"Notes From Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Pevear and Volokhonsky have translated seven of Dostoevsky's novels, including "The Brothers Karamazov" (for which they were awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize). This is the fourth version of "Notes From Underground" I have read, and for the first time I can hear what Pevear calls in his introduction its "striking language, unlike any literary prose ever written; its multiple and conflicting tonalities; the oddity of its reverse structure, which seems random but all at once reveals its deeper coherence."

Let's compare some passages from Coulson's translation for Penguin Classics with Pevear and Volokhonsky's interpretation. First, the novella's famous opening lines:

"I am a sick man ... I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man. I think there is something wrong with my liver." (Coulson)

"I am a sick man ... I am a wicked man. An Unattractive man. I think my liver hurts." (Pevear and Volokhonsky)

Pevear and Volokhonsky found a little joke that other translators missed. Underground Man doesn't trust his own instincts enough to be sure whether his own liver hurts.

Here's a famous passage often quoted in support of Underground Man's (and by extension, Dostoevsky's) supposed anti-intellectualism:

"But all the same, I'm firmly convinced that not only a great deal, but every kind, of intellectual activity is a disease." (Coulson)

"But all the same, I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness." (Pevear and Volokhonsky)

P&V find something a great deal scarier than anti- intellectualism, namely the idea that consciousness itself is responsible for the human malady.

That made the next passage, in which UGM proclaims his shame at his own intelligence, seem like a contradiction:

"First of all, I am cleverer than anyone else around me. (I've always thought myself cleverer than anybody I knew, and sometimes, if you will, believe me, I've felt quite ashamed of it ...)" (Coulson)

"First, because I am more intelligent than everyone around me, and, would you believe, I've even felt slightly ashamed of it ...") (P&V)

By removing the "If you will" and changing "believe me" to the rhetorical "would you believe," P&V show us that the UGM's humility regarding his own intelligence is a sham.

This passage was a big favorite among early slackers, offering as it did a perfect rationale for seeing one's own inferiority complex as a sign of superiority:

"I repeat, and repeat empathically: all spontaneous people, men of action, are active because they are stupid and limited. How's this to be explained? Like this: in consequence of their limitations, they take immediate, but secondary, causes for primary ones, and thus they are more quickly and easily convinced that they have found indisputable grounds for their action ..." (Coulson)

"I repeat, I empathically repeat: ingenious people and active figures are all active simply because they are dull and narrow-minded. How to explain it? Here's how: As a consequence of their narrow-mindedness, they take the most immediate and secondary causes for the primary ones, and thus become convinced more quickly and easily than others that they have found an indisputable basis for their doings ..." (P&V)

So it isn't just the men of action to whom UGM feels superior, it's also "ingenious" people as well; in other words, anyone who actually accomplishes something.

This passage was much favored by those of us who believed that having read "Notes From Underground" provided an indication of our own higher consciousness:

"This impressed them ... they were all gradually beginning to realize that I was already reading books they could not read and, knew about things (not entering into our specialized course of studies) they had never even heard of. They regarded this fact with savage derision, but morally they accepted defeat ..." (Coulson)

"This made an impression ... They began little by little to realize that I had by then read such books as they were unable to read, and understood such things (not part of our special course) as they had never even heard of. This they regarded wildly and derisively, but morally they submitted ..." (P&V)

"Morally they submitted" sounds so much more appropriate than "morally they accepted defeat."

Then there was this enigmatic denouement that we didn't entirely understand, but felt that somehow it was aimed at us:

"We are born dead, and moreover we have long ceased to be the sons of living fathers; and we've become more and more contented with our condition ... Soon we shall invent a method of being born from an idea." (Coulson)

"We're stillborn, and we have long ceased to be born of living fathers, and we like this more and more ... soon we'll contrive to be born somehow from an idea." (P&V)

Even a superficial reading of those two passages shows you why Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation is superior. They say more in fewer words. Freed from the tedious clutter of stilted and pompous language, "Notes From Underground" pulses with life and even some sardonic humor. Certainly one important aspect of the novel now comes into clearer focus, which is that Dostoevsky, a devout Christian and a political conservative, was not advocating nihilism but mocking it.

Vladimir Nabokov once cautioned Edmund Wilson to "remember that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as most Americans do." I hope, then, that Pevear and Volokhonsky will not be offended if I say that in their translation Dostoevsky has never seemed more American.

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