The 20th century has been a rough time for Soviet-American relations. Since its post-World War 2 enactment, The Cold War did more damage than previously thought. While not a single shell was fired during the war, the cultural embargo that was in effect ravaged each country. The effects of which are still felt in today’s modern society. Now, nearly 20 years after the ending of the Cold War, American and Russian cultural exchanges have started taking shape. While each culture is beginning to share and draw off one another, problems still exist. The problems of translating the language barrier in a post propagandized world have taken their full effect, and are playing heavily on the remnants of Cold War ideologies. By highlighting some problems …show more content…
But due to the fact that it is one of the world’s most well know Russian novels, the problem of translation needed to be answered. How could his novel be transferred into the far corners of the world, translated into any and all languages, and still hold its narrative prowess? The answer is: very carefully. But alas, these attempts to translate the manuscript, particularly into American English, have not held true to Bulgakov’s initial story, in a few particularly key …show more content…
The proper translation of the Russian idiom would be, according to the commentary, “quiet as a fish on ice” (352). Something much more befitting to the scene as either the fish in question is in a frozen body of water, or dead and chilling on ice. A more appropriate translation to American audiences would then be instead, “quiet as a mouse,” in that it instills the same level of perceived quietness expected from the scene. This Russian idiom is another example of culture lost due to translation. Whether that idiom was well known in the Soviet era, it is undecided, but the proper translation would have lent a better understanding, and recognition, of a Russian idiom and its proper use. Why the translators chose to leave out the proverbial quality of this line is unknown. The problem of translation is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to an American understanding, and cultural acceptance, of Bulgakov’s work. The next issue comes about due to the remaining trends and foreign policy ideologies after the ending of the Cold
The readers discover that Tolstoy’s motivation for writing “Sevastopol in May” was to provide Russia with an honest war narrative, not a literary cornerstone or a piece of light reading material. This realization is the clean ending that gives readers the they closure desire. By including an explicit declaration of theme and purpose at the
Considered to be among the greatest novels of the 20th century, Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is a timeless favorite, enjoyed and studied now as much as it was 50 years ago. The novel’s multiple interpretations and deep-seated nuances on behalf of the author have captured the attention of scholars and students alike. Among the main characters of the novel are Dr. Woland and his gang, who are representations of Satan or Satanic figures, and follows the mischief that they concoct around Moscow. Naturally, an inclusion of Satan as a main character who kills and seems hell-bent on driving people mad can appear pretty heretical from the outside, I could agree. But regarding the statement that “The Master and Margarita is the most heretical novel of the twentieth-century”, I would contend that claim and instead argue that the book celebrates spirituality and free-thinking, more specifically in the context of Christianity, because of the book’s status as a satire of an atheistic Russia and because Bulgakov doesn’t posit the book in an Anti-Christian sort of way.
One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich . (n.d.). Retrieved may 10, 2011, from Bookrags: http://www.bookrags.com/notes/ivan/
As has been demonstrated, character changes in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich find parallels in Russian power specifically through its rulers’ foreign and domestic policies. Though never expressly implied, one can assume that the author, having been quite politically involved, considered such things while writing his novella. We must not put biting social and political satire past a man who, among other things, was involved in the mass emigration of oppressed Russian Jews to the United States and Canada (Riasanovsky 397).
...er this simple condemnation of Ivan, Tolstoy forces us, unwittingly, to view the world through a similarly closed mindset. This allows the reader to feel the visceral results of this mindset. We enter the chapter confronted by the specter of a dead man, but never have to confront the idea of death because the deluge of empirical details numbs our emotions. We are like Pyotr Ivanovich whose emotions are "chilled" at the funeral by the quotidian task of fixing a broken ottoman (42). But we are also allowed to see how apparently innocuous this attitude is from the inside - there is no immediately apparent harm done by the narrator's perspective in the first chapter. By allowing the reader to feel this, Tolstoy shows the reader that this is frequently an unidentified problem that we all fall into, and not one that we should easily ignore in ourselves.
Appel, Alfred Jr. & Charles Newman, editors. Nabokov : criticism, reminiscences, translations, and tributes. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, l970.
More so than that of most other comparably illustrious writers, a number of Vladimir Nabokov’s works beckon near polarizing discrepancies in interpretation and actual author intent amidst literary circles. In a letter to the editor of The New Yorker, he concedes to constructing systems “wherein a second (main) story is woven into, or placed behind, the superficial semitransparent one” (Dolinin). In practice, such an architectural premise is complicated further by his inclination to dabble in the metaphysical and occasionally, in the metafictional. Nabokov’s inclusion of meticulous description and word choice coupled with his reliance on unreliable narrators—in “Signs and Symbols,” “The Vane Sisters,” and “Details of a Sunset”-- permits him to explore the boundaries surrounding objective versus subjective realities, creating conscientiously woven narratives multi-layered and possibly cryptic in meaning.
