THE ENERGY OF PASTERNAK
751
of profound inspiration, insight, and astonishing flights of imaginative
virtuosity, in which moments of tranquility, beauty and innocence mingle
with mere neurosis, extravagance, hysteria, genuine madness, and at
times a particularly false and irritating aesthetic exhibitionism.
The prose style which Pasternak created during the period of
literary and spiritual turmoil, is, to say the least, not easy to convey into
another language, and it is almost at its most obscure and artificial in
his autobiography, which he called
Safe Con,duct.
Hence the translator,
Mrs. Beatrice Scott, was clearly most courageous to have attempted it
at all; courageous or blind, for, more often than not, she gives the
impression of having surrendered the resources of the English language
without a struggle to the untranslatable Russian original, and we get
strange collocations of words which leave the reader perplexed.
Nor do Pasternak's stories fare better in Mr. Robert Payne's render–
ings. And although the heroic martyrdom of these translators may
entitle them to our respect, the author remains unlucky. The selection
of stories seems open to question. "The Childhood of Liivers" is a mas–
terpiece and well worth inclusion, but "Aerial Ways" and "Letters from
Tula" are so intimately connected with a particular period and manner
and literary atmosphere that their value to the untutored reader without
an apparatus of commentary may be doubted. The editing is slovenly
to a degree; Mr. Schimansky's references to his introductory essay pub–
lished in the original English edition are left intact in his Preface, al–
though the essay in question has been omitted from the American
compilation.
Of
the two-score or so translations of the author's poetry,
five at least are somewhat surprisingly given in the versions both of
Professor Bowra and Miss Deutsch-as if the translations had been
independently chosen and carelessly allowed to overlap. And why does
the second part of "Liivers" appear as a completely separate story under
the title, "The Stranger," (this is only a chapter-heading in the original
and is given quite correctly in the English edition)
?
Nevertheless one should not cavil too much; everything which throws
light upon the creative activities of an artist of rare genius about whom
too little is known (and all facts are valuable) is to be welcomed. Mr.
Lindsay Drummond (who has published these works in England), and
the editors of New Directions, as well as Mr. Schimansky, have per–
formed a service to literature by this act of homage to a noble poet and
one of the few men of authentic genius of our time.
Isaiah Berlin
