Interviews With Translators

Since this blog serves as my online filing system (surprise!) and since I happened to read two interviews with Russian-to-English translators last week, I thought I’d devote a post (meaning this post) to them: translator interviews aren’t exactly uncommon but these two covered points I especially enjoy reading about. The death last week of Gregory Rabassa, who translated from the Spanish and Portuguese, reminded me of an interview with him that I especially enjoyed reading, too.

First off, from a brief Q&A on the Pushkin Press site, here’s the beginning of Robert Chandler’s answer the question “What does being a translator mean to you?”:

I was once introduced to an acclaimed French translator of Shakespeare.  I was taken aback by my own entirely unexpected reaction: I felt envious of him.  He could get close to Shakespeare in a way that I can’t.

The more I think about what Robert says, the more moving I find his answer and the more I envy that French translator, too! The closeness of which Robert speaks is one of my favorite parts of translating. There’s a technical closeness with the text that can result in remembering specific words and usage from specific books, and even where tricky passages are located on their pages, and then there’s an emotional side, too: some books make me cry on each and every draft because I feel the stories so deeply on every each and draft. I learned a lot about thoroughness and collaboration from working with Robert on a Platonov story, and it was a joy to observe and sense his closeness with Platonov.

When asked to recommend just one book from Russian literature, Robert began his answer with this:

Andrey Platonov, ‘The Return’: This short story about an army captain returning home to his family in 1946 is one of the wisest works of literature I know.  It is also both tender and funny.

“The Return” (“Возвращение”), which I’ve written about in the past (here) is a beautiful story that I love recommending to anybody and everybody. It’s in Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida and it’s in Soul, in Robert’s translation. I’ll also mention that it makes me happy that Robert cites 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution, which Boris Dralyuk is editing for Pushkin Press; I translated a short story by Mikhail Prishvin for the book. I can’t wait to see 1917 toward the end of the year.

Liesl Schillinger’s interview with Jamey Gambrell, on the Los Angeles Review of Books site, could keep me writing posts for an entire month! I have tremendous respect for Gambrell’s translation of Vladimir Sorokin’s Day of the Oprichnik (previous post), which I should keep on my desk at all times: just opening Day to any random page is instant inspiration because a) I know this book had to be difficult to translate, b) Gambrell makes it look like this painstaking work was easy to do, and c) I can tell she had fun. Translation is painstaking fun.

I enjoyed the whole interview and—among other things—am glad to see that Gambrell thinks there’s been an upturn in the publishing of literary translations in recent years. (I share her belief so if I’m delusional, at least I’m not alone in my delusions!) Still, it’s Gambrell’s answers about process that felt closest. Nearly a dozen drafts sounds like a lot until I start thinking about how many times I go through my manuscripts, on the screen and on paper (they sure pile up fast…). Probably what I identify with most, though, in terms of process—this is something that has amazed me ever since it was part of my life as a freelance writer, too—is how the work seems to require hours of agonizing thinking about difficult passages but then resolutions seem to appear by magic. Meaning: out of thin air, despite the hours of agonizing thinking. After mentioning a specific passage from a Tolstaya story that’s filled with quotations from Pushkin, nursery rhymes, and all manner of other references, Gambrell says:

I must have spent three weeks on these three or four pages alone. I went back to it again and again. Sometimes I’d wake up in the morning and say, “That’s how I want to do it!” In that sense, I think that’s where being a translator and a writer overlap; when you are working on a piece like that, it sits in your head and simmers, and there is a process going on even if you are not aware of it. You will be in the middle of something, talking to someone, and you’ll suddenly break off and go, “Oh! That’s the word!” It is so wonderful when that happens — so rewarding.

This is one of the best feelings in the world. The shower seems to be where I make my biggest “policy” decisions about translations and cooking seemed to dredge up vocabulary insights and associations. The hows and whys of what goes on in my head are mysteries I don’t think I want to solve. Ever.

Finally, Gregory Rabassa’s death last week reminded me of Susan Bernofsky’s 2013 interview with Rabassa for The Rumpus. I read the interview when Gabriel García Márquez died in 2014 and it’s stuck with me because, I suspect, of the liveliness of the conversation, the mention of similarities between translation and acting, and Rabassa’s multiple uses of the word “fun.”

Disclaimers: The usual, plus I’m feeling a bit lazy and sleepy after a beach outing this afternoon.

Up Next: Eugene Vodolazkin’s The Aviator, which I’m still mulling over, trying to figure out how to write about it without giving away the whole story; Alexander Snegirev’s Vera, which I am now officially calling Faith; Maria Galina’s ever-mysterious Autochthons; and Aleksei Ivanov’s Nasty Weather/Nenast’e, which went to the beach with me this afternoon.

Moscow Trip Report: Book Fair, Kongress, and Miscellany

My trip to Moscow last month turned out to be even more packed with events, meetings, and, of course, books than I’d expected… I’ll just get right to it with a few highlights…

With visible soft sign.

