate their intention to the mortal beings

· Hermeneutics was initially applied to the interpretation, or exegesis, of Scriptures (A divine message must be received with implicit uncertainty regarding its truth)

· In its barest sense, hermeneutics can be understood as a theory, methodology and praxis of text interpretation

· As this working definition suggests, hermeneutics has three different layers of meanings and concerns

1) theory, which is concerned about the epistemological validity and possibility of interpretation;

2) methodology, which is concerned about the formulation of reliable systems of interpretation;

3) praxis, which is concerned about the actual process of interpreting specific text.

· 1) romanticist hermeneutics, 2) phenomenological hermeneutics, 3) dialectical hermeneutics, 4) critical hermeneutics, and 5) post-structural hermeneutics.

· Such categorization of the diverse hermeneutic systems into just five groups is specified by the variations of the structural components of interpretation itself, of which there are three: namely, 1) the interpreter, or the subject; 2) the thing being interpreted, or the object, which is either a text or a text analogue; and 3) the goal of the interpretive act, which is either truth or meaning.

 

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)

· Universal hermeneutics

· Lecture Ueber die verschiedenen Methoden des Uebersetzens (1813)

· Article Genealogies of Translation Theory: Schleiermacher by Lawrence Venuti (1991)

· For Schleiermacher, “the genuine translator” is a writer “who wants to bring those two completely separated persons, his author and his reader, truly together, and who would like to bring the latter to an understanding and enjoyment of the former as correct and complete as possible without inviting him to leave the sphere of his mother tongue.”

· A. Berman calls attention to the hermeneutical paradigm introduced here, the emphasis on translation as the object of textual interpretation