The Suffering Amazon: Karolina Pavlova’s French Translation of Schiller’s Joan of Arc

• In Event: 19th-Century Russophone Women Writers II: Women and Translation

Abstract

Karolina Pavlova (1807-1893), Russia’s foremost female poet of the nineteenth century, was trilingual in Russian, German and French and translated between these languages in both directions. This paper applies a feminist critical lens to Pavlova’s French translation of Friedrich Schiller’s drama Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans, 1801), which she published in Paris in 1839. By recasting Schiller’s blank verse play in rhymed alexandrines, Pavlova asserted her own poetic authority over the text of her male “rival.” At the same time, she modified the wording of the source text to express her personal view of the plot, countering Schiller’s androcentric glorification of Joan of Arc by drawing attention to her plight as a victim of patriarchy. If Schiller’s stated goal was to rescue Joan of Arc from Voltaire’s enlightenment mockery, Pavlova intended to rescue her from Schiller’s romantic idealization with an empathetic perspective motivated by female solidarity.

Author

• Adrian J. Wanner, Pennsylvania State U