| "This
study provides a great deal of interesting and important information
on literary translation as an international phenomenon, in its aesthetic,
social, and cultural dimensions. It will be of value not only to the
specialist on Russia but also to scholars and students in the broad
field of comparative literature."-Deming Brown, author of The Last
Years of Soviet Russian Literature: Prose Fiction, 1975-1991.
In this rich historical study, Maurice Friedberg recounts the impact
of translation on the Russian literary process. In tracing the explosion
of literary translation in nineteenth-century Russia, Friedberg
determines that it introduced new issues of cultural, aesthetic,
and political values.
Beginning with Pushkin in the early nineteenth century, Friedberg
traces the history of translation throughout the lives of Dostoevsky,
Tolstoy, and, more recently, Pasternak. His analysis includes two
translators who became Russia's leading literary figures: Zhukovsky,
whose renditions of German poetry became famous, and Vvedensky,
who introduced Charles Dickens to Russia. In the twentieth century,
Friedberg points to Pasternak's Faust to show how apolitical authors
welcomed free translation, which offered them an alternative to
the original writing from which they had been banned by Soviet authorities.
By introducing Western literary works, Russian translators provided
new models for Russian literature. Friedberg discusses the usual
battles fought between partisans of literalism and of free translation,
the influence of Stalinist Soviet government on literary translation,
and the political implications of aesthetic clashes. He also considers
the impetus of translated Western fiction, poetry, and drama as
remaining links to Western civilization during the decades of Russia's
isolation from the West. Friedberg argues that literary translation
had a profound effect on Russia by helping to erode the Soviet Union's
isolation, which ultimately came to an end with the dissolution
of the Soviet Union in 1991. |
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