Lakhasly

In "On Intersemiotic Transposition" Cluver explicates his application of semiotic principles. By relying on Roman Jakobson and by invoking Nelson Goodman's and Wendy Steiner's work, he postulates the following: "Literature as a semiotic system is as weakly or strongly determined as painting, and as subject to fluctuations.The meaning of a poem is no more self-evident and unambiguous than that of a pictorial text ... If we accept the idea that an English poem can be re-created as a Spanish poem, then we should also be able to accept that a painting can be translated into a poem.

In “On Intersemiotic Transposition” Clüver explicates his
application of semiotic principles. By relying on Roman Jakobson and by
invoking Nelson Goodman’s and Wendy Steiner’s work, he postulates the
following: “Literature as a semiotic system is as weakly or strongly
determined as painting, and as subject to fluctuations. The meaning of a
poem is no more self-evident and unambiguous than that of a pictorial
text … If we accept the idea that an English poem can be re-created as a
Spanish poem, then we should also be able to accept that a painting can
be translated into a poem. Finding equivalents in a different semiotic
system may be more difficult, and the sacrifices must be greater (and
sometimes the gains more spectacular), but a successful intersemiotic
transposition should not be considered less possible that a successful
interlingual translation of a poem” (61–62). Arguing from a theoretical
position informed by new criticism, structuralism, and semiotics, Clüver
is among the voices that offer the kind of theoretical glossary or
interpretive system within which comparative literature scholars are able
to approach creative works that travel between the arts (on recent work
about the other arts and literature, see, e.g., Grigorian, Baldwin, Rigaud-
Drayton; Joret and Remael.
In the twentieth century a great number of studies were published
about the interpretation of literature and/with that of other arts,
acknowledging the fact that the practice of translation or transposition
and of comparison began in antiquity, but that the critical analysis of
same is fairly new. While the Renaissance did point to convergences
between disciplines, not until the eighteenth century—with the beginning
of the study of aesthetics representing the numerous debates during the
Enlightenment and after on the comparability of the arts and their
significance for human experience and expression—did theoretical
discussions emerge from examining interart creations.