Russian book club

[Cypress]

Hmm. Not a great translation...here is a much better one, by the husband-and-wife team of Pevear and Volokhonsky, perhaps the most capable translators of Russian literature into English:

You are right, translation is everything. Prevear and Volokhonsky have proven themselves capable of excellent translations.

Gogol's "The Overcoat" is one of my favorite short stories (or novella?) in Russian literature, and established him as one of my favorite Russian writers. I believe I have read that Overcoat was the first time that a working class rube was treated in literary form as a real human being, a person worthy of dignity, rather than portrayed as a rube worthy of ridicule or pity. Gogol's prose I find to be quirky, strangely insightful, funny, sarcastic, and beautifully written all at the same time. I have yet to read "Dead Souls" but have it on my bucket list -- I am hoping Prevear-Volokhonsky did a translation!

As a testament to the monumental influence Gogol had on the legacy of Russian literature, Dostoyevsky is reputed to have said "We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'.

 

[kflaux]

You are right, translation is everything. Prevear and Volokhonsky have proven themselves capable of excellent translations.

Gogol's "The Overcoat" is one of my favorite short stories (or novella?) in Russian literature, and established him as one of my favorite Russian writers. I believe I have read that Overcoat was the first time that a working class rube was treated in literary form as a real human being, a person worthy of dignity, rather than portrayed as a rube worthy of ridicule or pity. Gogol's prose I find to be quirky, strangely insightful, funny, sarcastic, and beautifully written all at the same time. I have yet to read "Dead Souls" but have it on my bucket list -- I am hoping Prevear-Volokhonsky did a translation!

As a testament to the monumental influence Gogol had on the legacy of Russian literature, Dostoyevsky is reputed to have said "We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'.

Indeed. The Overcoat is sui generis.

You know you really are in terra incognita, when you find yourself reading a ghost story in which the ghost is probably the most believable character......

You might get hold of Vladimir Nabokov's Notes on Russian Literature, if you haven't already, and read what he writes about The Overcoat. Very illuminating.

...only, if you are a Dostoyevsky fan, as I am too, you might want to avoid what Nabokov has to say about FD....especially his The Idiot....which, however, is hilarious, but you will never be able to take that work seriously again...........

 

[Cypress]

Indeed. The Overcoat is sui generis.

You know you really are in terra incognita, when you find yourself reading a ghost story in which the ghost is probably the most believable character......

You might get hold of Vladimir Nabokov's Notes on Russian Literature, if you haven't already, and read what he writes about The Overcoat. Very illuminating.

...only, if you are a Dostoyevsky fan, as I am too, you might want to avoid what Nabokov has to say about FD....especially his The Idiot....which, however, is hilarious, but you will never be able to take that work seriously again...........

Thanks for the insights.

I really like Dostoyevksy, and it would be a bummer if somebody convinces me to hate him!

“You are not Dostoevsky,' said the woman...
'You never can tell...' he answered.
'Dostoevsky is dead,' the woman said, a bit uncertainly.
'I protest!' he said with heat, 'Dostoevsky is immortal!!”

Mikhail Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita":

 

[kflaux]

Thanks for the insights.

I really like Dostoyevksy, and it would be a bummer if somebody convinces me to hate him!

“You are not Dostoevsky,' said the woman...
'You never can tell...' he answered.
'Dostoevsky is dead,' the woman said, a bit uncertainly.
'I protest!' he said with heat, 'Dostoevsky is immortal!!”

Mikhail Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita"

Well I'll be damned. I don't remember that passage.

Russian language and literature is a hobby of mine, so to speak, and about three years ago I decided that I needed to read Bulgakov's classic, in the original.

Took me six months IIRC....but if I forgot a passage like that, well......

BTW and as you are probably aware, The Master and Margarita has been made into several movies and TV series.

