/lit/ - Literature

I mean it's only the greatest novel in the Russian language and probably in the top 5 novels ever written.

My copy is translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude.
Thye any good?

>>2049483
>>2049483
Better than constance garnett not as good as pevear and volokhonsky. that's the extent of my knowledge

>>2049480
Yes, that's why I forced myself to keep reading Garnett's painfully bad prose. I'm glad I didn't keep that up though, otherwise I would never have been able to finish the book.

Also, looking into Garnett made me realize that I've probably never actually read Dostoevsky, because that bitch managed to ruin his shit too.

Heh, you're not reading Tolstoy in Russian? What the fuck's wrong with you?

>>2049484
You based that on your experience with Constance Garnet being shit and Pevear and Volokhonsky having a great rep, didn't you?

>>2049488
Not the dude you were replying to, but honestly, the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation is infinitely better, even ignoring the facts that it's just more complete and their footnotes have saved me hours of reading wikipedia.

It honestly made me hate Hemingway a little bit to find out how highly he regarded Garnett's prose.

Also, here's an interesting article about Pevear/Volokhonsky: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11/07/051107fa_fact_remnick

>>2049494
That was all they had, man. Consider yourself lucky you live now and not then.

>>2049496
I'm aware that was all they had, but still, to praise that prose is lunacy. Praise Tolstoy for crafting the thing, and praise Garnett for making it available at the time but, fuck, being enamored by that translation's rendering of the text is inexcusable.

pretentious communist bullshit. game of thrones is better.

>>2049500
the HBO tv show, natch.

>>2049498
Man, I mean this as kindly as possible, but you lack perspective.

Garnett's translation WAS Tolstoy for Hemingway. He did not have the benefit of an alternative translation to compare. You harshly judge Garnett by comparing her to Volokhonsky.

>>2049509
>Garnett's translation WAS Tolstoy for Hemingway
Then he was a thoughtless fool who didn't understand what "translation" meant.

>>2049514
Or he could never have possibly realized how much better the original version was

Anyone arguing about translations from Russian to English are like people arguing over which tastes best, dogshit or cowshit.

You're all deluding yourself if you think you've read Tolstoy - you've read his translators. Keep on thinking that you're intellectual because you've read deep foreign literature though, even though you've really only read a precis.

>>2049519
That's missing the point though. Garnett's text is just badly written, period. There are incoherent sentences, needlessly disjointed dialogue, and she makes some minor episodes completely unintelligible. Like I said, praising the prose is lunacy.

That doesn't mean that you couldn't admire the depth of the characters, or the breadth of the story, because that will come through no matter how shitty the prose is. Still, attributing these redeeming features to the translator is ridiculous, even if it was the only translation available.

Btw, if anyone has any links to Hemmingway talking about Tolstoy, I'd be very interested in reading that.

>>2049527
lol @ this nigga over here. I'll pass on learning Russian to truly "read Tolstoy."

>>2049527
Except that a novel's merits are not exhausted by the quality of the prose. I'd agree with you if we were talking about poetry, but we're not.

>>2049529

Yeah, it's a shame there's no great literature written in English that you can read without translation. fucking tard

>>2049535

Then read a history of Russia in the Napoleonic era, and soak up all that primary goodness, rather than reading a fiction based in the time. If you're not interested in the prose style, then what's the point in reading fiction at all.

Particularly since an anonymous cunt like you will probably arguing in another thread that DFW or Nabokov is the most gorgeous prose stylist in the history of homosexuality, and anyone wh doesn't get the subleties of his expressive style is a moron.

Admit it you cunts, you only read Tolsy and Dozza because you think people will be impressed.

they're not - everyone's read war and peace.

>>2049539
I don't even want to reply coherently.

You're a double nigger.

>>2049539
Dat projection.

>>2049544

>I don't even want to reply coherently.

>I can't reply coherently.

FTFY, cunt.

>>2049539
>read a history of Russia in the Napoleonic era
That's retarded. Tolstoy's fiction has merits as a work of fiction (though you seem not to think so), and is at best a terrible representation of history (unless you cling to the great man theory of history, which is retarded).

