“Strong” musical texts: Gaining primacy (from “Carmen” by P. Merimee to “Carmen” by J. Bizet

Abstract

The article addresses secondary verbal, non-verbal and not only verbal (hybrid) versions of a “strong” original of fiction, which in modern humanitarian discourse is understood as a text that has both indisputable high aesthetic and cultural value and a number of other mandatory parameters (wide popularity in “one’s own” and “foreign” cultures, inclusion in the programs of various levels of education and in national / world book ratings, regular high reinterpretability of its information by means of various semiotic systems). The research results allow us hypothetically propose a probability of existence in the cultural space of various regions and a whole world of a polysemiotic multicomponent center of translation attraction. The creation of secondary versions of an original (primary) text is due to the inherent ambiguity of its information and can be described in the light of such new categories of Literary Translation Studies as the inexhaustibility of the original (the potential possibility for a theoretically infinite number of a primary text interpretations) and translation multiplicity (the existence of an original text in numerous secondary forms). Translational multiplicity presupposes the translation of a verbal original text by means of “one’s own” language (intralingual translation type), “foreign” language (interlingual type) or “languages” of other semiotic systems (intersemiotic type). Under certain conditions, secondary versions can also obtain a status of a “strong” text (in the broad sense of text). The work examines the situation in which a verbal text of fiction becomes a “strong” musical text. The material under study were the relations between the verbal text of P. Merimee’s novella “Carmen” and the hybrid opera text of the same name by J. Bizet which have resulted into creation of the world culture unique supertext.