Elena Kalashnikova. Evgenia Katseva: "German language

Evgenia Katseva: “The German language is my personal war trophy”
Elena Kalashnikova

Publication date: May 29, 2001

Evgenia Aleksandrovna Katseva is a translator from German, a member of the public council of the editorial board of the Znamya magazine, the first recipient (together with Solomon Apt) of the “Cross of Honor for merits in the field of science and art, 1st class” (Austria). Among her translations are Andersch, Belle, Brecht, Becher, Grasse, de Bruyn, Kafka, Musil, Frisch ...

Beginning: family, study, war, “New World”

Elena Kalashnikova: Did your family have anything to do with literature?

Evgenia Aleksandrovna Katseva. Photo by E. Kalashnikova

Evgenia Aleksandrovna Katseva: No. I come from a simple, poor Jewish family. During the First World War, my father, a cavalryman, was awarded the St. George Cross and a medal for bravery. After the war in Belarus, in a place near Gomel, he organized the International agricultural artel. In 1921, when I was one year old, he died of pleurisy - he was taking seed grain in the pouring rain.

Mother was a housewife. Of three children, I am the youngest. In the 20s, a famine began in Belarus and in 1924 my mother moved to one of her sisters, who lived with her family in Ukraine, in a Jewish colony. In 1929, my mother joined the first collective farm, at the age of 8 I became a collective farmer, and I can still milk a cow and work on the land.

When I graduated from four-year school, I was sent to Lugansk, to high school, to live with my mother’s other sister. Until I was 11 years old, I didn’t know the word “mother” in Russian; my family spoke Yiddish. A little time passed, and during the test all the students looked at me: in difficult cases, I gave a sign where to write “i” and where “e”. In 1937, I graduated from high school with a golden certificate, at which time a decree was issued - those who graduated from school with “excellent” marks can enter any university in the country. I sent documents to Leningrad University, to the Russian department of the Faculty of Philology.

E.K.: By this time did you already know German?

E.A.K.: I taught at school, but I only knew a few words and a funny rhyme about our German teacher.

At the beginning of the 4th year I got married, my husband, a graduate of the history department, was sent to Mordovia. I wanted to quickly pass the summer exams for the 4th year and go to him. I had one exam left on Sunday, June 22. I remember that day very well - beautiful weather, I was standing at the tram stop, getting ready to go to Shchedrinka - the library named after. Saltykova-Shchedrin, - when I heard the message about the outbreak of war.

My husband went to war; he was a reserve officer and commanded an anti-aircraft battery. The university was evacuated to Saratov, but I stayed - I was afraid that the letters would be lost - and became the political instructor of the air defense team. In November 1941 she became a candidate member of the party. Once I was called to the party committee, a senior lieutenant was selecting girls for special radio courses of the Baltic Fleet, in order to then parachute them across the front line into the occupied territory. He told me: “I’ll think about it,” and gave the other girls the address, and I decided to go with them. I was one of the first 12 sailor girls in the Baltic Fleet. Then I worked with the first prisoners of war: I didn’t know the language, but I understood the prisoners (remnants of Jewish were preserved in my head), I couldn’t convey anything to them - I didn’t want them to know that I was Jewish. The National Committee "Free Germany" was created from captured German officers and soldiers who were ready to fight on our side, and I had to teach them radio business in German.

In May 1945, I found myself in Germany, on the coast, then near Berlin. I had to demobilize, but since by that time I spoke German fluently, I was offered to stay in Germany and work in one of the divisions of the Soviet military administration to participate in the creation and work of the German press. Later, everyone who helped restore and create a new culture was called “culture officers.” The same thing happened in the administrations of the allied occupation authorities.

I willingly stayed, I still had nowhere to go - I wasn’t at home, my husband was dead.

E.K.: What happened to your mother?

E.A.K.: She died in January 1941. The rest of her relatives were shot near Lugansk - the place is called Ostraya Mogila.

In 1948, in Berlin, I met Simonov , he told me: “When you return to your homeland, if I am still the editor-in-chief (at that time he was the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir ), I will be happy to hire you.”

The next year, I came to Moscow with two suitcases and Simonov’s phone numbers. 1949 is the time of struggle against cosmopolitans. True, my Jewishness was balanced by the fact that I was a participant in the war and a party member, and besides, Simonov worked for me.

E.K.: What did you do in the “New World”?