>If you're not interested in the prose style, then what's the point in reading fiction at all.
Films can have great narrative, characters and insights, while simultaneously having shit dialogue. Similarly for novels with shit prose.

>Particularly since an anonymous cunt like you, etc...
I haven't read Nabokov or DFW, nor represented myself as having done so. But even if I did exactly what you described, your point is totally irrelevant.

>you only read Tolsy and Dozza because you think people will be impressed.
I read Dostoevsky, fighting against the shitty prose, because I'm a philosophy student and he made influential arguments about theology. I don't expect anyone to be impressed, I just wanted to round out my own knowledge of the subject, and consider the legitimacy of his point of view. It's the same reason I read any work of philosophy.

>everyone's read war and peace
Well, that's just demonstrably false. Maybe you mean something like "everyone educated has read W&P", which is farther from being false, but is also exactly the reason why I forced myself to slug through Garnett's shitty writing in the first place. It's also the reason I've read the bible, being an atheist, because I like to understand references to influential works.

Conclusion: You're a bad reader and a petty person. Stop pretending everyone else is like you.

>>2049556

>(though you seem not to think so)

That's not what I said - my argument is not about the merits of War and Peace, since I would assert that I've never actually read it, and therefore can't comment on it - I've only read the translation.

My argument is that you cannot approach the text when it is mediated by translation (this applies to the Bible probably above all books, since as far as I'm aware no-one has ever gone to war and razed the cities of the inifdel over interpretations of the translation of war and peace).

I can't comment on Russian, because I don't read it, but I do read a few other languages, and I can tell you that when I read books in the original which I've already read in translation, it's very rare that I don't come away feeling cheated. Russian friends tell me that Dostoevsky has a beautiful prose style, but that it's always butchered by translators who write effectively in the register of their time, so translations veer wildly between 19th century bullshit where they use Thee and Thou to reflect polite tenses and suchlike, or trendy post-structuralist readings where people say "fuck", "mate" and "leave it out", to make it a more modern and trendy reading.

I don't see the point of reading translated novels. Period.

I wish I wasn't so lazy. That way, I'd photoshop a image that would read
"Why can't I hold
All these characters"
Seriously. I have trouble remembering all those characters. I was at page 120-150, and I promptly removed my footnote, and placed it on page one.

I'll restart it with a notepad in my desk, and write a detailed as possible glossary for every damn character.

>>2049564
>I don't see the point of reading translated novels.
Then you just don't understand why the novel, as a format, is important or interesting. In fact, this implies that you just don't appreciate novels or stories, as works of arts, and your appreciation of literature in general does not extend beyond the craft of prose writing. This is akin to only liking paintings for technical skill, without being able to appreciate composition, symbolism, color selection, etc. You're stuck in tecne, without understanding poiesis. In other words, you don't understand what it means for a work of art to be more than just the sum of its parts.

That's actually really sad.

>>2049565
What I do is, as I read, I invent nicknames for them based on their features. So, Anna Begger is Boris' mom, Anna Bitch is Anna Pavlovna (the grossly superficial chick from the first chapter), etc.

>>2049585
*techne

>>2049564
>I don't see the point of reading translated novels

>>2049483
>>2049483

I read the Aylmer and Maude translation. Wordsworth edition by any chance?

>>2049585

>you don't understand what it means for a work of art to be more than just the sum of its parts.

I don't see how you can interpret that from what I've written, since I think I'm making the exact opposite point: literary art is precisely that, greater than the sum of its parts, but in order to work, in order to attain greatness, those parts all have to hang together in perfect harmony. If you're reading in translation, you've omitted one of the parts - the visceral enjoyment of the use of language, the raw power of the words your mother used, but reformed to create art that changes your life and ignites your brain.

Novels are greater than the sum of their parts, but you need all the parts.

You are correct that I don't rate novels highly in the scheme of art though - I think it's a fey discipline, and the novel is purely a construct of an idle society desperate to amuse itself, but that's another argument.

>>2049586
That's actually a neat trick, bro. I'll try that tonight.

>>2049565

You're not meant to memorise them.

