Imagery in translation. Translating F. M. Dostoevsky into English

PROSE UNIT 7:

TRANSLATING F. M. DOSTOEVSKY INTO ENGLISH

Introductory Notes

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821 -1881) was bom in Moscow but most of his life and creative activities were asso­ciated with St. Petersburg. In 1848 he finished the Army Engi­neering Academy in St. Petersburg, by which time his first liter­ary work had been published; it was his translation from French of Balzac's Eugenie Grande. So he resigned from the engineer­ing department and chose the writer career.

In May 1845 appeared his first book, The Poor People, and was highly appreciated by the literary public.

However, his life was far from being untroubled. When quite a young man, he found himself a prisoner in the Petro-pavlovsk Fortress in St. Petersburg and was sentenced to the capital punishment for participation in a socialist conspiracy. He faced a firing squad when the Emperor's commutation or­der arrived. Instead he spent four years in servitude in Siberia. The years in prison brought him a great amount of psycholog­ical experience and a knowledge of such characters that very few writers could have expected to learn about. His subsequent life was greatly influenced by that experience. Most of his fic­tion, as well as essays and literary criticism were in this or that way connected with the world of crime, misery, decay and despair. Yet it was not absolutely melancholy; in those depths of misery, he managed to find characters that glared like torches or stars of their own spiritual light. Most of his personages were in search of spiritual values even if their search might

seem strange, crooked and insane. __

His language is not easy to perceive even for a native speak­er, let alone for translators who take their pains to transport his narrative style into other languages and cultures.

Yet probably no other Russian writer, even Leo Tolstoy himself, got such a strikingly powerful world fame as Dostoevsky did. All his works were translated and re-translated into many languages of the world. Especially venerated are his five major novels, the quintet, written in the years of 1866-1880: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Devils for The Possessed), The Raw Youth, and The Brothers Karamazov. The Idiot was regarded as "particularly Russian" and The Devils puzzled generations of readers as a striking prophecy of the Communist totalitarian re­gime that later ruled in the twentieth century Russia.

Comparatively less known, or rather, less widely discussed were his short stories. The most popular of them were Memoirs from a Dark Cellar (1864), also known in English translation as Notes from the Underground, which were considered predeces­sors of Crime and Punishment and others; another one was The Double.

In some paradoxical way, the task of a translator grows more difficult when translating short stories; in some cases, a word or two, a sentence or two not quite carefully translated may cause a destroying effect onto its fate in the target culture. We may watch this phenomenon on the example of Dostocvsky's Кроткая in translation.

Task for comparison:

Кроткая — A Gentle Spirit — The Gentle Creature

КРОТКАЯ СОН ГОРДОСТИ

Так прошла вся зима, в каком-то ожидании чего-то. Я любил глядеть на нее украдкой, когда она сидит, бывало, за своим столиком. Она занималась работой, бельем, а по вече­рам иногда читала книги, которые брала из моего шкафа.

179

Практикум по художественному переводу

Выбор книг в шкафе тоже должен был свидетельствовать в мою пользу. Не выходила она почти никуда. Перед сумерка­ми, после обеда, я выводил ее каждый день гулять, и мы де­лали моцион; но не совершенно молча, как прежде. Я имен­но старался делать вид, что мы не молчим и говорим соглас­но, но, как я сказал уже, сами мы оба так делали, что не рас­пространялись. Я делал нарочно, а ей, думал я, необходимо «дать время». Конечно, странно, что мне ни разу, почти до конца зимы, не пришло в голову, что я вот исподтишка люб­лю смотреть на нее, а ни одного-то ее взгляда за всю зиму я не поймал на себе! Я думал, что в ней это робость. К тому же она имела вид такой робкой кротости, такого бессилия после болезни. Нет, лучше выжди и — «и она вдруг сама подойдет к тебе...»

Эта мысль восхищала меня неотразимо. Прибавлю одно, иногда я как будто нарочно разжигал себя самого и дей­ствительно доводил свой ум и дух до того, что как будто впа­дал на нее в обиду. И так продолжалось по нескольку време­ни. Но ненависть моя никогда не могла созреть и укрепиться в душе моей. Да и сам я чувствовал, что как будто это только игра. Да и тогда, хоть и разорвал я брак, купив кровать и ширмы, но никогда, никогда не мог я видеть в ней преступ­ницу. И не потому, что судил о преступлении ее легкомыс­ленно, а потому, что имел смысл совершенно простить ее, с самого первого дня, еще прежде даже, чем купил кровать. Одним словом, это странность с моей стороны, ибо я нрав­ственно строг. Напротив, в моих глазах она была так побеж­дена, была так унижена, так раздавлена, что я мучительно жалел ее иногда, хотя мне при всем этом решительно нрави­лась иногда идея об ее унижении. Идея этого неравенства нашего нравилась...

