Languor Management

Notes from the blogosphere

With the publication of his A Writer's Diary in 1873, Fyodor Dostoievsky invented the first blog!

[The] new and brilliantly successful form of peridocial publication [Dostoievsky] had invented for himself, which enabled him to air his views on political questions, criticize past and current literatrure in Russia and abroad, discuss the cases in the criminal courts that had always attracted his passionatte interest, revive memories of long-past events and old friends and enemies, and express his boundless and generous enthusiasm and admiration for all sorts of men, movements, and ideas. He found room in it also for a number of more imagineative writings, which include some of the best of his short stories.

[From the Jessie Coulson's translator's note to Penguin's The Gambler, Bobok, and A Nasty Story (three stories by Dostoievsky).

Oz, Russian style

We all know the story: little Elli, a girl living in the steppes of Kanzas with her dog Totoshka, is blown by a hurricane (stirred up by the wicked witch Gingema) all the way to Magic Land, where she meets the Cowardly Lion, the Iron Woodman, and the scarecrow Strashila and has to make her way to the Emerald City to find the magician Gudvin so she can get back home... What, you don't remember it that way? Didn't you read The Wizard of the Emerald City and its much-loved sequels Urfin Jus and his Wooden Soldiers, The Seven Underground Kings, The Fiery God of the Marrans, The Yellow Fog, and The Mystery of the Deserted Castle? Ah, you're not Russian! Listen [RealAudio] to a five-minute description (on Studio 360) of Alexander Volkov's Russified versions of Baum (with illustrations by Leonid Vladimirsky) and how they captivated children and adults in the Soviet Union (you even get a bit of the famous song Мы в город Изумрудный/ Идем дорогой трудной ["We're going to the Emerald City by a difficult road..."]); visit the Emerald City website (Russian version, where all the links work); and see the wonderful illustrations at this site, which links to the texts of all six novels (click on Читать...)—in Russian, but the images need no explanation. (Fun fact: the word "Oz" doesn't occur anywhere in the Russian versions.) And if you're interested in other alternate versions, go to Oz Outside the Famous Forty.

[Via metafilter, originally posted by Language Hat; Spaceeba Max!

Oh, loneliness and cheesburgers are a dangerous mix

Russian lawyer Igor Smykov's plans to take his case against The Simpsons to the European Court of Human Rights. It comes after a Moscow Court rejected his appeal to have the show banned from Russian TV, claiming it promoted drugs, violence and homosexuality.

He also demanded £6 000 (about R4,5-million) in compensation from TV channel REN-TV saying the show had morally damaged his nine-year-old son.

But the Moscow City Court rejected his appeal and Smykov says he now plans to take the case to European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

[Spaceeba, Dana!]

Art is often imprecise

If Marquez – that rare writer who is both a literary giant as well as a popular favourite – is accessible to the English-speaking world, it is thanks to the work of his translators Rabassa and Grossman (who translated his latest). Rabassa, at 82, published a book on his experiences. His theme? “Translation is impossible.”

Consider Marc el Proust. Or Dostoevski or Octavio Paz or Jorge Luis Borges, Pushkin, Chekov, Moliere, Flaubert, Llosa, Levi, Kundera, Allende, Kawabata, Neruda— the list goes on. They would be unknown to the rest of the world without the work of their translators. When Grossman translated Cervantes’ Don Quixote, she said “There’s 400 years of scholarship behind that work.” The novelist Carlos Fuentes called the translation “a major literary achievement.”

[Via Translation Exchange]

Moscow's non/fiction book fair

The annual non/fiction book fair opens this week at Moscow's Central House of Artists. The event, labeled an "exhibition of intellectual literature," is taking place for the seventh time.

The strange spelling of the event's name, featuring a slash instead of the more conventional hyphen, reflects the curious status of nonfiction writing in Russia today. Despite the recent wave of interest in journalistic, history and popular science books in the West, Russia has remained largely immune to the trend. Treatises on the occult are more popular than psychology books, even lowbrow self-help ones; the most popular historians here are Lev Gumilyov, with his vague agenda of Russia's uniqueness, and Anatoly Fomenko, a mathematician set on refuting -- very passionately and very ignorantly -- the traditional chronology of world history. In science, a recent success was Alexander Nikonov's "Ape Upgraded" (Apgreid Obezyany), a patchy retelling of the evolutionary theories of authors such as Desmond Morris and Richard Dawkins, but without the stylistic accuracy and scientific background of these prototypes. In Russia, "intellectual literature" remains limited to postmodernist fiction and cultural anthropology.

