Dostoyevsky's " Бе сы"(The Possessed)

[Sarah Ruth Lorenz]

You could look at Michael Katz's translation of Бесы, which he renders as Devils, in the Oxford World's Classics edition. I have not looked at this volume, but I did happily use Katz's translation of Notes from Underground after having a hard time teaching from the Pevear and Volokhonsky version. Katz's Notes from Underground (in the Norton edition) includes a nice preface, both technical and humble, addressing the insoluble problems of translation--particularly of that famous first line of the novella. This is a favorable contrast to Pevear and Volokhonsky, who are more likely to present their approach as the only correct way, the only way to translate with integrity. 

Pevear and Volokhonsky do show a lot of integrity in their efforts to be true to every last detail of both vocabulary and syntax, but the resulting English can be bumpy and awkward, which in its own way is not true to the original. Part of the experience of reading Dostoevsky in Russian is of being caught up in the flow of a melodramatic climax, and I found Katz to achieve this more successfully than Pevear and Volokhonsky, while retaining a high level of accuracy. P&V stretch English vocabulary and syntax to a point that can be brilliant, or just bumpy. When the Underground Man declares that he is "ужасно самолюбив," P&V translate this as "I have a terrible amour-propre." Yes,  amour-propre is a very accurate translation, but it is not English! There were many other instances where P&V used accurate but very obscure English words to render fairly common Russian words, which unnecessarily turned off the freshmen I was teaching. The point is not that the text should be made easy for freshmen, but that it should be put into English that flows, or does not flow, in a way similar to the original, and a chatty style should not become abstruse. P&V's approach has its strong points, but one should understand the trade-offs. In any case, I respect the work of all translators who make it possible for us to teach these works to our mostly English-speaking students. 



Sarah Ruth Lorenz
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Comparative Literature
University of California, Berkeley
srlorenz at berkeley.edu



On Dec 13, 2010, at 7:20 AM, Alexei Kutuzov wrote:

Dear Colleagues,
 
Could anyone recommend a good English-language translation of Dostoyevsky's Бесы 
(The Possessed)?  A friend of mine approached me with the Pevear and Volokhonsky 
translation and asked if this were the one to go with.  I hesistated when I saw 
this, and recommended instead the Magarshack version (with the only regret 
that there is no scholarly commentary provided).  If you have any suggestions on 
this account, they would be most welcome.
 
With supreme thanks,
 
Alexei Kutuzov




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