imaginary

The novel “Time Shelter”, by Georgi Gospodinov, parodies both the ideological arsenal of communism and that of nationalism, with their symbolic dates, kitsch, and material legacy. It made me think about what and how I was trying to convey them through my translation: much more than "culture" that is transmitted through education, whether in the family, at school, or in society, and which is, therefore, more or less consciously assimilated, it concerns the imaginary on which ideologies rest, since the imaginary contains many emotions, irrational and unconscious things. Yet the notion of “imaginary” has been surprisingly rare and belatedly included in critical reflection on translation, even though philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, and literature have been interested in it since the mid-twentieth century. In this paper I seek to answer the question: is the power of the imaginary translatable in “Time Shelter”?

This article asserts that the poetic intensity in Nezâmi’s “Haft Paykar” is obtained from the intertwining of the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real. The rhetoric of the active imagination, as it is employed in the epic poem, gives access to an imaginary world. The latter is presented as a realm of metaphysical images reflected by the senses. Moreover, it is depicted through mystical visionary narratives. The transition from the symbolic to the real implies a transformation of the being and the spirit. The symbol allows connection to another reality, as it refers to something beyond itself. In the present study, the relationship between the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real in “Haft Paykar” is examined from a psychoanalytic and, above all, Lacanian perspective.