A good translator is like a good musician: able to interpret a work in such a way that all one seems to hear is the master’s voice. In both cases, there is more than just understanding at stake. Translators and musicians have to perform a fine balancing act, steering on one hand between a strict and accurate rendition of the words or notes on the page and on the other the artistically more truthful conveyance of a meaning relevant to their own particular audience and time. And then comes the even greater challenge of giving an overall shape to one’s interpretation, creating a mood and tone that can only come from immersing oneself in the work and listening keenly to its rhythms and cadences. At best, the result is the illusion that translators and musicians are vessels, their own presence unnoticeable. Reading Peter Carson’s new translations of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession, one certainly has the sensation of coming face-to-face with Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy in all his rough-and-ready majesty.
Over the course of the twelve years in which I knew Peter as my editor, we both made the transition from Chekhov to Tolstoy as translators, and we used to swap stories about some of the thornier challenges we had tackled as well as the rewards that come from intense study of some of the greatest masterpieces of Russian prose (my position was usually that of the respectful pupil, I hasten to add). It was perhaps unusual to have had an acquiring editor who was also engaged in literary translation, but Peter was unusual. When he asked me to edit a collection of Chekhov’s letters for Penguin Classics back in 2001 (brilliantly timed to coincide with the appearance of previously censored materials), he already had in his sights new renderings of Chekhov’s major plays. His peerless translations, which were published in 2006, effortlessly convey both the grace and the economy of Chekhov’s writing and stand out in a crowded market.
In between Chekhov and Tolstoy for Peter came Turgenev, an often unjustly forgotten writer for whom he had a special affinity. Turgenev comes across in his writing as a refined but self-effacing man of exceptional judgment, and I remember Peter in this way too. I initially demurred when approached to write the introduction to his new translation of Fathers and Sons, arguing to his editor at Penguin Classics that I needed to get on with the biography of Tolstoy that Peter had commissioned me to write, but he was politely insistent. He was an editor who helped his authors in numerous unexpected ways, because of course the experience of giving an account of the background of Fathers and Sons was the ideal preparation for dealing as a biographer with Turgenev’s important but fractious relationship with Tolstoy, which came to a head just after the novel was completed. The bad feeling created by Tolstoy’s falling asleep while Turgenev read his new novel to him led to their almost fighting a duel. Tolstoy was immune—well, actually downright hostile—to the delicacy and artistry of Turgenev’s writing, but these are qualities to which Peter is exceptionally sensitive in his translation. In order to capture its spirit, he told me he had studied the early French translations, one of which was completed by the author himself in collaboration with his great friend Pauline Viardot in 1863. Since Russian and French were used interchangeably by the nineteenth-century Russian gentry, it was an inspired thing to do. Peter’s Fathers and Sons is now widely considered to be the most distinguished translation of this great novel in print.
Unlike Tolstoy, the much younger Chekhov was very receptive to the beauty of Turgenev’s writing, and the experience of translating their finely chiseled, immaculately crafted prose differs enormously from that of tackling Tolstoy’s masterpieces. While Peter was engaged in translating Confession and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, I was completing a new translation of Anna Karenina, and we both found Tolstoy much more difficult. With Turgenev and Chekhov, who seem to stretch a hand out toward the translator, everything appears to have its place, whereas with Tolstoy it often feels more like a battle with an author who does not want to give an inch (a sensation I also had while writing his biography). Well might Vladimir Nabokov describe Tolstoy’s style as a “marvelously complicated, ponderous instrument.” Here is a writer who, in a defiant assertion of freedom, deliberately rebelled against literary convention, spurning traditional rhetorical devices to create almost a new language in his fictional works. Tolstoy took pride in exhibiting the family trait of wildness (dikost’), and it was rather inevitable that this trait showed up in his writing too. Peter Carson shows himself to be more than equal to the task of taming it, however.
Tolstoy was always much more straightforward in his nonfictional writing, and he took care to ensure that Confession was particularly lucid, as this was his first attempt to attract a wide audience to his newfound Christian ideas. He came to see himself as living the life of an apostle for the truth with every limb of his body, so he also needed to be persuasive in Confession. Even this painfully candid, uncomplicated memoir, however, can give rise to quite differing interpretations in English translation, as can be seen by comparing different versions. Take, for example, the opening sentences of Chapter Four:
Translated by Vladimir Chertkov, 1885:
My life had come to a sudden stop, I was able to breathe, to eat, to drink, to sleep, I could not, indeed, help doing so; but there was no real life in me; I had not a single wish to strive for the fulfillment of what I could feel to be reasonable. . . . Had a fairy appeared and offered me all I desired, I should not have known what to say. . . . I could not even wish to know the truth, because I guessed what the truth was. The truth lay in this, that life had no meaning for me.
