The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue

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McDuff’s translation is the most literal (even more so than P&V). This means “the dialogue is sometimes impossibly odd—and as a result rather dead.” Extract from the McDuff translation of The Brothers Karamazov I went ahead with my experiment: to read the McDuff (Penguin) almost straight after the Pevear and Volokhonsky. I'm only a fifth in, but I know I'm a convert to the David McDuff. His language seems richer to me. I hope this was helpful to someone out there. Now I’m off to what is probably an awesome reading experience.

Should titles be translated literally or loosely? Opinions differ and tastes change with the times. The Brothers Karamazov: Translation Comparison When reading a long Russian novel, I always start with an Excel spreadsheet of families and their members and relationships. This printed out and folded into the book is very valuable, particularly with Tolstoy who has many characters. I mention this because if there are variations in the titles, I believe a table of translators and titles might be valuable. I know it would be to me.Pevear and Volokhonsky, while they too stress the need to exhume the real, rough-edged Dostoevsky from the normalization practised by earlier translators, generally offer a rather more satisfactory compromise between the literal and the readable. In particular, their rendering of dialogue is often livelier and more colloquial than McDuff’s.” Still: “[T]he desire to replicate the vocabulary or the syntax of the Russian results sometimes in unnecessary awkwardness and obscurity.” Extract from the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of The Brothers Karamazov All the readers of unabridged versions of The Brothers Karamazov happen to be male, except in the case of the collaborative Librivox recording, which includes female volunteers as well as male volunteers.

This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky—the definitive version in English—magnificently captures the rich and subtle energies of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece.”

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Dostoevsky’s irony is more noticeable than in previous English language versions, which tended to muffle the humor. Katz’s rendering in plain, contemporary English sets the Russian author’s satire in high relief.” It may well be that Dostoevsky’s [world], with all its resourceful energies of life and language, is only now–and through the medium of [this] new translation–beginning to come home to the English-speaking reader.”– New York Review of Books I chose not to follow the translations of my predecessors; however, on occasion I did engage with them critically, especially in the particularly complex passages, believing that literary translation is in reality an enterprise in which a translator builds on the work of his/her predecessors. If Garnett could come up with the perfect English counterpart, who was I to reject it and use a less appropriate phrase? In my translations, I try to achieve an evenhanded position on the continuum of accuracy/accessibility, somewhat closer to my readers—namely, the general public and students in high schools and colleges. What elements have I tried to highlight in my own version of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece? First of all, I try to do justice to the author’s dark sense of humor…. Secondly, I tried to be mindful of this rich high-style source [Old Russian] and render it with my own elevated language. Finally…. I eliminated what I considered unnecessary repetition of words [while retaining] essential repetitions, those that have semantic importance…. I hope to have produced a version of The Brothers Karamazov that will engage the general public and students for some time to come.” On the fateful day, Smerdyakov urges Ivan to go see about some business in a town called Chermashnya, before outlining how heated the conflict between Dmitry and his father had become—indeed, that it was likely to come to a head that night. “So why did you,” Ivan asks him, “after all this, advise me to go to Chermashnya? If I leave, see what happens here.” Smerdyakov answers cryptically: “Precisely so, sir.” Sensing a plot, Ivan has a spasm and breaks into a fit of laughter, a sound associated in the novel with the Devil. Still, he goes.

There’s a very strong picture in your second novel, The Game, of childhood creativity, but I have the feeling that there’s an element of the smokescreen to it. It’s quite an accurate portrait of what the Brontës got up to, isn’t it? Her knowledge of Russian was not particularly good and she was apt to leave out the bits she could not quite get the sense of, but she adored her work and her style had a natural animation and flow…. [H]er version of Dostoevsky remained the standard one until fairly recently, though there were more accurate renderings by David Magarshak and others.”I repeat, it was not stupidity —the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough—but just senselessness, and a peculiar national form of it. Pevear, Richard (14 October 2007). "Tolstoy's Transparent Sounds". New York Times . Retrieved 2008-04-23. We work separately at first. Larissa produces a complete draft, following the original as closely as possible, with many marginal comments and observations. From that, plus the original Russian, I make my own complete draft. Then we work closely together to arrive at a third draft, on which we make our 'final' revisions." [8]