Abstract
This chapter explores the practical problems, creative opportunities, and ethical questions that translators encounter in a text as vastly global and multilingual as the Wake. It develops the first ever in-depth study of the most important Russian translations of the Wake: Henri Volokhonsky’s Wéı̆k Finneganov, Konstantin Belyaev’s “Anna Livia Pli͡urabell’,” and Andrey Rene’s brand new Na pomine Finneganov, making these largely unknown translations accessible to Anglophone scholars for the first time. The chapter considers the unique stylistic, theoretical, and practical implications of transposing the text into a wholly new alphabet (Cyrillic). The Russian translations are placed in context with their West European counterparts, framing their translatorial methodologies in relation to important projects such as the Joyce/Nino Frank Italian Anna Livia Plurabelle, Beckett and Perón’s Francophone Anna Lyvia Pluratself, Robbert-Jan Henkes and Erik Bindervoet’s Dutch Finnegans Wake, and (briefly) modern projects such as Philippe Lavergne’s French Finnegans Wake and Dai Congrong’s Chinese translation. This comparative analysis raises pertinent issues as to the theory and practice of translation that bear significance for Joyce and Wake scholarship, Slavonic studies, as well as the field of translation studies more broadly.
An earlier version of parts of this chapter were previously published as an article: Boriana Alexandrova, “Wakeful Translations: An Initiation into the Russian Translations of Finnegans Wake,” Joyce Studies Annual (2015): 129–67.
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Notes
- 1.
Leo Knuth, “The Finnegans Wake Translation Panel at Trieste,”James Joyce Quarterly 9 (1972): 268, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25486975; my emphasis.
- 2.
Rebecca L. Walkowitz, Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature, Literature Now (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 3–4.
- 3.
Umberto Eco, Experiences in Translation, trans. Alastair McEwen (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 108.
- 4.
Tim Conley, “‘Avec Hésitance’: Lavergne’s Footnotes and Translations of Finnegans Wake,” Scientia Traductionis, no. 12 (2012): 21, https://doi.org/10.5007/1980-4237.2012n12p20.
- 5.
Walkowitz, Born Translated, 6.
- 6.
Conley, “‘Avec Hésitance,’” 21.
- 7.
Katarzyna Bazarnik, Erik Bindervoet, and Robbert-Jan Henkes, “Hier Komt Iedereen: An Interview with Erik Bindervoet and Robbert Jan-Henkes, the Dutchifiers of Finnegans Wake” (Journal article manuscript, courtesy of Robbert-Jan Henkes and Erik Bindervoet, Warsaw, Poland, 2004), 2.
- 8.
James Joyce, Zelfportret van de kunstenaar als jonge man, trans. Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes (Amsterdam: Athenaeum, 2014); James Joyce, Dublinezen, trans. Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes (Amsterdam: Athenaeum, 2016).
- 9.
Bazarnik, Bindervoet, and Henkes, “Hier Komt Iedereen,” 6.
- 10.
An excellent overview of the history of Wake translations can be found in Patrick O’Neill, Impossible Joyce: Finnegans Wakes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013) and Jolanta Wawrzycka, “Translation,” in James Joyce in Context, ed. John McCourt (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 125–36. See also: Patrick O’Neill, Trilingual Joyce: The Anna Livia Variations (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2018).
- 11.
According to Patrick O’Neill, Dr. Kim’s translation of the Wake was actually completed as early as 2002 (incidentally, at the same time that Robbert-Jan Henkes and Erik Bindervoet published their complete Dutch translation), but it is possible that the original version has been revised for inclusion in the 2012 collection. “Joyce’s Complete Works Translated into Korean,” James Joyce Quarterly Blog, November 4, 2014, http://jjqblog.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/joyces-complete-works-translated-into-korean/#comment-760; Patrick O’Neill, Impossible Joyce: Finnegans Wakes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 21.
- 12.