Мне случилось в эту зиму нарочно сделать несколько добрых поступков. Я простил два долга, я дал одной бедной женщине без всякого заклада. И жене я не сказал про это, и вовсе не для того, чтобы она узнала, сделал; но женщина сама

180 ~ ~~~

Imagery in Translation '

пришла благодарить, и чуть не на коленях. Таким образом огласилось; мне показалось, что про женщину она действи­тельно узнала с удовольствием.

Но подвигалась весна, был уже апрель в половине, вы­нули двойные рамы, и солнце стало яркими пучками осве­щать наши молчаливые комнаты. Но пелена висела передо мною и слепила мой ум. Роковая, страшная пелена! Как это случилось, что все это вдруг упало с глаз, и я вдруг прозрел и все понял! Случай ли это был, день ли пришел такой сроч­ный, солнечный ли луч зажег в отупевшем уме моем мысль и догадку? Нет, не мысль и не догадка были тут, а тут вдруг заиграла одна жилка, замертвевшая было жилка, затряслась и ожила и озарила всю отупевшую мою душу и бесовскую гордость мою. Я тогда точно вскочил вдруг с места. Да и случилось оно вдруг и внезапно. Это случилось перед вече­ром, часов в пять после обеда.

Translated by Constance Garnett:

A GENTLE SPIRIT THE DREAM OF PRIDE

So the whole winter passed in a sort of expectation. I liked looking at her on the sly, when she was sitting at her little table. She was busy at her needlework, and sometimes in the evening she read books taken from my bookcase. The choice of books in the bookcase must have had an influence in my favour too. She hardly ever went out. Just before dusk, after dinner, I used to take her out every day for a walk. We took a constitutional, but we were not absolutely silent, as we used to be. I tried, in fact, to make a show of our not being silent, but talking harmoniously, but as I have said already, we both avoided letting ourselves go. I did it purposely, I thought it was essential to "give her time." Of course, it was strange that almost till the end of the winter it did not once strike me that, though I loved to watch her stealthily, I

had never once, all the winter, caught her glancing at me! I thought
_ — —

Практикум по художественному переводу

it was timidity in her. Besides, she had an air of such timid gentle­ness, such weakness after her illness. Yes, better to wait and — "she will come to you all at once of herself..."

That thought fascinated me beyond all words. I will add one thing; sometimes, as it were purposely, 1 worked myself up and brought my mind and spirit to the point of believing she had injured me. And so it went on for some time. But my anger could never be very real or violent. And 1 felt myself as though it were only acting. And though 1 had broken off our marriage by buying that bedstead and screen, I could never, never look upon her as a criminal. And not that I took a frivolous view of her crime, but because I had the sense to forgive her completely, from the very first day, even before I bought the bedstead. In fact, it is strange on my part, for I am strict in moral questions. On the contrary, in my eyes, she was so conquered, so humiliated, so crushed that sometimes I felt agonies of pity for her, though sometimes the thought of her humiliation was actually pleasing to me. The thought of our inequality pleased me...

I intentionally performed several acts of kindness that win­ter. I excused two debts, I gave one poor woman money without any pledge. And I said nothing to my wife about it, and I didn't do it in order that she should know; but the woman came herself to thank me, almost on her knees. And in that way it became public property; it seemed to me that she heard about the woman with pleasure.

But spring was coming, it was mid-April, we took out the double windows and the sun began lighting up our silent room with its bright beams. But there was, as it were, a veil before my eyes and a blindness over my mind. A fatal, terrible veil! How did it happen that the scales suddenly fell from my eyes, and I suddenly saw and understood? Was it a chance, or had the hour come, or did the ray of sunshine kindle a thought, a conjecture, in my dull mind? No, it was not a thought, not a conjecture. But a cord suddenly vibrated, a feeling that had long been dead was stirred and came to life, fooding all my darkened soul and devil-

182

Дата добавления: 2015-08-03