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Sergei Dovlatov's Ludic Literary Discourse in the Original and In Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 5 (2016 9) 1232-1238 ~ ~ ~ УДК 82.091 Sergei Dovlatov’s Ludic Literary Discourse in the Original and in English Translations Evgeniia M. Butenina* Far Eastern Federal University Ayax Bay, Russky Island, Vladivostok, 690920, Russia Received 09.01.2016, received in revised form 10.03.2016, accepted 18.04.2016 Russian émigré authors created numerous postmodern ways of mediating Russian classics into contemporary fiction. Many scholars discussed Vladimir Nabokov’s role in this phenomenon, while such third wave writers as Andrey Sinyavsky/Abram Terz, Vasiliy Aksenov, Sergei Dovlatov continued and developed this tradition. The paper discusses Dovlatov’s ludic literary references in the original and shows how his three translators, Ann Frydman, Antonina W. Bouis, and Ekaterina Dovlatova, rendered them into English. While Sinyavsky’s books already found direct response in American fiction, resonance to Dovlatov’s stories is likely to occur in Anglophone Russian American literature, thanks to (re)translations and other popularizing projects. Keywords: third wave emigration, Sergei Dovlatov, The New Yorker, Ann Frydman, Antonina W. Bouis, Ekaterina Dovlatova. DOI: 10.17516/1997-1370-2016-9-5-1232-1238. Research area: philology. Introduction 1980 and 1989. This paper demonstrates how In the late 20th and early 21st centuries world Dovlatov’s translators rendered his ludic literary literature witnesses a boom of postmodernist references, which create one of the key features interaction with Russian classics, which includes of his (auto)mythological poetics. fictional biographies of Russian writers as well as numerous literary updates and other allusive Sergei Dovlatov in The New Yorker forms. This phenomenon is especially noticeable The New Yorker published stories from in American literature thanks to the mediation of four of Dovlatov’s collections: “The Jubilee Russian literary discourse in Vladimir Nabokov Boy” and “Somebody’s Death” come from and the third wave émigré authors such as The Compromise; “Straight Ahead” is the last Andrey Sinyavsky/Abram Terz, Vasiliy Aksenov, chapter in The Zone; “My First Cousin”, “The and Sergei Dovlatov. Dovlatov achieved an Colonel Says I Love You”, “Uncle Aron”, “Uncle unprecedented success for an émigré author in Leopold”, and “Father” are from Ours; “The the United States as the elite weekly The New Photo Album” and “Driving Gloves” are from Yorker published ten of his short stories between The Suitcase.1 Katherine T. O’Connor and Diana © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: [email protected] – 1232 – Evgeniia M. Butenina. Sergei Dovlatov’s Ludic Literary Discourse in the Original and in English Translations L. Burgin translated “Somebody’s Death”, Sadly, even the comic part is sometimes Antonina W. Bouis translated the two stories distorted: for example, uncle Mikhail sent his from The Suitcase, and Ann Frydman, whom immature poem with a line containing an idiom Dovlatov met through Joseph Brodsky and razbit’ lob (beat one’s brow) to Mayakovski and often called his coauthor, introduced him to the in reply received a put-down proverb with this magazine and translated the rest of these stories. idiom. In translation this play on words is lost due Frydman also translated The Compromise, to the use of two different word combinations: which became Dovlatov’s first book issued by the proverb «A fool prays to God and ends up a major American publisher Alfred A. Knopf cracking his skull» does not evoke the line «I was (1983). Several popular periodicals, including a-tremble, and I yearned / To beat my brow The New York Times and Harper’s, reviewed against a wall, to fall…» (Dovlatov, 1987b, 25). The Compromise favorably, and Slavic scholars Similarly, Frydman omits the narrator’s comment particularly praised Frydman for carrying over on the “literary” background of his second uncle, Dovlatov’s “sense of rhythm and repetition” Leopold, whose zamorskoye imya (overseas (Feine, 1984, 553). In 1985 Knopf published name) seemed to anticipate his cosmopolitan The Zone in Frydman’ translation and in 1990 adventurous biography that reminded of Mayne Weidenfeld published The Suitcase in Bouis’s Reid’s and Fenimore Cooper’s heroes (Dovlatov, translation. Thus, The New Yorker opened a 1995, 169). Perhaps, these authors, beloved in gateway to a wider literary American scene for Soviet Russia, are long forgotten in English Sergei Dovlatov. countries and this allusion would not have a similar Half of the stories published by The New effect, or the comparison of the “swindler” uncle Yorker tell a semifictional story of Dovlatov’s to Anglo-American literature characters could