Decadence or decay? On the Russian translation of a French word

Abstract

The article is concerned with variants of the Russian translation of the French term ‘décadence.’ Until the middle of the 19th c., Russian translators used the word ‘upádok’ [‘decay’]. However, beginning with translations of Baudelaire’s works and Flaubert’s Le Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues [The Dictionary of Received Ideas], ‘upádok’ is replaced by ‘dekadans’ [‘decadence’]. The author argues against the latter variant and points out the flaws in the interpretation of literary history that arise from its use. Opting for the term ‘decadence’ while translating texts that predate the actual French Decadent movement by ten to twenty years, the translators effectively portray Baudelaire as the movement’s founder, whereas his own view of the phenomenon he described as ‘décadence’ was mixed, at the very least, nor can he be credited with having laid out the movement’s principles. Even less appropriately, the variant ‘decadence’ appears in translations of utterances by the bourgeois characters ridiculed by Flaubert in his Dictionary of Received Ideas. The author supports her arguments with an analysis of Baudelaire’s and Flaubert’s use of the term ‘décadence’ in various contexts and corresponding Russian translations.