Man, when rarely updated sites decide to update, they do so with a vengeance and come in batches! The other day it was MMcM’s Polyglot Vegetarian, and now it’s Erik McDonald’s XIX век with Translation comparison: Fathers and Sons or Fathers and Children. OK, it’s not as long as MMcM’s five-part series (the War and Peace of blog posts), but it’s pretty damn long, and mighty appetizing for those of us who like comparing translations. It begins:
There are so many translations that I’ll start with a quick overall impression of each, then get into specifics. This is all based only on chapter 10 (I could read that 18 times, but not the whole novel).
1. Overall impressions of each translation
2. How Bazarov and Pavel Kirsanov talk
3. Dialogue as theater
4. Other voices
5. The metasociolinguistic eftim passage
6. 1860s key words
7. The painting everyone agrees is bad
8. Micro choices that reveal their/affect our understanding of the characters
9. A modified idiom to end on
10. Bibliography
The translations range from Eugene Schuyler (1867: “I think Schuyler must have worked at least partly from Russian”) to Nicholas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater (2022: “The language sounds smooth—modern and informal—and not only because it’s so recent”); here’s a sample of “How Bazarov and Pavel Kirsanov talk”:
Chapter 10 centers on a verbal confrontation between PK and Bazarov, where what they say is no more important than how they say it. PK argues the position of a liberal Anglophile patriotic reformer of the 1840s generation with long speeches, rhetorical flourishes, elaborate examples, and frequent flares of temper. The nihilist Bazarov provides the opening for the argument by stringing together two nouns, and even though his speech gets closer to PK’s debating style as he gets drawn into the argument, he tends to say one thing at a time simply, and by the end he is back to being calm and laconic.
Nearly all the translators did a good job distinguishing PK’s and Bazarov’s speaking styles, but PK was easier to get right.
As with her use of “thou,” Hapgood pushes the limits of how much you can leave unchanged, having PK say “princíples” (85) with a stress mark. Back in chapter 5 the narrator had commented on PK pronouncing the Russian word for “principles” like French, while his nephew Arkady pronounced it in a kind of hyper-Russian way, farther from French than the standard Russian version of the borrowing, and Hapgood tries to carry that into English.
I thought Isaacs captured PK’s tone pretty well with “individuality, my dear sir,—that’s the main thing; individuality must stand as firm as a rock, for it is the foundation which everything is built upon” (67), and again with “first we’re as proud as Lucifer, then we start mocking at everything” (74).
The way Edmonds translated PK’s speeches made me think she must have known people with his particular mix of class attributes: “how you can decline to recognize principles and precepts passes my comprehension” (123) and “the meanest penny-a-liner” (127, for последний пачкун) seemed pitch-perfect, stylistically marked but not over the top.
Oddly, I skipped Отцы и дети (Fathers and Sons) when I was reading my way through the 1860s (back in 2017) — I seem to remember that I decided I had too much Russian literature to get through to take the time to reread it. But it’s an important novel and I should really get back to it (and post about it).
At the end of the blog he mentions
Ехать за семь верст киселя есть
The link to Dal has other sayings:
Мужик простой, что кисель густой
Киселю да царю всегда место есть
I’m still working through ch. 10 in Russian so I can appreciate the comparisons!
Here there is a larger list.
The dialog in chapter X is remarkable, but I completely forgot that the best phrase uttered by Pavel Petrovich “Мы, люди старого века, мы полагаем, что без принсипов […], принятых, как ты говоришь, на веру, шагу ступить, дохнуть нельзя.” is from chapter V.
@do
Thanks for the kisel’ blog entry (with recipe). He seems to be a cool person and looks younger than his age. One of the commenters says:
призадумалась….когда же я в последний раз кисель пила?
….неужели в школьные годы???
So she must have drunk this superfood like kompot and not bothered with a spoon.
Sorry for not trying to stay on topic. When I look at people like Bazarov and Arkadii, I find it hard to take their programmes and sentiments seriously. They just seem very young to me. PP should have just smiled and mixed himself a stiff drink, while taking the opportunity to advise Arkadii in private not to do anything that would lead to imprisonment or penury.
Sorry for not trying to stay on topic.
Good lord, don’t apologize! I’m grateful for any comments at all on these Russ-lit posts.