The Constitutive Multilingualism of Literature

Az MMA Művészetelméleti és Módszertani Kutatóintézet, a LangueFlow, a Bielefeldi Egyetem, valamint az EU COST Action MultiLiLiTrans projekt nemzetközi együttműködésében megvalósuló rendezvény, a többnyelvűség és a fordítás irodalomban betöltött szerepét járja körül.

A program keretében Dorijan Hajdu professzor előadása a fordított költészet perspektívájából vizsgálja az irodalom alkotó erejű többnyelvűségét, különös tekintettel Nagy László munkásságára.. Az előadás a fordítást az irodalmi létezés szerves módjaként értelmezi, és arra világít rá, miként bontakoznak ki a költő versei a különböző nyelvek között, illetve hogyan válnak eredendően többnyelvű irodalmi művekké. Az előadást kötetlen szakmai beszélgetés követi.

Felhívjuk figyelmüket, hogy a rendezvény nyelve angol.

Organisers: Research Institute of Art Theory and Methodology (MMA MMKI, Budapest), LangueFlow, Bielefeld University, EU COST Action Project MultiLiLiTrans

Prof. Dorijan Hajdu will introduce the topic in the lecture Literature as Multilingual by Nature: Translation as a Constitutive Force. The presentation is followed by a discussion.

Literary forms and practices come into being from continuous cross-linguistic contact, rather than emerging from self-contained monolingual traditions. Genres migrate between cultures and traditions, enriching them, and texts travel through the world in translation. Readers routinely encounter literature in languages other than those in which it was originally written. From global adaptations of haiku poetry to transnational histories of novels, literary production and reception are shaped by processes of transfer, mediation and reinterpretation across linguistic boundaries. Consequently, multilingualism is not a secondary or external condition imposed upon literature, but a foundational element of its formation, circulation and meaning-making. To understand literature, researchers are required to pay close attention to the multilingual dynamics constituting its core.

This event is part of the EU COST project Literary multilingualism and social transformations in superdiverse societies (MultiLiLiTrans), WorkGroup 4.

Prof. Dorijan Hajdu, Scandinavian Department, University of Belgrade & Researcher at MMA MMKI

Literature as Multilingual by Nature: Translation as a Constitutive Force

This lecture explores the constitutive multilingualism of literature through the prism of poetry in translation, focusing on the Hungarian poet László Nagy on the centenary of his birth (1925). Treating translation not as a secondary derivative but as an integral mode of literary existence, the presentation examines how Nagy’s poems unfold across languages and thereby become inherently multilingual literary works.

The analysis centers on two poems in Swedish, Serbian and English, with the Hungarian originals functioning as a tertium comparationis. Special attention is paid to how each target language establishes its own relationship to the source text and how the translations relate to one another, forming a multilingual constellation rather than a simple source–target hierarchy. Where multiple translations of the same poem exist, the study compares different translators’ strategies, highlighting translation as an interpretive and creative act.

Through close linguistic and metrical analysis, the lecture investigates phenomena such as semantic density, rhythmic restructuring, and tendencies toward “padding” or “compacting” also through wider set of examples, demonstrating how poetic meaning is redistributed across languages. These shifts are discussed in terms of their aesthetic consequences and their impact on readers in different linguistic contexts.

By foregrounding translation as a site where literary meaning is continually renegotiated, the contribution argues that literature itself is fundamentally multilingual, and that translation functions as a central cultural and artistic mechanism through which this multilingualism becomes visible and productive.

Participation is free, but advance registration is required. Please register by April 7 by emailing rendezveny@mma-mmki.hu.