Tag: Russian

An Updated Original Language

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It was a while ago now but I mentioned I was reading For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. While this was likely over two months ago, I did take a break from it for a bit and read some other stuff in between. As I start reading again though I’m reminded of something I’ve thought previously, and likely mentioned on here already. Books age. Or more precisely styles of language and storyline age. There is little we can do for the storylines. The wild west cowboy books will be of their time in the 1950s, they suffer from fashions, just as modern-day thrillers will one day do similar. This is evident in films of such things too. Pathetic female leads needing rescued by some heroic man is an ideal our sensitivities in 2020 are acutely aware. Perhaps the issue then is not the period but the quality of book. Books like this don’t last the test of time because they were never supposed to yet plenty from the period still make for great reading.

With that, there are plenty of books from the 1850s let alone the 1950s which still feel highly readable. Perhaps they are just so well written that they become ageless. For Whom The Bell Tolls unfortunately doesn’t feel like that. It is a classic of literature, Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I enjoyed The Old Man & The Sea, which is a beautifully written story. There is something with this latest book which I can’t quite shake though. It feels like I’m reading a dated 1950s movie. It feels clunky and old fashioned and I didn’t expect it to. It’s an easy read, and not unenjoyable. The subject matter is one that interests me too but the language and imagery it creates have aged, and it’s aged to it’s detriment unfortunately.

This has got me thinking about a solution which I am aware is unfeasible. When I read books written by foreign authors, if the story is well known enough, it has likely been translated more than once since it’s publication. Recently, let’s say in the last ten years, Faber & Faber produced a new translation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba The Greek. From reviews it is a decent translation, less difficult to get through than the previous apparently but I’m cautious of that idea and it’s entirely subjective. Do some research on the Russian masters and you’ll discover multiple translations, evidently varying in quality enormously. You have to be careful to read the right ones otherwise your experience of one of the greats could be confusingly different to other peoples. When reading the introduction to Knut Hamsun’s Hunger the translator says the first translation was so bad, and he gave examples, that certain parts of the text had completely different meanings to the original. Translations are important.

What then for original versions. If someone translates Hemingway into Spanish, do they attempt to recreate and honour the exact style of the original or do they attempt to make it more accessible for the modern audience. Language evolves and translators are of their time. They can’t take liberties of course but a good translator is in some cases as important as the author. In that case, am I left with the unfortunate realisation that while books originally in foreign languages may evolve for me as language does but those originally in English will be doomed to age like the time they were born in. It could just be this current book, as many from that time don’t give off such an impression, but certainly it won’t be alone, other previously celebrated books and authors will disappear with the times too.

Which leads to the unthinkable, do we need books to be updated in their original languages too? There is no straightforward answer but unless they’re illegible through age the answer is likely no, don’t damage the intellectual property and creation of an artist. Could you imagine them touching up the Mona Lisa, giving her haircut a modern look. Yet it’s done in music with covers in a way. There is something that sits uncomfortably with the idea and I find it reassuring to feel that. Let the greats be greats and if their creation lasts whatever the evolution society hurls at them then great. If not, well so be it. As I said, unthinkable, yet the issue still remains.

BR#5 – Frankenstein

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

From time to time as adults we throw a little classic in to our reading. The kind of story that spawned others and has passed the test of time. The kind you could have studied at school. That last one in a way makes it sound unappealing considering we don’t always look back on the book we studied at school fondly. Frankenstein though isn’t one of them, it’s one of the ones you wish you had studied at school. It has so many of those moments you could see yourself analysing in a class, it has layers. It is also very simple and obvious. A main uncomplicated but unbelievable story. Take it at face value and that’s it.

The writing feels like it could be updated although it shouldn’t ever happen. When things are translated they are also updated in language and in a subtle way style. A book written in English will forever be ageing. I would love to know how Tolstoy sounds to a Russian than he is in the latest translation I read. In that sense I can tell it was written in the early nineteenth century. While that’s not a problem it will be one day.

Shelley approaches all sorts of ideas and concepts throughout the book. They are too numerous to go into detail in just five hundred words but she discusses justice, the role of god, she approaches ideas of personhood and what is is to be a person, our understanding of ethics, even existentialism but this was long before it had become an ism. This is an entire philosophy course for a year covered. There are many essays written on it. I imagine it’s a common understanding too that there is the potential schizophrenia angle which relates in a way to ideas of duality in the book. They need each other, the monster never tries to hurt him and when he dies the monster goes off to die too. Did Frankenstein give a part of himself in the creation of the monster. In a way the monster shows more of what we call humanity than Viktor Frankenstein who in the end becomes a monster himself in a sad way. In a contemporary sense we could think of the development of Artificial Intelligence. The monster has not only an ability to learn but has self-consciousness, the ultimate stage of creating free thinking robots. I could go on and on.

Quite interestingly the book has nearly as interesting a back story. Mary Shelley was the daughter of the revolutionary thinkers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the wife of the poet Percy Shelley. In the ‘Year Without Summer’ of 1816 when they were visiting the exiled and infamous poet and writer amongst many things, Lord Byron in Switzerland, the weather forced them to stay indoors and Byron came up with the idea they all wrote horror stories. In a dream over the next few nights the story of Frankenstein and his monster came to Mary Shelley.

Along with all this and not to be forgotten it’s actually quite a good story. You don’t just read it to learn and look smart, you read it to enjoy. I assume they teach it in schools still and if they don’t can’t think why. It’s so full of everything it would be a waste. I ended it really feeling happy that I had just read a good book. We all should, we may just learn a little eloquence and humanity from a monster.

BR#3 – Enemies

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I say book review but this is a play, and which it is a book, maybe I should call it Play Review or PR#1? Despite reading plays at school and studying drama it is only really in the last year I’ve discovered I really enjoy them. Obviously they’re different in how they share a story with the reader but without the descriptive part you take the time to enjoy the language of conversation and the scene set in this way. There is also the added bonus that you can read a play in a couple of hours and feel like you read a book in one day as opposed to one month which is extremely satisfying.

Enemies then is a play by the Russian playwright Maxim Gorky. It is set in 1905 just prior to the 1905 Revolution which was a precursor in a way to events in 1917. The early signs of later events are spread throughout the text, with the workers rebelling against the factory owners and the authoritarian response in return. This was a time of Tsarist oppression, as had always been but also of liberalisation of the country, or attempts at least. Gorky, who himself was involved in events in 1905, does a good job showing there to be little fundamental differences between the more dictatorial bosses and the ones who feign liberal ideals while continuing to depend upon the workers struggles for their vaulted positions. Plays can have a habit of lacking subtlety with characters as they have such a short time to get a message across and this play is no different. The bad guys are buffoons and the good attempting in vain to get across the message that change is on it’s way. Interestingly enough with the knowledge of hindsight, there is something eery in the premonitions about what is to come. This was written in 1906 after the 1905 Revolution was crushed but over ten years before the 1917 one succeeded and we all know what was to come afterwards.

Generally I’m a fanboy of Russian literature and plays, they seem to understand suffering in a way others can only guess at. While this is not grim, it is what it foretells that really makes you stand up and pay attention. You feel like you are watching through a window as the seeds of history are being planted. There is something admirable and courageous in it.

Interestingly enough the text I read was from a Royal Shakespeare Company performance from 1971 and quite remarkably looking at the cast list it included Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart and Ben Kingsley. The seeds of revolution being planted by the seeds of future cinema. Quite unbelievable. To have been there and not known, can we ever at the time?