I’m re-reading Anna Karenina. It’s the Penguin edition by the feted translators, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, and it says on the flyleaf:
William Faulkner, it’s said, was once asked to name the three best novels ever. He replied: “Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina.”
I don’t know if it’s the translation or that I’ve grown up since, but it scarcely feels like a book now; it’s more like an animal. It’s so lithe and fresh and vigorous, with long effortless sentences and smoothness without perfection.
I’ve just finished Part One. The stage has all been set. The train, the accident at the station, the short history of the Shcherbatsky sisters has been recounted. Stiva has blotted his marital copybook, Levin has brought to town his painful honour. And Anna has looked down the staircase at Vronsky and felt fear. She has appeared in black, not lilac, at the ball, and Kitty has missed the mazurka and seen the answer to her question — “Who is it? … All or one?” – on Vronsky’s face.
And the train has stopped at the halt between Moscow and Petersburg for the masterpiece scene where Anna probes her conscience, and congratulating herself on her rigour, passes right on to live through the greatest joy she will ever have of Vronsky, the high point of their affair, alone in the train carriage, before it has even begun.
She went through all her Moscow memories. They were all good, pleasant. She remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky and his enamoured, obedient face, remembered all her relations with him: nothing was shameful. But just there, at that very place in her memories, the feeling of shame became more intense, as if precisely then, when she remembered Vronsky, some inner voice were telling her: “Warm, very warm, hot!” … She passed the paper-knife over the glass, then put its smooth and cold surface to her cheek and nearly laughed aloud from the joy that suddenly came over her for no reason. She felt her nerves tighten more and more, like strings on winding pegs. She felt her eyes open wider and wider, her fingers and toes move nervously …
The vividness of the whole scene is extraordinary. I could hear the voice of the “bundled-up and snow-covered man” shouting something in her ear, and the wind, “as if only waiting for her,” whistling “joyfully.” I could feel the “cold post” she grasps, as “holding her dress down,” she steps out of the carriage. And when Vronsky materialises on the platform I felt, like Anna, the same sense of almost tiresome inevitability.
For Tolstoy understands, like Flaubert too — who somewhere in his notebooks describes the greatest erotic event of his life as the planning of a visit to a brothel that never actually eventuated – that two thirds of love consists in anticipation, not consummation.
For the same reason, it’s almost a shame to keep reading.
*****
Image: Detail from Mrs Wilton Phipps by John Singer Sargent, courtesy of Bridgeman Art Library.
I think i am going to pick up this book and read. Sounds very interesting. Followed a tag on ur post and now definitely will read. Your posts are great for the expansion of my reading horizon :)
I think you would love this book, one of the world’s greatest. Thank you for stopping by.
Judging by the exerpt that you have included of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, it sounds, that for once, there is a relatively good translation of a Russian classic. Everytime I have tried to read an English translation of a Russian novel, I would practically flung it from myself in horror, as if the book was hot coal that was burning my hands. Since then, I read Russian works only in the original because the specificity of the English syntax and the distinguishing particularities of its expression, practically butchers the cultural meaning that is specific to the Russians. Very often it also effectively alters the intended meaning of the author. As a native Russian, I can only say this: English readers lose immensely when they read translations – the feeling created by a specific language, its intended meaning, the cultural inferences that a native speaker draws from a novel in the original are all lost to a foreign reader. What the foreign reader does obtain in the majority of cases is the ‘gist’, as they say, the bare quintessence of the events conveyed in the novel.
It is for this reason, I assume, you say that the novel feels more like an animal with sentences that are smooth but without perfection. This is the common ailment of a translation, I am afraid.
Hello Kassandra and welcome to Solid gold creativity. Thanks for your insightful comment. How I would love to be able to read Tolstoy in Russian!
I would be very interested to see what you make of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translations. They’ve been raved about by literary critics fluent in both languages. Even The Man himself, Nabokov — that ultimate connoisseur of language — seems to have given his stamp of approval as I discuss in this later post here: http://solidgoldcreativity.com/2009/07/05/goodbye-levin/
What I meant by the novel feeling more like an animal is that it’s so alive, so pulsing, as if blood were running through its pages rather than ink. I used to feel like it was breathing when I laid it on my desk. So it was meant as a compliment. So too was my clumsy remark about sentences that are smooth but without perfection. Nabokov puts it much better than me (as I note it the later post) when he talks about Tolstoy’s “rejection of false elegancies.”
I will definitely look into Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translations – I think it is a very good strategy to work with language experts from both cultures so as to maximise the accuracy of the meaning conveyed by the author in his own work.
I will also read your subsequent post on the same subject, it should be interesting to see what Nabokov’s comments are on this.
In turn, I must apologize for my misunderstanding of your intended meaning in your description of the book. You are absolutely right, as is Nabokov, regarding “false elegancies” because in literature, just like in oral communication, too many are mezmerised with the sound of their own voice, thereby neglecting the content or the substance of their intended message.
I have just dabbled in some of the themes discussed in your blog and it seems very interesting what you write about, I will definitely continue reading.
So right that “too many are mezmerised with the sound of their own voice, thereby neglecting the content or the substance of their intended message.” In contrast, Tolstoy’s ruthlessness with his message is wonderful. Very pleased that you’ll continue reading ;) SGx