The Pevearsion of

Russian Literature
Disastrously popular new translations of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky,
and others threaten to dishearten and distance new
generations of readers from transformative works of greatness
By Gary Saul Morson

L
EGEND HAS IT that Grigory Potem- great works of Russian literature. These are Potemkin
kin, the chief minister and lover oftranslations—apparently definitive but actually flat
Catherine the Great, decided to im- and fake on closer inspection.
press her with the prosperity of lands The Pevear-Volokhonsky versions of Dostoevsky,
newly conquered by the Russian Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekhov, and Bulgakov have earned
Empire. So he had the pasteboard rapturous reviews by James Wood in the New Yorker
facade of houses constructed along and Orlando Figes in the New York Review of Books,
the road just far enough away to look real. Ever since,
along vkdth a PEN translation award. It looks as if
the phrase "Potemkin village" has indicated something people will be reading P&V, as they have come to be
that looks authentic and impressive—until one exam- called, for decades to come.
ines it closely and discovers its falsity. Thus it is with This is a tragedy, because their translations take
the celebrated work of Richard Pevear and Larissa glorious works and reduce them to awkward and un-
Volokhonsky, who are making a decades-long project sightly muddles. Professional writers have asked me to
of presenting authoritative new English editions of the
check the Russian texts because they could not believe
any great author would have written what P&V pro-
GARY SAUL M O R S O N is Frances Hooper Professor of duce. The danger their translations pose is this: if stu-
the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University. dents and more-general readers choose P&V—and it is
Yale University Press published his "Anna Karenina" clearly the intent of their publishers here and in Eng-
in Our Time in 2007 and is presently bringing out his land that their editions become the universally accept-
book on quotations. The Words of Others: From Quota- ed renditions into English for a generation or more—
tions to Culture. those students and readers are likely to presume that

July/August 2010
whatever made so many regard Russian literature
with awe has gone stale with time or is lost to them.
W
HEN I TEACH Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, I
want students to appreciate and not just
take on faith why their works are supreme
accomplishments. Often enough, they have reported
that they have become so absorbed in the psychology
and ethical dilemmas of the characters that their way
of looking at life itself has changed—a reaction that
accords with the peculiar and astonishing urgency
unique to Russian literature. But since the P&V edi-
tions have begun to appear, students—who have no
experience that would allow them to recognize the
difference a translation can make—have wondered
aloud to me why their peers using those versions in
other classes seem to be reading sometbing entirely
different.
Pevear and Volokhonsky, who are married, work
in an unusual fashion. She, a native Russian speaker,
renders each book into entirely literal Englisb. He,
wbo knows insufficient Russian, tben works on tbe
rendering with the intention of keeping the language
as close to the original as possible. What results from
tbis attempt at unprecedented fidelity is a word-for-
word and syntax-for-syntax version that sacrifices tone
and misconstrues overall sense.
S
TUDENTS ONCE encountered the great Russian
writers as rendered by tbe magnificent Con-
stance Garnett, a Victorian who taught herself
the language and then proceeded to introduce almost
the entire corpus of Russian literature to the English
language over the space of 40 years, from the 1890 s to
the 1930s. Her greatest virtues were her profound and
sympathetic understanding of the works themselves
and a literary artist's feel for the English language.
Over time, in the case of a few major works, bet-
ter versions were produced. Ann Dunnigan's transla-
tions of War and Peace, Cbekbov's plays and stories,
and Ivan Goncbarov's tragicomic masterpiece Oblomov
provide a more accurate rendering of the language and,
perhaps, an even greater degree of literary grace than
Garnett's. Bernard Guilbert Guemey accomplished the
impossible witb a translation of Nikolai Gogol's enor-
mously difficult and complex Dead Souls, conveying tbe
weirdness, linguistic inventiveness, and perfectly timed
bumor that had eluded everyone else, even Garnett. To
be sure, Garnett and Guemey have their flaws, includ-
ing some errors in meaning, but editing by judicious
scbolars bas often corrected those mistakes. Ralph
Matlaw thoughtfully revised the Garnett version of
Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, and Elizabetb
Coiiinieiitary
Allen did tbe same witb many works in The Essential
Turgcnev. Susanne Fusso's recasting of Guemey is the
only Dead Souls worth reading.
