I recently finished Tolstoy's War and Peace, and of course loved it. I
first read it about twenty years ago. This time, I read Anthony
Briggs's translation into English, in Penguin paperback edition (2005). I
don't remember the translator from my first reading, probably Constance
Barnett.
It's a good, lively read throughout. The dialogs flow quite well throughout, and I trust the translation generally.
But I take issue with Briggs's insertions of British colloquial slang
and Cockney when a peasant or serf is speaking. As long as the
aristocrats are speaking, we stay close to standard English, with
standard grammar, completed words, few contractions, not much slang.
When a lower class fellow talks, we get jarring distractions. Here is an
example, Volume IV, Part 1, Chapter 12. Pierre has been taken prisoner
by the French, and tossed into a big hut with a bunch of other Russians,
where he meets a "little man", Platon Karatayev.
"How d'you come to stay on in Moscow, sir?" (Platon)
"I didn't think they'd get here quite so quickly. I stayed on by accident," said Pierre.
"Just come in your house an' got you, did they old darlin'?"
"No, I went out to see the fire, and they got me then. Tried me for arson."
"No justice in the courtroom," put in the little man.
"How long have you been here?" asked Pierre, munching his last potato.
"Me? Took me out of the 'orspital in Moscow last Sunday they did."
"Are you a soldier, then?"
"Yes,
we're all from the Apsheron mob. Dying of fever I was. Never told us
nothin'. Must've been twenty of us layin' there sick. Never 'ad a
thought, we didn't no idea 'ow things was."
"Old darlin'"? "'orspital"? "Never 'ad a thought"?
Has Rumpole of the Bailey dropped in?
And here is the same passage, from the Louise and Aylmer Maude translation of 1922:
"How was it, sir, that you stayed in Moscow?""I didn't think they would come so soon. I stayed accidentally," replied Pierre.
"And how did they arrest you, dear lad? At your house?"
"No, I went to look at the fire, and they arrested me there, and tried me as an incendiary."
"Where there's law there's injustice," put in the little man.
"And have you been here long?" Pierre asked as he munched the last of the potato.
"I? It was last Sunday they took me, out of a hospital in Moscow."
"Why, are you a soldier then?"
"Yes, we are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was dying of fever. We weren't told anything. There were some twenty of us lying there. We had no idea, never guessed at all.”
Briggs's work fails to improve on the Maudes's translation here. And in fact, it might be less effective. I'm distracted by the British colloquialisms, and by subtle losses in complexity. Whether Platon says "old darlin"(Briggs) or "dear lad" (Maude) may seem a small point. They both contain a joking irony. But "dear lad" sings a louder note of warmth. And it emphasizes the greater age of Platon, to the younger Pierre.
It's the Britishisms that rankle, at least to my American reading ear. Perhaps, if some British readers ever see this blog, they might comment on whether they were put off as I was.