family, which he framed in ludic literary somehow be politically incorrect, but in any case allusions. In “Uncle Leopold” he introduces his these compressions pose a doubt to the adequacy father, Donat, and his two brothers, Mikhail of the translation. and Leopold: “U moego evreiskogo deda bylo The literary origins of the narrator’s relatives tri syna. (Da ne smutit vas eta obmanchivaya remained complete in Frydman’s translations bylinnaya nota)” (Dovlatov, 1995, 169) when they corresponded to western stereotypes (My Jewish grandfather had three sons. (Do about contradictory Russia. The narrator says not be confused by this deceptively epic note)). that his father “looked youthful and elegant Frydman simplifies the author’s remark but adds and yet at the same time like someone out of the place of the sons’ birth, perhaps for a folklore the “Lower-Depths” flop-house. He looked like effect of a reference to faraway lands: “My Jewish a cross between Pushkin and an American on grandfather in Vladivostok had three sons, just as unemployment” (Dovlatov, 1987a, 34). The in a fairy tale” (Dovlatov, 1987b, 25). Dovlatov’s narrator’s first cousin reminded him of “Levin goal is to embed the tragicomic history of his in “Anna Karenina”. On the eve of his marriage, Jewish ancestors into Russian cultural history. Levin lamented that he had already lost his His translator compresses the tragic part such as virginity in his youth. My cousin tormented the comment that the name Mikhail is an omen himself with a similar problem – namely, how one to early death if we remember Lermontov or could be a Communist and have a Criminal past” Bulgakov and the fact that the narrator’s uncle (Dovlatov, 1983, 52). Both remarks sarcastically died in Leningrad under siege. contrast Russia’s aristocratic past symbolized by – 1233 – Evgeniia M. Butenina. Sergei Dovlatov’s Ludic Literary Discourse in the Original and in English Translations the names of Pushkin and Tolstoy’s autobiographic references to Russian literature. The recent trend character with its present in “lower-depths”, either of retranslations and new translations inspired impoverished or criminal. Dovlatov’s daughter contribution to her father’s Frydman also preserved Dovlatov’s revival in the English-speaking world. expressions of half-hearted antagonism to Soviet system, which often reveals in his self- The Dovlatovs’ Pushkin Hills mocking references to worshipped socialist Following her editorial work, Ekaterina texts. In “My First Cousin”, he fears “sounding Dovlatova successfully tested her own translation overliterary like Sholokhov’s ‘Tales of the Don’” skills. In 2013, Alma Classics of London and but immediately comments that in his uncle’s in 2014 Counterpoint of Berkeley published speech he “could detect motifs from Gorky’s her translation of Sergei Dovlatov’s famous ‘Song of the Falcon’” (Dovlatov, 1983, 52). In “The and perhaps best book Zapovednik (originally Photo Album”, he laments that his wife randomly published in 1983). The translation gained high made her reading choices and “always ended up praises: The New York Review of Books reviewer reading good books”, but when he attempted to states that “Katherine Dovlatov’s translation do the same “it’s sure to be Plowing Virgin Soil” feels almost transparent at times, as though the (Dovlatov, 1989b, 45). original Russian were visible through the text”, Like Anne Frydman, Dovlatov’s second while Rachel Polonsky of The Times Literary frequent translator Antonina W. Bouis also took Supplement believes she “brings into English her some liberties as if she were his coauthor. While father’s gritty mix of elegy and wit.” The famous she preserved the quoted literary reference in “The American novelist Francine Prose expresses a Photo Album”, she distorted a comic Pushkinian universal feeling when she says that “One wishes strand in “Driving Gloves”. In the original, the that he’d lived longer, been published sooner, narrator tells of his attempt to play Peter the Great given us more” (Praises for Pushkin Hills, 2013). in an amateurish film by Yuriy Schlippenbach, Ekaterina Dovlatova renamed Zapovednik to who has a habit of quoting Pushkin’s reference to Pushkin Hills since the English word “preserve” his heroic Swedish ancestor in “Poltava” poem. does not have a meaning of a museum-estate, Bouis simply renames this character to colorless “which is a very Soviet concept” (Stivers, 2014). Filimonov (Dovlatov, 1989a). To her credit, in While in the quoted interview with Valerie 1990 she translated all stories of The Suitcase Stivers she calls the changing of the title her short story cycle, and this version, edited by first translation failure, this seems not to be the Ekaterina Dovlatova, is truer to the original. In case, as it helps
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