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Around Sonja: on the First Russian Translation Victor Fet Marshall University, [email protected]

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Around Sonja: on the First Russian Translation Victor Fet Marshall University, Fet@Marshall.Edu Marshall University Marshall Digital Scholar Biological Sciences Faculty Research Biological Sciences Fall 2016 Around Sonja: On the First Russian Translation Victor Fet Marshall University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://mds.marshall.edu/bio_sciences_faculty Part of the Modern Literature Commons, and the Russian Literature Commons Recommended Citation Victor Fet. Around Sonja: On the First Russian Translation. Knight Letter 2(27), no. 97, 25-34. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Biological Sciences at Marshall Digital Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Biological Sciences Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Marshall Digital Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. KllIGHT LETTER The Lewis Carroll Society ofNorth America Fall 2016 Volume II Issue 2 7 Number 97 Around Sonja: On the First Russian Translation VICTOR FET he first Russian translation of Wonderl.and le n in 1972, though a microfilm survives. Sonja has was published anonymously in 1879 as Sonja not been reprinted in Russia, but the text is now avail­ T v tsarstvie diva (Sonja in a Kingdom of Wonder, able online (in modem spelling). hereinafter referred to as SoriJa). 1 Deep Victorian mys­ At least four reviews of Sonja appeared in Rus­ 7 8 teries surround iL Its translator remains unknown­ sian periodicals between 1879 and 1882. · but a hint from Lewis Carroll himself leads one to These reviews are decidedly negative and even Russian aristocrats, patrons of the arts, and famous indignant. One of the reviewers, M. V. Sobolev, a chil­ writers. Its readership is undocumented, but the faces dren's literature expert of that time, opined that "the of children who most like ly first read this book are morality is overexaggerated, and ... Sonja's adven­ still well known in Russia today, having been painted tures are hardly inte resting." ~ None of the revi ewers by the most famous nineteenth-century Russian art­ recognized that the book was a translation, nor did ists. Further, as one looks carefully at the text itself, they identify it as Carroll's Alice! This demonstrates one finds it remarkably inte resting, even by today's just how unfamiliar the Russians were with Carroll at standards. that time. As mentioned, Lewis Carroll was not acknowl­ In this article I use the spelling "Sonja" to be edged as the author of Sonja. The book reproduced consistent with the 2013 re pr;nting, although a more only sixteen of Tenniel's ill ustrations and received common transliteration of CoHJ1 is Sonya or Sonia. This very negative reviews. (The four known surviving name, a diminutive of Sofia, also means "a sleepy­ reviews are reprinted in the Addendum.) The book head" in Russian (from son, "a dream") and was clear­ apparently was so thoroughly forgotten that the next ly chosen to indicate Alice's dream (unlike Nabo­ time it was mentioned in Russia was in the late 1960s. kov's Anya, which has no second meaning). "Sonja" Sonja is considerably abridged and heavily "domesti­ also means "dormouse"; this noun in Russian has a cated," that is, all English names and context marke rs feminine gender, and tl1 erefore the Dormouse is usu­ were removed, and all characters were "Russified." ally a female (but in Sonja, it was re placed by a male, This is discussed in the 2013 facsimile edition of Son­ Mishen'ka-Surok, "Mishen ka tl1 e Marmot"). ja, published simultaneously by the LCSNA as a lim­ Warren Weaver, who studied Carroll 's correspon­ ited-distribution hardback, and by Evertype (Eire) as dence with his publisher, Macmillan, wrote in his a paperback.2 It features commentaries by Fan Parke r book Alice in Many Tongues (p. 47): "On March 31, 3 and ina Demurova. • 4 This pioneering practice of 1871 , occurs a Dodgson letter of special interest: 'Un­ "domestication" was also used in later Russian transla­ less it should happen that I have already given the tions- of which Nabokov's Anya v Strane chudes (Anya order, will you please send a French and a German Al­ in Wonderland, 1923) is the best known. ice to Miss Timiriasef-care of Rev. H. S. Thompson, There are only two known surviving copies of English Church, St. Petersburg. She is the lady who, I Sonja. 5 One survived, unnoticed, in the Saltykov­ believe, is going to translate Alice into Russian."' 