They all have their defenders, and I cannot say definitively which is best, but I own the DVDs of and thoroughly enjoy this version:

https://www.amazon.com/Master-Margarita-Aleksandr-Abdulov/dp/B000EANSXM/ref=sr_1_1

The phrase "Manuscripts don't burn!" on the DVD sleeve is what any Russian will remember as the catch-phrase of the book....and it is especially significant given that Bulgakov's manuscript itself didn't burn....it was kept in total secrecy by his widow until Stalin was safely dead and buried, and the partial cultural thaw under Khrushchev allowed for most (but not all) of it to be published.

Ironically, in the book and the movies, it is the Devil himself (Wolland) who utters the famous "Manuscripts don't burn"....referring of course to the manuscript of the Master....

 

[kflaux]

Ah. I see I have been preaching to the choir. Mea Culpa. I just read your post #16 above.

One really striking thing about TMaM in my opinion is the juxtaposition of scenes from...not the Bible, nothing in the Bible is anywhere near that explicit....from the last few days of Christ, up to and including his crucifixion...with scenes from 1930's Moscow, in which the latter necessarily come off as superficial, absurd, ludicrous.

Anyways. A novel that is like no other.

 

[RickyTavy]

Ah. I see I have been preaching to the choir. Mea Culpa. I just read your post #16 above.

One really striking thing about TMaM in my opinion is the juxtaposition of scenes from...not the Bible, nothing in the Bible is anywhere near that explicit....from the last few days of Christ, up to and including his crucifixion...with scenes from 1930's Moscow, in which the latter necessarily come off as superficial, absurd, ludicrous.

Anyways. A novel that is like no other.

I'm sure you could have had this pleasant exchange with the Ant, if only you'd taken the time to put it all in words of two syllables or less, elitist assholes.

 

[Cypress]

Well I'll be damned. I don't remember that passage.

Russian language and literature is a hobby of mine, so to speak, and about three years ago I decided that I needed to read Bulgakov's classic, in the original.

Took me six months IIRC....but if I forgot a passage like that, well......

BTW and as you are probably aware, The Master and Margarita has been made into several movies and TV series.

They all have their defenders, and I cannot say definitively which is best, but I own the DVDs of and thoroughly enjoy this version:

https://www.amazon.com/Master-Margarita-Aleksandr-Abdulov/dp/B000EANSXM/ref=sr_1_1

The phrase "Manuscripts don't burn!" on the DVD sleeve is what any Russian will remember as the catch-phrase of the book....and it is especially significant given that Bulgakov's manuscript itself didn't burn....it was kept in total secrecy by his widow until Stalin was safely dead and buried, and the partial cultural thaw under Khrushchev allowed for most (but not all) of it to be published.

Ironically, in the book and the movies, it is the Devil himself (Wolland) who utters the famous "Manuscripts don't burn"....referring of course to the manuscript of the Master....

Much obliged for the recommendations.

Reputedly, Rolling Stones classic "Sympathy for the Devil" was inspired by Jagger's reading of Master and Margarita (Although I personally attribute it more to acid and weed).

Speaking of the body of work by translators Prevear and Volokonsky, I recently finished reading their "Selected Stories" by Anton Chekhov. If you have not given it a gander, you may want to consider! Personally love Chekhov's economical, impressionistic style of prose, which also tends to being strangely and beautifully poignant.

 

[kflaux]

Much obliged for the recommendations.

Reputedly, Rolling Stones classic "Sympathy for the Devil" was inspired by Jagger's reading of Master and Margarita (Although I personally attribute it more to acid and weed).

Speaking of the body of work by translators Prevear and Volokonsky, I recently finished reading their "Selected Stories" by Anton Chekhov. If you have not given it a gander, you may want to consider! Personally love Chekhov's economical, impressionistic style of prose, which also tends to being strangely and beautifully poignant.

Thanks for the recommendation. I recently read an extended article on P&V, explaining that she, as a native Russian, renders a work in rough English, he goes through and makes it more natural and faithful in tone, idiom etc, she goes over his version, and they bounce it back and forth until they're both satisfied.

