...The Captain’s Daughter and Dubrovsky are not novels but novellas — just in terms of length (95 pages and 66, here). But they are two of the greatest novellas ever written, both of them exciting, romantic racehorses of prose. He finished “finished” The Captain’s Daughter, the better known of the two, and to criticize it is to criticize a Mozart symphony: let’s say the first two-thirds are more excellent than the last. Dubrovsky is like a Heinrich von Kleist story; it gallops along on the hooves of righteous revenge, but is also full of romantic love — Pushkin’s specialty — which lightens the terror:
Marya Kirilovna sat in her room, embroidering on a tambour by the open window. She did not confuse the silks, as did Konrad’s mistress, who, in amorous distraction, embroidered a rose in green silk. Under her needle, the canvas unerringly repeated the original pattern, even though her thoughts did not follow her work but were far away.
How is that for a description of unconscious routine action? Dubrovsky is officially “unfinished” but is as polished as the rest of the fiction.
I read The Tales of Belkin and The Captain’s Daughter with surprising ease in my passable Russian before taking up Pevear and Volokhonsky’s new translations. The most popular translating couple of this century have taken their lumps for supposedly hogging the limited market for translations of the Russian classics — see, for instance, Janet Malcolm’s “Socks” in The New York Review of Books — but I wouldn’t presume to complain about them myself. In nearly 500 pages, I queried and checked maybe a dozen words or phrases of theirs, down to the pettiness of “Wouldn’t we say ‘went’ rather than ‘came’?” or “Wouldn’t ‘annoyed’ here be a little better than ‘bored’?” Quibbling over translations is perhaps only amusing for translators and people who claim to be experts in the original tongue. We’ll try a set of comparisons, but first I’ll declare that the best new old fiction you’re going to read all year is between the covers of this book.
If we start with a quotation from The Captain’s Daughter, we can visit a moment with the captain’s wife, Vasilisa Egorovna, who domineers over the dilapidated fort on the Bashkir steppes west of Orenburg. Her husband, the captain, is competent enough, but she always knows best, and he, a wise man, agrees. When he tries to persuade her to leave before the arrival of the real-life rebel Emelyan Pugachev, who is leading an army that can and will overwhelm the captain’s puny and incompetent forces (some of whom will even defect), she refuses to go. She only concedes to sending away their daughter for safekeeping:
“Very well,” said his wife, “so be it, we’ll send Masha off. But don’t dream of asking me to go: I won’t. Nothing will make me part from you in my old age and seek a solitary grave in strange parts somewhere. Together we’ve lived, and together we’ll die.”
My version of the same:
“Fine,” said the commandant’s wife, “let it be so, send Masha away. But don’t dream of asking me: I won’t go. Not in my old age am I separating from you and looking for a single grave in a strange land. Together we live, together we die.”
Natalie Duddington, Vintage Russian Library:
“Very well,” said the Commandant’s wife, “so be it, let us send Masha away. But don’t you dream of asking me — I won’t go: I wouldn’t think of parting from you in my old age and seeking a lonely grave far away. Live together, die together.”
Alan Myers, Oxford World’s Classics:
“All right,” said his wife. “So be it, we’ll send Masha away. But don’t even ask me in your dreams: I shan’t go. I’m not going to part with you in my old age and seek a lonely grave in some strange place. We’ve lived together, we’ll die together.”
Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, NYRB Classics:
“Very well,” said Vasilisa Yegornovna. “We’ll send Masha away. But I’m not going anywhere myself — so don’t you dare ask me again! Why should we part in our old age? I don’t want to go looking for a lonely grave far from home. Live together — die together.”
Is it a wash? I think so. But is it “different” in Russian? Of course!This is from Volume Five, “Stories, Tales,” of the 1975 10-volume Soviet edition of Pushkin’s works, cited by Pevear and Volokhonsky as their source:
— Добро, — сказала комендантша, — так и быть, отправим Машу. А меня и во сне не проси: не поеду. Нечего мне под старость лет расставаться с тобою да искать одинокой могилы на чужой сторонке. Вместе жить, вместе и умирать.
