REGARDS SUR LES TRADUCTIONS FRANÇAISES DE LA DAME DE PIQUE (ПИКОВАЯ ДАМА) DE POUCHKINE. ESSAI D'ETUDE COMPARATIVE DES TRADUCTIONS DE PROSPER MERIMEE (1852) ET DE DIMITRI SESEMANN

Abstract: Alexander Pushkin (Moscow, 1799 - St Petersburg, 1837) was still unknown in France when he published his first poems: Souvenirs à Tsarskoïe Selo (1814), Ode à la liberté (1817), Rouslan et Ludmila (1820). This was due to the difficulties of translating from Russian into French. Russian is a language characterised by its precision, making the translation of Russian texts an arduous and complex task. A writer of short stories, it was thanks to the Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin (Повести покойного Ивана Петровича Белкина) that Pushkin made a name for himself in France, particularly through his famous short story The Queen of Spades, published in 1833 and part of the fantasy genre. Of the many translations of the short story, Prospère Mérimée's 1852 translation is of greater interest because it allows certain "liberties", both narratological and stylistic, which, paradoxically, make Pushkin's text more accessible. Our contribution consists of a review of the various translations of the Queen of Spades, focusing on those by Prosper Mérimée (1852) and Dimitri Sesemann (1989). We are interested in the stylistic and narratological changes introduced by the two translators in order to attempt a comparative study of the two translations, which come from two different eras (a century separates the two translations). The purpose of this comparative study is to highlight the choices made by the two translators and the influence of one (Merimee's) on the other (Sesemann's), as well as the influence of the source text (Pushkin's) on the two translations.

Key words: French translation, Russian literature, Pushkin, Mérimée, Sesemann.