https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072095/ is a not so well known short film starring John Cleese. It's based upon a Chekhov novel. Highly recommended.
No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
11–20 of 34 posts
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#12Pevear and Volokhonsky are unreadable. Choose any other translation for your Russian lit.
The article mentions that at the end in a way
> And that is why one should never read any translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. They translate literary masterpieces word by word, with no appreciation of what the author is trying to accomplish or what makes a great work extraordinary.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#13You can download his entire short story corpus for free at Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-fictio... The translator is Constance Garnett, who is fairly well regarded. The collection is huge but there are a lot of gems in there!
Constance Garnett was well regarded 80 years ago, very much less so now. She was not rigorous, would drop entire words or phrases she didn't understand. She worked at breakneck speed with minimal thought to trying to capture idiom or literary devices. This is especially bad with an artful writer like Chekov. There's a quite fascinating discussion of this in the forward to the Norton collection of Checkov ( https://ww…
I knew a translator who worked for the EU high commission as a live translator. I asked her about translating books: "Knowing two cultures and languages in such intimate detail that you can know a book and translate it in any meaningful way for the princely sum of ten thousand pounds...no".
She compared it to poetry, you agonise over certain phrases and the thousands of years of history that phrase has and all its cultural meaning and all you've got is "he bonked him on the head".
She conceded that any translation was better than none as there are ideas out there, hidden, that need to spread and are limited only by language and time.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#14Pevear and Volokhonsky are unreadable. Choose any other translation for your Russian lit.
I hate their translation of The Master and Margarita. It’s ugly.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#15Pevear and Volokhonsky are unreadable. Choose any other translation for your Russian lit.
The article mentions that at the end in a way > And that is why one should never read any translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. They translate literary masterpieces word by word, with no appreciation of what the author is trying to accomplish or what makes a great work extraordinary.
P&V end up with a very readable and accessible translation for English speakers. For someone like myself who can read Russian newspapers, but struggles to finish older literature, it's not ideal, because I can look at the original text and see the lost poetry.
If you're interested in Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation methodology, check this out: http://columbiajournal.org/translation-lecture-richard-pevea...
> Pevear explained that they first began translating when they happened to both be reading Crime and Punishment at the same time – Pevear in English, Volokhonsky in Russian – and they compared sentences and saw how radically different they were. Since then, they have developed a system: Volokhonsky makes the first draft, trying to translate as literally as possible [...], explaining any clichés or colloquialisms. Then Pevear looks at the “scribble” (as Volokhonsky calls it), and he “puts it into English” (Pevear said, sighing). Pevear asks Volokhonsky questions, and, in the creating of the third draft, she answers them. Finally, before sending anything off to their editor, Pevear reads the English version out loud while Volokhonsky follows along in the original Russian text.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Constance Garnett was well regarded 80 years ago, very much less so now. She was not rigorous, would drop entire words or phrases she didn't understand. She worked at breakneck speed with minimal thought to trying to capture idiom or literary devices. This is especially bad with an artful writer like Chekov. There's a quite fascinating discussion of this in the forward to the Norton collection of Checkov ( https://ww…
I knew a translator who worked for the EU high commission as a live translator. I asked her about translating books: "Knowing two cultures and languages in such intimate detail that you can know a book and translate it in any meaningful way for the princely sum of ten thousand pounds...no". She compared it to poetry, you agonise over certain phrases and the thousands of years of history that phrase has and all its cu…
I see your point, but I don't think saying that "any translation is better than none" invalidates criticism of any specific translation. It's still possible for a translation to be better or worse than other translations.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#17You can download his entire short story corpus for free at Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-fictio... The translator is Constance Garnett, who is fairly well regarded. The collection is huge but there are a lot of gems in there!
Constance Garnett was well regarded 80 years ago, very much less so now. She was not rigorous, would drop entire words or phrases she didn't understand. She worked at breakneck speed with minimal thought to trying to capture idiom or literary devices. This is especially bad with an artful writer like Chekov. There's a quite fascinating discussion of this in the forward to the Norton collection of Checkov ( https://ww…
Opinions are divided concerning Garnett. I don't speak Russian but what I have read is that she does an excellent job translating the tone and meaning though there are mistakes and omissions (as you say). Many of the most famous Russian writers were highly influenced by Dickens and Trollope and she preserves that influence.
Also, keep in mind that Russian literature gained its reputation in the English speaking world via Garnett. Hemmingway read Garnett.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#18:-) Interesting to read many describe that feeling you get when you read Chekhov. A Russian friend once told me it is тоска (toska) - an unbearable, inescapable anguish - "Really you have to be Russian to understand it. toska is rent for being Russian. More Vodka?"
I don’t remember the exact quote, but I think it was Fr Seraphim Rose that said Russian people don’t know what the word “fun” is. They don’t understand “fun” as a general sense or feeling of ease / levity.
I don’t know if this is accurate but I asked some Russians what they like to do for fun and they didn’t actually understand. They asked if I meant hobbies and said they only have fun when they go out to a club or something.
The upshot is that hard people have the best dry humor.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#19You can download his entire short story corpus for free at Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anton-chekhov/short-fictio... The translator is Constance Garnett, who is fairly well regarded. The collection is huge but there are a lot of gems in there!
> Constance Garnett, who is fairly well regarded
I don't agree with this, mostly. Garnett's level of Russian competence was solidly journeyman level work. In the original Russian, Chekhov is much more vibrant and colorful than Garnett's dickensian translation. At best, passable.
That said, she did the world a huge service. It was her work largely that brought Chekhov to the attention of the english-speaking world, but their are better options now. Check out Pevear and Volokhonsky, I find them much closer to the soul of Chekhov's writing.
Re: No writer understood loneliness better than Chekhov
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Constance Garnett was well regarded 80 years ago, very much less so now. She was not rigorous, would drop entire words or phrases she didn't understand. She worked at breakneck speed with minimal thought to trying to capture idiom or literary devices. This is especially bad with an artful writer like Chekov. There's a quite fascinating discussion of this in the forward to the Norton collection of Checkov ( https://ww…
Opinions are divided concerning Garnett. I don't speak Russian but what I have read is that she does an excellent job translating the tone and meaning though there are mistakes and omissions (as you say). Many of the most famous Russian writers were highly influenced by Dickens and Trollope and she preserves that influence. Also, keep in mind that Russian literature gained its reputation in the English speaking world…
> she does an excellent job translating the tone and meaning
I really can't agree with this. Her translation work was journeyman level at best. I've read most of her translations, and they simply do not convey the magical soul of Chekhov's prose very well. Nothing is going to replace reading it in the original language, but Pevear and Volokhonsky get far closer in my opinion. Constance Garnet's translations still stick around largely because they are now free.