In the Russian we hear the captain’s wife’s distinct voice, without trying. But there are so many things going on in the tale itself, so much action, so much momentum, that the English almost can’t help but come to life. Pushkin’s the cook of this feast and translators are the waiters. If one of them sticks his bare thumb in while serving it, I remind myself to blink and go on chewing. It’s still good!
Pushkin’s influences included Shakespeare and Byron — primarily in French translation, but also in the original (although his English was poor). Even if he wasn’t always writing, he lived a wholly literary life, and adored heroines who read. The concluding Belkin tale is “The Young Lady Peasant”:
Those of my readers who have never lived in the country cannot imagine how charming these provincial young ladies are! Brought up on fresh air, in the shade of their apple orchards, they draw their knowledge of the world and of life from books. Solitude, freedom, and reading develop early in them feelings and passions unknown to our distracted beauties.
Some bookworms I know and love don’t agree with me that “The Young Lady Peasant” is the greatest short story ever written. Maybe it’s not famous enough because nobody in English knows quite what to call “Барышня-Крестьянка.” Pevear and Volokhonsky’s title is correct, even if not exactly clear; elsewhere it’s titled everything from “The Squire’s Daughter,” “Mistress into Maid,” “An Amateur Peasant Girl,” to “Lady into Lassie.” But regardless of title, I can’t read or reread this tale of the squire’s daughter who disguises herself as a peasant girl without smiling the entire time at the cleverness and delight of young love. Pushkin is a marvelous, unobtrusive but ever-present narrator:
Approaching the wood that stood at the boundary of her father’s property, Liza slowed her pace. Here she was to await Alexei. Her heart beat fast, not knowing why itself; but the fear that accompanies our youthful pranks is their chief delight. Liza entered the twilight of the wood. Its muted, rolling murmur greeted the girl. Her gaiety died down. She gradually abandoned herself to a sweet reverie. She was thinking … but is it possible to define precisely what a seventeen-year-old girl is thinking, alone, in a wood, at five o’clock in the morning?
I wasn’t going to fuss about the translation, but let me take issue with “pranks.” Five out of the six English translations I have beside my desk use “pranks” for “проказы” rather than what I would consider more apt alternatives: “mischief,” “capers,” “fooleries,” “escapades,” or “high-jinx.”
The most famous of Pushkin’s tales must be the gambling-ghost story that Tchaikovsky turned into an opera, “The Queen of Spades.” A most remarkable moment occurs when the protagonist, Hermann, a coolly calculating army officer, escapes the house where he has terrified an old countess to death, and he (but isn’t it really Pushkin, whose imagination darts this way?) reflects:
“Maybe by this same stairway, […], sixty years ago, at this same hour, into this same bedroom, in an embroidered kaftan, his hair dressed à l’oiseau royal, pressing his cocked hat to his heart, a lucky young fellow stole, who has long since turned to dust in his grave, and today the heart of his aged beloved stopped beating …”
The only piece that seems out of place in this (incomplete) Complete Prose — there are more than a thousand pages of Pushkin’s literary essays and a book of history not contained here — is the nonfictional, sometimes cranky 1829 travel diary, “Journey to Arzrum,” in which Pushkin chases after and rides along with a military expedition to the Caucasus. It would seem good if it weren’t in the company of Pushkin’s artistic glories. I don’t know why the editors of the Soviet edition shoehorned “Journey to Arzrum” into the volume made up of his fiction, but Pevear and Volokhonsky seem unconscious of making coherent decisions about story collections: their Tolstoy volume, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, and the Nikolai Leskov selection, The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories, were perversely random. The collection’s title is misleading. It should be called The Collected Stories, like a similar volume put out by the Everyman’s Library. By my count there are zero “novels,” and one journey, not multiple. But so what? Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translations suffice, and any new publication that brings the most superb Russian authors to light should make us grateful.
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“Quibbling over translations is perhaps only amusing for translators and people who claim to be experts in the original tongue. We’ll try a set of comparisons, but first I’ll declare that the best new old fiction you’re going to read all year is between the covers of this book.”—reviewer Bob Blaisdell's endorses the new Pushkin translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky.
