Nineteenth century quasi-equivalents

[Olga Meerson]

ALL of these suggestions return Dostoevsky back into the cradle of the (eventually) Victorian English. Some have already escaped the trap, in their own, existent translations. Why ignore them? (E.g., Pevear and Volokhonsky). As to why Jane Eyre may not do as a model, there is a wonderful piece of research by Svetlana Grenier--Dostoevsky was indeed very much influenced by its own translation into Russian, Irinarkh Vvedenskij's--a translation deeply and notorious different from the original, although very much in its spirit. But then, the stylistic and semantic departures from THAT translation in Dost. (specifically, in Besy, acc. to Grenier's brilliant analysis) were all marked. Translating is not a matter of "steeping" oneself in the period only. Equally important is one's ability to step out of things typical of the period. A good example is both the beauty and the problem of Constance Garnett: she was naturally "steeped" in the period but she never realized how different, !
 li!
nguistically, each Russian novelist was from his own period. 

 Dostoevsky's Russian is markedly different from your standard 19th c. Russian. Why make it similar to your typical 19th c. English? Besides, if that is philosophically acceptable for a translator, why not be content with Garnett's translations?

The reason I like the P-V translation of Z iz P so much is because they are fully aware of the immense degree to which this crazy and proto-Existentialist monologue of a crazy man whom his own author calls "that paradoxalist", differs from anything typically 19th C., in Russian itself. It is full of awkwardness, neologisms, seemingly clumsy locutions that, in the end, mean what they mean literally, not idiomatically -- like Freudian slips-- etc., etc. Yes, the standard he violates is 19th C. Russian, because he himself was indeed naturally steeped in it, but the degree to which he has violated it leaves no stone unturned. 
Another problem is that Dostoevsky's "modernity" comes from the fact that he borrows s much from the colloquial, and the distribution between Russian colloquial and literary languages is somewhat different from that of the English, of the same period or the preceding ones, even. By that I mean that Russian colloquial has been, more or less, similar as it was for Krylov. I do not mean slang, etc. All these have developed vigorously, as we all know. What I mean is its immense opposition to the literary language. The only exception to this rule of the contrast between the two languages may be... Pushkin. Dostoevsky's writing is certainly stylistically irreverent. I doubt it would qualify for Standard Literary Russian, in his day, let alone in ours. 
Yes, he vigorously read English novels but, unlike Tolstoy, in French or Russian translations, all stylistically marked themselves. The Russian of Dostoevsky's contemporaries (let alone the contemporaries of Jane Eyre!) looked archaic and pompous compared to him--thanks, partly, to his own parodies thereof, and partly to Pushkin's (already parodied by him in, say, the epigraphs to Captain's Daughter). But that is the literary Russian of the period. The colloquial sounds similar to today's. And indeed, what steeping can convey an expression like "na vysshej noge"? Well, perhaps if you know well how to translate the Russian idiom "na ravnoj noge", into the English of Dostoevsky's contemporaries (not Jane Austen, who preceded Pushkin!), this may help--to know what idiom to distort. But in order for the English reader today to recognize this grotesque distortion, the original idiom in English has to be recognizable by him or her, not by Dostoevsky's English or American counterpa!
 rt!
s in his days. 

Take it all (almost) back: things as scandalous and beautiful, as baroque in their switch between the high and the low styles and subject matters, and as poignant politically and philosophically, as Moby Dick will definitely help.   
o.m.

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