Or, how to try your hand at translation with a minimum of hubris
This has been a pet project of mine for the last six months or so. One of the texts I'm studying for my Russian degree is the prose poem Москва-Петушки, or "Moscow-Petushki", by Venedikt Erofeev (1938-1990), one of the more eccentric writers of the late Soviet era. When reading it in translation I noticed quite a few gaps and mistranslations. This was part of the reason why I decided to have a go translating it - the other part being that my knowledge of Russian was, at the time, still at the stage where reading effectively meant translating anyway. It's a fantastic text, darkly funny and borderline horrifying in places, and I've had a lot of fun working on it. I'll be uploading this in segments as I proofread it; hopefully you'll enjoy reading it.
Moscow-Petushki
By Venedikt Erofeev
Author’s Note
The first edition of
“Moscow-Petushki”, thanks to there being only one copy, sold out quickly. From
that point I received, quite unnecessarily, a lot of criticism for the chapter
“Hammer and Sickle – Karacharovo”. In the introduction to the first edition, I
warned all female readers that the chapter “Hammer and Sickle – Karacharovo”
should be skipped without reading, because after the phrase “and I drank it all
down” comes one and a half pages of pure, unadulterated swearing; there isn’t
one printable word in the entire chapter, except for the phrase “and I drank it
all down.” With this notification, made in good faith, I ensured that all
readers, especially girls, would immediately flip to the chapter “Hammer and
Sickle – Karacharovo”, without having even read the previous chapters, without even
reading the phrase “and I drank it all down”. For this reason, in the second
edition I found it necessary to cut out all the swearing from the chapter. This
would be better, because firstly, people would start reading my work in the
right order, and secondly, no one would be offended.
To Vadim Tikhonov, my beloved firstborn, the author dedicates these
tragic pages.
Moscow. On the way to Kursky Station
Everyone says, the Kremlin,
the Kremlin. I've heard about it from everybody, yet I haven’t seen it even
once. However many times (thousands), drunk or hungover, have I wandered
through Moscow from north to south, from west to east, from end to end, at
random – and I still haven’t ever seen it.
I didn’t see it yesterday
either - after all, I’d spent the whole evening circling around those places; I
wasn’t all that drunk: as soon as I’d left Savelovsky station I drank a glass
of zubrovka[1]
to start with, because I know
from experience that there is nothing better created by man to treat a morning
hangover.
So. A glass of zubrovka. Then, on Kalyaevskaya[2]
Street, another glass – only this time not zubrovka,
but koriandrovaya[3].
A friend of mine once said that koriandrovaya
acts inhumanly on the human body – that is, it strengthens the limbs and
relaxes the soul. With me, for some reason, the opposite happened, that is, my
soul strengthened in the extreme and my limbs weakened, but I agree that it’s
inhuman. Consequently, right there on Kalyaevskaya, I added two cups of Zhiguli
beer and Alba-de-dessert wine from the bottle.
Of course, you then ask:
what then, Venichka, what did you drink then? I don’t even know myself. I
remember - I remember clearly – that on Chekhov Street I drank two glasses of okhotnichya vodka. I could hardly cross
the Sadovoye Ring without drinking, could I? No. So I drank a little more.
Then I got to the centre,
for it’s always like that with me: when I search for the Kremlin, I always find
myself at Kursky Station. In fact, I had to go to Kursky Station myself this
time, and not to the centre, but I still went to the centre to try and see the
Kremlin at least once; anyway, I think, it doesn’t matter if don’t see the
Kremlin at all, I’ll just end up right at Kursky Station.
It pains me, almost to
tears. It doesn’t pain me, of course, that I didn’t get to Kursky Station
yesterday (this is nonsense: I didn’t get there yesterday, but I’ll get there
today). And not, of course, because I woke up this morning in some unfamiliar
stairwell (it turns out that I sat down yesterday on the steps in the stairwell,
the fortieth floor by my count, pressing my little suitcase to my chest - and
fell asleep there). No, that doesn’t pain me. This is what pains me: I had just
calculated that from Chekhov Street to that stairwell I had drunk away another
six roubles – but what and where did I drink? And in what order? Had I drunk
for my benefit or my detriment? No one knows, and now no one ever will. Even
now we still don’t know whether Tsar Boris killed Tsarevich Dimitri, or vice
versa.
What stairwell was this? I
still have no idea, and that’s how it should be. It’s like that. All things in
this world should happen slowly and incorrectly, so a person doesn’t start
feeling too proud, so that they’re sad and confused.
