A question about Igor Kholin

[C. Dougherty]

To the SEELANGS list -- please reply to me off list at cwd at comcast.net.

I am a fourth year Russian student who is working on translating Igor Kholin
(1920-1999), best known as Russian poet of the "Lianozovo" school and one of
the most vivid figures of the Russian literary underground. Kholin also
wrote hundreds of very short stories which were collected and published
after his death by       Новое Литературное Обозрение (Novoe literaturnoe
obozrenie) in the year 2000 in a book entitled *Избранная Проза* (*Selected
Prose*).

I selected six very short stories of Kholin. I tried to choose stories that
had little or no dialog, would appeal to an English-speaking audience, and
that described interesting characters. Each story had a different flavor to
it -- for instance, one seemed to have a bit of a "city slang" flavor to it,
and I made the language of that translation more informal, but my initial
translations in general are conservatively done; they are straightforward
with standard contemporary English grammar and syntax. I ran them by three
bilingual native speakers of Russian, one of whom is currently working on
her doctoral dissertation in Russian Literature at Columbia University.

The stories were at one time under submission to a yet-to-be-published
online Slavic "webzine," but I have recently withdrawn them from submission
to that webzine.

Here are my questions to anyone who is familiar with Kholin's work.

1. What style should I be going for when translating these stories? Are they
appropriate for someone of my level of expertise? As I said, I am a 4th year
Russian student; I've taken one translation course, and I don't have a
literary background. If the stories never turn out to be publishable, I
really don't care. The original Russian is a delight to read and translate
just on my own.

2. If these translations turn out to be publishable, I will need to obtain
permission from the copyright holder, which I guess in Russia is the estate
of Igor Kholin. I have no idea how to go about doing this. I have tried
looking up the publishing house on the Internet, and I think I may have
found an address, but heaven knows if a letter would ever reach it. If
anyone can give me any information about obtaining permission to publish a
translation, I would greatly appreciate it.

Again, please reply to me offlist at cwd at comcast.net.

Thank you in advance,
Carol Dougherty

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