Help with Ilf and Petrov

Maciej from Idle Words needs your help!

With everyone drunk on the nectar of National Novel Writing Month, I thought I'd mix it up a little and spend November working on a translation instead. The book I've chosen is Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf, and I'll post more about it here in a few days. However, I urgently need help from native speakers on a handful of baffling words and phrases that are proving resistant to attacks by Google, various dictionaries, and my translation partner, a native speaker.

I've set up a LiveJournal with the username baconmeteor where I'll be posting my questions on specific words and phrases. If you speak Russian and want to help move this delightful book into English, please take a look at some of the mysteries posted there and leave your comments.

[Via Language Hat]

Already the funds have left the shore of Russia

Over Thanksgiving, E-- received an urgent request from Mikail's Khodorkovsky's "personal treasurer"!

Dear friend

I am Mr. Olsom Berghart personal treasurer to Mikhail Khodorkovsky the Richest man in Russia and owner of the following companies: Chairman CEO: YUKOS OIL (Russian Largest Oil Company) Chairman CEO:Menatep SBP Bank (A well reputable financial institution with it’s Branches all over the world)

SOURCE OF FUNDS:I have a profiling amount in an excess of US$100.5M, which I seek your Partnership in accommodating for me. You will be rewarded with 4% of The total sum for your partnership. Can you be my partner on this?

INTRODUCTION OF MY SELF: As a personal consultant to him, authority Was handed over to me in transfer of money of an American oil merchant For his last oil deal with my boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Already the funds have left the shore of Russia to an European private Bank where the final crediting is expected to be carried out. While I was on the process, My Boss got arrested for his Involvement in politics by financing the leading And opposing political parties (the Union of Right Forces,Led by Boris Nemtsov, and Yabloko, a liberal/social democratic party Led by Gregor Yavlinsky) which poses a treat to President Vladimir Putin Second Tenure as Russian president. You can catch more of the story on This website:

http://www.yukos.com
http://news.ft.com/cms/4bb9612a-d254-11d8-b661-00000e2511c8.html
http://www.hoovers.com/yukos/--ID__53700--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4105663
http://newsfromrussia.com/main/2003/11/13/51215.html


YOUR ROLE: All I need from you is to stand as the beneficiary of the Above quoted Sum and I will re-profile the funds with your name, which will enable The European bank transfer the sum to you. I have decided to use this Sum to relocate to American continent and never to be connected to any Of Mikhail Khodorkovsky conglomerates. As Soon as I confirm your readiness to conclude the transaction with me, I  Will provide you with the details.

Thank you very much

Regards
Olsom Berghart (Mr)

What's Thanksgiving without Andrei Platonov?

Sovlit.com has posted the fourth and final act of Andrei Platonov's
play "14 Little Red Huts."  Translation by Gennadi V. Alexeyev and
Dmitri G. Alexeyev.

Big Book

Russia has a bolshoi new literary prize:

On Monday, a group of prominent government and cultural figures announced the inauguration of a new literary prize, called "Big Book," at the Leo Tolstoy Museum in Moscow. Events of this kind are usually of little interest: There are literally hundreds of literary prizes in Russia, with half a dozen Mikhail Sholokhov prizes, two Ivan Bunin prizes and countless other prizes named after nearly every classic Russian author or financial sponsor. This, however, might be a different story for three reasons.

First, the size of the prize money. The winner is to receive 3 million rubles (just over $100,000), while the two runners-up are to get 1.5 million rubles (about $50,000) and 1 million rubles (about $35,000). The organizers have already announced that their award is "second only to the Nobel Prize." Since being a professional author is still very far from a full-time, paying job in Russia, this could be good news for the trade....

So who the hell was Isaac Babel?

Richard Lourie takes Jerome Charyn to task for his new Issac Babel biography, Savage Shorthand: The Life and Death of Isaac Babel:

Not only does Charyn write poorly, quite often he simply does not know what he's talking about, or seems not to because of sloppiness. Quoting from the opening of Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoir "Hope Against Hope," he writes: "Thus begins Nadezhda Mandelstam's own journey with her husband, Osip, through Stalin's endless gulag." A reader unfamiliar with that book might well think them both arrested. Charyn also has Cossacks wearing "bowler hats and colorful blankets" -- perhaps they leaked into this text from something he was writing about Peruvian Indians.