For an overview of the background of Schenoni’s Italian translations of the Wake, see: Corinna del Greco Lobner, “‘Finnegans Wake, Libro Primo V-VII’ by James Joyce and Luigi Schenoni; ‘Talking of Joyce: Umberto Eco, Liberato Santo-Brienza’ by Umberto Eco and Liberato Santo-Brienza (Review),” James Joyce Quarterly 38, no. 3/4 (Spring-Summer 2001): 543–47. Terrinoni and Pedone’s complementary new translations are now available as: James Joyce, Finnegans Wake: Libro Terzo, Capitoli 1 e 2, trans. Enrico Terrinoni and Fabio Pedone (Milano: Mondadori, 2017); James Joyce, Finnegans Wake: Libro Terzo, Capitoli 3 e 4; Libro Quarto, trans. Enrico Terrinoni and Fabio Pedone (Milano: Mondadori, 2019).
- 13.
Dai Congrong, “A Chinese Translation of Finnegans Wake: The Work in Progress,” James Joyce Quarterly 47, no. 4 (Summer 2010): 582. See also: Jonathan Kaiman, “Finnegans Wake Becomes a Hit Book in China,” The Guardian, February 5, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/05/finnegans-wake-china-james-joyce-hit; Sheng Yun, “Short Cuts,” London Review of Books, April 3, 2014, http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n07/-shengyun/short-cuts.
- 14.
More broadly, it is also worth questioning whether the act of translation and translating a multilingual text like the Wake in particular, even necessitates a categorical separation between major and minor languages. The ethics of that kind of analytical move certainly calls for careful consideration, because the act of determining that one language outweighs another theoretically suggests that one voice, one narrative level, one culture or political mode, and so on also bears more significance or power than another. In other words, a translator’s methodological treatment of a text’s language(s) or register(s) influences the ethics of the text, and subsequently the gains and losses of the translation. As a side note on the political charge behind the major-minor distinction, the Dutch translators have said, albeit rather tongue-in-cheek, that Dutch and Polish Wake translators are “in the same boat, in the same bateau ivre” in that they are “representatives of the ‘little languages’ as they are called nowadays called (sic) in our economically unified Europe.” We might indeed be inclined to weigh the political, ethical, and artistic value of translating a major-language work into a “minor,” or “little,” language. Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes, “Finnegans Wake in Dutch, Dutch in Finnegans Wake, and What to Do with It” (Journal article manuscript, courtesy of Robbert-Jan Henkes and Erik Bindervoet, Cracow, Poland, July 2004), 1.
- 15.
Megan M. Quigley, “Justice for the ‘Illstarred Punster’: Samuel Beckett and Alfred Péron’s Revisions of ‘Anna Lyvia Pluratself,’” James Joyce Quarterly 41, no. 3 (April 1, 2004): 472, doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/25478072.
- 16.
Eugène Jolas qtd. in Quigley, “Justice for the ‘Illstarred Punster,’” 471. This belief is based on the fact that Joyce withdrew “Anna Lyvia Pluratself” when it was on the verge of publication in Bifur, and then proceeded to endorse another collaborative Frenchification by Philippe Soupault, Ivan Goll, Paul Léon, Adrienne Monnier, and Eugène Jolas, based on Beckett and Péron’s work.
- 17.
Letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver, March 4, 1931. James Joyce, Letters I, ed. Stuart Gilbert, 2nd ed. (New York: The Viking Press, 1966), 302.
- 18.
Quigley, “Justice for the ‘Illstarred Punster,’” 474.
- 19.
Most recently in O’Neill, Trilingual Joyce. See also: Daniel Ferrer and Jacques Aubert, “Anna Livia’s French Bifurcations,” in Transcultural Joyce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 179–86; Geert Lernout, The French Joyce (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990); Kim Allen, “Beckett, Joyce, and Anna Livia: The Plurability of Translating Finnegans Wake,” in Translation Perspectives XI: Beyond the Western Tradition, ed. Marilyn Gaddis Rose (Binghampton, NY: Center for Research Translation, 2000); W. V. Costanzo, “The French Version of Finnegans Wake: Translation, Adaptation, Recreation,” James Joyce Quarterly 9.2 (Winter 1971): 225–36.
- 20.
Quigley, “Justice for the ‘Illstarred Punster,’” 474.
- 21.
Allen, “Beckett, Joyce, and Anna Livia: The Plurability of Translating Finnegans Wake,” 430.
- 22.
Cited in Quigley, “Justice for the ‘Illstarred Punster,’” 471.
- 23.
By John Vandenbergh in 1969; Paul Claes and Mon Nys in 1994; and Henkes and Bindervoet in 2012.
- 24.