Andrei Platonov. I visited Andrei Platonov’s grave at the Armenian Cemetery on my first full day in Moscow: I wasn’t quite sure where to find Platonov and had to ask several people before a helpful security guard and his friend (who’d never heard of Platonov and grilled me about what to read) led me to Platonov’s grave. I would certainly have found it without the guard: two people were celebrating Platonov’s life, graveside, with vodka and a book. There’s something a bit odd about Platonov’s gravestone: at certain times, depending on the sun’s angle, the soft sign at the end of the word писатель (writer) seems to disappear. I noticed it was missing as we stood, talking, and everyone assured me it existed… and it did reappear a while later. Platonov turned up again, in the form of a book of his letters, published in 2013 by Elena Shubina’s imprint at AST: writer Vladimir Sharov very kindly gave me his extra copy and it’s a nice, heavy book with lots of photos, footnotes, and a lengthy introduction by Natalya Kornienko. For more: EricNaiman’s review in The Times LiterarySupplement complements positive comments I heard from a writer friend.

The Congress of Literary Translators. The main reason I went to Moscow was the Congress of Literary Translators, hosted by the Institute of [Literary] Translation at the Library of Foreign Literature. Each attendee presents a brief paper within a small “section”: with over 200 attendees from 55 countries, there were nine simultaneous sections. That might sound like a madhouse but everything seems to work itself out. Scheduling conflicts meant I missed a few talks I wanted to hear, but each section I attended magically worked out to a manageable size that allowed dialogue. I’ve come to appreciate the short presentations, too: at first it felt difficult to come up with something meaningful and brief but I now think of the mini-papers as executive summaries or micro-length case studies of current work… My paper addressed usage and translation of old language in contemporary fiction, drawing on my work on Marina Stepnova’s The Women of Lazarus, Vladislav Otroshenko’s Addendum to a Photo Album, and Evgenii Vodolazkin’s Laurus. I spoke most about Laurus since I could offer a method for my handling of old Russian words: I have a raft of reference materials but find it particularly useful to compare Bible translations (the Elizabeth and Tyndale translations) on the STEP Bible site from Tyndale House at the University of Cambridge. One of the high points of my Kongress was the chance to speak with Vodolazkin about Laurus—particularly that old language—and my translation. During a joint evening session with Valerii Popov, Vodolazkin, who’s a scholar of Russian medieval literature at Pushkin House, mentioned that he had to get away from the philological before he could write the book: he didn’t want to write a professory book. And he didn’t which is why, I think, his medieval setting and occasional archaisms work so well, so organically… As for other papers, I particularly enjoyed Christine Mestre’s talk about translating dialogue in Elizaveta Aleksandrova-Zorina’s The Little Man: Christine mentioned topics including mistakes in characters’ speech and handling details on what people do as they speak. The Little Man is one of the books I brought home so I’ll be watching for those elements. A few other papers of interest: Margherita Crepax on enriching language through translation; Oliver Ready on his translation of Vladimir Sharov’s Before & During, which I’d just read; and Kristina Rotkirch on Margarita Khemlin.

The Moscow International Book Fair. I made two trips to the book fair this year: beyond more opportunities to buy books and hear presentations, the weather was so nice I was more than happy to make the trip twice and do more walking between the Metro and the pavilion at VDNKh where the book fair is held! My biggest book fair highlight was probably hearing Marina Stepnova speak and then meeting her when I asked her to sign a copy of her new novel, Безбожный переулок, known in English as Italian Lessons, about a Moscow doctor and, well, freedom. Another highlight: meeting, by chance, Viktor Remizov, author of Воля вольная, known in English as Ashes and Dust, which I’m reading now. Remizov’s book looks at freedom, too, but from a completely different angle: through hunters and fishermen in the Russian Far East. They’re an odd pair to read one after the other but both are very good. I also bought Tatyana Tolstaya’s collection Легкие миры. Among other things…

All Those Other Books. It’s obvious from the photo why my checked baggage was overweight this time! Fortunately, all I had to do to avoid charges was pull out the copy of Sofia Lubensk(a)y(a)’s idiom/phraseology dictionary and stick it in my (wheeled) carry-on bag. This isn’t the updated 2014 edition of Lubensky’s Russian-English Dictionary of Idioms but, at 500 rubles, the 2004 edition is easy on the budget. As is the new Ozhegov dictionary I bought in the cheap-paper edition to save space and weight—it has 43,000 more words than my (very!) old Ozhegov but takes up less than half the space. My new dictionary of Russian Orthodox terms (for children!) is very helpful in translating Laurus, as is the “almanac” Текст и традиция (Text and Tradition), which Vodolazkin gave me: it includes his very engaging article about medieval writing and contemporary literature. And then there’s an anthology of Russian translations of contemporary Georgian poetry, compiled by poets Maxim Amelin and Shota Iatashvili, both of whom were at the Kongress… I loved hearing various translators read some of the poems at an evening presentation, particularly since I knew next to nothing about contemporary Georgian poetry before meeting Shota. I also brought back a few “thick” journals that I bought at the book fair: the woman at the thick journal booth particularly recommended a few specific novels (she even threw in a free issue so I could finish one of them!) so I bought those issues and then, of course, started by randomly reading articles and reviews. I wish it were more practical/reliable to subscribe to a journal or two. As for the other books in the photo, it’s hard to pick favorites but I’m particularly looking forward to Zakhar Prilepin’s The Cloister, which many people recommended, Aleksei Nikitin’s Victory Park, and Aleksei Tolstoy’s Engineer Garin’s Hyperboloid, which I’ve always wanted to read, if only because of the word “hyperboloid.”