Above all, translators need a tboroughgoing
understanding of the work and a feel for the genre in
which it is viritten. Garnett's Victorianization of Tol-
stoy was not inappropriate; to produce an English ver-
sion of Tolstoy, it really does help to know George Eliot
and Anthony IVollope, botb of wbom Tolstoy loved.
For Dostoevsky, familiarity with Dickens goes a long
way, as Garnett surely knew. One cannot adequately
translate a work one has not experienced with critical
sensitivity, because it is tbat experience, not just tbe
sequence of signs on a page, tbat one needs to convey.
How does tbis play out in P&V's work?
Imagine someone translating Paradise Lost
from Enghsb into Russian wbo bad somehow missed
that Milton was a Christian. There is something of
that in the P&V version of Dostoevsky's Notes from Un-
derground. Its nameless narrator, the "underground
man," wants above all to discredit tbe deterministic
credo that people are mere "piano keys" played upon
by tbe laws of nature—that since we must always act
according to our own perceived best interest, every-
tbing we do is in principle predictable and cboice an
illusion. In response, the underground man describes
and performs acts that violate his best interest, eitber
to disprove the prevailing theory or just because, just
so, for no reason at all. His word for sucb acts of self-
injury is, in Englisb translations before P&V, "spite." It
is fair to say tbat to miss tbe concept of spite is to miss
tbe work entire.
But that is just what P&V do. Instead of "spite," they
give us "wickedness." Now, the Russian word zloi can in-
deed mean "v^dcked." But no one v*dth the faintest idea of
what this novella is about, with any knowledge of criti-
cism from Dostoevsky's day to ours, or with any grasp of
Dostoevskian psychology, would imagine that the book's
point is tbat people are capable of wickedness.
Everytbing about tbe underground man is spite-
ful, including his prose. Here is the book's famous
opening in tbe Garnett/Matlaw version:
I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an
unattractive man. I think my liver is diseased.
However, I don't know beans about my
disease. I don't treat it and never have, though
I respect medicine and doctors. Besides, I am
extremely superstitious, let's say sufficiently
so to respect medicine. (I am educated enough
not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, I refuse
to treat it out of spite. You probably will not
understand that. Well, but I understand it. Of
93
P&V invoke the virtues of their literal accuracy. Such
repairs are well and good, hut readers typically turn to
translations not for ephemera hut to read literature.
course, I can't explain to you just whom I am
annoying in this case hy my spite. I am perfect-
ly well aware that I cannot "get even" with the
doctors hy not consulting them. I know better
than anyone that I thereby injure only myself
and no one else. But still, if I don't treat it, it is
out of spite. My liver is bad, well then — let it
get even worse!
P&y opens:
I am a sick man... I am a wicked man. An unat-
tractive man. I think my liver hurts. However,
I don't know afigabout my sickness, and am
not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not
being treated and never have been, though I
respect medicine and doctors. What's more,
I am also superstitious in the extreme, well,
at least enough to respect medicine. (I'm suf-
ficiently educated not to be superstitious, hut
I am.) No, sir, I refuse to treat it out of wicked-
ness. Now, you will certainly not be so good as
to understand this. Well, sir, but I understand
it. I will not, of course, be able to explain to
you precisely who is going to suffer in this case
from my wickedness. I know perfectly well
that I will in no way "muck things up" for the
doctors by not taking their treatment; I know
better than anyone that by all this I am harm-
ing only myself and no one else. My liver hurts;
well, then let it hurt even worse!
What has wickedness got to do with it? The un-
derground man is constantly turning on the reader,
taunting him, putting words in his mouth, answering
objections to things he hasn't yet spoken of. During
that pause between the first two sentences represented
by the ellipsis, it's as if he were thinking: "So, you think
I want your pity, and allow you to condescend to me?
Well, I'll show you I don't give a damn what you think!
