Russians
by maitresse on March 19, 2007
There’s a wonderful just-published essay by Susan Sontag in The Guardian this past weekend, I recommend it to one and all.
And I have an admittedly pedantic question. Were you to take heed of Sontag’s injunction to “be born at a time when it was likely that you would be definitively exalted and influenced by Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, and Turgenev, and Chekhov,” and were you to realize you had only read Crime and Punishment, Uncle Vanya, and Three Sisters (all in high school, mind you), and were you to decide to fill in some of the gaps: being fluent in French and English, but sadly not in Russian, which language would you use to read these Russians?
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That’s good advice, Anastasia. Interesting observation, one with which I agree; when I spend too much time in either language (I live in France but am a native English speaker) the other language suffers.
– maitresse (04/11 at 11-Apr 06:35 -05:00)
German works well for me when reading Russian authors. If anyone’s interested here’s a post at my blog regarding another interesting Russian author that I read in in German.
-tgs-
– Tommi (04/11 at 11-Apr 09:39 -05:00)
ooops. forgot the URL. Here ya go…
http://worstwriter.wordpress.com/2006/11/03/zypkin/
-tgs-
– Tommi (04/11 at 11-Apr 09:48 -05:00)
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My suggestion would be to read these writers in a language you’ll be writing in. A good translation will give you a taste for what a writer’s style in your tongue and tradition would feel like. Personally, as a native speaker of Russian writing fiction in English, I have trouble with being too influenced by my native cannon at times--in Russian, the rhythms ar different, commas are everywhere, and the sentences can stretch for miles.
Pavear and Volkhonsky translations have great reputations. Constance Gardner’s are in public domain, but tend to be less than faithful to the originals. Whatever you choose, take care to read Tolstoy with the original French left in, particularly if you’re fluent. It was the language of Russian aristocracy, and he does some wonderful things with bilingualism of the society.
– Anastasia (03/21 at 21-Mar 06:10 -05:00)