The Russian formalist and writer Iurii Tynianov is having a long overdue moment in the spotlight. A collection of his seminal essays on literary theory came out in English translation in 2019 and won the 2022 AATSEEL Prize for Best Scholarly Translation; an English translation of his historical novel Kliukhla, based on the life of the Decembrist poet Wil΄gel΄m Kiukhel΄beker, came out in 2021, and two translations of his historical novel based on the life of poet, playwright, and diplomat Aleksandr Griboedov, The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar, have come out in recent years, the first in 2018 and the second, in 2021. The latter, translated by Anna Kurkina Rush and Christopher Rush, is the focus of this review. The novel is fascinating in a number of respects. First, it represents a wonderful example of formalist-inspired literariness at a time when formalism was coming under attack in the Soviet Union. It was perhaps not enough for Tynianov to present contemporary readers with realia from early nineteenth century Russia, let alone the Caucasus and Persia; his prolific use of unusual metaphors and colorful epithets estrange virtually everyone and everything that enters the novelist's purview. Here are just three somewhat randomly selected examples: “the fingers are studded with rings, like shish kebabs on spits” (210) and “In a musical sense, Persia was a key, while the Caucasus was a string” (243), and “The man's face was shaven bluish-gray, like a dove, and was ruddy-colored under a tan, like a ham that had started to go bad” (252). Second, it is difficult to resist the temptation to read this novel about the 1820s as a commentary on the Soviet 1920s, a temptation fed by Tynianov's use of the phrase “the twenties” and his frequent shifting into the present tense. The novel's experimental style and complex plot present real challenges for the translator, and the Rushes do an extremely admirable job. The only glaring infelicity in this almost 600-hundred-page novel is, in my view, their decision to render izvestnoe litso, a recurring reference to Tsar Nicholas I, as “Famous Face.” While face is of course the primary meaning of the word, it is typically rendered in administrative discourse as “official” and in legal documents as “entity.” Here, I might have gone with personage. (The translator of the 2018 English version, Susan Causey, rendered the phrase as “famous person.”) On rare occasion, an attempt to render a complex Russian sentence into readable English results in a dangling modifier: “Birds’ heads glittered on the brand-new buttons—the emblem of the state,” as opposed to: “Glittering on the brand-new buttons were birds’ head, the emblem of the state” (5).
The Rushes’ translation is equipped with a wealth of supportive material, which is most welcome given the number of obscure historical characters and events treated in the novel, as well as Tynianov's generous use of foreign words and expressions. In addition to an informative introduction by Angela Brintlinger, there are two appendices at the back of the book, the first, a glossary of foreign words, mostly of Persian origin, and the second, a glossary of names, followed by endnotes. The most successful of the supplemental material is the glossary of names, as this is truly parenthetical information; most of the historical figures are briefly described in the body of the novel, so referencing that glossary need not disrupt the reading process. On the other hand, the glossary of Persian words and the endnotes, which contain translations of many words and phrases from European languages, would have been more useful as footnotes as these translations are often necessary to make sense of a passage, and it is quite unwieldy to access those definitions at the back of a volume of this size. Moreover, the endnotes provide nothing more than close English translations of the foreign expressions, even when they are citations or plays on words. So, for example, Griboedov's utterance—“Paris vaut bien une messe”—is rendered in the endnote as: “Paris is worth a mass (Fr.)” (27), with no mention that this was purportedly uttered by Henri IV when offered the French throne on condition that he convert to Catholicism. Without that explanation, the meaning of the expression is as obscure in English as it is in French. In a 600-page novel, these are trifles, but in my view worth mentioning for future translators.