I'm a spiteful man, so there!" As the best Dostoevsky
critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, put it, the underground man is
taking a sidelong glance at his listener, cringing in an-
ticipation either of sympathy or contempt, and exag-
gerating so as to leave him deniability should someone
pin him down by believing him. His prose is all loop-
94
hole. Garnett caught that tone well enough for genera-
tions to experience it. P&V don't seem to have heard it.
When challenged in this way, P&V invoke the
yirtues of their literal accuracy. In their War and Peace,
you learn that a heroine is wearing not a ribbon but a
toque, and a hero's outfit is a redingote. What's more,
they are eating not soup but a cold sauce, and it has
cockscombs in it. Such repairs are all well and good,
but readers typically turn to translations not to hear
about culinary ephemera but to read literature.
Another example. The Brothers Karamazov is di-
vided into 12 books, one of which is entitled "Nadryvy."
Garnett translates the word as "Lacerations." P&V use
"Strains." Again, both are possible so far as the diction-
ary is concerned. To choose, one has to understand
that the term names one of Dostoevsky's key concepts.
As the text makes explicit, nadryvy refers to deliber-
ately inflicted self-injury, the tearing at one's wounds
out of sheer masochistic pleasure. The image of tear-
ing is important, because it recalls the pleasure in self-
flagellation taken by the insane monk Ferapont. It also
brings to mind the saintly Alyosha Karamazov's lacer-
ated finger, which was bitten by an insulted schoolboy.
Such resonances disappear if one reads not of lacera-
tions" but instead of "strains."
In one scene, Alyosha's monstrous father. Old
Karamazov, taunts him in the presence of another
son, Ivan. The old man relishes how he used to drive
Alyosha's mother to hysterics by spitting on her icons.
The memory of his mother is Alyosha's ovra icon, and
he falls into the very same hysterics. Struck by the
extraordinary resemblance, the father cries out:
"Ivan, Ivan! Water, quickly! It's like her,
exactly as she used to be, then, his moth-
er.... He's upset about his mother, his mother,"
he muttered to Ivan.
"But she was my mother, too, I believe his
mother. Was she not?" said Ivan, with uncon-
trolled anger and contempt The old man shrank
before his flashing eyes...it seemed really to
have escaped the old man's mind that Alyosha's
mother was actually the mother of Ivan too.
"Your mother?" he muttered, not under-
standing. "What do you mean? What mother
are you talking about?"
The Pevearsion of Russian Literature : July/August 2010
Imagine if Mark Twain's quip was translated by Pevear.
Tone, word choice, playftilness, timing: all these qualities,
which P&V do not notice, belong to the essence of humor.
Ivan has concealed his hatred for his father, who worse than the last. When Chichikov ventures to call
abandoned him as a child, but here it bursts forth. By the governor a superb fellow, Sobakevich deems him,
forgetting who Ivan's mother is, the old sot seems, once instead, "a brigand—the biggest one on earth!" At last
again, to deny his son's very existence. With sarcasm Chichikov thinks of extolhng Sobakevich's reputed
bordering on assault, Ivan reminds the old man that friend the police chief. In Guerney/Fusso:
Alyosha's mother is also his mother. But in P&V, Ivan
says the opposite, that his mother is also Alyosha's!— "A swindler!" said Sobakevich with the utmost
"But my mother, I think, was also his mother, wouldn't saugfroid. "He'll sell you out and he'll take you
you agree?" in, and dine with you right after that. I know
It doesn't matter whether grammatically the them all, they're all swindlers, every man jack
sentence can be rendered this way. If you get a passage of them; the whole town is like that, one swin-
like this wrong, you have lost the novel. dler mounted on another and using a third
one as a whip, Judases all of them. There is
but one—and only one—decent man; that's

W
HEN RUMORS circulated that Mark Twain
had died abroad, he cabled: "Tbe reports of the Public Prosecutor, and even he, if the truth
my death have been greatly exaggerated." were to be told, is a swine."