By Endre Gáspár in 1947; Miklós Szentkuthy in 1974; and András Kappanyos, Marianna Gula, Dávid Szolláth, and Gábor Kiss in 2010. For a comparative analysis of these texts, see Erika Mihálycsa, “Translators Up a (Plum) Tree: (Food) Notes to The Translation of the ‘Sandwich Passage’ into Hungarian and Romanian,”Scientia Traductionis, no. 8 (2010): 147–74.
- 25.
The first complete Russian translation of Ulysses appeared in 1989. It was initiated in 1970 by V. Khinkis, who invited S. Khoruzhii to join the project soon after. After Khinkis’s death in 1981, Khoruzhii completed the translation on his own and oversaw its first publication in the literary journal Inostrannaia literatura in 1989 and its second publication in book form by Respublika in 1993. In 2001, Khoruzhii published a fully revised new edition of the translation, this time taking full credit for its authorship. Ekaterina I͡U. Genieva, I͡U. A. Roznatovskai͡a, and I͡U. G. Fridshteĭn, eds., “Russkai͡a odissei͡a” Dzheĭmsa Dzhoĭsa (Moskva: Rudomino, 2005), 139–49; “‘Uliss’ Dzhoĭsa v Rossii,” James Joyce (1882–1941): James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, accessed June 16, 2015, http://www.james-joyce.ru/ulysses/info5.htm.
- 26.
Lawrence Venuti, The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 12.
- 27.
Robbert-Jan Henkes and Erik Bindervoet, “Why We Needed a Third Dutch Translation of Ulysses,”Scientia Traductionis, no. 12 (2012): 75.
- 28.
Venuti, The Scandals of Translation, 12.
- 29.
Henkes and Bindervoet, “Why We Needed a Third Dutch Translation of Ulysses,” 75.
- 30.
“The sticker that was handed out in 1969 to every buyer of the Dutch Ulysses, saying Ik heb Ulysses helemaal gelezen, ‘I read Ulysses from beginning to end,’ conveyed the enthusiasm at the time, but the wobbly result would have been better excerpted with a bonus sticker Maar ik snapte er geen hol van, ‘But I didn’t quite get it.’” Henkes and Bindervoet, “Why We Needed a Third Dutch Translation of Ulysses,” 75.
- 31.
Henkes and Bindervoet, “Why We Needed a Third Dutch Translation of Ulysses,” 75.
- 32.
Bazarnik, Bindervoet, and Henkes, “Hier Komt Iedereen,” 2.
- 33.
Bazarnik, Bindervoet, and Henkes, “Hier Komt Iedereen,” 3.
- 34.
Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes, “Twenty nine Methods to Translate Finnegans Wake, Developed in the Course of Seven Years” (Book section manuscript, courtesy of Robbert-Jan Henkes, Amsterdam, 2005).
- 35.
Bazarnik, Bindervoet, and Henkes, “Hier Komt Iedereen,” 3–4.
- 36.
Henkes and Bindervoet, “FW in Dutch, Dutch in FW,” 6. That said, I picked up the question of the Wake’s “central” language with Robbert-Jan Henkes at the James Joyce Italian Foundation conference in Rome on February 2–3, 2015, and this time, nearly 11 years after the above-quoted interview, he shared that his opinion had shifted since. Calling the Wake “basically an English book” is a theoretical oversimplification that he would no longer endorse, although it might also have been a necessary stepping stone in the process of actualising the translation: while a theoretically-minded reader must perpetually problematise such encompassing and universalising premises, the translator’s task demands a commitment to a limited number of linguistic and methodological choices. Every word choice and translatorial premise gets picked out of a proliferating number of possibilities that might be graspable in theory but are impossible to implement wholly and simultaneously in practice.
- 37.
Bazarnik, Bindervoet, and Henkes, “Hier Komt Iedereen,” 6.
- 38.
Bindervoet and Henkes, “FW in Dutch, Dutch in FW,” 8.
- 39.
Elena G. Fomenko, “Proba Perevoda Na Russkiĭ I͡azyk Finala ‘Pominok Po Finneganu’ Dz͡heĭmsa Dz͡hoĭsa,” Naukoviĭ Visnik Miz͡hnarodnogo Gumanitarnogo Universitetu [Науковий Вісник Міжнародного Гуманітарного Університету], Filologii͡a [Філологія], 2, no. 29 (2017): 126, http://www.vestnik-philology.mgu.od.ua/archive/v29/part_2/Filologi29_2.pdf#page=124; translation mine.
