Daria Khitrova. Running on air

Running on air
Notes on Virginia Woolf's novel "Mrs. Dalloway" translated by E. Surits (St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2000)

Daria Khitrova

Date of publication: October 10, 2000

Published by discussion
RZ

Big , deep-set eyes smiled invitingly on the cover, as if they reflected the blue foliage of Surrey and the night sitting on the terrace at Bourton, the dry hands of Miss Parry and the voice of Sally Seton, rushing down the corridor in her mother's clothes. She looked at them again, then boldly and decisively paid for the book (it was inexpensive), making her way to the checkout through myriads of books, the smell of visitors' perfume and the taste of new printing ink, through hundreds and hundreds of different products. The clock struck twelve, tearing the air into thousands of small pieces. Lead circles ran through the air.

Sounds like Virginia Woolf? I wonder how she herself would describe buying her own book?

However, in this idyllic picture, which describes the “live” contact between the author and the reader, alas, there is another link missing, one that is torn, bending and unreliable. His name is translator. This book, apparently, fully corresponds to my initial prejudice towards translated literature. Moreover, along with Brodsky’s exceptionally helpless translation of Yellow Submarine The Beatles, it can be included in the annals of the worst translations from English in our literature. I am amazed by the huge number of hitherto unknown (at least to me: you know - write) words and expressions of the Russian literary language: izgluboka, furniture , and so on. But most of all I was captivated by a phrase worthy of the pen of a new Dostoevsky (okay, so be it, Hardy), given, however, fortunately, through a semicolon from the main sentence, and not through a period: “there ” was an attic . That's it - “there was an attic”! Simple, tasteful and, most importantly, what power!!! In general, complaints about the translator of this book can be expressed endlessly; one cannot but admit, however, that the text, as the author of the afterword to the novel A.A. Astvatsaturov rightly notes, is very difficult to translate: an abundance of uncommon words, the complexity of the syntax, and finally, the pace itself is tense, as if the author is eavesdropping with his ear to the keypad well, and does not have time to record.

But it wouldn’t be so bad if all that irritates and saddens the reader was in the translation. In other words, Virginia Woolf’s text itself, in my opinion, is flawed. Her ideological position - realism through subjectivity - is broken by the first obstacle that the literary text contains: the problem of space and time. It would seem that everything is very clear: the space is described by the names of the streets, the movements of the characters from the dining room to the smoking room, the rapid run of Sally Seton along the corridor; time is measured by Big Ben and memories. Lead circles ran through the air.

But it turns out that if for the main character and her guests one day lasts from the beginning to the end of the novel, then for the Warren-Smith couple, apparently, several months pass.

In addition, Woolf cannot overcome the temptation to follow the law of the genre (although try to define the laws of the novel as a genre - you will be tortured!) and connect, at least with a fragile thread of acquaintance with the Whitbreads, all the heroes of the novel. That is, if at the beginning she absolutely adheres to a kind of cinematic principle, as if following with her “myelophone” (remember, the heroine of Kir Bulychev had such a device, which made it possible to eavesdrop on thoughts) behind each person who at a certain time finds himself in a certain place and becomes a participant or spectator of certain events - for example, the passage and accident of a car of a certain person, never established in the novel (here the author maintains character!), a person of royal blood. But then “mere mortals” stop caring about her, and she focuses on, in fact, two storylines: the Dalloways, along with the guests at their reception, and the Warren-Smiths. Moreover, the plot itself, that is, some dynamics (and this seems to be a rather boring social message, starting with Belinsky), is present only in the fate of the Smiths. Thus, for the Dalloways and Co. the climax of the novel is the reception, and for Septimus Warren-Smith it is suicide.

The following point also remains unclear: if the author is trying to express the thoughts and feelings of the characters in all their diversity, then how can she justify the obvious division of the characters into good and bad?

You might find it boring to list the compositional and ideological inaccuracies in Woolf's book, and I can agree. Much more tiring than all of the above is the main device of her narration - the polyphonic stream of consciousness, so to speak.

The worst thing is that she cannot even withstand him to the end: the author hovers over all thoughts and feelings like a petrel, from time to time inserting in parentheses remarks like “this is how Hugh Whitbread reasoned, lingering near the display case” or “this is what he thinks as he moves forward.” along the clearing" ; it turns out that the epic is replaced by drama: text plus stage directions - but the characters’ remarks, firstly, are given “to themselves”, and secondly (or rather, this follows from the first), they turn from time to time into the author’s speech, directly not given in the novel (besides the already mentioned phrases-remarks). That is, we have before us a kind of second Dostoevsky (it is no coincidence that it was he who came to my mind as an example to follow for the author of the sentence “there was an attic”!), but who has undergone significant changes directly resulting from the difference in eras; Astvatsaturov, for example, very aptly calls the style of the novel impressionistic - despite the fact that formally the term “psychological realism”, usually applied to Dostoevsky, would have suited Woolf perfectly. But for her, realism is possible only through the “I”, it is always subjective, and the only Truth is that all people are different. And Dostoevsky’s ideology, on the contrary, is built mainly on eternal truths, that is, on the ten commandments that are fair for everyone (this is the main concept of “Crime and Punishment”), and thus turns into a paradoxical ideology of proving axioms.

I appreciate modern philology, but in one aspect I remained in soul with the scientists of the last century who did not live to see the formalist era, which, as we know, proclaimed the “death of the author.” I see the author or try to see him, moreover, I believe him. Not only within the text, but also beyond it. Moreover, it seems that no one has yet disputed the fact that with the help of biographical data and non-literary works (diaries, notebooks, letters) one can read this or that text or the entire work of the author more competently (although there are truly brilliant exceptions, for example a pile of letters from Baratynsky to his friend N.V. Putyata, containing numerous agricultural calculations and wisdom, as well as a new, improved by the poet, model of the wheel with pictures and detailed descriptions - and absolutely no philosophical or literary thoughts).

So, how can such a thoughtful and all-understanding ideology belong to a person who committed suicide as a result of depression, which, according to the same Astvatsaturov, set in after completing work on each of the books, including this one?! I think there is an explanation for this. There is an obvious flaw in this position: how can the author, while affirming the absolute subjectivity and originality of the human “I,” generally speak on their (numerous “I”) behalf, not eavesdrop, but invent someone’s thoughts and worldview (especially since eavesdropping on - impossible)? There is an obvious paradox in this. But even if we do not take this circumstance into account, there is a much simpler one: it is very difficult, living so many lives, and not destinies, but lives - that is, not a series of events, but a series of days, daily and minute-by-minute impressions, which and one person gravitate towards the end of each of them - to remain oneself. In other words, Virginia Woolf's ideology and literary practice were decidedly unable to converge into something that was not as sizzling as it was fruitful.

Nevertheless, despite all my invective towards the translator and the author (to which, however, it is not a sin to add complaints against the publishers: of course, “Azbuka” is not a scientific publishing house, but at least a minimal real comment would not hurt), the book is worth reading . If only because of the lead circles running through the air every hour.