The Dragon: Fifteen Storiesby Yevgeny Zamyatin; Mirra Ginsburg

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American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages The Dragon: Fifteen Stories by Yevgeny Zamyatin; Mirra Ginsburg Review by: Alex M. Shane The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Summer, 1968), pp. 240-241 Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/304276 . Accessed: 17/06/2014 00:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Slavic and East European Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.78.76 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 00:27:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aatseel http://www.jstor.org/stable/304276?origin=JSTOR-pdf http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp 240 The Slavic and East European Journal 240 The Slavic and East European Journal slovecki; it is rather representative of a wide circle of writers in the Soviet Union today, none of whom are especially concerned with the depiction of the quaint and hypothetical: mnenija raskololis' (p. 9); bycok (p. 12); ponacalu (p. 12); privodivsej ee dobroporjadocnyx roditelej v uzas (p. 13); pili . .. dlja vzroslosti (p. 13); privela parnja v futbolke (p. 14); u tebja svoja baska na plecax (p. 27); Vecerka pisala (p. 28); spokojnaja ~izn' poletela vverx tormaskami (p. 30). These words and expressions seem to be well established and not unfamiliar to the educated ear in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, if Turgenev were to hear them, it is safe to assume that he would be amazed and shocked. The Russian language has undergone a profound change. These words of Evtusenko are equally applicable to present day Russian: "Esenin, milyj, izmenilas' Rus', / No plakat'sja, po-moemu, naprasno / I govorit', cto k lucsemu, bojus', / I govorit', cto k xudsemu, opasno." It is evident that to teach modern Russian by way of Puskin, Lermontov, or Turgenev is to be blind to the present and to deprive the student of the spoken word. It is for this reason that Lyudi and Kira Georgievna constitute a welcome contribution to available modern texts. There is an Introduction in each of the two books designed to assist the student in getting his bearings. The principal hero of Lyudi is surrounded by a number of characters who are not depicted as fully as Belokopytov. Jarkin, Sitnikov, Eremeic, Pepeljuxa, Belo- kopytov's wife Arbuzova, and lica, o kotoryx . . . govorit'-mnogo cesti (p. 12) help delineate the hero in greater detail. The author, of course, is still another character. Though he is extremely disingenuous, the implications of his narrative are more obvious to the reader than they are to him: a device of irony, often called the naive narrator. Lyudi and Kira Georgievna contain short sections or chapters each forming an integrated whole. The sections are short, two to four pages. Each book contains a key to the grammatical terms used in the Notes and Vocabulary. The Notes are arranged by section. In the Select Vocabulary the emphasis is on words not readily found in small-format dictionaries. Verbs are provided with prepositions. Sections in the text are provided with running section numbers which help the reader to find the explanations in the Notes without first turning the pages to determine the section number. The entire text is provided with stress marks. This method affords richer presentation of a highly idiomatic material and facilitates the learning process. It is undoubtedly superior to the one where the difficult passages are explained in the margin or at the bottom of the same page. No editing of the Russian word order has been done to bring it into closer conformity with the typical word order of English, for with the aid of the Notes and Select Vocabulary the student is expected to acquaint himself with the word as it is actually used by native Russians. One can only regret that the Notes and Select Vocabulary are not more extensive, so as to make it possible to use the books on both the elementary and advanced levels. Nicholas D. Isotov, Idaho State University Yevgeny Zamyatin. The Dragon: Fifteen Stories. Tr. and ed. by Mirra Ginsburg. New York: Random House [c. 1966]. xx, 291, $5.95. Although Zamjatin's novel We has been translated into ten European languages, it is amazing that collections of his other works have appeared previously only in slovecki; it is rather representative of a wide circle of writers in the Soviet Union today, none of whom are especially concerned with the depiction of the quaint and