In Nikolai Gogol’s short story “Nevsky Prospect” (1835), setting illuminates the theme of lies and deception. The setting of the story is the city of St. Petersburg, Russia. St. Petersburg was custom-built as a distinctly European-style capital. The replication of European architecture gives St. Petersburg an artificial feel, which can be seen in the setting of Gogol’s story. The story’s setting is more than just a city; it is a character of its own. The setting of the story is initially presented with the introduction of Nevsky Prospect, the city’s main street. Then, the story moves deeper in the streets of St. Petersburg as the story follows the journey of two men, Piskarev and Pirogov, after two women. As the story progresses, setting teeters
During the Cold War (1947-1991), the Kitchen Debate demonstrates an illustrative exchange between U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in which they exchange cultural viewpoints in each of their societies. The American National Exhibit displays the “American way of life” to the citizens of the Soviet Union to represent the advancements in the American society. The Kitchen Debate and Cold War Consumer Politics shows a diversification of culture between the United States and Soviet Union. The debate between the two superpowers discusses a series of topics such as production, technology innovation, and standard of living. The American National Exhibit establishes their capitalistic ideas of domestication, food production, and global politics to Soviet Union. The Soviet Union won the debate with their effective ways of utilizing their resources and pushing parallel structure.
This paper seeks to review the themes found in the book entitled Heart of a Dog, which has been authored by Mikhail Bulgakov. In summary, the themes of the book are a satirical representation of the state of affairs in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The book was written during the era in which censorship was in full force throughout the country. Mikhail was therefore forced to write his book in a satirical and subtle manner in order to himself from the dictatorial leadership (Bulgakov, 1988).
Nikolai Gogol has been widely recognized as one of the most inspiring and remarkable authors of the Russian Empire and the one who produced an enormous impact on literary work of countless contemporaries and successors, both in the Tsarist Russia and abroad. Particularly, Gogol’s literary legacy is praised for his exceptional ability to deploy humor as a means of expression and the way to convey the message. In this respect, the short story The Overcoat written during the St. Petersburg period of Gogol’s activity is a very important work which balances between tragic and humorous elements and presents a brilliant specimen of satire. In this work, Gogol builds up the powerful criticism of the contemporary Russian society with its social hierarchy,
Russian literature was very much influenced by the literary trope known as the superfluous man. This trope was ideal for writers to describe the shortcomings of Russian high-class society. There has been a witnessed general consistency when dealing with the superfluous man such as the exhibition of cynicism and existential angst, while indulging in vices such as affairs, gambling and duelling. These individuals are typically from noble birth yet refused to fit into society and disregard the societal norms. This trend can be witnessed through many examples such as Alexander Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin” and “Diary of a Superfluous Man” by Ivan Turgenev. The characters described by these authors reflects the lifestyles of such a man, and seems to imitate the lives of the men who wrote these stories, as the real life Pushkin and Turgenev were both to be described as superfluous men.
...E. The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917-1991. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.
The story “The Darling” by Anton Chekhov, illustrates a woman that is lonely, insecure, and lacking wholeness of oneself without a man in her life. This woman, Olenka, nicknamed “Darling” is compassionate, gentle and sentimental. Olenka is portrayed for being conventional, a woman who is reliant, diligent, and idea less. Although, this story portrays that this woman, known as the Darling needs some sort of male to be emotionally dependant upon, it is as if she is a black widow, she is able to win affection, but without respect. Only able to find happiness through the refection of the beliefs of her lovers, she never evolves within the story.
The vast interpretations and multiple meanings that lie within Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita cannot be limited or reduced to just a singular point or explanation. It would be ludicrous for one to simply classify Bulgakov’s work as just a religious, ethical, social or political tract because the enforcement of only one of these points of view would hinder the reader’s insight into the depth of the entire novel. However, it is possible to be able to grasp the many themes and meanings of The Master and Margarita by the examination of one of the novel’s central characters, this character is found in both narratives of the novel and his name is Woland or, as he is also known, the devil. Woland is the most important character in the novel because he entices the people of Moscow, whether they want to or not and whether they are conscious of it or not, to rebel against the order of which they are accustomed too and to gain a new found sense of liberation. Colin Wright, in his work Mikhail Bulgakov: Life and Interpretations, writes, “And here we find the key to the whole book for, as we have seen, it is the individual non-conformists who are Bulgakov’s heroes, those who rebel – whether against God or man” (270). It is understandable that Bulgakov, having written this work in an oppressive surrounding that limited what he could and could not write, creates a hero who is in fact a rebel and other characters that are rebellious against those who stifle artistic freedom. In Vladimir Tumanov’s essay, Diabolus ex Machina: Bulgakov’s Modernist Devil, the author writes, “In this respect the modernist qualities of Bulgakov’s novel acquire a new dimension because Master i Margarita becomes a kind of artistic devil, fulfilli...