What are You Reading Now?
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I just wanted to add...ironically this seeming "awkwardness" of the P&V is precisely what made me decide it was preferable based on what I had read about the translations.
Below are the key excerpts from the New Yorker essay in case anyone who is interested may not have had the time or inclination to read the whole thing:
The famous style of “convulsions” and “nervous trembling,” he wrote, becomes under Garnett’s pen “a safe blandscript: not a volcano, but a smooth lawn mowed in the English manner—which is to say a complete distortion of the original.”
Their hope was to be true to Dostoyevsky, right down to his famous penchant for repetition, seeming sloppiness, and melodrama.
Dostoyevsky’s detractors have faulted him for erratic, even sloppy, prose and what Nabokov, the most famous of the un-fans, calls his “gothic rodomontade.” “Dostoyevsky did write in a hurry,” Pevear said. “He had terrible deadlines to meet. He wrote ‘Crime and Punishment’ and ‘The Gambler’ simultaneously. He knew that if he didn’t finish ‘The Gambler’ on time he would lose the rights to all his future books for the next nine years. That’s when he hired his future wife as a stenographer and dictated it to her. Tolstoy was better paid, and he didn’t even need the money. And yet Dostoyevsky’s roughness, despite the rush and the pressure, was all deliberate. No matter what the deadline, if he didn’t like what he had, he would throw it all out and start again. So this so-called clumsiness is seen in his drafts, the way he works on it. It’s deliberate. His narrator is not him; it’s always a bad provincial writer who has an unpolished quality but is deeply expressive. In the beginning of ‘The Brothers Karamazov,’ in the note to the reader, there is the passage about ‘being at a loss to resolve these questions, I am resolved to leave them without any resolution.’ He stumbles. It’s all over the place.”
“And this is how people speak,” Volokhonsky said. “We mix metaphors, we stumble, we make mistakes.”
“Other translators smooth it out,” Pevear said. “We don’t.”
The Translation Wars
How the race to translate Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky continues to spark feuds, end friendships, and create small fortunes.
Yes, I used to have friendly debates with a Russian professor who’d read the originals and who gently pointed out to me I was reading Constance Garnett. No doubt it is true. I can only say I’ve enjoyed her translations more than the others I’ve tried. I get into the world of the novel more completely. That’s what matters to me.I've thought of reading the Garnett versions as well, but I so deeply loved the P&V that I'm not sure I want to experience it any other way. I may at some point read the Garnett Karamazov.
I didn't start reading Dostoevsky until the '90s. I don't remember what initially drew me to it, but so glad I did...there's just so much that resonates deeply with me. His life with the near execution experience and the Siberian prison and how his views changed and evolved interest me a lot as well...Frank's biography is fascinating.
Regarding the translations, I've read some various things regarding the differences, and the P&V approach seems more appealing to me. Below is an interesting piece that includes commentary on Garnett and P&V.:
The Translation Wars
How the race to translate Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky continues to spark feuds, end friendships, and create small fortunes.www.newyorker.com
Same. And even the ones I do not reread, I keep for reference purposes. Plus I just love books...and in a world run mostly by Orwellian lunatics, the digitization process of everything is like putting it all into a giant heap to be set aflame. Unaltered hard copies of original text may be rare treasures in the future.
I find it amusing that Amazon's "devices" are called Fire and Kindle.
Not to derail, but does anyone here enjoy audiobooks? I do the bulk of my reading with them. I prefer female readers, and Brits when possible. When I was a boy our teachers (all female) would read to us. I always found it soothing and it must’ve stuck. Audiobooks can take your drive-time (and walking, rucking, yard work time) to a whole new level. It’s a great way to fit in more books in a year.
Also, do you all keep book logs? I’ve been cataloging my reading since I got seriously into books and self-education about 20 years ago. It’s fun and informative to go back and see what I’ve read, see patterns emerge in my thinking, and track the course of my further education.
Also, do you all keep book logs? I’ve been cataloging my reading since I got seriously into books and self-education about 20 years ago. It’s fun and informative to go back and see what I’ve read, see patterns emerge in my thinking, and track the course of my further education.
I used to listen to audiobooks back when I had a commute. I really enjoyed them and it made the commute something I kind of looked forward to.
I keep book logs too! It’s fun to go back and see the patterns of interests I had. Sometimes it reminds me to go revisit some books/series or expand on that interest . I used to keep track of the books I read because I wanted to read as many books a year as I possibly could. I’ve stopped caring about how many books I read and I just try to slow down and enjoy them instead of rushing through them. I scratch my head as to why I did that but I guess I was young and thought it was a competition haha. Reading is even more enjoyable when I slow down and savor a good book.
Wow, we are very similar! I also used to try and cram in as many books as possible in a year. Looking back that was kind of stupid, but I was also a lot younger and I guess I was trying to catch up from years of wasted time. It’s funny how we can lose track of what reading and learning is all about.
These days, like you, I am slowing down and reading less but enjoying it a lot more and gleaning a lot more from the books I read.
I still get entirely too caught up in writing down quotes from the books I read though. I have a lot of notebooks filled with such a quotes! That can also get hard to wade through after a while. I used to write down a lot more stuff when I first started reading, but these days it has to really strike me hard to make it into one of my notebooks.
I think that the translation issue is really all about preference, unless you are an academic. My first experiences of reading Dostoevsky were all Garnett, and that is the version I fell in love with. I switched to P&V and struggled through several works, only to realize that they just don't resonate with me.
Interestingly, I've only ever read Tolstoy translated by P&V and I have loved it. I don't know if their style just fit his better or if it is just my expectations. So, I don't have anything against P&V, but when it comes to Dostoevsky, I won't be reading their versions.
I have been using Goodreads to log my reading for the last 15 years or so, and it is a lot of fun looking back at my history and at the statistics they provide.
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose. “Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the opening of the American west”
To those I would add Notes from Underground; although Crime and Punishment is my personal favorite.
Yes, absolutely...I was only listing the major novels, but I do love the novellas such as Notes from Underground, Notes from a Deadhouse, The Gambler, The Double, as well as the shorter stories such as The Eternal Husband and the others in that collection...there are some real gems there as well.
That's a great book. The movie adaptation was surprisingly good.
I'm a fan of this author, this looks promising, released today.
I need to listen to a “new to me” audiobook sometime soon. Every year or so I try listening to an audiobook but I always choose a book I love and know. The result has been that I am totally unsatisfied because I already have the authors voice in my head. I expect a certain cadence and it bothers me when words and names are pronounced differently than I expect. I’m sure I would enjoy an audiobook if I came to it without preconceptions or if it were read by the original author. Unfortunately I have a hard time finding contemporary literature that I can really get into.
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