The (Un)translatability of Metaphors: Motivical Function and Ambivalence of Meaning in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Golden Pot

Abstract

The Golden Pot, as Hoffmann’s first and most artistical tale, has also been canonized as his literary ars poetica. Henceforth, the intertextual relationship which connects the work to the popular genres of education- and artist novels of the Goethe Era, especially to Novalis’ experimental novel, Henry von Ofterdingen, is given as the authentic milieu of the interpretation. So far, according to literary reception viewing from this angle, The Golden Pot is regarded to be an education novel, as well as the “caricature of it”, which consequently shows a complex reflection of Hoffmann’s ironic-critical attitude towards the programme of the early German Romanticism. Therefore, the greatest challenge the translator must face, is to imply this ironic relation, which is expressed in multiple layers of linguistic metaphors and in various elements of the German text. The perception of metaphorical meanings and of poetical functions of these elements, i. e. their explications or implications as motifs have a defining value of the work’s literary meaning. In my paper, using five different Hungarian editions of The Golden Pot, I would like to draw attention to some of the actual examples of these, yet unsolved translation and interpretation problems, which deprive the Hungarian readers of comprehending all the layers of the meaning in some parts of the text.