800 KS
299
or euphemisms for them is something quite bold in Soviet writing which
has long been known for its prudery. Every word is used for effect.
Even the title shows Solzhenitsyn's characteristic terseness. This is, by
the way, spoiled in the English translation of the title (the Russian
language can quite easily express "in the life of," had Solzhenitsyn
wanted to say that) which sounds like the name of one of those daytime
television programs. Both English translations are good enough, and
both ought to be much better. Mistakes and omissions are fairly in–
frequent and minor, and the two versions play to a draw on this
account. I favor the Parker version just because it more closely renders
the syntax and feel of the original. Thus Parker's translation: "Now
for that slice of sausage. Into the mouth. Getting your teeth into it.
Your teeth. The meaty taste. And the meaty juice, the real stuff' comes
closer to what Solzhenitsyn wrote and how he wrote it than the Ray–
ward-Ringley version, which is rather freely and capriciously re–
assembled: "And he put the piece of sausage in his mouth and chewed
it and chewed it. The taste of that meat, and the juice that came out
of it!"
On one other point the translations also diverge widely: Parker
translates the four letter words with some (often excessive) restraint,
while Hayward and Ringley "have thought it best to ignore the prudish
conventions of Soviet publishing and spell out the English equivalents
in
full." This choice changes the tone of the novel considerably, and
I personally wonder if the assumption upon which it was made was
justified inasmuch as Solzhenitsyn himself does "spell out" a sufficient
number of the words, something to which any reader of the Parker
translation will testify. Needless to say, the Hayward-Ringley version
has b{!en widely praised for precisely these licenses of style and language.
The great value of
One Day
is, finally, political, but its artistic
qualities should not be too lightly dismissed.
It
is one of the several
recent encouraging signs (and the first to be presented to English
readers) that contemporary Russian literature is crossing the threshold
into mature imaginative achievement.
Andrew Field
