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

[Psy Ling]

If I understood what is said in the article [Почему Пушкин - русский поэт 
http://www.textology.ru/article.aspx?aId=21 ] correctly, Pushkin was a kind of 
personality that today's specialists in mental health would call manic :-) and 
depressive :-(

  Psy Ling




________________________________
From: Robert Chandler <kcf19 at DIAL.PIPEX.COM>
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Sent: Sat, December 11, 2010 5:27:21 AM
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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