Chekhov probably ranks as my favorite author, if "favorite" is measured by the amount of time actually spent reading the author. ...if by actual page count, it would prolly be Faulkner....

....I was an American studying physics in Tokyo when I learned that two papers directly related to my research were written in Russian, with no translations anywhere. So I began studying Russian, taking classes given in Japanese, which may not have been too smart.... Anyways, about a year into those classes, the Bolshoi Theater visited Tokyo, and so our teacher got us tickets for their performance of Uncle Vanya, and told us to read the play in advance of the performance. Which was absurd...we were nowhere near able to read at that level after just one year of study. IAC perhaps partly for that reason, it became my favorite play in the Chekhov canon, and I have on DVD the performance with Michael Redgrave, Lawrence Olivier, Joan Plowright, and a young, radiant and truly beautiful Rosemary Harris as Elena......

 

[Cypress]

Thanks for the recommendation. I recently read an extended article on P&V, explaining that she, as a native Russian, renders a work in rough English, he goes through and makes it more natural and faithful in tone, idiom etc, she goes over his version, and they bounce it back and forth until they're both satisfied.

Chekhov probably ranks as my favorite author, if "favorite" is measured by the amount of time actually spent reading the author. ...if by actual page count, it would prolly be Faulkner....

....I was an American studying physics in Tokyo when I learned that two papers directly related to my research were written in Russian, with no translations anywhere. So I began studying Russian, taking classes given in Japanese, which may not have been too smart.... Anyways, about a year into those classes, the Bolshoi Theater visited Tokyo, and so our teacher got us tickets for their performance of Uncle Vanya, and told us to read the play in advance of the performance. Which was absurd...we were nowhere near able to read at that level after just one year of study. IAC perhaps partly for that reason, it became my favorite play in the Chekhov canon, and I have on DVD the performance with Michael Redgrave, Lawrence Olivier, Joan Plowright, and a young, radiant and truly beautiful Rosemary Harris as Elena......

Great stuff. I salute you. I seemingly cannot get many native born Americans in my circle of influence interested in the great Russian works, although one lady at the office read Brothers Karamazov with me. Probably shouldn't have started with Dostoyevsky, who is as much a philosopher and a psychologist as he is a story teller.

My "introduction" to Russian literature were Russian children's books. Which my father - a Russian immigrant - would read to us. I must have only been about three years old, but the residual memory of my father's voice and the pictures from "Mukha-Tsokotukha" are still burned onto the neurons of my mind.

My Russian language skills have atrophied since childhood, but I remember my father's book collection; dusty old editions Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, Gogol, Paustovsky. Being far beyond my Russian linguistic abilities, these books forever lay beyond my reach. But, at the dawn of the second half of my life, I got a second wind and started tracking down good English translations of the Russian masters. Right now, I am finishing up some Gogol, with Bulgakov, Tolstoy, and Turgenev on deck. Wish me luck!

 

[kflaux]

Great stuff. I salute you. I seemingly cannot get many native born Americans in my circle of influence interested in the great Russian works, although one lady at the office read Brothers Karamazov with me. Probably shouldn't have started with Dostoyevsky, who is as much a philosopher and a psychologist as he is a story teller.

My "introduction" to Russian literature were Russian children's books. Which my father - a Russian immigrant - would read to us. I must have only been about three years old, but the residual memory of my father's voice and the pictures from "Mukha-Tsokotukha" are still burned onto the neurons of my mind.

My Russian language skills have atrophied since childhood, but I remember my father's book collection; dusty old editions Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, Gogol, Paustovsky. Being far beyond my Russian linguistic abilities, these books forever lay beyond my reach. But, at the dawn of the second half of my life, I got a second wind and started tracking down good English translations of the Russian masters. Right now, I am finishing up some Gogol, with Bulgakov, Tolstoy, and Turgenev on deck. Wish me luck!

Excellent. I salute you, and your father.

