Platonov: kak na tesnom dvore

[Robert Chandler]

Dear all,

Tesnyi, tesnota, stesnennyi, stesnenie, etc are anther group of words that
Platonov uses particularly often in KOTLOVAN.  For the main part we have
used different combinations of such words as ‘cramped’, ‘tight’ and
‘constraint’.  Most of the time we have, I think, come up with satisfactory
solutions, but we are still struggling with the following:
 Кто вперед успел поесть свою живность или кто отпустил ее в колхозное
заключение, тот лежал в пустом гробу и жил в нем, как на тесном дворе,
чувствуя огороженный покой.

The (very unsatisfactory) best we have come up with is:
 As for anyone who had managed to eat his stock of life in advance or else
released it into collective imprisonment – he lay in an empty coffin and
lived in it as if in a snugly cramped home, feeling an enclosed peace.

(I’m aware, by the way, that the normal tr. for ‘zhivnost’’ would be
‘poultry’, but the phrases ‘live stock’ and ‘dead stock’ (zhivoi inventar’
and ‘mertvyi inventar’) occur many times, so we have chosen to play on
that.)

In hope,

Robert

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