Thordai János Epiktétosz-fordításának stíluskérdéséhez

Abstract

János Thordai (ca. 1597—1636) was an interesting figure of the late humanist Unitarian intellectual stratum of Transylvania. After studying in Germany, as a teacher in Kolozsvár he translated King David's Psalms and the Enchiridion written by Epictetos. The present study, as a part of a larger work, is an attempt to argue that not only Thordai's Psalm-translations (as recently claimed by a number of studies), but also this translation (made between 1626 and 1636) is characterized by the marks of the late Renaissance prose style. The connecting sentences of his work resolve the conciseness of those of the original, and his synonyms support a tendency to produce local centers, of tension. His epithets are opulent and on several occasions heightened, his images (metaphors, personifications) are suggestively composed. But besides these characteristically late Renaissance qualities of style there is also another, stricter and more exact method of translation, the method of the erudite philologist. This appears in his endeavours to preserve the exactness of ideas, without all the pomp and splendour. These two profiles together reveal the true face of the translator. Thordai's translation is a part of that European anti-Ciceronian movement of style which had already appeared in the second half of the 16th century in Europe — in the first place as a consequence of Justus Lipsius's activity, and this transläcion also proves that we must assume much more consciousness in the translations by the authors of Hungarian artificial prose of the 16th and 17th centuries, than formerly supposed.