It's never too late to learn, though. The great German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss took up Russian in his late 60's, IIRC, partly in order to be able to correspond with Nikolai Lobachevsky, a co-discoverer of non-Euclidean geometry.

 

[Cypress]

Excellent. I salute you, and your father.

It's never too late to learn, though. The great German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss took up Russian in his late 60's, IIRC, partly in order to be able to correspond with Nikolai Lobachevsky, a co-discoverer of non-Euclidean geometry.

Great point. I have been making it a point to improve my atrophied Russian by conversing with my Russian relatives here in North America, and leveraging my trips to Belarus.

To follow up on this tangent, those 18th and 19th century scientists strike me as renaissance men and women in every sense of the word. I just read a book about Alexander Humboldt, and his breadth and scope of knowledge seems astonishing, simply beyond comprehension. To this day, when I read classic scientific papers from the 19th century, I am struck by how well-spoken and literate they were, and how keen their powers of observation were in the absence of the technology we have readily at hand.

 

[Cancel 2018.1]

Read Anna even if it takes months, it's well worth it. I read it going back and forth to work via public transportation and it did take a long time, but it's a great book... sad and depressing but great. Picture Vivien Leigh as Anna while you're reading. She was just so beautiful.

Almost finished with Anna. Any suggestions as to what movie version does the most justice to it? Just rented the latest version with Jude Law. Seems to concentrate on visually artistic, stylish aspect which gets in the way of the storyline.

 

[kflaux]

Great point. I have been making it a point to improve my atrophied Russian by conversing with my Russian relatives here in North America, and leveraging my trips to Belarus.

To follow up on this tangent, those 18th and 19th century scientists strike me as renaissance men and women in every sense of the word. I just read a book about Alexander Humboldt, and his breadth and scope of knowledge seems astonishing, simply beyond comprehension. To this day, when I read classic scientific papers from the 19th century, I am struck by how well-spoken and literate they were, and how keen their powers of observation were in the absence of the technology we have readily at hand.

Do you travel to Belarus on business? Yes, it's great if you have opportunities to use the language.

I have a half-Russian sister-in-law, but I almost never see her....

Not many people read classic scientific papers from long ago. Are you a student of the history of science? As it happens, I did a master's in history and philosophy of science at Univ. Toronto.

If need be, we could take this discussion to a new thread....

 

[kflaux]

Almost finished with Anna. Any suggestions as to what movie version does the most justice to it? Just rented the latest version with Jude Law. Seems to concentrate on visually artistic, stylish aspect which gets in the way of the storyline.

I have no opinion on movie versions--have not seen one yet--but one of the most remarkable parts of the book, for me, was the passage describing her mind during her final trip from home. Starting with where she sees herself in the mirror and doesn't recognize herself.

It seems to me that Tolstoy brilliantly described the psychological implosion of a human mind. Not that I'm an expert on e.g. madness or the like, but it rang true to me.

And, of course, the scene in which Levin proposes to Kitty (...the second time!) is wonderful...and much else besides......

 

[Cypress]

Do you travel to Belarus on business? Yes, it's great if you have opportunities to use the language.

I have a half-Russian sister-in-law, but I almost never see her....

Not many people read classic scientific papers from long ago. Are you a student of the history of science? As it happens, I did a master's in history and philosophy of science at Univ. Toronto.

If need be, we could take this discussion to a new thread....

Not business. Family is from Belarus, and cousins throughout Belarus and Russia. The only thing I dread is the constant vodka drinking, I am a lightweight! I am afraid I am not putting in a good showing for Uncle Sam with my vodka soaked Slavic relatives.

Re: your background -- Holy smoke, check out the brain on kflaux! Impressive. That is the kind of scholarly endeavor I can respect. Parents I know are always telling their kids to major in engineering, computer science, or something that supposedly makes a lot of money. My advice? Study what you like, and what interests you as long as you feel you can excel in it.

