'Singing, Blooming and Sparkling with Beauty'

We, the hopelessly monolingual, are at the mercy of translators. Imagine a purist who would read only books in his native tongue. For an English speaker that would mean no Dante, Montaigne or Tolstoy; in effect, illiteracy. It would rule out Chaucer for many and even Shakespeare for the militantly lazy. Half a century ago I remember a professor of English complaining that most of his students were unable to read anything written before Hemingway introduced his see-Dick-run prose.

On this date, May 4, in 1889, Chekhov writes a letter from Sumy (now in northeastern Ukraine) to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin, beginning with a detailed celebration of the Russian spring. I’m using Letters of Anton Chekhov (1973), translated by Michael Henry Heim and Simon Karlinsky:

“I am writing this, Alexi Sergeyevich, just after getting back from the hunt: I was out catching crayfish. The weather is marvelous. Everything is singing, blooming and sparkling with beauty. By now the garden is all green, and even the oaks are covered with leaves. The trunks of the apple, pear, cherry and plum trees have been painted white to protect them from worms.”

Who paints fruit trees white, and why? At this point, Karlinsky adds a much-needed footnote:

“In the translation of this passage that appears in the Lillian Hellman edition of his letters, Chekhov is sent to catch crabs, rather than crayfish, in the inland river Psyol, oaks are said to be covered with blossoms, and the fruit trees have been given ‘a white coat’ by ‘the busy worms.’ Elsewhere in that volume, gobies (a species of fish) are confused with bulls, cod becomes ‘a fish from the Caspian,’ a siskin (a free bird) is rendered as ‘bird in a cage,’ and chanterelles [OED: “A popular edible fungus, Cantharellus cibarius, with an orange-yellow, funnel-shaped fruiting body”) as ‘various kinds of mushrooms.’”

The translation of The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov (1955) edited by Hellman, the award-winning Stalinist and liar, is attributed to someone named Sidonie K. Lederer. I keep a copy out of loyalty to Chekhov and to remind me to never trust a commie. Karlinsky adds to his footnote:

“All this is particularly regrettable because Chekhov is not the hazy writer some of his translators take him to be, but a very precise and observant one.”