This is what the Artist and I will be tackling this weekend: The Second Bedroom/Finnabee's Nursery.
I'm excited to finally get to this, though. I'm tired of going in there for some item and moving six things around in order to get it. And it'll be lovely to prepare space for baby!
This week's links!
- Another recommendation for an artistic opportunity via The Way of Beauty.
- Mom recommends Gary Saul Morson's The Pevearsion of Literature*, originally published in Commentary*, a warning against bad translations. Now that Anna Karenina is a new major motion picture, you might be thinking of reading it (and you should, before you watch the movie!) The translation you read matters.
- Also from my Mom: David Rees recapping episodes of Top Chef in New York Magazine. About this, she writes: “Reading recaps of bygone episodes, yes, that's how I occasionally spend my time. If it helps, I'm knitting while I do it. I will say that he's a cross between Ben Stein and Honest Toddler. I enjoy Top Chef (while really hating its annoyingness) and it's fun to have something to read in between seasons. I find Rees funny. Lots of the commenters seem to think he's lame and can't believe he pretends not to know about food or perhaps that he actually doesn't know about food yet writes the recaps, but honestly, he's channeling my thoughts when a contestant cheftestant says something like “Chefs, I'm making ponzu infused speck for you tonight.” I just need some snark with my time-wasting indulgence. My complaint is that it's hard to navigate the posts. This post was particularly snide about soup, and I laughed out loud even though I love soup.”
- This week we don't have an offering straight from Anthony Esolen, but we do have an offering on Esolen, which Suki came upon. When I mentioned last week that he writes consistently, what I meant was prolifically… almost to an extent that occasionally defies belief. Perhaps when we doubt, we're on to something.
- For your visual pleasure this weekend: The 50 Most Perfectly Timed Photos Ever.
Have a lovely weekend!
*Edit: We didn't realize this document is now behind a paywall on each site. The key learning: Pevear and Volokhonsky take “glorious works and reduce them to awkward and unsightly muddles” and remove their explicitly religious content. They leave out the irony, narrative voice (specifically what Morson calls “double-voicing”), and wit of the original, giving us “great literature that has been stripped bare of its mystery.” If you are interested in this kind of thing, we do recommend buying the article. If you just want to know what translation of Anna to get, Morson praises “the magnificent” Constance Garnett.
julie says
Ha Ha- loved the piece on Esolen! So sly- and enjoyable.
CarlynB says
Oh, I really wanted to read the “Pevearsion of Literature,” but according to Scribd I have to become a premium member in order to read the entire piece. Could Auntie Leila maybe do a summing up of the article? My copies of The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment were translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky. I'm wondering where to find a better translation?
Phyllis says
I want to read the “Pevearsion of Literature” article, too, and I've having the same trouble. I read Anna Karenina as a teen and thought it was okay. Then, last year I read it in Russian, and it flew up into one of my all time top favorite books. I don't know if it was age and experience now or a bad translation the first time around, but I suspect something of the latter.
Susan (DE) says
Ditto on that article. Can't see it without paying. Plus, they said they wanted to access my Facebook email addressbook and stuff (would that be, give access and THEN pay, or give access and don't have to pay??). Whatever. I don't do that. 🙂
I read whatever translation of Anna they offered at S'more when I was there, and I have (over the years) read it four times. But I heard that the Pevearse (sp) people had done a GREAT translation of same, plus Brothers K … I am 99% certain that that translation was the one a friend's son read at Hillsboro — so I bought them. I am also intensely curious to know what is wrong with it…
By the way, inquiring minds would like to know what translation of Anna YOU read. 🙂
Janet says
I had to laugh at the Catholic Thing article about the ubiquitousness of Anthony Esolen. I read a lot of Catholic websites, First Things, Magnificat, etc. and have thought the same thing. But the kicker was the time I opened a donation envelope for a non-profit I was working for when I saw the name on the check – yep, you guessed it. He really IS everywhere!
Nancy says
I am passing on the website The Way of Beauty to a couple of my former students who majored in art. We always need more beauty in our lives !
Virginia says
Just to give another side… I'm not sure if I can agree with Morson that Pevear and Volokhonsky leave out the irony and wit. It's hard to translate a narrative style that isn't really used in English and, frankly, when Constance Garnett translates it in a more literal style, it doesn't come across as funny, at least not to me. When I read Anna Karenina the first time in the Garnett translation I didn't get that large parts of it were supposed to be funny–maybe I'm just dense, or I was too young, or something. It was a totally different experience reading Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation.
Also, another point in their favor is that they have a deep understanding of Russian Orthodoxy, which is (I think) what really sets their translations of Dostoevsky apart from everyone else's. Maybe it doesn't matter so much for translating Tolstoy.
I guess the solution is that we all just learn Russian : )
Philip says
I took a Dostoevsky course in college (possibly the best course I ever took). I really liked my professor a good deal, and had a great deal of trust in his opinions. He had read Dostoevsky numerous times in the original Russian as well as the Constance Garnett translations. He liked Garnett fairly well, but also said that while she was a great writer, she tended to change the feel of Dostoevsky a great deal and that her translations were not very literal a lot of the time. Even the titles of her books, were not that close to the original. So for instance “The Possessed” is just a strange translation that in English should have been “Devils.” He said even the title Crime and Punishment was a fairly procedural name that took a lot of meaning out of the original title which was more properly Transgression and Punishment, focusing on the moral transgression rather than something legal.
He had us read the Pevear and Volokhonsky version of Crime and Punishment. He said that Dostoevsky's style in the original Russian is much more jarring and that Garnett basically smoothed the prose out to make it read more easily, but be less immediate. He said that while it was not a bad translation, you lost a lot of the effect of his specific style. He was very impressed with Pevear and Volokhonsky's ability to recapture the effect of the prose in English, even if it made the work read slightly less like the perfectly written Victorian era novel.
He was not in any way a shill for the new translations. They had just completed their translation of The Brothers Karamazov and he had us read the Garnett translation because he had not had a chance to read the new translation yet. He said he suspected it would be better and that we were free to read it, but that he could not vouch for it yet, so Constance Garnett was our official read.
I read the first half in the Garnett translation, and the second half in the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation. I enjoyed the second half more than the first half. I definitely felt like like I experienced the novel becoming a little bit sharper and more focused.
Regardless, I am certainly not saying that their translations are perfect. But I am suggesting, that many times when their translation might be oddly worded and even seem awkward, it is because of their faithfulness to Dostoevsky's amazing style in the original Russian. Or so my professor had me believe!
Lisa G. says
My goodness – after seeing the John Hurt tv version in the 80s, I picked up the book. I remember how gripping it was – also meaning that literally, as I was clenching the book while I read that emotionally draining story. And now you are saying that she “smoothed out” his style? Wowee. I'm not sure at my age I could read it again without collapsing entirely! 🙂 A great story.
Christy says
Deirdre-you're doing such a wonderful job of moving house while pregnant!
And I love Leila even more because of that Top Chef link, I'm a die hard Top Chef fan!
Phyllis says
The Russian literature article! I think this is the whole thing, free
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/