My career involves a scientific research, and it just so happens that in the course of literature review I sometimes run across old scientific papers, and my curiosity leads me sometimes back into the earlymost 20th century and late 19th century. Interesting stuff, someday I would like to take a gander at Darwin's original published work!

Regarding the question on movies, I cannot stand movies made by americans and british that purport to be an adaptation of a great Russian novel. The Americans and the Brits just don't get it right, they do not understand the nuance and the intangibles of the Russian soul. Which gets back to your earlier comment about translation. A translation from the original Russian has to be authentic and culturally relevant. Which is why I appreciated your comment on the Prevear-Volokonsky translation team which bring both the native Russian and the native English speaker perspectives to the work.

 

[Cancel 2018.1]

I have no opinion on movie versions--have not seen one yet--but one of the most remarkable parts of the book, for me, was the passage describing her mind during her final trip from home. Starting with where she sees herself in the mirror and doesn't recognize herself.

It seems to me that Tolstoy brilliantly described the psychological implosion of a human mind. .

I felt like that was a result of an addiction to morphine which she was using to help with sleep.

 

[Cancel 2018.1]

Regarding the question on movies, I cannot stand movies made by americans and british that purport to be an adaptation of a great Russian novel. The Americans and the Brits just don't get it right, they do not understand the nuance and the intangibles of the Russian soul.

To be fair, how often does a movie do justice to any book?

 

[kflaux]

Not business. Family is from Belarus, and cousins throughout Belarus and Russia. The only thing I dread is the constant vodka drinking, I am a lightweight! I am afraid I am not putting in a good showing for Uncle Sam with my vodka soaked Slavic relatives.

Aha. I can relate, to an extent. My wife is Japanese, and on trips to Japan, sake and etc. are part of every meal with friends. Sometimes it's not something I'm real keen on--I must be getting old--but as in Russia, it's part of the culture.

My career involves a scientific research, and it just so happens that in the course of literature review I sometimes run across old scientific papers, and my curiosity leads me sometimes back into the earlymost 20th century and late 19th century. Interesting stuff, someday I would like to take a gander at Darwin's original published work!

His Origin is an interesting read. He did a very good job of gradually making the malleability of species something people could accept, by talking about e.g. pigeon breeding and the like.

Most of what I did was in history of physics and math, however. Master's dissertation on Faraday's discovery of E-M induction.

Regarding the question on movies, I cannot stand movies made by americans and british that purport to be an adaptation of a great Russian novel. The Americans and the Brits just don't get it right, they do not understand the nuance and the intangibles of the Russian soul. Which gets back to your earlier comment about translation. A translation from the original Russian has to be authentic and culturally relevant. Which is why I appreciated your comment on the Prevear-Volokonsky translation team which bring both the native Russian and the native English speaker perspectives to the work.

I guess they are both translations, so to speak, aren't they. And any "translation" of a book into a movie will be imperfect, in the same way that there is no such thing as a perfect translation into another language. "To translate is to traduce".

 

[Phantasmal]

Aha. I can related, to an extent. My wife is Japanese, and on trips to Japan, sake and etc. are part of every meal with friends. Sometimes it's not something I'm real keen on--I must be getting old--but as in Russia, it's part of the culture.


His Origin is an interesting read. He did a very good job of gradually making the malleability of species something people could accept, by talking about e.g. pigeon breeding and the like.

Most of what I did was in history of physics and math, however. Master's dissertation on Faraday's discovery of E-M induction.


I guess they are both translations, so to speak, aren't they. And any "translation" of a book into a movie will be imperfect, in the same way that there is no such thing as a perfect translation into another language. "To translate is to traduce".

Japan, a country I would suffer a plane ride to visit. I am fascinated by their culture.

 

[kflaux]

To be fair, how often does a movie do justice to any book?

True dat. Some are tolerable. Many are not.

A very few however rise above their textual origins, transcend them. My favorite example of this is Rashomon, the film that first got Akira Kurosawa noticed. Based on two interesting but not widely known or appreciated short stories by R. Akutagawa.