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, 1921:
My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider reasonable. . . . Had a fairy come and offered to fulfill my desires I should not have known what to ask. . . . I could not even wish to know the truth, for I guessed of what it consisted. The truth was that life is meaningless.
Translated by David Patterson, 1983:
My life came to a stop. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep; indeed, I could not help but breathe, eat, drink, and sleep. But there was no life in me because I had no desires whose satisfaction I would have found reasonable. . . . If a fairy had come and offered to fulfill my every wish, I would not have known what to wish for. . . . I did not even want to discover truth anymore because I had guessed what it was. The truth was that life is meaningless.
Translated by Jane Kentish, 1987:
My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep and I could not help breathing, eating, drinking and sleeping; but there was no life in me because I had no desires whose gratification I would have deemed it reasonable to fulfill. . . . If a magician had come and offered to grant my wishes I would not have known what to say. . . . I did not even wish to know the truth because I had guessed what it was. The truth was that life is meaningless.
Translated by Peter Carson, 2013:
My life came to a halt. I could breathe, eat, drink, sleep, and I couldn’t not breathe, eat, drink, sleep; but I had no life because I had no desires in the fulfillment of which I might find any meaning. . . . If an enchantress had come and offered to fulfill my desires for me, I wouldn’t have known what to say. . . . I could not even desire to learn the truth because I guessed wherein it lay. The truth was that life is nonsense.
What is particularly successfully rendered in English here by Peter Carson is the abruptness of the first sentence (moya zhizn’ ostanovilas’—literally, “my life stopped”); the felicitous translation of volshebnitsa as “enchantress” (the gender is definitely female; “fairy” sounds all wrong); the boldly colloquial “couldn’t,” emulating Tolstoy’s preference for the living, spoken language; and the use of “nonsense,” accurately reflecting the nuances of the Russian (Tolstoy writes zhizn’ est’ bessmyslitsa, rather than zhizn’ bessmyslenna).
In the fiction that Tolstoy wrote after Anna Karenina, he consciously tried to simplify his famously convoluted writing style. In this he was partially successful. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, certainly, is devoid of some of the extremes to be found in Anna Karenina—ninety-eight word sentences, clusters of as many as five adjectives in a row, and multiple subordinate clauses packed with participles and gerunds like sardines in a tin. Consummate artist to the last that he was, however, Tolstoy could not refrain from deploying sophisticated narrative strategies in his methods of constructing The Death of Ivan Ilyich, which range from stream of consciousness to the manipulation of Christian imagery for his own ends. In Peter Carson, Tolstoy has a translator alert to all of his carefully concealed complexities and the idiosyncrasies of his style, but above all to the simplicity on the surface of his writing.
Most characteristic of Tolstoy’s style throughout his literary career is his use of repetition. Peter’s translation faithfully preserves the dozens of instances where we encounter variations of the word “pleasant” (priyatno), for example (there are sixteen in Chapter Two alone), which are fundamental to elaborating on the theme of reversal in the story and communicating its overall ironic tone. Peter also proves wonderfully inventive when relaying Tolstoy’s sardonic sense of humor. Take, for example, the famous scene in Chapter One in which Pyotr Ivanovich visits Ivan Ilyich’s grieving widow. The lugubrious solemnity of the occasion is immediately punctured when he has to do battle with a rebellious pouf (buntovavshiisya pod nim puf), and Tolstoy thus forces the reader to see through the veneer of hypocrisy. The passage has been rendered in many different ways, and we might compare two more recent translations of how it begins with Peter’s neat version:
Translated by Anne Pasternak-Slater, 2003:
They entered her dimly lit sitting room, upholstered in pink cretonne, and sat down by a table—she on a divan, Piotr Ivanovich on a low ottoman, whose broken springs yielded unpredictably to his weight.
Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2009:
Having gone into her drawing room, upholstered in pink cretonne and with a sullen lamp, they sat by the table, she on the sofa, Pyotr Ivanovich on a low pouf with bad springs that gave way erratically under his weight.
Translated by Peter Carson, 2013:
They went into her dimly lit drawing room hung with pink cretonne and sat down by a table, she on a sofa and Pyotr Ivanovich on a low pouf built on springs that awkwardly gave way as he sat down.
Peter Carson is scrupulous and attentive throughout The Death of Ivan Ilyich, producing an English version that respects Tolstoy and all his rough edges, yet is always a pleasure to read. His Tolstoy translations are sure to stand the test of time.