Article

Name: Concept of tree in Varlam Shalamov’s “Kolyma tales” and their translations into Italian

Authors: F. Varlaro

Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: This paper aims to analyze the metaphorical meaning of phytonyms in Russian and Italian languages and the Russian-Italian version of Shalamov’s literary text. After analyzing the author’s style, we examined the thematic group of phytonyms and their use in the “Kolyma tales.” We divided trees into two categories: 1. plants – the main characters represented by a system of metaphors; 2. plants occurring once or twice in the tales and in a neutral way (even having significant meanings in the Russian culture). The phytometaphor of the stlanik (dwarf cedar), from the first category, is a leitmotif in almost all Shalamov’s works, especially in the “Kolyma tales” and in the “Kolyma notebooks,” where the phytonym has a complex symbolic meaning characteristic of the word tree in general (life, green, wood) but also linked to the author’s view of the world. In Shalamov’s works, the tree reflects not only the picture of the northern nature but also takes on special meanings more related to the prisoner and his physical and psychological characteristics. Thanks to Shalamov, the lexeme stlanik was introduced into the Russian linguistic view of the world. Also, the analysis of the adequate interpretation of this keyword in the translations of the “Kolyma tales” into Italian revealed that when the translation contains a description of parts of this phytonym, for example, branches, the metaphor of the original text is sometimes lost in the translation.

Keywords: phytometaphor, phytonym, Shalamov, communicative lexicology, comparative linguistics, Italian and Russian languages, translation

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