If Pevear had composed the message, it might be:
"Regarding the recent information pertaining, as you But in P&V:
agree, to my accomplished demise, sir, the communi-
cations have been overfalsified." Tone, word cboice, "A crook!" Sobakevich said very coolly. "He'll
playfulness, timing: all these qualities, which P&V do sell you, deceive you, and then sit down to
not notice, belong to the essence of humor. dinner with you! I know them all: they're all
Gogol's Dead Souls stands as the comic master- crooks, the whole town is the same: a crook
piece of Russian literature. Gogol's hero, Chichikov, mounted on a crook and driving him with a
travels across Russia buying up the deeds to serfs (or crook. Judases, all of them. There's only one
"souls") who have died since the last census and are decent man there: the prosecutor—and to tell
therefore legally alive. Since they are still taxed, these the truth, he, too, is a swine."
"dead souls" constitute a negative asset, so any money
offered for them is a gain to the seller. No one can fig- "Swindler" is funnier than "crook," not to men-
ure out why Chichikov wants to buy non-people, and tion that "crook" momentarily raises the possibility
the author plays the theme for all the existential and that "driving him vidth a crook" means "with a hooked
theological humor it is worth. Only at the end do we staff." Good humorists only suggest a double mean-
learn that Chichikov plans to use these souls certified ing when it makes the line funnier, not because, as in
by the bureau of audits as collateral for a mortgage. this case, the translators haven't thought of it. In the
The story reads, and probably always will, as if it were superior version, Sobakevich's final comment is funny
right out of today's papers. because he is trying to create the false impression that
Guemey and his revising editor Fusso understand only under extreme pressure does he admit that the
Gogol's sense of humor from within. They mimic the decent man is really a swine. The Guerney/Fusso ver-
sorts ofjokes he makes, play on words as he does, and let sion is dragged out as Sobakevich intends; the P&V
the narrator apologize for one straight-faced absurdity version is too straightforward, and in being straight-
with another still more outrageous. Like Gogol, they forward, they blow the joke.
allow the sounds and associations of words and idioms to When Chichikov first arrives in town, we are
suggest ever-longer chains of sublime nonsense. told that "there was something substantial about the
Thus, Chichikov tries to soften up the landowner ways of this gentleman, and when he blew his nose
Sobakevich by illogically praising every town official as be did so exceedingly loudly," as if somehow the loud
the worthiest of all. But Sobakevich denounces each as nose-blowing was proof of substantiality. P&V put it

Coinnientary 95
Gogol s humor cascades into a series of synonyms for
nonsense, and it hardly matters what they are as long as
they crowd each other and sound ridiculous.
this way: "The gentleman's manners had something
solid about them, and he blew his nose vÁÜi exceeding
loudness." Not only is the connection between the two
clauses weakened, but "solid manners" is too earnest a
notion for the author. Gogol does something inventive
and strange in almost every sentence, and that's where
this book's real energy lies. To be flat-footed and literal
as if that were enough is to make a lively masterpiece
into a dead soul.
We read of Chichikov's servant, "Petmshka the
flunkey," settling into "a very dark cubbyhole, whither
he had already brought his overcoat, and together with
it, a certain odor all his own, which had been imparted
to the bag brought in next, containing sundry flun-
keyish effects." "Sundry flunkeyish effects" is just how
Gogol sounds. Alas, P&V's Petmshka settles into "a very
dark closet, where he had already managed to drag his
overcoat and with it a certain smell of its own, which
had been imparted to the sack of various lackey toilet-
ries brought in after it." To be sure, the Russian here is
tualet, or toiletries, as P&V want us to know, but the
point is that in Russian, the sound of the word tualet is
funny and its tone jars with the word preceding it. As
every critic notes, but P&V do not understand, Gogol
often chooses words less for their meaning than for
their humorous sound and resonances (which is why,
for example, the hero of his story "The Overcoat" sports
a complexion described as "hemorrhoidal"—a nonsen-
sical concept if taken literally but an inspired image).
Is there anyone who thinks "a certain smell of its
ovwi" is as amusing as "a certain odor all its own," or
who prefers "various lackeyish toiletries" to "sundry
flunkeyish effects"? Isn't it obvious that the sentence
should end with the funny phrase—as it does in the
Russian—and not vvdth the anticlimactic "brought in
after it"?
