Gloom and wit in Russian literature (WAS "one more interview about Grossman")

[Perova Natasha]

Dear Robert
what a wonderful champion of Russian literature you are! What you say is so 
true: the ability to capture the author's voice in translation is really 
crucial. The myth of the "mysterious Russian soul" is easily dispelled by 
good translations.
I would only like to point out to readers of Russian literature in 
translation that among the more contemporary stuff there are many fine 
sample of humorous, witty and at the same time deep and serious novels. 
E.g., Dmitry Bykov's "Living Souls" (published by Alma Books this year) or 
Olga Slavnikova's "2017" (also published this year by Overlook), and of 
course some of the Glas books (take for instance our latest collection of 
young authors "Squaring the Circle".)

Natasha Perova
Glas New Russian Writing
tel/fax: (7)495-4419157
perova at glas.msk.su
www.glas.msk.su

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Chandler" <kcf19 at DIAL.PIPEX.COM>
To: <SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu>
Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2010 1:27 PM
Subject: [SEELANGS] Gloom and wit in Russian literature (WAS "one more 
interview about Grossman")


Dear Olga, Penelope, Josh and all,

It is, of course, pleasing to read praise of our translation of Kap. dochka, 
all the more so because it was barely reviewed!

But there is a serious point here that needs to be emphasized.  We often 
fail to give the few truly outstanding translations the attention they 
deserve.  To my mind, the greatest of all translations of Russian prose is 
William Edgerton's translation of 'Levsha'.  The word play is every bit as 
funny as in the original, and there are at least some occasions when it is 
imbued with a still greater depth of meaning.  This translation was first 
published in 1969, in Satirical Stories of Nikolai Leskov, but it had been 
out of print for a long time when we republished it in Russian Short Stories 
from Pushkin to Buida.  If we all did what we could to encourage people to 
read translations like this, or Stanley Mitchell's Eugene Onegin, perhaps 
there really would be less complaints about the gloominess of Russian 
literature.

All the best,

Robert

On 10 Dec 2010, at 16:26, Josh Wilson wrote:
> If to move beyond the myth, we'll more Chandlers and probably a bit of
> finessing (and maybe sugar-coating) readers to convince them to read all
> those Chandlers...



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