Faithful Ruslan

Review Essay: FAITHFUL RUSLAN Nadja Jernakoff* The date given at the end of the Russian text of Vernyi R uslan is 1963-1965. Its first publication in Russian by Possev-Verlag in Frankfurt, West Germany is dated 1975. Since then readers of German, French, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, etc. — more than a dozen languages in all — have had the opportunity to read this splendid novella by Georgi Vladimov, a prominent and highly talented Russian writer who lives in the Soviet Union. With the appearance of this translation by Michael Glenny, English-language readers will, at last, be able to sample for themselves the novel which many Russians regard as Vladimov's masterpiece. It is well known that for many years a story initially called simply "The Dogs" circulated within the Soviet Union by way of samizdat. Because of its outstanding literary qualities it was, at one time, attributed to the pen of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Vladimov retitled the book Faithful Ruslan during a long period of meticulous rewriting of his story which, in its final form, was smuggled to the West in 1974. The book deals with the heroic spirit of a German Shepherd dog trained from early puppyhood to guard prisoners in a labor camp. The dog's finest attributes are his devotion to Duty (the word is capitalized in the Russian text) and his loyalty to his master. The story begins at the time when Ivan Denisovich left off, that is, at the time of partial abolition * Nadja Jernakoff is Instructor of Russian at Union College, Schenectady, New York. 1 Faithful Ruslan: The Story of a Guard Dog, by Georgi Vladimov. Translated from the Russian, with a foreword, by Michael Glenny and with an introduction by Richard Adams. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1979. 220 pp. $9.95. 217 of labor camps in the late 1950's. As a result, the dogs are left "unem- ployed," Ruslan among them. His world, the only one he ever knew, begins to crumble around him. The strong sense of dignity and pride in his own worth and in his special training does not allow him to mingle with the other dogs, nor accept food and shelter from anyone except his master. Ruslan reverts to the state of a wild beast, hunting in the woods for his food and finding a temporary occupation as the "voluntary" guard of an ex-prisoner. At the close of the book Ruslan, having mis- takenly taken a band of marching workers for a column of prisoners, remembers his Duty and proceeds to reestablish order among the unruly crowd in a manner appropriate to guard dogs. The loser, of course, is Ruslan, whose death is brought about by severe clubbing. Bewildered but full of dignity to the end, Ruslan dies alone as befits a hero, but not before having experienced, as in happier days, a last quasi-mystical call to Duty. The events of the story flow smoothly against a background of vivid images of life in camp and existence on the outside, interrupted by flashbacks and punctuated by strong dramatic passages, among them a riot by the dogs, a cold-blooded shooting of an inmate guilty of killing the camp informer, and the ill-fated attack on the column of workers. The reader closes the book upon what emerges as an upside-down world, having been reminded in the process that man is capable of actions to which an animal will never be a party — to wit, the rebellion of the dogs inside the camp. It was reported in the press (New York Times, 29 April 1979, p. 30, col. 4) that when at a news conference the newly released dissident, Valentin Moroz, was describing his imprisonment, he "told of beatings he had received from prison guards. In particular, he said, he remem- bered a train ride to Moscow three years ago when guards pummeled him 'without reason. The best being in that group was a dog — he didn't have any desire to bite me.' " This comment by a man who only two days earlier had been a "resident" of the Gulag serves to underscore the fact, already evident in Vladimov's novella, that in the frightful, nightmarish world of the Gulag men act like animals and animals display human, even humane qualities. If Solzhenitsyn in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich succeeded in giving us an unforgettable vision of one day in the life of one man in one labor camp as told by that man, and in the process acquainted his readers with contemporary reality in one country, then Vladimov has gone one step further in time and reality. It is known that the events described in the book, such as the attack upon the column of workers by dogs trained to do just that, have indeed occurred in the Soviet Union. At 218 the same time the entire story is masterfully told from the point of view of the dog — a tour de force in