At last the tovwispeople wonder obsessively why
on earth Chichikov would buy dead souls. Perhaps
he's really a secret government inspector? Or maybe
a certain storied war veteran seeking revenge for his
lost limbs? Or maybe, just maybe, he's Napoleon in
disguise? Or, God help us, the Antichrist? In the better
version, the townsmen ask themselves:
After all, what sort of parable is this, really?
What sort of parable are these dead souls?
96 The Pevearsion of Russian Literature : July/August 2010
There's no logic to dead souls; how then can
one buy up dead souls? Where would you dig
up a fool big enough to buy them? And what
sort of fairy-gold would he use to buy them?
And to what end, to what business, could one
utilize these dead souls?...What reason can
there be to dead souls? Why, there just isn't
any! All this is simply the Devil riding on a
fiddlestick, so much moonshine, stuff and
nonsense, pigeon milk and horse feathers!
This is, simply—oh, may the Devil take it all!
Pevearized, the passage reads:
What was this riddle, indeed, what was
this riddle of the dead souls? There was no
logic whatsoever in dead souls. Why buy dead
souls? Where would such a fool be found?
What worn-out money would one use to pay
for them? To what end, to what business,
could these dead souls be tacked?.. .What was
the reason for the dead souls? It was all mere
cock-and-bull story, nonsense, balderdash,
soft-boiled boots. Mere devil take it! '
The Russian questions are hyperactive, exagger-
ated, challenging anyone who would even think there
might be a sensible answer. They repeat the emphatic
particle zhe, which carries a "can you possibly answer
that?" sense, and they produce humor through a build-
up of hysteria. That's why "where would you dig up a
fool big enough to buy them?" outdoes P&V's "where
would such a fool be found?" Would anyone in such a
state end vdth the stilted "Mere devil take it"? Gogol's
humor cascades into a series of synonyms for non-
sense, and it hardly matters what they are as long as
they crowd each other and sound ridiculous.
N
OWHERE is the P&V distortion so plain and
disturbing as in their versions of Tolstoy.
Critics sometimes say it is impossible to ruin
Tolstoy because his diction is so straightforward. But
it is actually quite easy to misrepresent him if one
does not understand the language of novels. Since
Jane Austen, novels have tended to trace a character's
thoughts in the third person. The choice of words, and
Critics sometimes say it is impossible to ruin Tolstoy. But
it is actually quite easy to misrepresent him if one does not
understand the language of novels.
the way one thought begets another, belongs to the
character, and so we come to know her inner voice. At
the same time, the character's view may not comport
with the author's, and it is the art of the writer to make
clear that what the character is seeing is deluded or
self-serving or foolish. This "double-voicing" lies at
the heart of the 19th-century novelistic enterprise. For
Dickens and TroUope, "double-voicing" becomes the
vehicle of satire, while George Eliot and Tolstoy use it
for masterful psychological exploration. If one misses
what is going on, the whole point of a passage can be
lost. Pevear and Volokhonsky do, and constantly.
At the beginning of Anna Karenina, Stepan
Arkadyevich, whose wife has discovered his infidel-
ity, tells himself that his honesty will not allow him
to say he repents of his actions. We hear the author's
irony at the philanderer's notion of honesty. As Stiva
thinks of his wife, we listen in (in the revised Garnett
version) on his inner voice, along with Tolstoy's im-
plicit commentary:
Stepan Arkadyevich was a truthful man with
himself. He was incapable of deceiving him-
self and persuading himself that he repented
of his conduct....All he was sorry about was
that he had not succeeded in hiding it from
his wife.... Possibly he might have managed
to conceal his sins better from his wife if he
had anticipated the effect on her should she
discover them. He had never clearly thought
out the subject, but he had vaguely conceived
that his wife must long ago have suspected
him of being unfaithful to her, and shut her
eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that
she, a worn-out woman no longer young or
good-looking, and in no way remarkable or
interesting, merely a good mother, ought from
a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It
had turned out quite the other way.
