Disinfection of actuality in Soviet translations

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of John Dos Passos and James Joyce translations made by Ivan Kashkin and his “First translators’ collective” in 1934–1937. Kashkin’s version of John Dos Passos’ novel The 42nd Parallel (1936) is a re-translation of Valentin Stenich’s version (1931, 2nd ed. 1936). When collated with Stenich’s daringly inventive and acutely modern translation that was then acknowledged as a major influence in Soviet literature, Kashkin’s version seems pointless as it levels out Dos Passos’ formal innovation, makes the text stylistically archaic, moves it away into a familiar sphere of Russian literature immune to the current Russian speech. We find an explanation for this kind of domestication in the topical Soviet context, in the important role that references to Dos Passos played in the 1932–1933 discussions of Socialist realism and formal innovation. Kashkin’s translation reflects the position voiced by officious Soviet critics calling to learn not from Dos Passos’ “formal” devices but from his “revolutionary” path. The unfinished translation of Ulysses published by Kashkin’s collective in 1935–1936 also plays out against the background of the then existing attempts to render episodes of the novel, primarily made by the same Valentin Stenich, and of major critical articles about Joyce, most importantly by Dmitry Mirsky, that stated that the English text is without parallel, practically untranslatable and requires an adequately radical translating experiment and fundamental scholarly commentary. By contrast, translations made under Kashkin’s aegis vary in method, now and then haphazardly ignore Joyce’s stylistic devices and lack a serious commentary. We see the rationale for this sloppy approach also in the topical politically charged Soviet context in which Ulysses was regarded as fundamentally opposed to socialist realism. Kashkin had dropped the translation unfinished and turned to The Dubliners (1937) also in sympathy with the changing official position: the totally disparaging assessment of Ulysses was phrased so that there it was no longer needed to be translated, while references to the novel were now used for the social destruction of Soviet writers (such was the case of Leonid Dobychin). Soviet critics declared their preference for Joyce’s earlier stories with their “warm” “Chekhovian” tone, so the new translation domesticated them accordingly. Translations made by Kashkin and his group in the 1930s can be described as an extension of the evolving politically charged Soviet attitude towards contemporary foreign writers. In fact, they present a unified whole with Soviet critical paratexts and did not aspire to offer better, more adequate, modern, influential re-translations that had the potential to outlive their time.