E.A.K.: I was the editor of the criticism department, then, already under Tvardovsky , I became the head of the criticism department, working there until March 1953. At the height of the story with the “killer doctors,” Novy Mir published Vasily Grossman ’s novel “For just cause,” a devastating article was immediately published in Pravda. Tvardovsky was summoned to a meeting of the party bureau of the Union of Writers, and he took me with him. The meeting lasted 6 hours, everyone forgot about Grossman and rushed to the criticism department. The next day I submitted my resignation.

Then I worked at Voprosy Literatury (32 years!), at Znamya (7 years), from where I left for free in 1995.

About translation: the writers are friends from Berlin

E.K.: When did you start translating?

E.A.K.: When I was the head of the criticism department at the New World, I came across Johannes Becher’s book “The Defense of Poetry.” This was a relevant book, and relevant for us. The author wrote about non-conflict, about varnishing... I met Becher, like many other writers, back in Berlin, when I was a “cultural officer”. I made a selection for the "New World". Then she began to translate other authors.

E.K.: Which author or work was most difficult for you to translate?

E.A.K.: The Soviet translator always had two functions: to translate and to get the work into print.

I have a happy fate: I translated only what I like. On vacation I took some German-language book with me. Late Frisch was suitable for this , for example, “Montauk”, “Bluebeard”... And from vacation I brought the finished translation. If I really like a book, then I have to convince the publisher that the reader will also like the book. From what I translated, everything was printed.

E.K.: Which of the writers is most interesting or close to you?

E.A.K.: Recently I wrote my memoirs in German. The first part talks about my life from birth to the present day, and the second is called “Men of my life” and is dedicated to my favorite writers - Franz Kafka , Heinrich Böll , Günter Grass , Max Frisch , Peter Weiss... I love Frisch very much. They all knew each other and treated Kafka very well. When I wrote my book, I saw something Freudian in this.

E.K.: Who, in your opinion, are the best domestic translators from German?

E.A.K.: Nina Fedorova, Mikhail Rudnitsky, Solomon Apt, Serafima Shlapoberskaya, Sofia Fridlyand, and very, very few others.

Portrait of “the most important man”, given by his niece

E.K.: How did you come to Kafka?

E.A.K.: In 1964, the magazine “Foreign Literature” published his short stories “The Metamorphosis” and “In the Penal Colony” translated by Solomon Apt. I was then working at the journal “Questions of Literature” and preparing for publication an article by Dmitry Zatonsky dedicated to this writer. I took up Kafka, after reading “The Diaries ,” I realized that I was “lost.” I began to make a selection for “Questions of Literature”; a one-volume edition had just come out, in which “The Process” and short stories were published.

One functionary said: “The whole world was buzzing: Kafka, Kafka... We published it from a distance and the reader saw: Kafka is crazy. We won’t publish him anymore.” Kafka's works were banned in the Soviet Union. For the publishing house "Art", I nevertheless prepared a one-volume writer's book, which was supposed to include part of the "Diaries" , "Letter to Father" , and some short stories. Then I was informed that the Press Committee had removed Kafka from the plan as not meeting the publisher's profile.

But the manuscript of the book had already passed from hand to hand, and in the books of our major literary critics there were quotations from there with footnotes “Printed with the kind permission of the translator E.A. Katseva.”

E.K.: What do you like most about Kafka?

E.A.K.: “Diaries” and “Letter to Father.”

E.K.: How fully does Kafka exist in Russian now?

E.A.K.: In 1999, the Symposium publishing house published a four-volume work I prepared. It included all artistic creativity, the entire “Diaries”, entire letters to Max Brod, Milena Jesenskaya. The only exception is the letters to Felice Bauer. But to publish them completely would require another volume, the thickest one. However, I didn’t want to fight for him. I don’t really like Felitsa - it’s not for nothing that Kafka got engaged to her twice, but never married, she was just the addressee of his letters. He largely invented her image; from the letters it is clear that he understood the degree of her intellectual development. For example, he was very fond of Russian literature, especially Dostoevsky (although the content of his work is closer to Gogol ). In one of his letters to her, he writes: “I just read an amazingly interesting book about Dostoevsky , I’m not sending it to you, it will be difficult for you to understand and boring to read.”

By the way, “Letters to Felitsa” is now being fully translated by Mikhail Rudnitsky.

Compiled by

E.K.: You are one of the few translators involved in compiling collected works. How did you become a compiler?

E.A.K.: I compiled the collected works of Kafka, Frisch, Grass, Dürrenmatt, “little” Musil (short stories about love, two plays, from diaries, journalism); one-volume works by Bell, Christa Wolf, Hesse and others.

The more I studied a writer, the more I wanted to fully introduce him to the Russian reader. She began compiling collections of their works, selecting the best existing translations and ordering translations of their works that had not yet been published in Russian.