canine psychology — and the parallel of beasts and people is brilliantly handled. Thus, the episodes in Faithful Ruslan, though remaining firmly rooted in the realities of our time, also become symbolic. On February 18, 1976, Moscow's Literaturnaya Gazeta published an interview with Georgi Vladimov at a time when he was still a member of the Writers' Union of the USSR. In this interview, during which Vernyi Ruslan, of course, could not be mentioned, the writer in discussing his approach to prose says that, in his opinion, an author's personality reveals itself most fully in "parabolic" prose "which entails something higher than what is depicted in it, a certain impulse, an outlet to the principal phenomena of existence..." [trans. N. J.). Faithful Ruslan fits quite well into his definition. It is always rewarding to see an outstanding literary work made available to readers of another language, and the present translation is no exception. Michael Glenny has, on the whole, given us an adequate rendition of Vernyi Ruslan. In an excellent essay on translation, Alexis Klimoff stated that accuracy is "the degree to which a translation com- municates the content, spirit, and manner of the original" and does not merely relate to "basic meaning."2 Taking this statement as a premise, one must recognize that Mr. Glenny has been able to preserve in his translation not only the tone of compassion for beasts and men alike which characterizes Vladimov's novel but also the parabolic quality of the tale. Yet one finds too often sprinkled throughout the book inaccuracies in literal translation. For instance: the color malinovo-krasnoe is not "reddish-brown" (p. 33), but rather "crimson" or "raspberry-red"; s glazu na glaz means "privately" or "without witnesses" and not, as Glenny translates it, "looking him straight in the eyes" (p. 109); tolstyi lokot' voditelia [the driver's fat elbow] is transformed by Glenny into "the driver's big bony elbow" (p. 37); in the translator's words the lazy dog Djulbars "trotted around the firewood stack" (p. 53) rather than "thrashed the firewood stack [with his tail]" which is what lupanut' po drovam means; undecided about what to make of krutoi lob, Glenny initially translates it as a "bony forehead" (p. 22), then as a "high forehead" (p. 70), and finally as a "steeply sloping forehead" (p. 142); odin prozhektor valialsia vnizu is most certainly not "one searchlight was...pointing straight down" (p. 26), but "one searchlight was lying about below"; priznat'sia sebe v neliubvi khoziaina [to admit to himself - Alexis Klimoff, "Solzhenitsyn in English: An Evaluation," Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Critical Essays and Documentary Materials (Belmont, Mass: Nordland Publishing Company, 1973), p. 535. 219 the master's lack of love] is rendered by "to acknowledge that he [Ruslan] no longer loved Master" (p. 77) which, given the context, makes no sense; v drugikh za eto palili bez okrika should have been translated as "others had been fired at without warning for that" and not as "others had been attacked without warning for trying to do the same thing" (p. 40); i vse otsluzhennoe im means "and all his time spent in Ser- vice" rather than Glenny's "and all his troubles" (p. 141); an important philosophical aside by the author is distorted by the incorrect rendition of the phrase brezglivo pereshagivaiushchim cherez kakoi-to porog as "self-righteously crossing over some threshold" (p. 55) instead of the appropriate "crossing over some threshold in disgust"; and, the locale of the story notwithstanding, Shabby Man's words about Stiura's im- aginary rival ty b ее so svetu szhila [you would have hounded her to death (coll.)) should not be translated as "you'd have her arrested" (p. 97). A special word must be said about Mr. Glenny's constant and un- necessary softening of dialogue, especially of phrases and expletives used by camp guards and plain folk. It is somewhat ludicrous to have an ex- uberant and ironic tractor driver who greets Ruslan's master with the earthy Russian greeting Zdorovo, vologodskii say meekly "Hi, there, soldier!" (p. 34); and it is completely out of character for a desperate camp guard to answer his captain's question about a disobedient dog with "God knows, Comr'd Cap'n..." (p. 131), especially when Vladimov has him saying Kholera ego znaet... Some readers might observe more than once a lack of spit and polish in the structure of English sentences, resulting almost always in the weakening of the idea to be translated. For instance: Ruslan is afraid to die, no esli vmeste s khoziainom — eto drugoe delo [but if it had to hap- pen together with Master, that would be another matter].

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