- 40.
Patrick O’Neill, Polyglot Joyce: Fictions of Translation (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 195.
- 41.
Qtd. in Quigley, “Justice for the ‘Illstarred Punster,’” 484n10.
- 42.
Jörg W. Rademacher, “Two Approaches to Finnegans Wake in German: (Mis)appropriation or Translation?,” James Joyce Quarterly 30.3 (Spring 1993): 484.
- 43.
James Joyce, Finnegans Wehg: Kainnäh ÜbelSätZung Des Wehrkess Fun Schämes Scheuss, trans. Dieter H. Stündel (Darmstadt: Häusser, 1993); James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, trans. Philippe Lavergne, Du monde entier (Paris: Gallimard, 1984).
- 44.
Cited in Rademacher, “Two Approaches to Finnegans Wake in German: (Mis)appropriation or Translation?,” 484.
- 45.
Jacques Derrida, “Two Words for Joyce,” in Post-Structuralist Joyce: Essays from the French, ed. Derek Attridge and Daniel Ferrer, trans. Geoff Bennington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 159n10.
- 46.
Conley, “‘Avec Hésitance,’” 23.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Conley, “‘Avec Hésitance,’” 24n5.
- 49.
Kaiman, “Finnegans Wake Becomes a Hit Book in China.”
- 50.
Andrey Rene, “Russian Finnegans Wake (e-Mail),” July 15, 2016.
- 51.
David W. Dunlap, “Landmark Status Given to Woolworth Building,” The New York Times, April 13, 1983, National ed. edition, sec. Section B, https://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/13/nyregion/landmark-status-given-to-woolworth-building.html.
- 52.
Mauri Furlan, ed., “James Joyce & Tradução,” Scientia Traductionis, no. 8 (2010), https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/scientia/issue/view/1590; Mauri Furlan, ed., “James Joyce & Tradução II,” Scientia Traductionis, no. 12 (2012), https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/scientia/issue/view/1951.
- 53.
Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli and Ira Torresi, eds., Joyce And/in Translation, Joyce Studies in Italy 10 (Roma: Bulzoni, 2007).
- 54.
Karen R. Lawrence, ed., Transcultural Joyce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
- 55.
Another notable inspiration for O’Neill, particularly in terms of comparative methodology, appears to have been Fritz Senn’s Joyce’s Dislocutions, ed. Jean Paul Riquelme (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984). Senn’s influence was likely to also have set a precedent for O’Neill’s earlier study of Joyce translations, which was not limited to Finnegans Wake: Patrick O’Neill, Polyglot Joyce: Fictions of Translation (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2005).
- 56.
O’Neill, Impossible Joyce, 33.
- 57.
For an extensive (although inexhaustive) list of Russophone critical engagements with, and translations of, Joyce’s works, see: Ekaterina I͡U. Genieva, I͡U. A. Roznatovskai͡a, and I͡U. G. Fridshteĭn, eds., “Russkai͡a odissei͡a” Dzheĭmsa Dzhoĭsa (Moskva: Rudomino, 2005), 139–279.
- 58.
Genieva et al., Russkai͡a odissei͡a, 120.
- 59.
Genieva et al., Russkai͡a odissei͡a, 108.
- 60.
Genieva et al., Russkai͡a odissei͡a, 109.
- 61.
For an English translation of Eisenstein’s theorisation of the Wakean portmanteau, see: Sergei M. Eisenstein, “Word and Image,” in The Film Sense, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1975), 1–65.
- 62.
It was made available as a publication two years later. Fomenko, Lingvotipologicheskoe v idiostile Dzheĭmsa Dzhoĭsa (PhD diss., Belgorod, 2006), http://dissertacii.com/116043. Available to read in Russian at http://www.james-joyce.ru/articles/lingvotipologicheskoe-v-idiosile-joysa.htm.
- 63.
Elena G. Fomenko, “Lingvostilisticheskie Aspekty Perevoda ‘Pominok Po Finneganu’ Dzheĭmsa Dzhoĭsa [Лингвостилистические Аспекты Перевода «Поминок По Финнегану» Джеймса Джойса],” in Teorii͡a i Praktika Perevoda i Professional’noĭ Podgotovki Perevodchikov [Теория и Практика Перевода и Профессиональной Подготовки Переводчиков] (Perm’: PGTU, 2006), 247–54.
