G. Mazzini’s Early Works on Philosophy of History: Challenges of Translation and Interpretation
Aleksandr Vukolov
This article focuses on some challenges and nuances of translating two early texts by the Italian thinker Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) into Russian: the article Of a European Literature (1829) and open anonymous letter to King Charles Albert of Sardinia (1831). The author analyzes different translations for the existing ambiguous units and also presents possible interpretations of these works on philosophy of history, justifying each translation decision. The paper’s first part explores the meaning of the word “una” in the title of the article Of a European Literature (D’una Letteratura Europea). Tracing the history of the “Goethean” epigraph to this Mazzini’s writing and examining its content, the author comes to the following conclusion. In this case, “una” can be perceived as either a numeral meaning “united” (in a moral sense) or an indefinite article, which indicates the unspecified and hypothetical nature of the concept of European literature. The article’s second part covers interpretations of the characteristic “Un Italiano” found at the beginning of the letter to Charles Albert. As the author shows, it can be applicable both to the Sardinian monarch, who is called to head a “united, free, and independent” Italian nation, and to Mazzini himself, who had already used the signature “An Italian” in several of his previous works. Furthermore, this part discusses the practical goals Mazzini may have had when distributing this letter among Italians in the summer of 1831. In the author’s opinion, following P. Ricœur, such parallelism of different but equally relevant interpretations should be viewed as “not a drawback or vice, but a virtue of understanding, which forms the essence of interpretation.