I walked out into the fresh
air when it started getting light. Everyone knows – that is, everyone who’s
fallen unconscious in a stairwell and left it at dawn – everyone knows what a
weight I carried in my heart down the forty staircases of that strange stairwell, and
what a weight I carried out into the fresh air.
Nothing, nothing, I said to
myself - nothing. There’s a pharmacy, do you see? There’s some shithead in a
brown coat scraping the pavement. You can see that as well. Calm down.
Everything is going as it should. If you want to go left, Venichka, go left,
I’m not forcing you into anything. If you want to go right, go right.
I went right, swaying
slightly from the cold and grief, yes, from the cold and from grief. Oh, this
morning burden on the heart! Oh, the illusoriness of the disaster! Oh, the irreversibility!
What does it contain more of, this burden that no one dares name: paralysis or
nausea? The exhaustion of nerves or a deathly melancholy somewhere near the
heart? And if it is all equal, which is more prevalent anyway: lockjaw or
fever?
“It’s nothing, nothing,” I
said to myself, “just hide yourself from the wind and go quietly. And breathe
slowly, slowly. Breathe like that, so your legs don’t bump against your knees.
Just go somewhere. Doesn’t matter where. Even if you go left you’ll end up at
Kursky Station, if you go straight on you’ll end up at Kursky Station, if you
go left you’ll end up at Kursky Station. So go right, to be certain of ending
up there.”
Oh vanity! Oh, ephemerality!
Oh, the most powerless and shameful moment in the life of my people - the time
from dawn to when the shops open! How many extra grey hairs it weaves in all of
us, the homeless and lounging brown-heads. Go, Venichka, go.
Moscow. Kursky Station Square.
Well, I knew what I was talking
about: go right – you’ll be sure to get to Kursky Station. You were getting bored
in these alleys, Venichka; you wanted some hustle and bustle – go out and get
it.
- Come on, - I said,
brushing myself off, - do I really need your hustle and bustle? Do I really
need your people? After all, even the Redeemer said to his own mother, ‘What
art thou to me?’ And even more so in my case – what are all these scurrying,
odious creatures to me?
I’m better off leaning
against a column and closing my eyes, so as not to be sick.
- Of course, Venichka, of course, - a voice from above sang so quietly,
so softly-softly, - close your eyes, so
as not to be sick.
Oh! I recognise them! It’s
them again. The Angels of God! Is it you again?
- Of course it is us. - Again, so tender!
- You know what, angels? - I
asked, also quietly-quietly.
- What? - replied the angels.
- It’s hard for me…
- We know it’s hard for you, - sang the angels. - But keep going, keep going, and you’ll feel
better. In half an hour the shops will open: well, you won’t get vodka until
nine, but they’ll give you a little red straight away.
- A little red?
- A little red, intoned the angels of the Lord.
- Chilled?
- Chilled, of course.
Oh, how excited I was!
- You say, keep going, keep
going, you’ll feel better. But I don’t want to move anywhere. You know
yourselves that I’m in no condition to move!
The angels were silent to
that. Then they sang again:
- How about this: drop by the station restaurant. They had sherry there
yesterday evening. They can’t have drunk it all.
- Yes, yes, yes. I’ll go.
I'll go and find out. Thank you, angels.
And they sang,
softly-softly:
- To your health, Venichka...
And then, so gently-gently:
- Don’t mention it.
How sweet they are! Well…
let’s go. How good it is that I bought some goodies yesterday. Can’t go to
Petushki without goodies. No way can you go to Petushki without goodies. The
angels reminded me of the goodies, because the people for whom I bought them
resemble angels themselves. Good thing I bought them. And when did you buy them
yesterday? Remember… walk, try to remember…
I walked across the square,
or rather, I didn’t so much walk as get drawn across it. Two or three times I
stopped and froze on the spot to soothe my light-headedness. After all, a man
doesn’t only have a physical side; he also has a spiritual side, and - more
than that – he also has a mystical side, a super-spiritual side. So, every
minute I expected that in the middle of the square I’d start to feel sick on
all three sides. Again I stopped and froze.
- So when did you buy the
goodies yesterday? After the okhotnichya?
No. You weren’t up for getting goodies after the okhotnichya. Between the first and second glasses of okhotnichya? Also no. There was a
thirty-second pause between glasses, and I’m not enough of a superhuman to be
able to accomplish anything in thirty seconds. A superhuman would have
collapsed after the first glass without managing a second. So when? God, how
many secrets there are in the world! An impenetrable veil of secrecy! Before
the koriandrovaya or between the beer
and Alba-de-dessert?
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