hypothetical: mnenija raskololis' (p. 9); bycok (p. 12); ponacalu (p. 12); privodivsej ee dobroporjadocnyx roditelej v uzas (p. 13); pili . .. dlja vzroslosti (p. 13); privela parnja v futbolke (p. 14); u tebja svoja baska na plecax (p. 27); Vecerka pisala (p. 28); spokojnaja ~izn' poletela vverx tormaskami (p. 30). These words and expressions seem to be well established and not unfamiliar to the educated ear in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, if Turgenev were to hear them, it is safe to assume that he would be amazed and shocked. The Russian language has undergone a profound change. These words of Evtusenko are equally applicable to present day Russian: "Esenin, milyj, izmenilas' Rus', / No plakat'sja, po-moemu, naprasno / I govorit', cto k lucsemu, bojus', / I govorit', cto k xudsemu, opasno." It is evident that to teach modern Russian by way of Puskin, Lermontov, or Turgenev is to be blind to the present and to deprive the student of the spoken word. It is for this reason that Lyudi and Kira Georgievna constitute a welcome contribution to available modern texts. There is an Introduction in each of the two books designed to assist the student in getting his bearings. The principal hero of Lyudi is surrounded by a number of characters who are not depicted as fully as Belokopytov. Jarkin, Sitnikov, Eremeic, Pepeljuxa, Belo- kopytov's wife Arbuzova, and lica, o kotoryx . . . govorit'-mnogo cesti (p. 12) help delineate the hero in greater detail. The author, of course, is still another character. Though he is extremely disingenuous, the implications of his narrative are more obvious to the reader than they are to him: a device of irony, often called the naive narrator. Lyudi and Kira Georgievna contain short sections or chapters each forming an integrated whole. The sections are short, two to four pages. Each book contains a key to the grammatical terms used in the Notes and Vocabulary. The Notes are arranged by section. In the Select Vocabulary the emphasis is on words not readily found in small-format dictionaries. Verbs are provided with prepositions. Sections in the text are provided with running section numbers which help the reader to find the explanations in the Notes without first turning the pages to determine the section number. The entire text is provided with stress marks. This method affords richer presentation of a highly idiomatic material and facilitates the learning process. It is undoubtedly superior to the one where the difficult passages are explained in the margin or at the bottom of the same page. No editing of the Russian word order has been done to bring it into closer conformity with the typical word order of English, for with the aid of the Notes and Select Vocabulary the student is expected to acquaint himself with the word as it is actually used by native Russians. One can only regret that the Notes and Select Vocabulary are not more extensive, so as to make it possible to use the books on both the elementary and advanced levels. Nicholas D. Isotov, Idaho State University Yevgeny Zamyatin. The Dragon: Fifteen Stories. Tr. and ed. by Mirra Ginsburg. New York: Random House [c. 1966]. xx, 291, $5.95. Although Zamjatin's novel We has been translated into ten European languages, it is amazing that collections of his other works have appeared previously only in This content downloaded from 185.44.78.76 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 00:27:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Reviews 241 Spanish (1927) and Serbo-Croatian (1963), but not in English, French, or German. At last the need for such a collection in English has been filled by a handsome volume which (set in clear type and printed on good paper) contains Zamjatin's famous letter to Stalin, two povesti ("A Provincial Tale," "The North"), eleven stories ("The Dragon," "The Protectress of Sinners," "The Cave," "The Healing of the Novice Erasmus," "In Old Russia," "A Story about the Most Important Thing," "The Miracle of Ash Wednesday," "X," "Comrade Churygin Has the Floor," "The Flood," "The Lion"), and two fables ("The Church of God," "The Ivans"). Correct dates of writing and first publication are given in brackets for eight of the items; the others are followed by a single date indicating, presumably, that the work was published the same year it was written (although generally correct, "Lev," written in 1935, was published in 1939, and the two fables, published in 1922, were probably written in 1919). The translator's excellent six-page Intro- duction not only acquaints the