By the Way...

...Rhian just poked her head over my shoulder to remind me that, on the Julian Calendar anyway, it's the birthday of Anton Chekhov, the man who named this blog. Raise a glass to the good doctor, if you will.

The Detective as a Purifying Force

I'm about halfway through this new-ish translation of Crime and Punishment I posted about a couple of days ago, and came to the bit in the middle where Porfiry, the investigator, shows up. I'd forgotten how surprising this scene is--Raskolnikov and his friend Razumikhin go to Porfiry's apartment in order for Raskolnikov to see if he can recover the items he pawned with the murdered pawnbroker (murdered, of course, by Raskolnikov himself). And after telling Raskolnikov that he can indeed recover the items, Porfiry says:

"Your things would not be lost in any event," he went on calmly and coldly, "because I've been sitting here a long time waiting for you."

And a few moments later, he adds, "You are the only one"--that is, of the pawners--"who has not been so good as to pay us a visit."

The overall impression, which both Raskolnikov and the reader takes away from this conversation, is that Porfiry already knows Raskolnikov is the killer, and thus that his role is not to investigate the crime, but to serve as confessor to the criminal. He is the vessel into which the truth is supposed to be poured.

In a sense, every great literary detective is like this. The detective exists to receive the truth, and to know its implications. The possibility that this is so seems to mesmerize Raskolnikov--indeed, he keeps thinking Porfiry is winking at him, but is never entirely sure if this impression is real. The scene recasts Raskolnikov's supposed madness as a kind of spiritual dissonance, a moral imbalance. One thinks of President Bush's deer-in-the-headlights stare during his speech the other night, the gaze of a lunatic being dragged from his bunker into the light of day.

United Pants of America

I'm re-reading Crime and Punishment right now, but this time I'm trying a new translation with a reading group I'm in--the one by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose Brothers Karamazov is so superb. I originally read this book in the David Magarshack translation, and this is the edition that made it my favorite novel. But I have to admit--though Magarshack still rules the roost when it comes to Chekhov, this Vintage C&P is the new king.

How come? Take a look at this passage, from the Magarshack version. Here, Raskolnikov's friend Razumikhin has brought him some new clothes. He fits a new cap on Raskolnikov's head, and then:

"Well, now, let's address ourselves to the United States of America, as we used to call it at school. A word of warning, though--I am proud of the trousers!" and he spread out before Raskolnikov a pair of grey summer trousers of light woolen material.

All right, then...fair enough, if a little puzzling. Now read the Pevear/Volokhonsky:

"Well, sir, now let's start on the United Pants of America, as we used to call them in school. I warn you, I'm proud of them," and he displayed before Raskolnikov a pair of gray trousers, made of lightweight summer wool.

Now, you see the difference? The second one is freaking hilarious. And I greatly prefer the word "displayed" to Magarshack's "spread out"...the words are of equal utility, but the Vintage translation seems to emphasize the ridiculousness of the moment--as it's Raskolnikov's last thirty-five rubles, we learn, from which the pants money has been drawn.

I recommend either, of course, but if you're trying Dostoyevsky for the first time, go with the new one. It's very natural, nearly as good as the other great new translation I read recently, Lydia Davis's Swann's Way.

Ivan Bunin's About Chekhov

I was excited to find in the Fall '06 issue of The Paris Review (there's a newer issue out now; I rescued my copy of the fall one from the trash can at the bookstore where I work, sans cover) an exerpt from the newly translated memoir about Anton Chekhov by Ivan Bunin (1870-1953, won Russia's first Nobel Prize). Here's what Bunin says about Chekhov's talking about writing and criticism:

" No writer should be forced to listen to any advice. If a writer has made a mistake, if he has talked nonsense, the mistake will be his alone," he often said. "After the high demands that Maupassant placed on his art, it would be difficult to write anything, but one must work just the same. We Russians must be particularly bold in our work. There are big dogs and little dogs, but little dogs must not fret over the existence of the big ones. Everyone is obliged to howl in the voice that the Lord God has given him."

I love that. Chekhov is probably the only long-dead writer I feel I know -- and like -- as well as some of my friends. The memoir, translated by Thomas Gaiton Marullo, will apparently be published some time this year by Northwestern University Press.