Whatever may be lost in translation is, I would suggest, always far outweighed by what may be found. A good translation is one that transports the spirit of the original, even if the odd letter is left on the journey. Translations open up entire cultures and histories, and confirm both our diversity and our common humanity.
This new section of the website is to celebrate and, if needed, promote poetry, prose fiction, drama, and non-fiction, famous or obscure, translated into English. The celebrations maybe scholarly, journalistic, personal – or a combination of all three.
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In 1959, when I was 15, I read the Max Hayward and Matya Harari English translation of Boris Pasternak’s DR ZHIVAGO. I think that was the first foreign language book I had read. I still have the same copy, and – often inspired by watching/re-watching David Lean’s DR ZHIVAGO – have re-read the novel and the poems that accompany it a number of times since.
Here is a useful account of the novel itself, and the furore and fame that accompanied its publication firstly in an Italian translation in 1957 and then, in the English version referred to, in 1958: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Zhivago_(novel). DR ZHIVAGO was so popular that the English publisher, Collins, ordered six re-prints from September 1958 to November 1958.
I was fortunate to be brought up in a household where reading and owning books was seen as integral to family life – and affordable. If I remember correctly DR ZHIVAGO was bought – by my mother or one of her sisters – as a result of the publicity stemming from the geo-politic controversy surrounding it.
The action of the novel takes place between the early 1900s and circa 1950. I was interested in reading it for two reasons. I thought that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was not only an inevitable event but one that represented the triumph of equality, freedom and comradeship – and, yes, I was also inspired by the French Revolution! – over injustice, tyranny and hostility. My paternal grandfather was what we would now describe as a refugee, an asylum seeker from what was then Kiev in Tzarist Russia. (See ASYLUM SEEKER). In 1900 – the year he escaped – the Russian empire included not only Ukraine but also Poland, the Baltic States and Finland.
I did not learn anything about my Grandpa’s Russia – except that Russian cavalry did indeed ride people down in the street – and I found the very convincing descriptions of the unintended consequences of the Revolution both disappointing and disheartening. Nevertheless there was something in the book that not only made me want to finish it but, as I have mentioned, have made me need re-read it at least three times.
So what brings me back to the book? The love stories? The depiction of historical events? The sense of the vastness of Russia? Its religiosity? The evocation of place and nature? The notion that our lives to a greater or lesser extent are determined by the vicissitudes of chance? And sometimes by the machinations – accidental or intentional – of others? Perhaps simply because it is a tale of heartache and hope?
Boris Pasternak was well known to Russian readers both as a translator – of Shakespeare, for example – and as a poet. (So renowned was he that Stalin personally phoned him in 1934 to talk about the poet Osip Mandelstam – https://qcurtius.com/2017/11/18/a-phone-call-with-stalin/ ). DR ZHIVAGO is assumed to be semi-autobiographical. Zhivago is both a physician and a poet. His poems appear in the book after the Epilogue, poems informed by and informing his life. Here is the first of them:
HAMLET
The noise is stilled. I come out on the stage.
Leaning against the door-post
I try to guess from the distant echo
What will happen in my lifetime.
The darkness of the night is aimed at me
Along the sights of a thousand opera glasses.
Aba, Father, if it be possible,
Let this cup pass from me.
I love your stubborn purpose,
I consent to play my part.
But now a different drama is being acted;
For this once, let me be.
Yet the order of the acts is planned
And the end of the way inescapable.
I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisee’s hypocrisy.
Life is no stroll through a field.
The last line is a Russian proverb. Perhaps when I re-read the book once more I shall start this time with the poems.
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I would very much like readers to contact me about works translated into English which have particular significance for them and which they would like featured on the site. The significance may be personal, cultural and/or historical. The translations can be the reader’s own, of course. Other readers’ views on DR ZHIVAGO would be welcome too.
In addition, I shall be commissioning posts about particular works and/or writers.
By David Selzer