Shocked, shocked, I tell you

[nineveh_uk]

I was going to write something brief and sarcastic to the effect that although it is some time* since I got half-way** through War and Peace, though my memory of it is imperfect I was pretty sure that it didn't contain surprise incestuous undertones, or indeed overtones. Fortunately for my dignity I looked up the character list first, and apparently the incestuous undertones are at least somewhat canon***. I'm not sure that I'm convinced by the adaptation so far: for something set in Russia in 1805 I'm not getting much sense of a fundamentally different society to that of a generic Jane Austen adaptation, or indeed the present day UK, but I'll be watching the second episode.

I note that it so far lacks the extremely tight breeches of the big Russian film version, but it has one thing in common in that forty years from now, anyone who watches it will look at the women's hairstyles and think how much more they look like the period in which it was made than the period when it was set.

*About twenty years.

**I was disappointed it wasn't Anna Karenina II.

***Though I will need to make a second attempt to discover whether the novel had them as totally scurrilous rumour or otherwise. I will make sure I choose a more engaging translation.

ETA: I have just learned that the adaptation was by Andrew Davies, and thus all is explained.

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

My translation of Anna Karenina (trans. Rosemary Edmunds) had an introduction about the naming conventions (with examples), which was extremely helpful.

I read a couple of interviews with/articles about Briggs' translation when it came out*, and I must admit that my interpretation was "sexist". I'm sure there are issues with translating whatever Russian soldiers' idiom Tolstoy has in the book, but if it exists in the form that Briggs states I am more inclined to ascribe it to conventions at the time on translating literature rather than feminine ignorance of manly soldiers.

*Thinking vaguely that I might try reading W&P again.

[tree_and_leaf]

I wrote out everyone's name, patronymic, and nickname (helped by the introduction) and used it as a bookmark.

[caulkhead]

I've seen one edition which actually provided a bookmark like that. I thought it was a brilliant idea.

[antisoppist]

I was going to argue that female translators are just as capable of researching military slang as male ones are of researching descriptions of millinery (or whatever) but then I found someone on the internet saying that when Constance Garnett was translating War and Peace she just missed out any paragraphs she didn't understand.

[nineveh_uk]

Isn't there a really long passage somewhere in Tolstoy on jam making?

Skipping bits does sound unprofessional, though quite tempting if you were confident no-one was going to notice.

[caulkhead]

'Oh, for goodness sake, we've had fifty eight pages of battle already. Who's going to read this bit?"