Disclaimers & Disclosures: The usual. I work on occasional projects for the Institute of Translation, which subsidized many of my travel expenses, and Read Russia. Many of the books in the photo were gifts. Thank you!

Up Next. Yasnaya Polyana Award winners on Tuesday. Then books galore… After something of a summer slump, I’ve been having a great reading run, starting with Evgeny Vodolazkin’s first novel, Solovyov and Larionov, and followed by Marina Stepnova’s latest book, Italian Lessons and Viktor Remizov’s Ashes and Dust. There’s also a bunch of books I’ve been reading in English. I’m glad to have lots of books waiting for posts: after Ashes and Dust, my next Russian-language book will likely be Zakhar Prilepin’s rather long (okay, very long) The Cloister, which has relatively small print, too, meaning it will take some time.

Image Credit. Platonov’s grave photo by Andranikpasha, through Wikipedia Commons.

Favorite Russian Writers A to Я: Pushkin, Pasternak, Platonov, Panova

Well, I’ve done the unthinkable twice today: first I posted a piece to the wrong blog, for which I apologize, now I’ve skipped the letters N (Н) and O in my “Favorite Russian Writers” series. I don’t mean to disappoint fans of Nabokov, Nekrasov, Odoevsky, or Okudzhava but I don’t have any real, true favorites among those letters… despite enjoying Nabokov’s Gogol and some of Ostrovsky’s plays. Beyond a dearth of N and O favorites, the letter P (П) is so much more fun that I’m happy to jump N and O…

The letter P, of course, has to start with Alexander Pushkin, who would be a favorite just for his Повести Белкина (Belkin Tales) (previous post) and the short story “Пиковая дама” (“Queen of Spades”). They get better for me with each rereading. And then there’s all the poetry…

Moving into the Soviet era, I can’t not mention Boris Pasternak, whose Доктор Живаго (Doctor Zhivago) I read multiple times in grad school. Even if I didn’t enjoy Zhivago as much when I read it four years ago (previous post), I still have a deep sentimental attachment to my experiences (re)reading and talking about the book in school, trying to figure out the meaning of the rowan tree and gathering references to sources of light so I could write a paper. Plus there’s the Pasternak dacha, which I visited regularly when I lived in Moscow.

Platonov's grave, Moscow. 

Then we have Andrei Platonov, whose “Возвращение” (“The Return”) is one of the most perfect short stories I’ve ever read. I think “Родина электричества” (“The Motherland of Electricity”) was my introduction to Platonov, though, followed by his difficult Котлован (The Foundation Pit) (previous post) and his wonderfully disorienting Ювенильное море (Juvenile Sea or Sea of Youth) (previous post). I think disorientation is what I love so much about Platonov: his word choices, word order, and word inventions create texts that jar me linguistically and emotionally. Platonov may be my favorite of these favorites. 

Another favorite is Vera Panova, whose novella Серёжа (translated as Seryozha and Time Walked and A Summer to Remember) is a beautiful account of a child’s life with his mother and new stepfather. My previous post generated lots of very enthusiastic comments from people who first read Seryozha in Tamil, Bengali, and other languages. I thought Panova’s Спутники, (The Train), about people who work on a hospital train during World War 2, was also very good.

Among contemporary writers, Zakhar Prilepin is probably my closest to a favorite, thanks to his Грех (Sin) and a few short stories that I also thought were very good; I enjoyed his political novel Санькя (San’kya) far less.

Bonus! Daniel Kalder, who writes a weekly column for RIA Novosti, sent the link to his interview with Russian critic Lev Danilkin; it’s in English. Danilkin mentions Prilepin and another P writer—Victor Pelevin—as popular, even naming Pelevin when asked “Who are the great authors of today?” I was particularly happy to see Danilkin mention books that discuss the October events of 1993… Enjoy!

Up next: Andrei Rubanov’s Жизнь удалась (All That Glitters, on his literary agency’s page). And more soon about Read Russia and BookExpo America… 

Photo: SreeBot, via Wikipedia. 

Happy New Year & Reading Highlights from 2011

Happy new year! С Новым годом! I hope 2012 bring you plenty of fun and absorbing Russian books to read, no matter what language you read in. Before we finish with 2011, I thought I’d write up a quick list of books I particularly enjoyed during the year:

Favorite book. I can’t decide on just one favorite, so I’ll name two, listing them alphabetically by author surname: Mikhail Gigolashvili’s The Interpreter (previous post) and Mikhail Shishkin’s Maidenhair (previous post). Both books felt especially exuberant, with lively voices and structures, and subject matter that’s difficult to summarize. I think this must have been my year for books of this type: I also loved Thomas Pletzinger’s Funeral for a Dog, which I read in Ross Benjamin’s German-to-English translation (post on my other blog).

Favorite newer release. I didn’t do so well with books released during late 2010 or 2011—an unusually high number of the year’s Big Book finalists were clunkers for me—but I did enjoy Iurii Buida’s Blue Blood (previous post) once I got past the first 50 pages and got used to Buida’s patterns. The book may be too quirky or collage-like (to borrow from Alexander Anichkin’s comment) for some readers but something (?) managed to win me over.

Favorite “what’s old is new” work. Andrei Platonov’s Juvenile Sea, sometimes Sea of Youth, (previous post) still rings in my mind… it’s probably those pumpkin sleeping pods. I think it’s safe to say that Platonov is my favorite writer who must be read slowly; I seem to read every paragraph at least twice. I love how Platonov arranges his words.