- 64.
Rene has begun his translation of Book IV but so far from FW 619 onwards. See http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/415.shtml.
- 65.
Originally published in Zapadnoevropeĭskai͡a Poezii͡a XX Veka (Moskva: Khudozhestvennai͡a literatura, 1977) and currently available online via the online journal Vek perevoda: Andrey Sergeev, “Ballada O Khukho O’V’orttkke (Zloslovie Khosti Po Povodu Grekhopadenii͡a Khamfri Irvikera),” Vek Perevoda, accessed June 6, 2016, http://www.vekperevoda.com/1930/sergeev.htm.
- 66.
The most recent version of this text is now available as part of Volokhonsky’s collected works: Henri Volokhonsky, “Wéĭk Finneganov: opyty otryvochnogo perelozhenii͡a rossiĭskoi͡u azbukoĭ,” in Sobranie proizvedeniĭ: perevody i komentarii, ed. Illy Kukui͡a, vol. 3, 3 vols. (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012), 81–136. However, it was written between 1995 and 2000, in which time it was published serially and eventually in book form. The translation has a significant writing and publication history, which I discuss in further detail below.
- 67.
O’Neill erroneously cites the scope of Wéĭk Finneganov as FW 3–168, which would be the end of Book I, Chapter 6, as does E. G. Fomenko, who reports that Volokhonsky translated “the six opening parts of the text.” However, Volokhonsky’s 2000 Kolonna edition also included the start of the “Shem the Penman” chapter (I.7), whilst the 2012 edition in his Collected Works included fragments from I.8 and III.3. O’Neill, Impossible Joyce, 20; Fomenko, “Proba perevoda na russkiĭ i͡azyk finala ‘Pominok po Finneganu’ Dz͡heĭmsa Dz͡hoĭsa,” in Naukoviĭ visnik Miz͡hnarodnogo gumanitarnogo universitetu, Filologii͡a 29 (2017): 124.
- 68.
Konstantin Belyaev, “Pominki po Finneganu: Apologii͡a perevoda,” Soi͡uz Pisateleĭ, 2000, http://sp-issues.narod.ru/2/index.htm.
- 69.
James Joyce, Stikhotvorenii͡a, ed. G. Kruzhkov (Moskva: Raduga, 2003). It is worth noting that three of these translators were working on the Wake at the same time: although Smirnov’s “Tri kvarka” only appeared in print in 2003, his translation was done in 1999, concurrently with Belyaev’s “Anna Livia Plurabelle” and at a time when Volokhonsky had just published his Wake transposition in serial form in the Russian literary journal Mitin.
- 70.
Fomenko, “Proba Perevoda ‘Pominok Po Finneganu.’”
- 71.
Andrey Rene and James Joyce, Na pomine Finneganov, 8 vols. (Izdatel’skie reshenii͡a, 2018). Rene’s translatorial process, copious notes, digital publications, and drafts-in-progress are also catalogued on his website at http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/.
- 72.
Andrey Rene, “Ot perevodchika [От переводчика], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/intro.shtml.
- 73.
Patrick O’Neill, “Predislovie ‘Na Pomine Finneganov’ [Предисловие ‘На Помине Финнеганов’]: Introduction,” Samizdat, March 18, 2016, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/intro.shtml#intro2.
- 74.
