The Untranslatable Depth of "Wooden Song": Unveiling Slavic Identity Traits through Poetry Translation

The paper presents the results of the research on the translatability of Drvena pesma (Eng. Wooden Song), written and performed by Đorđe Balašević, appreciated by experts, and included recently in one of the textbooks for primary education in Serbia (Grujić et al. 2021). The research is based on the translation of the key elements of the poem, in which the author retraces the various phases of his life: childhood, boyhood, that of an enamored man and death at the end, through symbolic elements made of wood that represent them, respectively: “дрвени коњић” (wooden rocking horse), “дрвена тамбура” (wooden guitar), “дрвени кревет” (wooden bed) and “дрвени сандук” (wooden coffin). The two stanzas are linked by a refrain about the life and destiny of the tree that these wooden objects are made of. The research is based on the analysis of the translation of the abovementioned elements (and others considered relevant) in the texts in representative languages belonging to the Slavic, Romance and Germanic branch of languages (in alphabetical order): Bulgarian, Czech, French, German, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian, in order to mark the difference between the key words related to ‘tree’ (the plant) and ‘wood’ (referring to the material). The lexemic equivalent between the tree as a living element and wood as a material is essential for capturing the profound meaning of the text. The results of the analysis lead to the conclusion that Balašević intuitively perceived his self-declared Slavic identity numerous times (through autobiographical songs, novels, interviews, etc.) and that the profound meaning of the song can be conveyed with less effort only in Slavic languages.