To the Editors:
In his review of our translation of The Brothers Karamazov (March 1991), Vasily Rudich takes the “unfashionable position” that “style in a work of literature is subordinate to the message.” All the more so, it may be assumed, in a work of non-literature—fortunately for Professor Rudich, whose message concerning the “failures and flaws” of our translation is then free to soar above the bromides, weary reviewerisms, and dying metaphors in which he expresses it.
“To their credit,” he writes, for example, “[the translators] have escaped the temptation to mod ernize Dostoevsky’s language and to embroider it with current slang.” (To our credit? But we didn’t “escape” the temptation; we simply never felt it.) However, grateful though he is for this hypotheti cal escape, the “native speaker of Russian” never theless feels that our choice of words and phrases could have been bolder “without compromising the fabric of English.” That “uncompromised fabric” is good, but Professor Rudich can do bet ter: “The many merits of the new translation not withstanding, the novel’s innumerable literary gems are bound to remain unfathomable and un suspected by the reader who is innocent of Rus sian.” This same unsuspecting reader, if he gets as far as “The Grand Inquisitor,” is going to find him self beset by “a familiar host of problems.” But there’s no help for it, since the frustrated state in which our translation leaves both the reader in nocent of Russian and the reviewer guilty of it, arises “not because the translators lacked talent or diligence. It arises rather from the impossibility of the task.” Here the bromide starts to fizz; a mo ment later it foams over: “This is the reason that the new—and, for that matter, any other— transla tion necessarily falls short of what we would wish. There is no way around it: One must master Russian to enjoy the novel in full.” No, really? Who would have thought it? Or, failing that, read Professor’s Terras’s commentary? Instead? But that is not quite the whole of the message.
Our translation has received a fair share of at tention in the press. There have been some silly things in the reviews (one of which was accom panied by a full-page photograph of Lev Tolstoy—Tolstoevsky, indeed!), but we have not thought it necessary to respond to them. Even the woolly logic of a review that speaks of our “failure” to do the “impossible” would not have drawn us out. But at the very end of his review Professor Rudich slips in a litde theory of his own—much as Raskolnikov did at the end of his article on crime—just a hint, a suggestion, but a remarkable one. To this we could not help responding.
Viewing things from his unfashionable posi tion, Professor Rudich notes that, while “no amount of skill can produce a translation (into any tongue) that does full justice to Dostoevsky’s in novative and idiosyncratic rhetoric,” nevertheless “Dostoevsky’s message . . . has been transmitted across languages, nations, and races around the world and has profoundly influenced our cen tury’s cultural and psychological landscape.” Then comes the little theory: “By excessive concen tration on the aspects of form, lesser talent often un dercuts both the appeal and the availability of his work.” There, set in our italics, is an unfathomable gem for you! But no, let us try to fathom it. Take, for instance, the word “often.” How “often” has lesser talent been guilty of “an excessive con centration on the aspects of form” in translating Dostoevsky? We alone would seem to be the of fenders here. Does the “often” then refer to the number of our offenses? That we are “lesser tal ent” we won’t dispute (“lesser” than Dostoevsky, presumably), but how much more “lesser” would one have to be in order not to “undercut the ap peal and availability” of Dostoevsky’s work? Pro fessor Rudich says several times that our transla tion is “superior to previous efforts,” though still not bold enough. Yet it was these previous, less bold efforts that sent Dostoevsky’s message racing around the world (sic?), profoundly influencing the landscape, while ours, owing to its superiority, undercuts the appeal and availability of his work. Isn’t that remarkable? It’s a paradox, of the real “Russian” sort—“smoke, mist, a string twanging in the mist,” as Porfiry Petrovich says of Raskolnikov’s little article. (Crime and Punishment is on our minds because, alas, we have just applied our lesser talent to it, and our publisher will soon be undercutting that work’s availability as well.)
Having produced his little wind-egg of a theory, Professor Rudich takes wing at last, calling down to us one final, ear-splitting apothegm: “But a work of true genius transcends every for mal limitation, even that of language, and arrives at the universal.”
Prolonged applause.
Richard Pevear
Larissa Volokhonsky
Yerres, France
Vasily Rudich replies:
I am saddened and surprised by the angry tone of Richard Pevear’s and Larissa Volokhonsky’s let ter. I believed—as it turned out, mistakenly—that I had written a favorable review of their translation of The Brothers Karamazov. At one point I de clared that their achievement is “nearly heroic.” If they think that it is even grander than that, such is their privilege, constitutionally guaranteed. Sim ilarly, if they consider the style of their own letter superior to my “bromides” and “weary reviewerisms,” they are entitled to do so.
I pass over most of their effusions, and will only say that as regards the last paragraph of my piece their furor is misguided. In speaking of “lesser talent,” I did not mean them—nor, for that mat ter, any other translators. Indeed, the idea of comparing the talent of any translator to Dosto evsky is preposterous. The “lesser talents” I had in mind were numerous modernist artists who reduce the essence of art to formal experimenta tion. A good example of this may be found in Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor. While cer tainly a lesser talent than Dostoevsky, Nabokov is still a master stylist; but in translation, or deprived of clever puns and literary games, Ada, or Ardor would offer little to a discriminating reader.
I wish Pevear and Volokhonsky and their publisher the best of luck with Crime and Punishment. But I shall withhold my own “prolonged applause” until I see the result of their new labors. I hope it will be as worthy as their previous ef fort—or, at least, that it will be worthier than their present excursion into the epistolary genre.