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

[Lewis B. Sckolnick]

  All we need are some off base lazy readers to kill the interest of 
others. The names then become very strange and the history and culture 
yet stranger. Many readers just do not want to try much the way people 
who I traveled to the Soviet Union with on one group trip with 20% of 
the Americans having decided by day three that where they were was not 
for them and those people came back to the USA with their negative ideas 
which they taught to others.

Lewis
> 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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-- 
Lewis B. Sckolnick
The Ledge House
130 Rattlesnake Gutter Road, Suite 1000
Leverett, MA 01054-9726
U.S.A.

Telephone 1. 413. 367. 0303
Facsimile 1. 413. 367. 2853
info at runanywhere.com

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