To the Editors:

In his review of our translation of The Brothers Karamazov (March 1991), Vasily Rudich takes the “unfashionable position” that “style in a work of literature is subordinate to the message.” All the more so, it may be assumed, in a work of non-literature—fortunately for Professor Rudich, whose message concerning the “failures and flaws” of our translation is then free to soar above the bromides, weary reviewerisms, and dying metaphors in which he expresses it.

“To their credit,” he writes, for example, “[the translators] have escaped the temptation to modernize Dostoevsky’s language and to embroider it with current slang.” (To our credit? But we didn't “escape” the temptation; we simply never felt it.) However, grateful though he is for this hypothetical escape, the “native speaker of Russian” nevertheless feels that our choice of...

 

A Message from the Editors

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