Constance Garnett: A Rehabilitation

Constance Garnett’s 1912 translation of "The Brothers Karamazov" set off a craze for Russian literature among English readers, modernists foremost among them. This talk will explore how, as Garnett continued to translate nineteenth-century Russian literature, modernists found dynamic characters, compelling experiments with narrative time, and a new way to create a novel, one in which a study of the inner life is the principal subject matter. Although her translations were later subject to scrutiny and concerns about accuracy, this talk will demonstrate that Garnett was the translator who brought Russian literature to the modernists and whose translations played a key role in the transition away from Victorian letters. This talk will explore Garnett’s signature move as a translator: the co-creation of charismatic and manic characters who speak with the same voice across her translations of work by separate authors. The talk will involve reparative work on Garnett’s translations, which are questionable according to translational norms of both yesterday and today, but function well as modernist translations, following the distinctly modernist calibration of equivalence.

Program in Translation and Intercultural Communications | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Program in Translation and Intercultural Communications (OWNER), Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Slavic Languages & Literatures

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