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proximoception) wrote2011-01-16 01:29 am
proximoception) wrote2011-01-16 01:29 am
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2. Rock 'n' Roll, Stoppard
3. The White Deer, Thurber
4. Selected Lyrical Poems, Pushkin, tr. Falen
5. The Gypsies & Other Narrative Poems, Pushkin, tr. Wood
Good, not peak Stoppard. Very amusing Thurber, maybe not quite as good as 13 Clocks written in that same mode. I read both the Pushkins yesterday, and find I like Falen as a translator but not Wood; I stumbled with Stanley Mitchell's version of Eugene Onegin last year - it's very highly praised but struck me as awkward, so I might try Falen's instead. They say it's at least as good as Johnston's, which I liked a lot, as well as his Narrative Poems of Pushkin and Lermontov which held up when I reread it last year, esp. his "Bronze Horseman" and "Novice" versions.
I read Nabokov's translations of his lyrics last month, which were interesting but very strange - clearly he was caught between two languages at a lot of points. You can see why he'd need his son to help him translate his own books. Falen's versions were better, and better than Arndt's, too, though you could probably cobble together a superior collection from the stray happy efforts of various people over the years, including a couple of Nabokov's.
Wood just sucked in comparison, and you find out he's a horrible pedant in his preface, introduction, notes and afterword (the word count of which must have at least tripled Pushkin's in the volume). Awkward, even ugly stabs at Pushkin aren't uncommon: D.M. Thomas' selection of mostly narrative poems had a lot of infelicities, as I remember. Clearly this has to do with Pushkin, with something people want to get across but strain trying to. Thomas' version of Onegin will be out this spring.
(Actually, a lot of Russian translators are horrible pedants, for some reason - Arndt, Guy Daniels, obviously Nabokov. And they're usually pretty mean, maybe channeling that strain of savagely insulting verbosity that pops up a lot in Slavic culture - John Simon, Ayn Rand and Dostoevsky are big offenders.)
Falen's edition of his plays has also been praised, and I actually have that volume up here so maybe I'll hit that next. I barely remember anything about Boris Godunov.
Wood lists the translations he approves of in his afterword - nearly all British - while implicitly condemning all others to hell:
The Gypsies, George Borrow
Fountain of Bakhchisaray, William Lewis
Some lyrics by Donald MacAlister, Frances Cornford, Alan Myers & Thomas
Nabokov's non-Onegin ones
The Bronze Horseman, A.D. Briggs
Tsar Nikita and His Daughters, Ranjit Bolt
The Prophet, Ted Hughes
Arion, Seamus Heaney
Eugene Onegin, Mitchell ("excellent", though Johnston and Falen did "pretty well")
I agree about Briggs, whose "Gavriliad" is also very good. But I think Johnston did even better with "Horseman," probably Pushkin's best poem.
I know I'll never read him in Russian. They had us memorize "Ya vas lyubil, lyubov eshcho bwyt mozhet" - his most famous lyric - and I still retain most of it. But I forget what half the words mean, after that easy first line. My Russian's just gone.
3. The White Deer, Thurber
4. Selected Lyrical Poems, Pushkin, tr. Falen
5. The Gypsies & Other Narrative Poems, Pushkin, tr. Wood
Good, not peak Stoppard. Very amusing Thurber, maybe not quite as good as 13 Clocks written in that same mode. I read both the Pushkins yesterday, and find I like Falen as a translator but not Wood; I stumbled with Stanley Mitchell's version of Eugene Onegin last year - it's very highly praised but struck me as awkward, so I might try Falen's instead. They say it's at least as good as Johnston's, which I liked a lot, as well as his Narrative Poems of Pushkin and Lermontov which held up when I reread it last year, esp. his "Bronze Horseman" and "Novice" versions.
I read Nabokov's translations of his lyrics last month, which were interesting but very strange - clearly he was caught between two languages at a lot of points. You can see why he'd need his son to help him translate his own books. Falen's versions were better, and better than Arndt's, too, though you could probably cobble together a superior collection from the stray happy efforts of various people over the years, including a couple of Nabokov's.
Wood just sucked in comparison, and you find out he's a horrible pedant in his preface, introduction, notes and afterword (the word count of which must have at least tripled Pushkin's in the volume). Awkward, even ugly stabs at Pushkin aren't uncommon: D.M. Thomas' selection of mostly narrative poems had a lot of infelicities, as I remember. Clearly this has to do with Pushkin, with something people want to get across but strain trying to. Thomas' version of Onegin will be out this spring.
(Actually, a lot of Russian translators are horrible pedants, for some reason - Arndt, Guy Daniels, obviously Nabokov. And they're usually pretty mean, maybe channeling that strain of savagely insulting verbosity that pops up a lot in Slavic culture - John Simon, Ayn Rand and Dostoevsky are big offenders.)
Falen's edition of his plays has also been praised, and I actually have that volume up here so maybe I'll hit that next. I barely remember anything about Boris Godunov.
Wood lists the translations he approves of in his afterword - nearly all British - while implicitly condemning all others to hell:
The Gypsies, George Borrow
Fountain of Bakhchisaray, William Lewis
Some lyrics by Donald MacAlister, Frances Cornford, Alan Myers & Thomas
Nabokov's non-Onegin ones
The Bronze Horseman, A.D. Briggs
Tsar Nikita and His Daughters, Ranjit Bolt
The Prophet, Ted Hughes
Arion, Seamus Heaney
Eugene Onegin, Mitchell ("excellent", though Johnston and Falen did "pretty well")
I agree about Briggs, whose "Gavriliad" is also very good. But I think Johnston did even better with "Horseman," probably Pushkin's best poem.
I know I'll never read him in Russian. They had us memorize "Ya vas lyubil, lyubov eshcho bwyt mozhet" - his most famous lyric - and I still retain most of it. But I forget what half the words mean, after that easy first line. My Russian's just gone.