Imaging you're at a gay, fancy party. The host takes you by the arm and ushers you through the invited, introducing to a lot of interesting, and not so much, people. You're not going to remember all of them because, quite frankly, they have yet to make you care, and most won't. But the important characters will keep reappearing, and one day as you pass Count Rostov on the street you will say, "I say, haven't we met before? At the party of Madame Voronova?"

And that's how you make a connection. One way of reading War and Peace is as a window to the spirit of the times. So go with the flow.

>>2049564

That's retarded. I read French, Russian and Spanish in the original because I speak those languages. I don't speak Chinese or German yet, and don't intend to ever learn Persian or Greek. Does that mean I should withhold myself from the literature of those nations? That's a sure way to impoverish your life.

>>2049565

Just keep reading. I had the same problem at first, then when I got to book two I knew them all. Like a boss.

>>2049602
At least you're starting to sound sane, which is some kind of progress.

Great stories can be poorly told, but still be great. A shitty comedian can tell a hilarious joke, and an irrational person can make a sound argument. There is more substance to a novel than just presentation and, in my view, the greater part of what is interesting about novels is found in the story and its structure, rather than the prose. To me, the best prose style for a novel is not intrusive, nearly invisible, rather than brilliant.

>Novels are greater than the sum of their parts, but you need all the parts.
Only in the best cases, and I'm willing to admit that W&P may be one of them, but I'll never know, since I wasn't raised in Russia. Still, the story and characters, by themselves, already reach outside themselves. You can take an isolated melody of Beethoven's and still have a great work of art, even if its all the greater by being part of a symphony. A thing doesn't stop being good just because it isn't as good as it could be, otherwise no one would ever have sex with a condom.

>the novel is purely a construct of an idle society desperate to amuse itself
You dropped your sanity.

>>2049622

The novel is an incredibly new artform, and will also be an incredibly short-lived one. The death throes of the form are already beginning.

Only societies well advanced into decadence produce novels, then they go out of fashion for a thousand years or so.

It's never a good sign when people get too involved in novels, they're essentially for housewives, shopgirls, invalids and children.

>>2049624
It got too obvious dude. You need to tone it down a bit if you want to troll successfully.

>>2049625


Not trolling, actually. It's what I actually believe. I don't mind a novel for entertainment every now and then, and when I'm on vacation I devour novels voraciously. However, nobody ever changed the world with a novel. No novel has ever reached the heights of art and beauty of Michelangelo or Milton. No novel has ever significantly challenged the way that people view the world, beyond empty stylistic experiments.

The novel is simply not a long-lasting form. Example is the Roman empire - from 500 years of European dominance, we have only one novel extant. When people decide which cultural artefact to save, nobody wastes space on the novelists.

pic related: it's a art, and unlike a novel it doesn't have to be translated, because its meaning and beauty will transcend all time, whereas no-one will be reading Joyce within 50 years.

>>2049631
Nah, you're pretty obviously trolling.

>>2049631
>uses hackneyed cliches like "devour novels voraciously"
>talk like you know what art is

>>2049666

>uses even more trite expressions like "hackneyed cliches" while callng someone else for cliche
>posts faggoty .gif like a faggot

You wouldn't know art if it bit you in your malformed cock. Go back in the house - your dad wants you to suck him off again.

>>2049670
>>2049666
You both seem like hull-damaged and sinking douche canoes.

>>2049672
>>2049670

so mad.

>>2049673

fuck you, cunt, pic related.

I've never been called a hull-damaged douche canoe before. that's really rather good. Needs a bit of work, but I'll definitely steal that.

>>2049678

>>2049631
>When people decide which cultural artefact to save, nobody wastes space on the novelists
herp

>>2049631
I skipped right over your post until the guy above me quoted you/bumped.

>no-one will be reading Joyce within 50 years.
This is the most misguided prediction, ever. It ranks up there with the world ending in 2012.

>>2049686

derp

>>2049699
You've made no point. I'm sure you think you have, but you haven't.

>>2049696

Hardly anyone reads Joyce now.

because he's shit

>>2049700

Likewise.

>people on /lit/ actually wasting time replying seriously to this double nigger
>not just using reaction images

>>2049709

>using image macros
>2011

>>2049624
>It's never a good sign when people get too involved in novels, they're essentially for housewives, shopgirls, invalids and children.

This is the most revealing post you've made, you know.