1° Co­ Shchedrin Library in St. Petersburg, Russia. August he n and Gandolfo reprinted the same letter (p. 90) A. lmholtz,Jr. managed to obtain its microfilm , and a but with the spelli ng "Timiriaseff," and the sentence scanned fi le is now available on line. The second-the e nding " ... is going to translate Alice into Russian for only known copy outside of Russia-surfaced in 1958 me." 11 This lette r by Carroll, in fact, is the earliestdoc­ at Sotheby's. It went to tl1 e Alfred Bero! Carroll col­ ume n ted evidence that Wonderl.and was known to any­ lection, now at New York University's Fales Library. one in Russia. The very first me ntion in print I could Its title page was reproduced in 1995 by Nina De mu­ find of Alice books (both Wonderland and TTLG) in rova. 6 (The Fales copy was the source for the 2013 Russia was in 1883, in a translation of an 1881 essay by reprinting.) NYU has a digitized version of it. There British childre n 's writer Annajane Buckland. 12 was also a third copy in the Russian State (formerly Neither Rev. Thompson nor Miss Timiriasefwere Le nin) Library in Moscow that was discarded or sto- mentioned in Carroll's diar;es or his Russianjourna~ the 1867 travelogue of his continentaljourney. 13 Dis­ we see Ekaterina Ivanovna living in a rented apart­ cussing the copy of Sonja sold at Sotheby's in 1958, ment full of books, giving lessons to eight-year-old Weaver made a connection with Miss Timiriasef: "Can Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) . The great Russian poet it be that she is the translator of the 1879 edition?" affectionately remembered her as his first teacher. 18 The Russian scholar Dmitrii Urnov mused: Unlike Olga (who was h er father's first cousin) , Ekaterina Boratynskaya became an accomplished So who was [the translator]? Possibly, Olga author and translator from English and French, in­ lvanovna Timiryazeva, a first cousin of the fa­ cluding childre n 's and art literature. Many of her mous scientist K. A. Timiryazev. Her brother translations were signed only by the initials "E.B." She left memoirs where he tells about his family left memoirs about the famous religious philosopher that was friendly with Pushkin, about him Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900); 19 she was a friend of and his sister reading as children in major Lev (Leo) Tolstoy and contributed translations for European languages including English, while his publishing house, Posrednik ("The Mediator") their readings were selected by [the famous beginning in 1891. The chief editor of Posrednik poet Vasily] Zhukovsky himself. Indeed, reme mbered Ekaterina Boratynskaya as one of the Sonja v tsarstve diva falls within the tradition most active contributors.20 She translated and retold of the Russian or translated literary fairy tale an incredibly diverse array of English, American, and that was created for us by Pushkin and Zhu­ French literature, including Unde Tom's Cabin, Long­ kovsky. 14 fellow's "Evangeline," stories of Ernest Thompson Se­ Urnov's suggestion, first made in 1975, became the ton, Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, The Lamplight,er by source of further attribution, usually with a ques­ Maria S. Cummins, George Eliot's Adam Bede and Silas tion mark. The suggestion, however, was based ex­ Mamer, Timothy's Quest by Kate Do1;!glas Wiggin, Cafr clusively on Carroll's letter quoted by Weaver, which tain January by Laura E. Richard~" l'osette (a fragment then became known in Russia. Demurova mentions from Hugo's Les Miserables)• and CkiH'ls~ O.rwi.ot 's that Weaver sent her a copy of his 1964 book after T<ftt"'Voyage uf t!w Esf.lg./.6 (edited 8' he1 ttRr;;le K!jmen.t.,) . her translations of both Alice books were published On Tolstoy's suggestion, she translated Alice Bunker (1967) ."' No further inquiry, to my knowledge, has Stockham's Creative Life: A Special Lett,er to Young Girls been made into the identity of the putative translator. (1893), an early text on women's health. It is quite The "Timiriasef" family name is well known in possible tha t the Macmillan books in 1871 were re­ Russia due to the famous biologist Kliment Arka­ quested for the young Ekaterina Timiryazeva rather dyevich Timiryazev (1843-1920), a scion of the old than for Olga. aristocracy, who after 1917 supported the Bolshevik Note that Carroll asked specifically for French regime. Infonnation about his cousin Olga Ivanovna and German, but not English, texts of Wonderland Timiryazeva (1841-1897) is scarce. Her brother Fedor (both the first translations, just published by Macmil­ (1832-1897) was a governor of Saratov in 1880-1881, lan in 1869) to be sent to a "Miss Timiriasef." The and published a memoir Lo which Urnov refers. 16 Dur­ request (which can be dated 1870) meant that she ing her youth in Moscow, Olga belonged to the circle wanted to read Alice in more familiar languages; the of the famous polymath Vladimir Odoevsky, who con­ educated Russians usually had good French and Ger­ tributed much to the early Russian fantasy literature man, but English was much less common. in the tradition of E.
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