Favorite discovery. A few of Fazil’ Iskander’s Chik stories (previous post) and a novella (previous post) were enough to give me a new favorite writer whose stories I want to ration and read over time. I particularly love Iskander’s gentle humor and his ability to portray the everyday injustices of Soviet life.

Favorite work of nonfiction. I only read a few books of nonfiction this year but Frank Westerman’s Engineers of the Human Soul: The Grandiose Propaganda of Stalin’s Russia (previous post), translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett, was my kind of book, thanks to its combination of socialist realism and irrigation in the Soviet Union.

Travel. Book-related travel was a treat, a big highlight of 2011: I met a lot of you at the London Book Fair, BookExpo America, and the American Literary Translators Association Conference. I hope to see and meet more of you in 2012, particularly given the market focus on Russia at BookExpo America—I’ve already been excited about BEA 2012 for over a year! I’m sure I’ll be writing more about BEA when details are available.

What’s next? This isn’t book news, but I’m also excited about 2012 because I’ll be teaching first-year Russian at Bowdoin College next semester. I particularly love teaching first-year courses so am looking forward to getting started. As for reading, I don’t make resolutions but I am planning on at least one geographically based book sequence, beginning with St. Petersburg: some of Gogol’s Petersburg stories, Bely’s Petersburg, and perhaps Bykov’s Ostromov. I’m already thinking that a Moscow sequence might be fun for the second half of the year. I still have a clump of Shklovsky books on the shelf, too, just waiting for a mini-marathon.

Finally, I want to thank all of you for your visits, comments, book recommendations, and e-mail messages. It’s always fun to hear from you! I wish everyone lots of enjoyable reading in 2012… Happy new year!

Disclosures: The usual. Previous posts that I have referenced in this post contain further disclosure information about individual books and relationships.

Image credit: Fireworks in Bratislava, New Year 2005, from Ondrejk, via Wikipedia.

More Awards News & a Bit on Grekova’s Faculty

There are weeks (like, say, last week) when it feels like I can’t check my blog reader or Lenta.ru without finding more news about Russian literary awards. Book of the Year winners were named on Wednesday at the Moscow International Book Fair, and I was pleased to see that an eight-volume edition of works by Andrei Platonov, published by Vremia, won the main Book of the Year prize. Prose of the Year went to Olga Slavnikova’s Lightheaded (previous post); the other nominees in the prose category were Mikhail Shishkin’s Letter-Book (previous post) and a book of essays about history by Iakov Gordin. OpenSpace.ru has a full list of winners here, and some short lists are available here.

Then the Yasnaya Polyana award announced its six-book short list on Friday. I don’t know much about any of these writers or books but that, of course, is why I so enjoy following prize lists. The winner will be announced in late September or early October.

• Ergali Ger’s Кома (Koma) – This novella/long story starts with the phrase “Родом Кома была из Рыбинска”—“Koma was a native of Rybinsk”—which got me interested because I once spent a couple days floating around the Rybinsk Water Reservoir on a research vessel and eating fresh fish.
• Elena Katishonok’s Жили-были старик со старухой (Once There Lived an Old Man and His Wife) (excerpt) – This book was a Booker finalist in 2009.
• Natal’ia Kliuchareva’s Деревня дураков (Village of Fools) – Kliuchareva is the only writer of the six that I’ve read so far: one of her stories is in the Rasskazy collection. It was one of my favorites. I still, BTW, highly recommend Rasskazy (previous post).
• Irina Mamaeva’s Земля Гай (Gai Land, where Gai is the name of a settlement)
• Iurii Mamleev’s Русские походы в тонкий мир (perhaps Russian Hikes/Campaigns Into a Subtle World?) – I still haven’t read much Mamleev, beyond a couple very short stories that I read at the beach recently.
• Dmitrii Shevarov’s Добрые лица (Kind Faces)

As for I(rina) Grekova’s Кафедра (The Faculty): I realized I don’t have much to say about the book. After Grekova’s shorter Ship of Widows, Hairdresser, and Little Garusov, The Faculty felt a bit long and dispersed: the novel is composed of episodes in the lives of a math (cybernetics, I believe) department’s faculty members and students. The episodes are linked with various degrees of looseness and tightness; lives overlap like my beloved Venn diagrams. Grekova’s writing is, as usual, very readable, and she offers lots of insights and details on life, family, friendship, work, and death, reflecting Soviet reality… despite all that, plus Grekova’s tremendous compassion for her characters, The Faculty didn’t feel, well, special, compared with the other works I’ve read. I think the problem—a relatively minor one, I suppose, since I didn’t skim—is my preference for more tightly focused narratives.

Up Next: Well, there’s Leonid Girshovich’s “Вий”, вокальный цикл Шуберта на слова Гоголя (a title I’ve seen translated as “Viy,” Schubert’s Songs to Gogol’s Words), which I still think is peculiar. I’m also finding it a little repetitive and/or plodding, and definitely very showy so am going to do something I don’t usually do: read a chapter a day but focus more on another book, Sergei Kuznetsov’s Хоровод воды (Water’s Round Dance or The Round Dance of Water), a Big Book finalist. An excerpt, with comments from Kuznetsov, is on Snob. By coincidence, Kuznetsov’s book, which two friends recommended to me very highly, mentions the Rybinsk Water Reservoir in its early pages. Let’s hope this is a sign that it will help me break a streak of unsatisfying books.

