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Showing posts from March, 2008

Reading old translated classics

The past couple of years, I've tried to become a more cultivated person by trying to read the "classics" — old books revered by well-read people far and wide. A lot of literary contributions have been in languages other than English — the French and the Russians in particular have made tremendous contributions to world culture — and in reading some French and Russian classics I've wondered how much I'm missing by not reading them in their original languages. What I've found has been utter genius as far as pure ideas go, and eloquent choices in figurative language. Both translate well, as one would expect. As far as clever turns of phrase, I know I'm missing out because the wording hasn't seemed terribly impressive in the translations of Les Miserables (by Victor Hugo, originally in French) and War and Peace (by Leo Tolstoy, originally in Russian with a lot of French phrases). Even in translation, though, I found Victor Hugo to be frequently poetic ev