Excepting my earlier article, “An Initiation into the Russian Translations of Finnegans Wake” in Joyce Studies Annual (2015). Henri Volokhonsky’s Wéĭk Finneganov has also occasionally been mentioned in Russophone interviews and reviews, but all popular sources of this kind refer to the work only superficially. The most detailed scholarly analysis of Wéĭk Finneganov available appears in a doctoral dissertation by Anton Mosyagin, although Mosyagin’s work has not been published to date and, while most of the dissertation is accessible via his (no longer updated) personal website, the particular chapter dealing with Volokhonsky is no longer accessible. A postgraduate paper by Natalia Lameko at Belarusian State University makes a brief comparative mention of Volokhonsky and Belyaev’s translatorial engagements with Joyce, although this intervention does not offer any detailed analysis of the translations either. Elena G. Fomenko has recently taken up the task of studying the Wake in its original and exploring practice-led methods of translating it. She has not as of yet published any studies of the existing Russian translations, however. Most recently, Evgeniya A. Naugolnykh published a brief analysis of the Wake in dialogue with its Russian translations in Evgeniya A. Naugolnykh, “‘Pominki po Finneganu’ v razreze russkogo i͡azyka: Spetsifika deformatsii i interpretatsii” (‘Finnegans Wake’ in Russian: Language Deformation and Translation Challenges/Interpretation), Vestnik PNIPU. Problemy iazykoznaniia i pedagogiki no. 1 (2018): 32–41. See also: Anton Mosyagin, “Mezh”i͡azykovai͡a omonimii͡a kak problema transformatsii avtorskoĭ kartiny mira pri perevode” (Interlingual Homonymy as a Problem in the Translational Transformation of the Authorial Worldview) (PhD diss., University of A. M. Gorky, 1999), http://mosyagin.narod.ru/dip/d_i.htm; Natalia Lameko, “Metamorfoza kak element mifopoétiki Dzheĭmsa Dzhoĭsa” (Metamorphosis as an Element of James Joyce’s Mythopoetics) (Belarusian State University, 2014), http://elib.bsu.by/handle/123456789/103445.
- 75.
This is Rene’s spelling, but what he is referring to here are textual “motifs,” such as “Dear Dirty Dublin” or the thunderwords, which are central to his translatorial methodology as I will show.
- 76.
Andrey Rene, personal e-mail to author, July 15, 2016.
- 77.
Fomenko, “Proba Perevoda ‘Pominok Po Finneganu,’” 124.
- 78.
Jolanta Wawrzycka and Katarzyna Bazarnik have been among the most prolific Joyceans writing on the Slavic (chiefly Polish) Wakes in English in recent years.
- 79.
O’Neill, Impossible Joyce, 14–22.
- 80.
David Remnick, “The Translation Wars,” The New Yorker, November 7, 2005, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/11/07/the-translation-wars.
- 81.
Henri Volokhonsky, Sobranie proizvedeniĭ: perevody i komentarii, ed. Illy Kukui͡a, vol. 3, 3 vols. (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012).
- 82.
Henri Volokhonsky and James Joyce, Wéĭk Finneganov: opyty otryvochnogo perelozhenii͡a rossiĭskoi͡u azbukoĭ (Tver: Kolonna Publications, 2000).
- 83.
“Vavilon: Chto éto takoe?,” Vavilon, 1997, http://www.vavilon.ru/xplain.html. Vavilon’s presentation more closely resembles the way in which Volokhonsky’s text presumably appeared in serial form in Mitin in the late 1990s, as it breaks down the work into shorter, titled excerpts, occasionally (though not always) identified by the page ranges of their equivalents in Joyce’s text and always by the full citation details of the respective Mitin issue where they were originally published. Vavilon’s presentation thus helps the reader get a sense of the chronology of Volokhonsky’s process and adds a further quirk of the transposition by identifying each section with a title, which is purely of Volokhonsky’s (or perhaps the editors’) invention. For example, the transposition based on the Mamafesta at FW 104.1–107.7 is named simply “Anna”; the section based on “Tap and pat and tapatagain…down Keysars Lane. (Trite!)” (FW 58.23–61.27) is identified as “Pokazanii͡a” (“The Testimonies,” or “Testimony”); the Prankquean becomes “Oslushnitsa” (“Prankster” or “Mischief,” conjugated as a feminine noun and implying a touch of infantilism as the word “oslushnitsa” is usually used to refer to a naughty child). Somewhat less easily explained is the choice to call the excerpt from “So there you are now there they were, when all was over again…by the waters of babalong” (FW 94.23–103.11) “Oni i ona”: “They and She.” And the section at FW 79.14–80.19, “Ladies did not disdain those pagan ironed times…So pass the pick for child sake! O men!” comes to be affectionately known as “Kati͡a,” that is the Russian name for “Kate.”
- 84.
“Arkhiv: Mitin zhurnal v 1985–2001 godakh,” Izdatel’stvo Kolonna publications, Mitin zhurnal, 2005, http://kolonna.mitin.com/archive.php.
- 85.
O’Neill, Impossible Joyce, 28.