Disclosures: Tin House, publisher of Rasskazy, is a publisher I enjoy speaking with about translated fiction.

Seeing the Light: Platonov’s Juvenile Sea

After reading Il’ia Boiashov’s unsatisfying Stone Woman, I decided to get back to (modern) classics with a bit of Andrei Platonov… it finally felt like time to read the long story Ювенильное море (Juvenile Sea, sometimes Sea of Youth). And what a wonderfully disorienting pleasure it was to read Platonov: it would have been worth reading if only for its giant pumpkin shell sleeping pods.

And where else can a reader find a production story – goals here include increasing cattle production and investigating alternative energy sources – written in a variegated language that braids poetic turns with Soviet-speak and tropes from socialist realism? I think my biggest difficulty in reading Platonov is that his unusual word combinations dazzle so much that I have to read each line twice to apprehend their various literal, figurative, and story meanings. Often, twice is not enough: Platonov’s writing is so full of остранение (making it strange) that almost everything feels a bit off, unusual, or grotesque, making reading a full-on experience. Even the preface to one of my Platonov books begins with the line “Кажется, мы уже никогда не узнаем, как читать Андрея Платонова.” – “It seems that we will never find out how to read Andrei Platonov.” The key has fallen away in the waters of time, explains Valentin Kurbatov… a particularly fitting phrase for The Juvenile Sea.

Of course I prefer back doors and loose windows to lost keys because I don’t think there’s any single correct way to read a book or writer. And all those layers of cryptic words and meaning are why a stubborn reader like me so enjoys Platonov. Rather than write about the entire story, which could take a month or two, I’ll mention a jumble of the oddities and happenings that drew me in on the first pages, then list a few of the themes they raise. If you want to learn more about the whole story, Thomas Seifrid’s book Andrei Platonov summarizes some of the technical themes in The Juvenile Sea here, on Google books.

The Juvenile Sea begins as an engineer and electrician, Nikolai Vermo, crosses the steppe in the southeast Soviet Union on foot, spending his days staving off boredom by imagining himself as a machinist, pilot, or geologist. He finds himself at the home of Adrian Umrishchev, director of a state farm for raising meat; Vermo presents papers that ordered him to the farm. Umrishchev is reading an ancient book with old words, about Ivan the Terrible. On The Juvenile Sea’s third page, Umrishchev says he resolved a housing crisis with the afore-mentioned pumpkin shells. He soon describes how he’d been placed on the rolls of the “unexplained” (невыясненные) after demobilization from the Soviet apparatus. Vermo and Umrishchev talk into the night. Here’s the phrase that indicates morning has arrived: “Ночь, теряя свой смысл, заканчивалась” – “Night, losing its point/meaning/purpose, was ending.”

Light and Dark. I withered when I read that phrase about night, and I kept returning to it as I read The Juvenile Sea: the sun as a source of power is a key piece of the story, and brightness and mentions of electricity link into typical themes from Soviet propaganda and socialist realism, along with more metaphorical aspects of light, such as enlightenment.

Generations. The phrase also struck me on a more emotional level because of the mention of loss of purpose. Umrishchev’s name is rooted in “die” and even his breathing feels tired; he gives off an air of boredom and doubt. And of course he was “unexplained” – talk about lacking purpose! – until he become fully explained through practical work. At the end of the story we see two couples, one young and setting out to America (!) for a business trip, the other old, staying behind.

The Dark Side of Sotsrealism. A horrible sadness – starting with тоска (I’ll just call it deep melancholy) in Vermo’s heart in the second sentence – flows through The Juvenile Sea… along with Platonov’s characters’ optimism. Of course there are plenty of enthusiastic workers in socialist realism, but they don’t carry this kind of toska. Or so many rats: rats run over one character as she sleeps, though she doesn’t hear them. It’s those jarring combinations that make Platonov’s writing feel so wonderfully convoluted and oddly real.

The Great Pumpkin. Russian Dinosaur’s mention of The Velveteen Rabbit in a blog post (and a college course) about socialist realism inspires me to invite Linus van Pelt’s Great Pumpkin into my post: Soviet-era promises of a bright future (the good old светлое будущее), communism, and even superlative meat production were about as likely to materialize as the Great Pumpkin. Belief is at the root of my fascination with the huge pumpkins in The Juvenile Sea: my first thought was to wonder if such pumpkins were possible. I later reminded myself that real reality didn’t matter because I was reading a piece of work that corrupts socialist realism, a myth-laden genre, and its language.

P.S. Platonov’s Life. I’ve been reading and enjoying Frank Westerman’s Engineers of the Soul: In the Footsteps of Stalin’s Writers, translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett. Among other things, Westerman mentions Platonov’s technical education and experience (some of which dovetails with The Juvenile Sea), difficulties publishing, and relationship with Maxim Gorky. I’ll write more about Engineers of the Soul later, probably in a nonfiction roundup post.

Level for Non-Native Readers of Russian: Rather difficult, linguistically, culturally, and most of all, logically, 3.75-4.0/5.00.

