/lit/ - Literature

Andrew*

>>12136117
It sucks.

Maude Translation or gtfo.

>>12136117
It’s not good and I’d rather read Maude or even Garnett. It gets traction because it’s publishers bankrolled good reviews for it, I’ve talked to a few Russian speakers and American literature professors who speak Russian and they are all very critical of it.

>>12136117
Imagine after your formative years and in teh beginning of your reading career the only books you read were The Bible and War and Peace. Maybe eventually you read more and expanded but for a good amount of years you read and re-read and re-read these two books. Imagine you read the KJV and the P&V translations. Imagine learning about the beauty of life and variety of persons in this world. Imagine being there when Rostov when he was bested by Andrew--a captain he (Rostov) formerly misread, or when he bet away his money. Imagine noting that you, like Pierre, don't like to complain about your problems, and imagine being there when he first joins the Freemasons. Imagine noticing that at least once in your life you've acted like Boris when he is being diplomatic and pretending to laugh at a joke he didn't hear. Imagine bettering your life by reading these characters and getting to know them; hence making Flaubert proud when he said a scholar should know well a half a dozen books; or Ovid or Aquinas when they said beware the man of one book. Imagine going on with your life with the foundation that is War and Peace, and then living a successful life while revisiting it and revisiting it, gradually being as close as one can get to Tolstoy, the man who put Kitty and Levin and Anna and whatever-the-fuck-hundredth-character-you-want-to-mention-here-because-of-how-god-damned-good-of-a-writer-he-was. Imagine, then, someone telling you: DUDE LMAO P&V. LOOK AT THIS KID RIGHT HERE OH NO NO NO NO HE'S NOT ONE WITH THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR--AND ALTHOUGH ADMITTEDLY HE RECOGNIZES THAT LEARNING ANOTHER LANGUAGE IS GREAT HE AT THE SAME TIME KNOWS THAT EVEN UNDER THE BEST CIRCUMSTANCES THE MOST GIFTED POLYGLOTS ARE NEVER GOING TO GET SO FAMILIAR WITH ALL THE NECESSARY BIG LITERATURE LANGUAGES THAT THEY'LL BE ABLE TO APPRECIATE IT ALL--STILL LOOK AT HIM WHAT A FAGGOT YOU'RE NOT EVEN GETTING THE TRUE MEANING OF THE BOOK LOLOLOL WAIT WAIT WAIT WHAT WAS THAT TAKEAWAY AGAIN THAT YOU HAD AND IMPLEMENTED IN YOUR LIFE? TOO BAD IT'S ALL THROWN AWAY BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU JUST WENT THROUGH BY TYPING ALL THIS MAD SHIT OUT EVEN THOUGH IT ONLY TOOK YOU SIX MINUTES MAX AND YOU'RE GOING TO GO BACK TO READING, WRITING, AND BEING. YEAH, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT HAHAHA.

>>12137452
Oh please, thats full of shit, im sorry youre so salty, prob got your feelings hurt

>>12137452
A+ post

>>12136117
there was a decent Russian translation thread yesterday.

“As I begin the life-chronicle of my hero, Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov, I find myself in something of a quandary.”
translator: David McDuff (Penguin Books 1993)

“Starting out on the biography of my hero, Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, I find myself in some perplexity.”
translators: P/V (Vintage, 1992)

>>12136117
Read the Briggs translation.

Not OP, but trying to decide between Briggs, Maude and P&V. I am leaning towards Maude because I like the French not translated but with footnotes attached, but Maude takes away the Russian-ness of the names I heard.

Any suggestions?

>>12137494
Pure TRASH
They wrote this for TODDLERS

I really enjoyed Rosemary Edmonds translation in a fairly recent penguin paperback - I’m not sure if they’ve changed their translation now though

Anyone else agonize over which translation to buy and then end up holding out and never picking up books because of it?

It's why Nabokov is my favorite, no translation like self-translation.

>>12137538
I do too, but over the swedish equivalent. Thankfully there are quite a few great ones, and no less than two exceptional translators of Dostoevsky (that I know of).

>>12137538
I have the Coulson translation of Notes from Underground in the mail. Did I do ok?

>>12137538
Absolutely.
I got so overwhelmed that I gave up on translations and started working my way through the Brits.

>>12136117
It hurts me to know that I will never read Dosto, Tolstoy or Pushkin’s work in the language in which it was written, that I will only get to experience their writing after it’s been consumed and vomited and shat out by some plebeian translator who will butcher their beautiful prose. Why even live?

>>12137723
>Dosto
>beautiful prose

>>12137744
>listening to the literary equivalent of this guy

>>12137744
QUICK, SAVE THAT IMAGE!

Government didn't want you to know that he was able to make words appear above his head instead of speaking, and cut the photo, but the traces have remained!

>>12137503
Read the revised Maude translation, the French passages are restored.

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/war-and-peace-9780199232765

>>12137893
Acktchually, “War and Peace” had been printed a dozen of times in Tolstoy's lifetime, and half of editions (cheaper ones, made for lower classes) had foreign text translated or rewrote in Russian by Tolstoy himself. However, he obviously expected the readers to be educated enough to read those passages as they were, without consulting the footnotes, and harshly responded to critics telling that it was a vital part of the images he had drawn.

So, he thought about sound cinema long before it was invented, and you people are as smart as Russian peasants 150 years ago.