- 86.
The plural form of the singular, masculine adjective “Finneganov” would be “Finneganovy.”
- 87.
Dmitry Volchek, “Re: Vopros o ‘Wéĭka Finneganova,’ perelozhenie A. Volokhonskogo,” November 4, 2014.
- 88.
As several other known translations do, such as the trilingual edition of Anna Livia Plurabelle edited by Rosa Maria Bollettieri Bosinelli, Luigi Schenoni’s incomplete two-volume Italian translation, or the Dutch Finnegans Wake by Robbert-Jan Henkes and Erik Bindervoet, which even matches the original in page count. Joyce, Anna Livia Plurabelle nella traduzione; James Joyce, Finnegans Wake: Libro primo V-VII, trans. Luigi Schenoni (Milano: Mondadori, 2001); James. Joyce, Finnegans Wake: Libro secondo, III-IV, trans. Luigi Schenoni (Milano: Mondadori, 2011); Joyce, Finnegans Wake [Dutch Trans.].
- 89.
Volokhonsky, Collected Works, 3:83.
- 90.
For ease and clarity, parenthetical references to Volokhonsky’s Wéĭk Finneganov throughout this chapter will cite the latest edition published in his Collected Works as WF plus page and line numbers, paralleling the referencing convention for citing Joyce’s 1939 text. So page 83, line 10 of Volokhonsky’s translation will be cited as WF 83.10.
- 91.
Preface to Henri Volokhonsky, “Wéĭk Finneganov: opyty otryvochnogo perelozhenii͡a rossiĭskoi͡u azbukoĭ,” in Sobranie proizvedeniĭ: perevody i komentarii, ed. Illy Kukui͡a, vol. 3 (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012), 83. My translation.
- 92.
These are the fragments included in Volokhonsky’s Collected Works, published in 2012. However, neither III.3 nor I.8, the ALP chapter, were present in the 2000 Kolonna edition, which suggests Volokhonsky may have written them in the years leading up to the publication of his Collected Works. He was asked about ALP in a 2003 interview by Dmitry Volchek, “Stikhi i pesni Anri Volokhonskogo,” July 21, 2003, http://www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/24200160.html. His response to that was evasive but it suggests that he did not have a translation of I.8 at that time. III.3 is not mentioned in any available interviews or criticism on his writing.
- 93.
Volokhonsky, Preface to “Wéĭk Finneganov” in Collected Works, 83.
- 94.
For a close reading of the opening paragraphs of Volokhonsky’s translation, see Boriana Alexandrova, “Wakeful Translations: An Initiation into the Russian Translations of Finnegans Wake,” Joyce Studies Annual, 2015, 141–46.
- 95.
The use of slashes (/) in this instance is mine. All quotations from Volokhonsky’s, Belyaev’s, and Rene’s Wake translations will be quoted in their original Cyrillic and accompanied by transliterations. My transliterations generally follow the Russian Romanization conventions of the Library of Congress, which can be found at https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/russian.pdf. However, it is crucial to note that the LoC Romanization table draws a strictly visual equivalence between Roman and Cyrillic symbols, and as such it does not account for the phonological variations that might occur in certain symbol combinations in the Russian language. Because the phonological manoeuvres of Joyce’s multilingual techniques are so complex and often carry their own layers of meaning independently of the visual, my transliterations occasionally depart from the standard Romanization conventions in order to approximate the phonology of the translations as closely as possible. In the present instance, I have wholly adhered to the LoC conventions because the translator does not make notable use of Joyce’s phonology here. However, readers attempting to sound out the transliteration may wish to note that in Russian, the letter o is pronounced as a curt ó when stressed and as a when unstressed. Thus the vowel composition of the thunderword will phonologically change depending on how the reader chooses to rhythmicise their pronunciation, and some of the o’s could be opened up into a’s. It is also worth noting that there is no equivalent for w in Cyrillic, and indeed, w sounds differently in English depending on its relative position to other characters: for example, compare water and dew. Where w sounds like wɔ as in water, the Cyrillic transliteration will convey it as u, which sounds like ʊ (as in put or foot); where w sounds like juː as in dew, it would be transliterated as ͡iu to match the Cyrillic ю.
- 96.
Andrey Rene, Na Pominne Finnegannov [На Поминне Финнеганнов] I.1, vol. 1 (Izdatel’skie resheniia, 2018), 17.12.