Up Next: Definitely *not* Iurii Arabov’s Орлеан (Orleans), a Big Book shortlister that reads easily but felt unconvincing and unfocused at best, kitschy and overwritten at worst. I abandoned it after about 20%.

Disclosures: Overlook Press provided me with a review copy of Engineers of the Soul, thank you!

Photo credit: Three-foot high pumpkin (is that sleepable?) photo from idea22, via sxc.hu.

More Mid-March Miscellany: 1 Nomination, 2 Adaptations, 1 Review, 1 Passing & 4 Reading Ideas

Sometimes I go for weeks without seeing any news related to Russian literature, but then there are weeks like this one…

1 Nomination. The most exciting news of the day was learning that Andrew Bromfield’s translation of Boris Akunin’s Коронация (The Coronation), published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, is on the long list for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Coronation, a “high-society detective novel,” is one of my Fandorin favorites.

2 Adaptations. Dostoevsky made the front page of today’s New York Times, in the article “A 12-Hour Play, and Endless Bragging Rights,” about Peter Stein’s lengthy production of The Demons scheduled for the Lincoln Center Festival in July. At $175, including meals, it’s a good value, but I agree with some of the commenters who think 12 hours sounds, uhm, rather long. My husband thinks it sounds like a hazing ritual… In film news, Kommersant.ru reports here that Karen Shakhnazarov’s film version of Anton Chekhov’s Палата No. 6 (Ward No. 6) won the Manoel de Oliveira award at the Fantasporto film festival in Porto, Portugal. The film is set in the present but evidently preserves Chekhov’s plot. Mosfilm has a site here with information, including an English-language trailer.

1 Review. In contemporary fiction news, Gregory Freidin’s article-review of Aleksandr Terekhov’s Каменный мост (The Stone Bridge) is on TimesOnline here. Chances are good I won’t be writing about The Stone Bridge any year soon: I stopped reading on page 364 of 829. Freiden reveals aspects of the ending that confirm that I truly did quit reading while I was ahead. From what I can gather, readers either love or hate The Stone Bridge. Two friends loved it but I dreaded reading it. That’s always a bad sign. I can handle loathsome narrators (one reader I know mentioned misogynism), but the combination of loathsome and (okay, I’ll just say it!) boring was too much.

1 Passing. Lenta.ru reported (here) that Russian poet Elena Shvarts died yesterday. A Russian-English book of Shvarts’s poetry, Birdsong on the Seabed, translated by Sasha Dugdale, was a finalist for the 2009 Rossica Prize. Wikipedia lists Shvarts’s translated works.

4 Recommendations. Finally, Elif Batuman, author of that other book called The Possessed (previous post), wrote a piece for The Daily Beast (here) recommending four modern classics of Russian literature. They are: Viktor Shklovskii’s ZOO, или Письма не о любви (ZOO, or Letters Not about Love), Andrei Platonov’s Джан (translated by Robert Chander and Olga Meerson as Soul), poet Osip Mandel’shtam’s memoir Шум времени (The Noise of Time), and Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms.

Oddly, two of these books – ZOO and Soul – have come up recently in dinner conversations with friends. Did I read ZOO years ago? I don’t remember for sure, though I know I read some of Shklovsky’s literary theory as well as his Сентиментальное путешествие (Sentimental Journey) for courses. And Soul, which a friend liked very much, came up right after I posted (here) a link to an interview in which Robert Chandler discusses Platonov. Unfortunately, Chandler’s introduction to Soul (PDF here) indicates that I don’t have the full text of the Russian original of Soul. Even so, I’m thinking I may read it before delving into Чевенгур (Chevengur), which is over 400 pages long.

The Coronation on Amazon

Dostoevsky's Demons, Devils & Possessed on Amazon

Batuman's The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them on Amazon

Shklovsky's Zoo, or Letters Not About Love on Amazon

Shvarts's Birdsong on the Seabed on Amazon

Platonov's Soul: And Other Stories on Amazon

Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms

Robert Chandler on Andrei Platonov

This title sure caught my eye: “Andrei Platonov: Russia’s greatest 20^th-century prose stylist?” Here’s a link to the article, Daniel Kalder’s guardian.co.uk interview with translator Robert Chandler.

Chandler, who translated Andrei Platonov’s Котлован (The Foundation Pit) not once but twice, speaks here, among other things, about the repeat translation, Platonov’s language, and some odd realities connected with The Foundation Pit.

I particularly enjoyed reading what Chandler says about working on the collection Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida:

“I worked on this for several years, did most of the translations myself and revised them many times. I read through the proofs with enjoyment – I was still happy with the choices I had made – but there were only two writers whom I was still able to read with real wonder: Pushkin and Platonov.”

The stories? Pushkin’s “Пиковая дама” (“The Queen of Spades”) and Platonov’s “Возвращение” (“The Return”), both of which are personal favorites of mine, too. “The Return,” by the way, is written in fairly simple language, making it a good way for non-native readers of Russian to introduce themselves to Platonov. I wrote a bit about “The Return” in this 2008 Victory Day post.

So is Platonov is Russia’s greatest 20^th-century prose stylist? I’m not sure but Chandler’s interview brought back memories of how much I loved the piercing precision of “The Return.” I think it’s time to push Ювенильное море (The Juvenile Sea) to the top of the book pile.

