I may have to put The Name of the Rose higher up my reading list. I’m in the midst of re-reading Kristin Lavransdatter at the moment, a book made much better by having read it through once already… but it’s making me crave other well-executed medievalist pieces.
Thank you for being real about pevear volokhonsky…I’ve been afraid for so long that i was alone in throwing every one of their translations across the room 😂
Very glad to find I'm not the only one! I started stomping around my living room the other day when I realized that a beautiful new edition of Pushkin's prose and poetry was done by them.
My list is titled "Books I Refuse to Live Without" which I listed on Barnes and Noble until they wiped that feature right off their webside. Must have run to over 100 titles. I've been trying to reconstruct it on my discord server but I've been lax about it. OTOH, I just (re)purchased a copy of Brendan Behan's "Borstal Boy" because mine has gone all flappy—broken spine, loose pages and such.
I didn't know Barnes and Noble ever even had such a feature. I've been trying to keep track in a notebook for precisely that reason, but still I always forget to update it. I have a decent list of books I want to buy but then I forget to update it and can't remember what books I already own when I'm at the bookstore. Keeping track of one's books, I've come to realize, is hopeless.
They didn't have that "feature" per se. They did, however, have a chat very like this one and that's where I posted my list. It was a good list, though I didn't delve into the reasons why I liked each title. Mine was just a list.
I should have kept a copy of it. Mea culpa . . . .
Pity they dumped it. Lost marketing opportunity there. But then B&N lost its way after the 2008 financial crisis. Within 6 weeks after stocks tanked, they began picking their customers' pockets. It was heartbreaking.
Borges had a way of referring to forgotten or obscure authors, and interpolating them in his discussions. One such author comes to mind, now out of fashion with the bien pensant class, his name is Charles Dickens who invented the popular conception of the Victorian World. I mean Dicken's work in its entirety. Another author of wry withering brilliance is Yaroslav Hacek, whose masterpiece was unfinished and to be completed by us. Anyway, Hilary's list appears to be copied from my own, must look into it.
I own and read from the same edition of Borges you show here. It's a great translation. Borges is bottomless, I never get all of it, I keep going back to the stories and they seem new each time. For such a quiet, shy and scholarly man, he wrote with incredible understand of humanity in all its violent and manipulative forms. The Laurus book interests me. Name of the Rose is incredible. I read Foucault's Pendulum twice, and left unsatisfied with it each time. Hard to say why. I'm reading Moby Dick, and though Hawthorne's language is pre-modern and odd at times, the metaphysical essence of it is very deep and modern. I may skip some of the whaling chapters, as I did before.
If you liked Name of the Rose there's a decent chance you'll like Laurus. It is very much a Russian Name of the Rose, but it is also very Russian (in a good way, in my opinion). I suppose I've never really been able to give in to the modern idea that brevity and economy are the most important factors in prose. I pull Borges off the shelf and read a story at random now and then. He had an interesting interview in The Paris Review eons ago. He seems to come alive when you give him some room to open up about his passions.
I read a few Jane Austen books as a teenager. I liked Pride and Prejudice, but ultimately romance isn't really my genre. Though Austen is an excellent writer and had a keen eye for that particularly British wink-wink kind of prose. I didn't love Wuthering Heights, though I think Emily's poetry is astonishing. However I did really, really enjoy Jane Eyre. I'll probably add that to a future list.
Curious... As you read "The Brothers Karamazov" in translation, i'm assuming you don't speak (or read) Russian. How then, if you're unable to compare any translation with the original, are you able to judge any translation as being "better" than any other, let alone be opinionated enough about one of them to declare you loathe it?
Like most people in today's society, I do have access to many who speak both Russian and English. I have read several reviews by these people that compare and contrast the most popular translations of Dostoevsky available today. Most say that Garnett's is the clunkiest while the new Pevear-Volokhonsky translation is more literary. I personally disagree, but didn't originally care one way or another. One reviewer -- whose site I can no longer find, sadly -- learned Russian in Russia and had a far more in depth review to provide: He placed several passages from several books of Dostoevsky side by side with their most popular translations. These included the Garnett translation and the Pevear-Volokhonsky. Something that was immediately obvious was that the Garnett translation had made a point of trying to convey the original meaning of the text as literally as possible. But the Pevear Volokhonsky translation simplified the meaning, sometimes even reducing a paragraph to a sentence. More than once this, in my opinion, changed the fundamental meaning of the passage as translated and explained by the person writing the review and evidenced in the Garnett translation. You will find this to be true as well if you have a copy of both translations -- which I do -- and try to find corresponding passages to compare.
I don't speak chinese, but if I read two translations of The Art of War and one was garbage and the other read well, then I'd assume the first translator did a poor job rather than assume the latter brilliantly rewrote a poor piece of literature that somehow survived generations.
You’re right! Constance Garnett’s translations are superior.
(Also Wordsworth classics does a cheap edition of the Garnett translation.)
I may have to put The Name of the Rose higher up my reading list. I’m in the midst of re-reading Kristin Lavransdatter at the moment, a book made much better by having read it through once already… but it’s making me crave other well-executed medievalist pieces.
