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.”
4 comments:
Whew. It’s good to know about that difference of translations.
Evelyn Waugh said something to the effect that the art of translation had gone into decline when clergymen ceased to be unfrocked for sodomy (the reasoning being that many 19th-century and early 20th-century clergymen were very well educated and familiar with multiple languages, and once deprived of their livings, could exercise this skill and sensitivity on translation). There's something in that; most modern translations I read have a deadness of tone, a monotonous approach to relating the story and numerous bozo errors that seem to escape the editor and publisher. I once read an entire Jean Giono book where no one had bothered to translate "Genes" into Genoa and the place was frequently mentioned throughout the story.
Foose, would you be so kind as to provide a source for that quote from Waugh? I collect witty comments about translation.
My mistake! Or mistaken recollection. The actual quote was apparently in a letter by Waugh to his school friend Tom Driberg: "I am told printers' readers no longer exist because clergymen are no longer unfrocked for sodomy." The context was that Driberg had published a life of Ronald Knox with a lot of typographical errors. Modern periphrases of the quote use "proofreaders" for "printers' readers." I was recalling a version that specified translation, but perhaps it was a misquote.
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