piatiknizhie in English Pentalogy

[Olga Meerson]

Dear Paul (Gal.), dear all,
You are right. I was approaching the problem of Russian Dostoevsky scholars calling his five major novels a Pentateuch from a point of view that was indeed not that of a translator. I am not one, or not merely or mainly one, although translation is a vocation I respect even more than that of a poet: it is more difficult to hear and convey one's neighbors than one's own revelations. I have worked with arguably the best one today, from Russian to English -- also a wonderful English poet in his own right -- and my greatest use was that I was a commentator. In other words, I could comment on shifts of tone, or any intertextual allusions, in the original Russian, in any given passage. This brilliant translator is Robert Chandler. I know no one better today, for conveying these shifts of tone precisely. The Pevears have done some good job on some books (my favorite one is The Brothers Karamazov), but Robert seems to be unfailing. Not because he is infallible but because if he hear!
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something strange and doesn't quite know what it is, he keeps asking until he finds out. He has been doing this for many years, passage after passage, day in, day out. 
On my own, I could not have done anything of the sort: you have to know the target language like a native speaker to not merely hear these nuances but to produce them as well. I can lend Robert Chandler my ear, but my active suggestions are, for the most part, merely guesses, more or less educated. 
In any case, as both a commentator and a colleague to those Russians who say about Dostoevsky's five major novels that they form "the Great Pentateuch", I feel a certain collegial shame, all the more so because I respect many of them in many other ways. It just hurts too much that anyone would refer to a novelist as someone similar to Moses. No person nowadays translates the word "Torah" into English. It refers to the same five books of the Bible as Pentateuch, but the word originally means "Law", or "Teaching", the Teaching being  the Torah, or haTorah). Russian is deprived of any remnants of articles, so piatiknizhie doesn't even sound like A Pentateuch but like THE Pentateuch. It just hurts too much, if you take the Bible OR Dostoevsky seriously. Not only is it blasphemous for a religious ear but it sounds awfully pretentious for an ear of a decent Dostoevsky scholar as well. Pretense is the first thing to betray dilettantism, so, in my capacity as a Dostoevsky scholar I !
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uld like to somehow hush the bad taste of pretense among my otherwise esteemed colleagues. For a translator, on the other hand, this consideration--imperative to me -- is unprofessional. What is the point of reconciliation between these two approaches? Explaining to your "client", as you put it, what the problem might be is possible in a note. After all, this is how it is done when you find something to be untranslatable or in bad taste in the target language -- as opposed for the original. But if it is bad taste in the original, to begin with, why not make a note of this as well? I think I wouldn't want my colleagues whom I respect look like fools to a whole community of English-speaking scholars reading them in MY translation. Suffice it that they do look like idiots in their own language! And these are sometimes very, very smart people--like the now late, wonderful scholar Slava Svitel'skij, for example! I am mighty glad that Robert Chandler has supported me on the SEELAN!
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 Forum. His support means a world to me, as he understands both the importance of a faithful rendering and sparing his Russian colleagues the shame of their pretense being exposed and made obvious.

Another matter is the culture-specific reason for Russians' using an expression in such a bad taste. Russians, particularly those loyal to the "Great Cause of Russia's  Literary Heritage", particularly Dostoevsky scholars, tend to hold too many things sacred -- too many besides God Himself. Like the much-parodied Stanislavsky's "Theatre is a temple!"  I wouldn't want people to ignore their many wonderful insights and discoveries because of merely one or two points of stupid, crypto-pagan bathos. We all have our weaker points stemming from some of our cultural language's idioms. In addition, Russian Kulturtraegers of all sorts and scales have created many cults out of their disciplines or, still worse, schools. This is a given fact that, because of cultural barriers may avert a person from another culture from their achievements, as it does look completely idiotic to an outsider (and to some insiders capable of cultural critique, like myself). Yet they write and say things wo!
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h reading or listening to. When a genius sounds like an idiot, it may detract from his/her genius, by distracting the listener/reader. I would do all I can to prevent that from happening. You are right: I'd rather betray the cause of translating faithfully than betray the cause of these scholars' whole meaning of work and even existence itself. Sorry for being unprofessional as a translator. Being myself a literary scholar, I can always compensate as a commentator here. But this silly piatiknizhie business is a problem easy to fix--with a mere note.
An aside: I think that a timely commentary may save the face of a translator, occasionally, when they believe they are being faithful because they know the denotations of a locution but might be deaf to its connotations in the original language. Sometimes conveying those connotations is possible only in a footnote. But I think you would agree that it would be a disservice "to the client" to NOT convey these differences in cultural connotations alone! Anglish simply tolerates ampty bathos much less than Russian. This bathos may always be bad but "getting through it to what the person wants to say is easier in Russian and for a Russian -- as the tone is much more common and easier to ignore :) Look at my own letter :)
o.m. 

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