general reader for whom this volume was intended with the major facts of Zamjatin's life, his world view and role in Russian litera- ture, but also provides a concise description of the salient features of his prose style and helpful references to English translations of Zamjatin's interesting essay "Litera- ture, Revolution, and Entropy" and his uncompromising letter of resignation from the Writers' Union. With the exception of the frequently anthologized "The Cave" and three short stories that Miss Ginsburg had already published, the works included have not previously been available to the English reader. The selection of material is good, and the inclusion of significant works such as "A Provincial Tale" (Zamjatin's keynote work of the pre-Revolutionary period which brought him literary fame), the philosophical "A Story about the Most Important Thing" (a striking attempt at creating a new art form suitable for a new age, which the translator has in- explicably described as an ironic commentary on contemporary life, p. ix), and "The Flood" (representative of Zamjatin's turn to greater simplicity in later works) must be warmly commended. There is, however, a decided (perhaps intentional) emphasis on the stories of the twenties at the expense of earlier and later works, and this reviewer would welcome a companion volume including works such as "Alatyr," "Africa," "The Islanders," "The Fisher of Men," "The Yawl," and "Martyrs of Learning." The translation has been done carefully and is notable above all for its read- ability and clarity. In attaining this, the translator has frequently substituted Zam- jatin's terse Russian with an expanded English version: Spal'nja. Ogromnaja, s goroju perin, krovat'. Lampadka. Pobleskivajut risy u ikon, has been rendered as "Her bedroom. A huge bed, with a mountain of feather quilts. A small lamp in the corner before the icons, their silver mountings glinting in the light." (p. 12.) In some instances the translation exhibited stylistic "leveling" (sglazivanie): the ex- pressive oblepila szadi was innocuously rendered by "She was pressed to him from behind" (p. 12). Spot checks revealed that omissions were rare, although the loss of i kricit (p. 14, 1. 2 up), berlogami (p. 161, 1. 1), and the inexplicable replacement of napoleonovyx francuzisek by "shivering Frenchmen" (p. 161) should be noted. The captious critic's commentary on certain stylistic renditions would simply be a reflection of the difficulty (perhaps the impossibility) of rendering precisely Zam- jatin's skaz in English. The translator has succeeded in capturing the general tone of Zamjatin's works and, although the stylistic gourmet will still have to turn to the original, this conscientiously and, skillfully executed translation should be wel- comed by the general reader as well as by the student of Russian literature. Alex M. Shane, University of California, Davis This content downloaded from 185.44.78.76 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 00:27:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Article Contents p. 240 p. 241 Issue Table of Contents The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Summer, 1968), pp. 141-274 Front Matter Acmeism [pp. 141 - 156] Xlebnikov and Russian Futurism [pp. 157 - 168] Grigorovič's "The Village": An Étude in Sentimental Naturalism [pp. 169 - 175] Social and Cultural Motifs in Canadian Ukrainian Lullabies [pp. 176 - 183] Legends of the Chuds and Pans [pp. 184 - 198] Russian Film Terminology [pp. 199 - 205] Some Acoustic Correlates of Tone in Standard Lithuanian [pp. 206 - 212] Žirmunskij's Theory of Verse: A Review Article [pp. 213 - 218] Reviews untitled [pp. 219 - 222] untitled [pp. 222 - 227] untitled [pp. 227 - 228] untitled [p. 229] untitled [pp. 229 - 231] untitled [pp. 231 - 232] untitled [pp. 232 - 234] untitled [pp. 234 - 235] untitled [pp. 235 - 236] untitled [p. 236] untitled [pp. 236 - 238] untitled [pp. 238 - 239] untitled [pp. 239 - 240] untitled [pp. 240 - 241] untitled [p. 242] untitled [pp. 242 - 244] untitled [pp. 244 - 247] untitled [pp. 247 - 248] untitled [pp. 248 - 249] untitled [pp. 249 - 251] untitled [pp. 251 - 253] untitled [pp. 253 - 254] untitled [p. 254] untitled [pp. 254 - 255] untitled [pp. 255 - 258] untitled [p. 258] untitled [pp. 258 - 259] untitled [pp. 259 - 260] untitled [pp. 260 - 261] untitled [pp. 261 - 262] untitled [pp. 262 - 263] untitled [p. 263] untitled [p. 264] Books Received [pp. 264 - 266] News and Notes [pp. 267 - 273] Back Matter [pp. 274 - 274]


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