{"id":288736,"date":"2012-01-10T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2012\/01\/10\/russias-best-kept-literary-secret-is-an-open-letter-author-we-rule\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:11:47","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:11:47","slug":"russias-best-kept-literary-secret-is-an-open-letter-author-we-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2012\/01\/10\/russias-best-kept-literary-secret-is-an-open-letter-author-we-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia's Best-Kept Literary Secret is an Open Letter Author [We Rule]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia Beyond the Headlines<\/em> has a great piece about (and interview with) Mikhail Shishkin, the only<\/b> Russian novelist to have won have won the Russian Booker, Big Book, and National Bestseller awards, and whose Maidenhair<\/em> is coming out from Open Letter this summer in Marian Schwartz’s translation. <\/p>\n

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Shishkin has been compared to numerous great writers, including Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Nabokov and James Joyce. He laughs at critics\u2019 need to find literary similarities, but admits that Chekhov has been influential, along with Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Bunin, from whom Shishkin said he learned not to compromise as an author. \u201cIf you say to yourself \u2018I will write for such-and-such a readership\u2019 \u2013 you immediately stop being a writer and become a servant,\u201d Shishkin said in explanation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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According to Shishkin, the literary accolades that continue to greet his novels confirm \u201cwhat was important to you is also important to someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Marian Schwartz has just finished translating the award-winning \u201cMaidenhair,\u201d first published in Russian in 2006. The novel draws on Shishkin\u2019s own experience of working as an interpreter for asylum seekers in the Swiss immigration office.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cShishkin’s is a voice I not only can hear in English but also find very amenable to being transformed into English. I’m very excited that readers here, too, are going to have the chance to hear it now,\u201d Schwartz said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Schwartz describes the book as \u201cextremely ambitious and daring, but ultimately tremendously rewarding.\u201d She admits that translating it was a challenge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cI remember all too well how confusing it was the first time I read it. Shishkin\u2019s array of voices is dizzying in the best kind of way,\u201d she said<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Translation of this rich and allusive novel was further complicated by extensive literary references ranging from Xenephon to Agatha Christie, as well as by neologisms and wordplay, including \u201can entire page that is at least half palindromes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

YES<\/span> to all of this. And unless something goes haywire, he’s going to be in the States right around the time of BookExpo America for a series of readings and other events to promote the launch of Maidenhair.<\/em><\/p>\n

And I know this is a long excerpt from the interview RBTH<\/span><\/em> did with Shishkin, but I think it’s well worth it, and that these few answers will excite any and all literature fans reading this post:<\/p>\n

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Russia Beyond the Headlines:You seem to be a writer for whom linguistic concerns are crucial. Do you think this makes translating your work particularly challenging?<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Mikhail Shishkin: If you’ve read my books, then you know that the problems of love, death, human dignity, brutality, humiliation are all no less important for me than the linguistic aspects of prose. Text is only the means. Simply, it has long been the case that you can\u2019t say anything with the usual words; they lead nowhere. You have to pave your own unique road. Of course, some things vanish in translation \u2013 word games, rhymes \u2013 but there are things that are translatable and understandable in all languages\u200b\u200b, for example, the need for love. Words are glass. You need to look not at the glass, but through it to God’s world. Words, like glass, exist so that light can pass through them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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RBTH<\/span>: You have said that a writer\u2019s language should diverge from the norm. Can you say a bit more about what you meant by this?<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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M.S.: Would you be interested in reading a novel constructed wholly according to the textbook of how to speak and write correctly? Imagine a play entirely built of phrases from an Anglo-Russian phrasebook for tourists? It would drive you crazy! The art of prose writing consists of irregularities. There are no rules. No one can explain why one incorrect phrase can be simply wrong, and another \u2013 in the work of Brodsky or Alexander Goldstein \u2013 becomes a great line.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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RBTH<\/span>: You have been compared to Nabokov, Chekhov and Joyce, among others. Are there any writers you feel have particularly influenced you?<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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M.S.: It\u2019s funny that critics have to compare an author to someone or other. It\u2019s interesting. Who did Pushkin get compared with? Or Tolstoy? With age the past itself changes, and the literary influences. Previously I would have answered the question about who influenced me, thus: Sasha Sokolov, Max Frisch, Nabokov. But now it seems to me that Tolstoy, Chekhov, [Ivan] Bunin exerted the most important influences on me. Bunin taught me not to compromise, and to go on believing in myself. Chekhov passed on his sense of humanity \u2013 that there can\u2019t be any wholly negative characters in your text. And from Tolstoy I learned not to be afraid of being na\u00efve.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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RBTH<\/span>: Which contemporary writers do you find interesting?<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

M.S.: Definitely, Alexander Goldstein. Sadly, this writer died a few years ago. Literary critics will all one day call us his contemporaries. Russian authors write beautiful texts: Vladimir Sharov\u2019s “Rehearsals,” Dmitry Ragozin\u2019s “Battlefield,\u201d Maya Kucherskaya\u2019s “Modern Paterik.”<\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia Beyond the Headlines has a great piece about (and interview with) Mikhail Shishkin, the only Russian novelist to have won have won the Russian Booker, Big Book, and National Bestseller awards, and whose Maidenhair is coming out from Open Letter this summer in Marian Schwartz’s translation. Shishkin has been compared to numerous great writers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[41096,14146,44836,1866,44846],"class_list":["post-288736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-maidenhair","tag-marian-schwartz","tag-mikhail-shishkin","tag-open-letter","tag-russia-beyond-the-headlines"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341976,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288736\/revisions\/341976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}