Platonov - Kosnoyazuchie

[Lily Alexander]

Dear Robert and All,

Just one more thought. Maybe sacrilegious.

Although people like me and others may take part in the search for a 
good word, and native speakers may help in deciphering the hidden 
meaning and grammatical controversies - it seems to me that the group 
that could be of help to you in finding correlating English odd 
words/usage, would be American comedians.

I was looking last week in a bookstore at the complete script of 
Seinfeld, and was thinking about buying it. On paper, the power of 
language in the dialogues is even more clear. The script centers on a 
word or a notion that seems known, habitual and banal, and offensively 
makes fun of it by displacing it in contexts or repeating it to death. 
The word and its core meaning, together with the users, turn absurd. As 
often in Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm). My family is a "big fan" of 
stand-up comedy, and these people twist words in amazing ways.

This is the closest - what I can think of  - to your uneasy task. That's 
why I earlier mentioned to you the connection between Platonov and 
Chaplin. What Chaplin does with the gravity of a body, Platonov does to 
a stability of a word in language.

Of course Platonov is much more tender, kind, philosophical and 
mythological than David. Larry David, the writer of Seinfeld and Curb, 
especially in the latter -  he is too gloomy and his twisted words drop 
on your head like stones. Your don't want to live in his universe. He is 
way too ruthless and sarcastic to be compared to Platonov. One loved his 
heroes and another does not. But David is good, and nobody has such 
freedom of word-twisting in this intentionally awkward way (not even 
English-American modernist poets) as the best of the comedians. And 
after all - you are translating for the contemporary readers, and you 
want them to accept and like Platonov as their own.

If I were you, I would keep some scripts or the comedians' texts on 
paper or on tapes/DVD at home for inspiration. Perhaps of your personal 
favorite. I am NOT suggesting that you should turn Platonov into The 
Simpsons or Seinfeld, but there is a holyfooldom and clownery in all of 
them. The big question is how to translate Platonov's creative 
kosnoyazuchie (twisted tongue) into contemporary English. Some part or 
element of what Platonov was doing with language is  currently in the 
most joyful brunch of American humor. To inject its spirit into your 
translations just a little bit,  if not their specific vocabulary, may 
be liberating.
In any case, you would enjoy having those scripts and tapes one way or 
another.

This of course opens the whole new can of worms about translating for 
specific generations, but lets leave it to the theorists, and I wish 
your work on Platonov to be an enjoyable process.

Best regards,

Lily Alexander

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