(no subject)

[proximoception]

I received two each of a couple books from my birthday list, and it's been over a month since their purchase so I assume amazon won't be thrilled to take them back. One's Chekhov's complete plays, the new Norton hardcover. The other a few of you might be interested in, it's an expensive, bizarre four-paperback boxed set called Wonderwater. Anne Carson wrote one, is the thing (the other three are by Helene Cixous (!), John Waters (!!) and some sculptor named Louise Bourgeois); each paperback annotates drawings, or titles of drawings, by someone named Roni Horn. Anne's centers on Holderlin rather than Horn, in a characteristic series of quotations, poems, mini-essays and indescribables. I'll send the volume and/or set to the interested person (drop a comment if you are) who wants it most and/or is cheapest to send to. Carson shouldn't moulder on my shelf or in a warehouse. And this doesn't sound like it will make it to many libraries.

Comments

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Garnett's great for the stories, actually. She made mistakes, and later translators justify their own versions by listing them, but it's what people do right that matters. Never tried or heard anything about her dramatic versions though.

[sweet-nothing.livejournal.com]

Well I listened to the radio show and they brought in Garnett for the usual roughing-up. You cannot hear Chekhov's delicate sensibility in the straitjacket of her nineteenth-century English is what the translator said. In my experience, that's going a little far for her versions of Chekhov, and of Tolstoy. For Dostoevsky though, you need another translator.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

The straitjacket of her five-times-our-vocabulary, seven-times-our-dictive-alternatives? Pfft.

I do Edmonds (Penguin translator) for Tolstoy though; Garnett's kind of annoying with dialogue and the Maudes are a bit flat. They say the Pevears communicate Dostoevskyan baldness well.

[sweet-nothing.livejournal.com]

Yes, have to have Pevear for Dostoevsky. He's also good on Tolstoy, but the difference between him and Garnett wasn't all that striking to me. I suspect it matters a little less with Tolstoy; the power is going to come through no matter what. (Though I hear the new translation of War and Peace sports dialogue full of British slang.)

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I hate when they do that. No American would have the gall.