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Recommended Translations |
by David Rodeback |
Copyright 2003 by David Rodeback |
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |
If, like most native speakers of English, one cannot read the classics of Russian literature in the original Russian, there are plenty of translations. Each has its merits, and one can read virtually any of them to get a sense of plot, theme, and character. But a certain sort of reader needs (or at least wants) a translation that is at once readable and as faithful as possible to the Russian. In the past, translators have typically taken Tolstoy's or Dostoevsky's Russian, for example, and produced a translation that smooths the rough edges and all too often suppresses the author's humor and tone. The result is very readable, is worth reading, and does not challenge the sensibilities of readers nurtured on the great prose of English literature, but it is not particularly faithful to the original Russian. |
Over the last 15 years, however, the husband and wife translating team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have broken the mold. They have produced one state-of-the-art translation after another, crafting readable prose that nevertheless remains quite faithful to the original Russian. It's not quite as good as reading the great Russian works in Russian, but it's the next best thing. |
Pevear and Volokhonsky have translated several Fyodor Dostoevsky novels, including The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, The Adolescent; a collection of shorter works, entitled The Eternal Husband and Other Stories; and the bizarre and elusive Notes from Underground. They have translated Nikolai Gogol (The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol and Dead Souls), Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina and What Is Art), Mikhail Bulgakov (Master and Margarita), and Anton Chekhov (Kashtanka and Stories. |
Personally, I'm hoping they will range as far as Tolstoy's massive War and Peace or even Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, a great novel of the mid-20th century. The latter exists in an inferior 1985 English translation, which seems to some extent to have sacrificed the richness and imagery of Grossman's prose on the altar of speed. |
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