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1. The Brothers Karamazov Online

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Spoiler tags are: #s for example: is done with: Spoilers about XYZ(#s 'Spoiler content here') Filter by Flair. Check out our Megathreads for and. I'm reading the Pevear and Volokhonsky version right now after reading half of the Constance Garnett version via Gutenberg. I had wanted to read paperback rather than ebook, so I bought the P/V translation because of its reputation (and started the book over).

This translation boasts of winning the Pen/Book-of-the-month Club Translation prize. Unfortunately, I haven't read up to a point that surpasses the place I read to in Garnett's version. I had found things to be sometimes very humorous in Garnett's version, but haven't really found the humor in P/V (because I knew the joke). Still, P/V's version is very pleasant to read, and there are many pieces of the story I feel made more impact than in Garnett's version.

Anyway, it's really the same story in both versions, as you'd probably expect, so the literary truth of the novel will still get digested. I've been digging into P/V Karamazov since last week, and have come out with many passages that are beautiful, insightful, and poetic-things that touch my emotional core. I had found much of this in the Garnett version too, though it's been several months since I read any of her passages so it's not as fresh. I would not have bought the P/V version if I didn't find the Garnett version to be alluring. Otherwise, I'd have dropped the book, but the P/V version was the first I bought when I began building a paperback library a couple months ago. I won't say for sure what you should take. It might come down to price.

Garnett's version is free for ebook, less than $5 for paperback, and P/V asks for $18 at full price ($11.56 on Amazon right now). Generally, for Russian, Pevear/Volokhonsky are the go-to translators, but they do get some criticism for translating so much (and thus, relatively quickly and in-carefully) and some flak for leaning towards what sounds best in English as opposed to what is closest to the original words. Personally, I'm always in the camp of what works best in the language a work is being translated to, instead of what is most literally authentic. Anyway, they're often the first place to look, because they offer very readable, modern translations. I think their Dostoyevsky translations are very good. That said, lesser known, one-off translators who spend years on a book because they love it can be a better option in many cases.

Constance Garnett is the old, out of copyright, standard of a more stilted literary age. I read her War and Peace translation, which was not ideal. She's the Pevear/Volokhonsky of 100 years ago. For classics, you can really just look at what translation Penguin Books is using, and that'll be a great one 90% of the time. Oxford World Classics for a second opinion. In the case of Karamazov, Penguin goes with David McDuff (I read his translation of The Idiot and thought it was very good) and Oxford goes with Ignat Avsey, who I haven't read.

In any case, I'm sure they're both good options. I always think someone should do a series of translations of the Russian classics where they Anglicise the names. It always takes me a while to associate all the variations (patronymic, diminutive etc.) with the right characters.

It would be a lot easier if it was 'The Bothers Smith: Ian, Alex and Dave'. As for which translation, get the free one from Gutenberg if you have ebook facilities as statistically you probably won't finish it. Although if you persevere through the first third of the book It becomes a bit more compelling. Relavant Onion The above makes it sound like I think it isn't worth reading, which isn't true.

The Brothers Karamazov Online

Its a classic for a reason, It just needs to be approached with the right mindset. A good tip is to go through the Wikipedia character list and the synopsis of the section/chapter you are about to read before you start. Read the P/V translation. One of the sections in the Garnett translation is titled 'Lacerations' opposed to 'Strains' in P/V. The differences in tone is pretty noticeable between the versions.

Also, I wouldn't recommend starting dostoyevsky w/ the brothers karamazov-crime and punishment is more accessible; notes from the underground is short w/ a lot of depth to it. P/V has translated both of these. If you read both of these you'd have sort of dostoyevsky's rough draft on one of the brothers in the brothers k.

I have no idea how Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s translation of The Brothers Karamazov came to be regarded as definitive. Let me rephrase that. Fourteen thousand copies a year, practically indefinitely, is why. There’s a lot of money at stake, for them and for their publisher. What I don’t know is how. Admittedly, their method is a publicist’s dream come true. A husband-and-wife team, Larissa makes a literal translation as close to word-for-word as possible and then Richard tidies up her copy. (He hasn’t mastered the language himself, not even at a conversational level, which is why I feel comfortable criticizing their work so harshly.

I may not know Russian—but neither does Richard Pevear.) The result, as you might imagine, is a fairly close replication of the original. The promotional material practically writes itself. No one has ever offered a truer approximation of Dostoevsky’s prose! P & V are like Gillette razors—you just can’t get any closer! Unfortunately, the result is not something you would want to spend 974 pages with. When I decided to tackle The Brothers Karamazov last month, I chose my translation the obvious way: I pulled up Amazon previews for half a dozen versions and compared the opening pages and tables of contents to see which one grabbed me. Here are a few chapter headings from the Oxford World Classics translation by Ignat Avsey, the one I ended up going with: Second Marriage, Second Brood An Unseemly Encounter A Careerist Seminarian Here’s what P & V have: Second Marriage, Second Children An Inappropriate Gathering A Seminarist-Careerist That last one is especially offensive to the ear of a native English speaker.

They make a worse blunder in the scene where Mrs. Khokhlakov is explaining to Alyosha that Dmitry might opt for a temporary-insanity plea. “Suppose we have a person who’s perfectly sane, and suddenly he’s suffering from diminished responsibility,” is what Avsey has her say. “Come to think of it, who doesn’t suffer from diminished responsibility these days?

Don’t you, don’t I? We all do.” P & V translate the crucial phrase as “fit of passion”—“Who isn’t in a fit of passion these days?” That’s readable (unlike “seminarist-careerist”), but utterly wrong.