Previous post on The Foundation Pit

Platonov on Amazon

Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida on Amazon

Platonov image from user 53RUStm, via Wikipedia

Happy Birthday to “Наше всё" & Newish Translations

A.S. Pushkin. Today marks 210 years since the birth of Aleksandr Pushkin, the Russian writer also known as “наше всё” (“our everything” or “our all”). (Thanks to Josefina of Russian Blog for the Pushkin birthday reminder.)

The “our everything” tag originated in 1859 with critic Apollon Grigor’ev’s article “Взгляд на русскую литературу со смерти Пушкина” (“A Look at Russian Literature Since the Death of Pushkin”) (a brief Russian piece on the subject or the entire Russian-language Grigor’ev article). The label stuck. I particularly like Pushkin’s Повести Белкина (Belkin Tales), which became the source of my predilection for the Belkin brand of computer cables.

New Translations. I spent a few hours at BookExpo America last week, where I was reminded of several relatively new translations of Russian books. It was nice to see them on display!

Seven Stories Press released Marian Schwartz’s translation of Ivan Goncharov’s Обломов (Oblomov) last December. Schwartz translated the L.S. Geiro version of the original, which Seven Stories calls “definitive.” It was published in 1987.

New York Review of Books introduced a new translation of Andrei Platonov’s Котлован (The Foundation Pit) in April 2009. This translation, too, is based on an edition of the manuscript now considered definitive. I think the most interesting aspect of this translation is that it is the work of Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, and Olga Meerson… making it Robert Chandler’s second translation of the book. R. Chandler provides background in this Amazon.com comment. (Previous post on The Foundation Pit)

Finally, Ardis Publishing is now part of the Overlook Press, the house that offers Today I Wrote Nothing, Matvei Yankelevich’s translation of selected works by Daniil Kharms (2007). A paperback version will be out at the end of this month. Ardis offers a smallish but varied list of Russian books in translation, including two of my favorites, Vladimir Makanin’s Лаз (Escape Hatch) and Долог наш путь (The Long Road Ahead), plus yet another version of The Foundation Pit, this one translated by Thomas P. Whitney. (Previous post on Makanin’s novellas)

One more “finally”… If you’re looking for Russian books in new English translation and missed last week’s post on the 2009 Academia Rossica prize, here’s a direct link to the PDF of the Rossica Prize brochure. It includes a list of all nominees plus excerpts from the finalists, in Russian and English, making it a particularly fun piece for bilingual reading.

Pushkin on Amazon

The Foundation Pit on Amazon

Marian Schwartz's translation of Oblomov

Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms (Paperback)

Makanin on Amazon

Baby Pushkin portrait by Xavier de Maistre, 1800-1802

Russian Reading Challenge 2: Platonov's “Foundation Pit”

Andrei Platonov’s Котлован (The Foundation Pit) was a perfect Russian Reading Challenge selection: I read the first 30 pages several years ago but got stuck. I’m glad I stuck with it this time because, though I still found it quite difficult, this short novel is very rewarding.

The Foundation Pit, written in 1929-1930, is an allegory of the era of collectivization: workers digging a pit for a foundation also find themselves digging, in effect, a collective grave. They take part in the collectivization campaign, too, banishing kulaks by sending them away by raft.

Form and content are inseparable in The Foundation Pit, and Platonov draws on language and themes found in divergent genres, mixing elements of folk tales, carnival, existentialism, and socialist realism to create a dystopia so painful and surreal that I feel almost as if I’ve lived there.

Despite the inherent tragedy of The Foundation Pit, some passages were laugh-out-loud absurd – the behavior of collectivized horses stands out – but I thought others plodded, perhaps because they were so familiar and reminiscent of “real” socialist realism. Other chunks of text jarred to good effect: an orphaned girl taken in by the workers speaks in violent, revolutionary terms, demanding death of kulaks.

What sets The Foundation Pit apart from other dystopian novels – and most other fiction – is Platonov’s creativity with the Russian language. Language is the foundation upon which the book is built, with Platonov’s diversity of linguistic registers reflecting changes in society. The Foundation Pit depicts on every level – from words to characters’ actions – untenable visions of a socialist future in a place where truth and rationality are losing their meaning.

Joseph Brodsky says in this (Russian) piece, which evidently appears as an afterward to an English-language edition of The Foundation Pit, that the book is untranslatable. (I find a lot of irony there!) He cites as one reason Platonov’s depiction of a nation that effectively becomes a victim of its own language. Obviously not all of Platonov’s words in The Foundation Pit have equivalents in a language like English – the content of “энтузиаст,” for example, differs tremendously on a cultural level from our “enthusiast.”

But I think Brodsky may underestimate the talents of translators, readers, and Platonov himself. Many of Platonov’s unique phrases translate elegantly enough into English to read well. Robert Chandler and Geoffrey Smith’s translation beautifully captures the mood and meanings of the novella’s unique first paragraph. Much later in the book, as I translate it, a bear “sang a song with his jaw.” Even culturally laden phrases that don’t translate this easily into English can still display Platonov’s ability to use repetition or word combinations that force the reader to (re)consider meaning.

Even if I don’t quite agree with Brodsky about translating Platonov – particularly after reading Robert Chandler’s crackling versions of Platonov in The New Yorker and the paragraph cited above – I think his definition of surrealism sums up The Foundation Pit very neatly. He calls Platonov the first surrealist, arguing that surrealism is not an aesthetic category but rather (as I translate it) “a form of philosophical rage, a product of the psychology of dead end.”

