They Know Russian. I Know Plays. Would That Translate?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/theater/uncle-vanya-translation-hunter-project.html

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I never write fan letters, and certainly not to people I don’t know. But about 10 years ago, I wrote to Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky and described how their translations of Tolstoy, Gogol and especially Dostoevsky had deeply affected me both as a reader and writer.

And, with some hubris, asked: Was it indeed true that they had not translated plays, and was there a reason? And, by the way, I was a playwright who had often translated classic plays, working off what are called “literal translations” but without any knowledge of the original language.

I suggested that this might seem bogus to them; still, I made the argument that translating plays requires a different skill from translating prose, and that the former was enhanced by a thorough knowledge of playwriting and theater.

I sent the email, and had to wait only a day for a response.

The Pevears, who live in France, wrote back that they would soon to be in New York to give a reading. I had a play running at the Public Theater at the time; and so we met for dinner, then I took them to see it.

To this day, I think not one of us completely understands how we were able to take the plunge and commit to collaborating after just one evening together. And I am sure it occurred to each of us, at some point as our time together approached, that such a collaboration was bound to fail.

After all, the Pevears are married and had never allowed anyone into their working methods before; they finished each other’s sentences; they had the same references; they knew each other so profoundly well that anyone, especially one who knows no Russian, would have a very hard time “fitting in.”

The couple, I later learned, had always been conflicted about translating plays; Larissa had wanted to, but Richard felt they’d need to work with a director or someone who knows theater.

And, of course, I had never collaborated on a translation before; never had to compromise or convince or admit to being wrong. Yet, for some fated reason, we all agreed to go forward. We selected “A Month in the Country” as our initial effort; this being a play, I felt, that had not been adequately translated before, and so had often been misunderstood or misrepresented.

We met in their country house, in Burgundy, and worked for a month, all day, every day, with only the occasional expedition, to show me some Burgundian site.

Here’s how we worked then and have worked since: Larissa, with a native experience of Russian literature and an extraordinary linguistic gift, does the first draft. She then hands it to Richard, who besides being an important translator in his own right is a poet and a rigorous stylist. He does the next draft. Then they sit down together and discuss it in minute detail, raising questions, making decisions about the style, the level of diction, the choice of words, phrases, and so on. After that, Richard writes the third draft.

This is sent to me; I make notes, write out questions — nearly all relating to how the play works as a play. Then we meet; work through the translation word by word; discuss, argue, cajole, but always with the understanding that we all needed to agree all of the time.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned from this first effort at collaboration occurred one morning in their kitchen. I was at a small table looking out into their garden, and Larissa said something like, “You know, Richard, you keep asking us one question that, in all our other translations, we never ask.”

“What question?” I asked.

“Why?” she said. “You are always asking why did this character say this, and why this way and not that, and why now? In our other translations, we don’t ask why; we are simply trying to translate the words.”

Of course, here was the essence of our collaboration — or rather, what I think I was bringing to them. Unlike a novel or a story, a play is basically a series of notations for something else. It is not an end in itself. It is the notation for the production of the play, and so, as we worked together, I, as both a playwright and director, was always thinking toward production, imagining the questions that would be asked by actors and designers, and trying to make sure we were asking them as we translated.

We decided to come together once a year and translate a play, and found a publisher, TCG books, for the series. We began to get commissioned by theaters and eventually turned to the Everest of our ambitions: the major plays of Anton Chekhov.

We began with my favorite, “The Cherry Orchard.” What we soon discovered was that significant changes had been made to Chekhov’s script during the rehearsals at the Moscow Art Theater. Thanks to the latest, 30-volume edition of Chekhov and its extensive endnotes, we were able to reconstruct this script, eliminating all the changes made in rehearsal.

I soon became convinced that all of these changes were, in fact, to the detriment of the play. So what I had known to be one of the greatest plays ever written, was in fact even greater!

“The Cherry Orchard” was written and produced while Chekhov knew he was dying of consumption. He couldn’t attend many rehearsals. The Moscow Art Theater itself was going through a crisis; its founders, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, were hardly speaking. A few days after the play’s premiere, Russia was at war with Japan. These were tumultuous times, personally, professionally and politically.

Stanislavsky clearly made these changes (as directors have and always will) to make his production “work.” He cut up the character of Charlotta, making her all but unplayable in future productions. He changed locations (making the last act the same as the first), the ages of characters (to fit casting) and so forth.

In other words, we were reminded of the lesson every living playwright is faced with: that plays are not literature, they are but notations for productions; and between the words and the audience are actors and directors and designers.

Our latest effort has been “Uncle Vanya” — the result of which had its stage premiere at the Old Globe in San Diego last spring and is being remounted in New York, with the Hunter Theater Project, starting this week.

When Larissa described it as Chekhov’s most religious, or at least most spiritual, play, I hesitated. I did not see Chekhov as either a religious or spiritual writer, but rather as the most profound humanist. But after a month working on the play, I came to understand what she meant, and eventually to be completely convinced.

“Vanya” poses the deepest question that we humans ask: Do we matter? No answers are given. However, by the end of the play, I believe, we are left with the unmistakable assurance that we must, or there must be something greater than ourselves.

There is much more I could say, but I will just mention one other thing. We often began our work day together saying, “You know, this is an untranslatable play!” It is, for this simple reason: There is an untranslatable Russian word, “chudak” (plural “chudaki”), that is used in the play six or seven times.

Astrov at one point says something like “You come to the country and all the people here are …” and then the word, “chudaki.” “And you live here long enough and you too become a ‘chudak.’” Then, at the end, he says, “You know I think we’re all ‘chudaki.’”

That word goes to the moral center of the play and its meaning. It has been translated in so many different ways; three examples: creep, crackpot, old fart. But the original Russian word is not a criticism or a judgment.

The word we finally chose for “chudak” is misfit. So, “We are all misfits.” And that, I think, goes to the heart of what the play is all about, what people are feeling and what they’re trying to sort out about their lives. Translations, I’ve learned, are very complicated animals.

“We are all crackpots.” “We are all misfits.” Those are two different plays.