Who could have guessed?
The author's irony at such a sequence of thoughts
is felt throughout and produces the snap of the final
sentence. Had Stiva ever bothered to see things from
his wife's point of view, her devastated reaction would
have been no surprise at all.
Coiiiiiiciitary
All that double-voiced irony fades from P&V's
rendition, which begins "Stepan Arkadyevich was a
truthful man concerning his ovm self." Someone might
think that he is "truthful with himself" but not that he
is "a truthful man concerning his own self." P&V's final
sentence, "It had turned out to be quite the opposite,"
misses the wit to which the whole paragraph builds,
and which Garnett brilliantly renders as "It had turned
out quite the other way."
The same sort of failure of meaning occurs in the
P&V War and Peace. One of the most moving moments
in this enormous novel occurs when Prince Andrei
dies. Ann Dunnigan translates:
Nikolushka cried because his heart was
rent with perplexity. The Countess and Sonya
cried out of pity for Natasha and because he
was no more. The old Count cried because he
felt that before long he too must take the same
awesome step.
Natasha and Princess Marya also wept
now, but not because of their own personal
grief; they wept out of a reverent emotion that
filled their souls before the solemn mystery of
a death that had been consummated in their
presence.
P&V weaken the tone:
Nikolushka wept from a suffering bewil-
derment that rent his heart. The countess and
Sonya wept from pity for poor Natasha and
because he was no more. The old count wept
because he felt that soon he, too, would have
to take that same dreadful step.
Natasha and Princess Marya also wept now,
but they did not weep from their own personal
grief; they wept from a reverent emotion that
came over their souls before the awareness of
the simple and solemn mystery of death that
had been accomplished before them.
When I first compared these passages, I was sur-
prised by P&V's "poor Natasha"; the authorial expres-
sion of sympathy seemed viTong, but I assumed that
P&V, with their literal-translation approach, had cap-
97
what these readers are getting, alas, is great literature
that has heen stripped bare of its own solemn mystery, no
longer consummated in our presenee.
tured Tolstoy's own false step. I went and checked out
the Russian; the word "poor" is absent.
Unlike Dunnigan, P&V, like Tolstoy, repeat tbe
word "wept" rather than sviatch to a synonym. And
P&V are correct that Tolstoy's description of Natasha's
and Marya's awareness is literally "simple and solemn."
But in its syntax, vocabulary, and tone, Tolstoy's Rus-
sian usage is elevated and poetic. It is suffused vrith the
sense of "solemn mystery," as Dunnigan renders it. It
should be obvious that one should pick "awesome step"
over "dreadful step" to describe the Count's sudden
sense of his ovm eventual end (all the more so because
tbe former comes closer to capturing the alliteration of
the Russian "strashnyi sha^'). P&V's "wept from a suf-
fering bewilderment" is awkward, not elevated. Dun-
nigan's "filled their souls" is more solemn than P&V's
"came over their souls," and "consummated in their
presence" comes much closer to Tolstoy's tone. It also
suits more adequately the finality of death and the fact
that these are the last words of this part of the novel.
98 The Pevcarsion of Russian Literature : July/August 2010
T
HE MARKETING of Pevear and Volokhon-
sky is a remarkable accomplisbment. Each
of their editions has allowed magazine and
newspaper editors to commission articles in which
v^Titers of distinction are given the rare opportu-
nity to review without qualification a genuinely great
work that has great meaning for them—to salute it,
pay tribute to it, and sbow tbeir own critical sensitiv-
ity and knowledge in discussing it. Witb such reviews
in hand, Farrar, Straus and Giroux has been able to
appeal to the burgeoning circle of book-club readers
to take a cbance on something old and enduring—
with its greatest triumph being winning the endorse-
ment for Anna Karcnina in 2004 from none other
than Oprah Winfrey, with the P&V version right there
at the bookstore by tbe tens of thousands to welcome
the buying tbrong.
Wbat these readers are getting, alas, is great lit-
erature that has been stripped bare of its ovra solemn
mystery, no longer consummated in our presence. S*-
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