Dostoevsky as a Translator of Balzac

by Julia Titus

The focus of this study in comparative criticism is close analysis of Dostoevsky’s first literary publication—his 1844 translation of the first edition of Balzac’s Eugе́nie Grandet (1834)—and the stylistic choices that he made as a young writer while working on Balzac’s novel. Through the prism of close reading, the author analyzes Dostoevsky’s literary debut in the context of his future mature aesthetic style and poetics. Comparing the original and the translation side by side, this book focuses on the omissions, additions and substitutions that Dostoevsky brought into the text. It demonstrates how young Dostoevsky’s free translation of Eugénie Grandet predicts the creation of his own literary characters, themes, and other aspects of his literary output that are now recognized as Dostoevsky’s signature style. It investigates the changes that Dostoevsky made while working on Balzac’s text and analyzes the complex transplantation of Balzac’s imagery, motifs, and character portraiture from Eugénie Grandet into Dostoevsky’s own writing later on.

194 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 25, 2022

Reviews

[Amy Ronner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished this book, but I shouldn't say "finished." I actually devoured it. Yes, there are scholarly books that are interesting, but page-turners are near anomalies. This is a page-turner!
For me as a reader, this book accomplishes significant things on multiple levels. It yokes together my favorite author, Dostoevsky, with an adored writer, Balzac. On another level, the book is a superb piece of scholarship on translation. It introduces readers to the movement of bukvalizm as well as the school of translation that supplanted it and sought to effectuate a balance between opposing views.
But beyond translation theory, the book is top notch scholarship on both Balzac and Dostoevsky. While there are too many highlights to point out, I was mesmerized by the chapter on "Dostoevsky's Female Characters," particularly the discussion of Evgenia as the embodiment of virtue, as the moral individual and the heart (not calculation or logic) as the pulsating path to the right choice. The discussion of Dostoevsky's "The Meek One" is one of the best. The author's take on it resonates: she shows how Dostoevsky contraposes conflicting human values - - Christian virtue (the meek one) versus the "cold calculations of capital" (the pawn broker). Other sections of the book jump out as well: for example, the analysis of Raskolnikov's room and the ligature between a character's physical surroundings and his or her psychological and emotion state; the elaboration on Prince Myshkin's sensation generated by Rogozhin's house; Balzac's approach to describing faces, clothes, and the movement of his characters; the thread focusing on Lavater, Lombroso, Gall, and Carus; the dissection of Fyodor Karamazov's face and the visage of the morally repulsive Smerdyakov; the parallel between Nastasya Fillippovna and Balzac's Esther; how in Dostoevsky's most important works money is treated as almost one of the principal characters; how Pushkin's main character in "The Miserly Knight" wends its way into Dostoevsky's translation, especially his image of Old Grandet.
Unlike many books, the conclusion pulls together the multiple levels and themes. It honors its inaugural promise by showing how Balzac's Eugenie profoundly influenced Dostoevsky, how his changes and additions as translator emphasized certain moral traits, and how the translator's renditions resurface in later works.
Dr. Amy D. Ronner (author of "Dostoevsky as Suicidologist: Self-Destruction and the Creative Process")