In the end (whether it’s dead or not) what I find most interesting about The Foundation Pit is that, to be blunt, I didn’t often enjoy reading it… but I can’t stop thinking about it. I even have thoughts of rereading it. I’ve enjoyed Platonov’s short stories much more because they feel peculiar and, perhaps even alienated, without conveying utter desolation. But I love a literary puzzle, and that’s what The Foundation Pit feels like. I may be back in a few years.

Summary: The Foundation Pit is one of the most difficult books I’ve read in recent years, but it’s worth the effort if you enjoy dystopia or writing that depends on both form and content to convey its messages. Platonov layers the book with far more themes than I’ve mentioned here: I felt like I barely touched on their significance in this, my first reading. I should add that my first attempt at reading The Foundation Pit was my introduction to Platonov. Reading several short stories between then and now helped me feel more comfortable with his style.

Cross-posted at Russian Reading Challenge

Electricity + Anna + Minaev = Blog Entry

Happy Power Engineering Day! What better way to celebrate electricity than reading some Andrei Platonov, who once worked as an electrical engineer?

One fitting selection is Platonov’s short story “Родина электричества” (“The Motherland of Electricity”), which I recently read and enjoyed. The narrator of this quirky 1926 story walks for days to reach a town needing drought relief and help with an electrical system that’s a relic from the White Army. Platonov covers a lot in 10 pages, touching on religious, political, technological, and mythical themes.

“The Motherland of Electricity” is included in Soul, a new collection of Robert Chandler’s translations of Platonov stories published by the New York Review of Books. Soul contains an extensive introduction by John Berger.

Name Day for Annas. Sorry, Ms. Karenina, but my favorite literary Anna is Akhmatova. It’s worth listening to Akhmatova read her own poetry even if you don’t understand Russian. This online anthology includes two recordings of Akhmatova, some poems in Russian and English, biographical information, illustrations, and links. The photo of Joseph Brodsky at Akhmatova’s funeral illustrates their closeness.

Sergei Minaev in the New York Times. Today’s New York Times included a “Saturday Profile” of Sergei Minaev, author of the best-selling novel Духless (Soulless). Soulless is an unfortunate book: it might have become something quite good had Minaev and his editor been patient enough to work through another draft or two. Decadence alone does not a novel make.

The Times article quotes Vasilii Aksyonov saying that “Minaev’s hero is a superfluous man.” That’s true, but the book’s lack of structure and real characters doom it from contributing to the pantheon of superfluous men in Russian literature, antiheroes like Lermontov’s Pechorin and Goncharov’s Oblomov. Minaev’s characters are conscious that they’re a lost generation, but Soulless was probably successful primarily for its voyeuristic look into another lifestyle, like Oksana Robski’s Casual. I hesitate to say that Soulless probably won’t be translated into English: Casual already made it.

Russian Reading Challenge 2008

Are there four Russian novels, plays, story collections, or other books that you've always meant to read but never found time for? I'm sure there are! 2008 is your year.

The Russian Reading Challenge 2008 blog encourages visitors to read four Russian-related books between January 1 and December 31, 2008. The best part about the challenge format is that nobody will be alone -- dozens of participants should mean lots of discussion.

I'm going to use the Challenge as a way to assuage my guilt about missing these classics for too long:

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Бесы (The Possessed)

Nikolai Gogol’s Ревизор (Inspector General) plus stories I haven’t read in Вечера на хуторе близ Диканьки (Village Evenings near Dikanka -- not the video game!) and Миргород (Mirgorod)

Vasilii Grossman’s Жизнь и судьба (Life and Fate)

Andrei Platonov’s Котлован (Foundation Pit) or, as a backup, Ювенильное море (Juvenile Sea)

For now I'm reading and enjoying Sergei Dovlatov's Компромисс (The Compromise), a very funny-but-sad autobiographical novel about working as a journalist in Soviet Estonia. A friend lent me four volumes of Dovlatov -- t0 be sure I'd find something I liked! -- and I may be reading it all cover-to-cover if everything is this good.

"New Yorker" Story & "Times" Book Review

The October 22, 2007, issue of The New Yorker includes "Among Animals and Plants," ("Среди животных и растений") the translation of a long story by Andrei Platonov. I've only read the beginning so far, but particularly liked the comparison of ants and kulaks. There's not much information about the piece online, even in Russian, but one site calls this story "small," so I wonder if perhaps what's in The New Yorker combines several stories with the same character.

Today's New York Times has a book review of Simon Sebag Montefiore's new biography, Young Stalin. If you're more interested in how fiction writers portray Stalin, Vasilii Aksenov and Anatolii Rybakov both wrote trilogies that include Stalin as a character.

The first volume of Aksenov's Moscow Saga (Московская сага) is called Generations of Winter in English. I read the whole trilogy, though skimmed at times and often felt irritated with Aksenov's literary devices and namedropping. I liked Rybakov's trilogy, beginning with Children of the Arbat (Дети Арбата), much better: the characters and their lives felt realer, and I think Rybakov is a more modest writer.

Happy reading!

Books in this posting:

Young Stalin Generations of Winter
The Children of the Arbat: A Novel (Rybakov, Anatolii Naumovich. Arbat Trilogy, V. 1.)