I’m reading Eugene Vodolazkin’s 2012 novel Лавр in Lisa Hayden’s superb translation as Laurus, and I’ve come across a passage that seemed eminently Hatworthy. Our hero Arseny, a 15th-century village healer, has gotten enough renown for his success that his patients in Belozersk are giving him plenty of money (Christofer is the grandfather who raised him and taught him about healing herbs):
Arseny used the money to buy several small books that he chanced upon: they described the healing properties of herbs and stones. One of them was a doctor book from abroad, and Arseny paid the merchant Afanasy Flea, who had visited German lands, for a translation. Flea’s translation was extremely approximate, which limited opportunities for using the book. Arseny employed the book’s prescriptions only when they coincided with what he knew from Christofer.
By following along as the merchant read the unfamiliar symbols and translated the words they composed, Arseny grew interested in the correlations between languages. Thanks to the story of the confusion of tongues, Arseny knew of the existence of seventy-two world languages, but he had yet, in his whole life, to hear a single one of them beyond Russian. His lips moving, he repeated the unaccustomed combinations of sounds and words to himself, after Flea. When he learned their meanings, it surprised him that familiar things could be expressed in such an unusual and—this was the main thing—awkward way. At the same time, the multitude of opportunities for expression entranced and attracted Arseny. He tried to memorize correlations between Russian and German words, along with Flea’s pronunciation, which probably did not correspond to authentic German pronunciation.
The enterprising Flea quickly noticed Arseny’s interest and offered to give him German lessons. Arseny readily agreed. Essentially, these new lessons were nothing like the usual notions of teaching, because Afanasy Flea was unable to say anything intelligible about language in general. He had never thought about its structure and certainly did not know its rules. At first the lessons consisted of nothing more than the merchant reading more of the doctor book aloud and translating it. These language lessons differed from their previous translation sessions only because at the end of each section, Flea asked Arseny:
Got that?
This allowed the merchant to charge Arseny a double fee: for translation and for lessons. Arseny did not begrudge the money so he did not grumble. He valued Afanasy Flea as the only person in Belozersk familiar to any degree with speech from abroad. Understanding that he would achieve little by merely reading the doctor book, Arseny decided to make use of one of his instructor’s undeniable merits: Flea possessed a good ear and a tenacious memory.
During his time spent on lengthy trips in the land of Germany, Flea had mastered phrases to be uttered in various situations and could repeat those words when asked probing questions. Arseny described these situations for Flea and asked what to say in those cases. The merchant (this is so easy!) waved his hands around, surprised, and reported all the versions he had heard. Arseny wrote down what Flea said. When he was alone, he put his notes in order. He extracted the unfamiliar words from the expressions he heard from Flea and registered them in a special little dictionary.
I presume he will make use of this knowledge later in his travels. The novel is delightfully cavalier about historical accuracy (the author calls it «неисторический роман» — “an unhistorical novel”); there are occasional dips into the future (at one point someone quotes the Little Prince: “For what you have tamed, you become responsible forever”), and the language mingles Ye Olde Church Slavic with modern colloquialisms in a pleasing way which Hayden renders with perfect pitch (her equivalents for “бля” are a master class in themselves). She even comes up with a spectacular equivalent of the pun in “Корова (что в вымени тебе моем?)” (an allusion to the Pushkin poem “Что в имени тебе моём” ‘What is in my name for you,’ with в вымени ‘in udder’ substituted for в имени ‘in name’): “The cow (how shall I udder your name?).” Highly recommended!
The Russian original is below the cut:
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