Thank you for being real about pevear volokhonsky…I’ve been afraid for so long that i was alone in throwing every one of their translations across the room 😂
Very glad to find I'm not the only one! I started stomping around my living room the other day when I realized that a beautiful new edition of Pushkin's prose and poetry was done by them.
I saw that! Literally an atrocity 😅
My list is titled "Books I Refuse to Live Without" which I listed on Barnes and Noble until they wiped that feature right off their webside. Must have run to over 100 titles. I've been trying to reconstruct it on my discord server but I've been lax about it. OTOH, I just (re)purchased a copy of Brendan Behan's "Borstal Boy" because mine has gone all flappy—broken spine, loose pages and such.
I didn't know Barnes and Noble ever even had such a feature. I've been trying to keep track in a notebook for precisely that reason, but still I always forget to update it. I have a decent list of books I want to buy but then I forget to update it and can't remember what books I already own when I'm at the bookstore. Keeping track of one's books, I've come to realize, is hopeless.
They didn't have that "feature" per se. They did, however, have a chat very like this one and that's where I posted my list. It was a good list, though I didn't delve into the reasons why I liked each title. Mine was just a list.
I should have kept a copy of it. Mea culpa . . . .
Pity they dumped it. Lost marketing opportunity there. But then B&N lost its way after the 2008 financial crisis. Within 6 weeks after stocks tanked, they began picking their customers' pockets. It was heartbreaking.
Borges had a way of referring to forgotten or obscure authors, and interpolating them in his discussions. One such author comes to mind, now out of fashion with the bien pensant class, his name is Charles Dickens who invented the popular conception of the Victorian World. I mean Dicken's work in its entirety. Another author of wry withering brilliance is Yaroslav Hacek, whose masterpiece was unfinished and to be completed by us. Anyway, Hilary's list appears to be copied from my own, must look into it.
I own and read from the same edition of Borges you show here. It's a great translation. Borges is bottomless, I never get all of it, I keep going back to the stories and they seem new each time. For such a quiet, shy and scholarly man, he wrote with incredible understand of humanity in all its violent and manipulative forms. The Laurus book interests me. Name of the Rose is incredible. I read Foucault's Pendulum twice, and left unsatisfied with it each time. Hard to say why. I'm reading Moby Dick, and though Hawthorne's language is pre-modern and odd at times, the metaphysical essence of it is very deep and modern. I may skip some of the whaling chapters, as I did before.
If you liked Name of the Rose there's a decent chance you'll like Laurus. It is very much a Russian Name of the Rose, but it is also very Russian (in a good way, in my opinion). I suppose I've never really been able to give in to the modern idea that brevity and economy are the most important factors in prose. I pull Borges off the shelf and read a story at random now and then. He had an interesting interview in The Paris Review eons ago. He seems to come alive when you give him some room to open up about his passions.
Is it from the Faus-Dolos' translation effort of Ibn Fadlan's Viking report?
Indeed it is! ⭐
Great! My research skills still work. I was just skimming over the Faus-Dolos report; it is pretty neat to learn how life was so long ago!
I am not surprised that I’ve only not read one of these books… You are the person I wanted to be in high school. 🤗
I have to admit, I'm a bit surprised not to see Jane Austen here! Or any of the Bronte sisters. I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on their works.
I read a few Jane Austen books as a teenager. I liked Pride and Prejudice, but ultimately romance isn't really my genre. Though Austen is an excellent writer and had a keen eye for that particularly British wink-wink kind of prose. I didn't love Wuthering Heights, though I think Emily's poetry is astonishing. However I did really, really enjoy Jane Eyre. I'll probably add that to a future list.
Curious... As you read "The Brothers Karamazov" in translation, i'm assuming you don't speak (or read) Russian. How then, if you're unable to compare any translation with the original, are you able to judge any translation as being "better" than any other, let alone be opinionated enough about one of them to declare you loathe it?
Like most people in today's society, I do have access to many who speak both Russian and English. I have read several reviews by these people that compare and contrast the most popular translations of Dostoevsky available today. Most say that Garnett's is the clunkiest while the new Pevear-Volokhonsky translation is more literary. I personally disagree, but didn't originally care one way or another. One reviewer -- whose site I can no longer find, sadly -- learned Russian in Russia and had a far more in depth review to provide: He placed several passages from several books of Dostoevsky side by side with their most popular translations. These included the Garnett translation and the Pevear-Volokhonsky. Something that was immediately obvious was that the Garnett translation had made a point of trying to convey the original meaning of the text as literally as possible. But the Pevear Volokhonsky translation simplified the meaning, sometimes even reducing a paragraph to a sentence. More than once this, in my opinion, changed the fundamental meaning of the passage as translated and explained by the person writing the review and evidenced in the Garnett translation. You will find this to be true as well if you have a copy of both translations -- which I do -- and try to find corresponding passages to compare.
I don't speak chinese, but if I read two translations of The Art of War and one was garbage and the other read well, then I'd assume the first translator did a poor job rather than assume the latter brilliantly rewrote a poor piece of literature that somehow survived generations.