- 97.
Rene, Na pominne Finneganov I.1, 17.10. Russophone readers may also be interested in having a look at Rene’s digital version of this section at http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/111.shtml, where in the margins he provides references to the equivalent page and line numbers of Joyce’s 1939 original. Elucidations for page 4 are also provided in Russian in a hyperlinked annotation section at http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/111.shtml#004c.
- 98.
Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman (London: Flamingo, 1992), 88.
- 99.
Eisenstein, “Word and Image,” 17.
- 100.
Gösta Werner and Erik Gunnemark, “James Joyce and Sergej Eisenstein,” James Joyce Quarterly 27, no. 3 (Spring 1990): 491–507; Emily Tall, “Eisenstein on Joyce: Sergei Eisenstein’s Lecture on James Joyce at the State Institute of Cinematography,” James Joyce Quarterly 24, no. 2 (Winter 1987): 133–42.
- 101.
Eisenstein, “Word and Image,” 15.
- 102.
See, for example, Thomas L. Burkdall, Joycean Frames: Film and the Fiction of James Joyce (New York: Routledge, 2001); Christopher Butler, “Joyce the Modernist,” in The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce, ed. Derek Attridge, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 67–86.
- 103.
See my discussion of “micro” and “macro” multilingual phonologies under “The peculiar phonology of Wakese” in Chap. 2.
- 104.
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, ed. Robbert-Jan Henkes, Erik Bindervoet, and Finn Fordham (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2012), xxxv.
- 105.
“homelette” with an h also curiously sounds like umlaut, connoting German.
- 106.
Kenneth James, Escoffier: The King of Chefs (London and New York: Hambledon and London, 2002), 197.
- 107.
For this transliteration, I have adhered to the LoC Romanization table but, due to the phonological shifts, the LoC system cannot accommodate as indicated earlier, I have also provided phonological transcriptions of the affected words in square brackets. In this instance, “ego” (his) should be pronounced “yevo” because in Russian a г/g followed by a vowel changes to в/v. The ё in “pridёtsi͡a” (will have to be, you will have to) is pronounced yó.
- 108.
“Good, mein leber!” (Good, my liver!) could also be read as an inversion of “mein lieber Gott” (my good God) as in German gut (good) sounds similar to Gott (God). If the reader is in the mood to play, the “liver” in “Good/God, my liver” could also be read as the one performing the action of living: “God, you are the liver of my life,” that is, “the one who lives my life.” And this could be read as a pang of pain: “God! My liver!” which must hurt from too much drinking and not enough breakfasting on “homelettes.”
- 109.
James, Escoffier: The King of Chefs, 125–40.
- 110.
In the same interview, Volokhonsky was also asked why he had not yet attempted to translate the famous “Anna Livia Plurabelle” chapter (FW I.8). Although he did attempt it years later, in time to publish a fragment of it in the 2012 Collected Works version of WF, at this time he offers only a brief reply: “the difficulty lies in that most of the meaningful words in this excerpt present as names of rivers. Translating this is incredibly difficult.” Dmitry Volchek, “Stikhi i pesni Anri Volokhonskogo,” July 21, 2003, http://www.svoboda.org/content/transcript/24200160.html.
- 111.
“Konstantin Belyaev (Contributor’s page),” Soi͡uz Pisateleĭ, accessed December 12, 2014, http://sp-issues.narod.ru/belyaev/index.htm.
- 112.
Bazarnik, Bindervoet, and Henkes, “Hier Komt Iedereen,” 5.
- 113.
Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes, Finnegancyclopedie (Amsterdam: Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 2005).
- 114.
Belyaev, “Apologia,” n2.
- 115.
Belyaev, “Apologia,” 3.
- 116.
The following editions are listed in this order: 1. James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (London: Penguin Books, 1992); 2. Bernard Benstock, Joyce-again’s Wake: An Analysis of “Finnegans Wake” (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965); 3. Vincent John Cheng, Shakespeare and Joyce: A Study of “Finnegans Wake” (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1984); 4. Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (Oxford, New York, Tokyo, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1983); 5. Adaline Glasheen, Third Census of “Finnegans Wake” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); 6. Clive Hart, A Concordance of “Finnegans Wake” (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1963); 7. Roland McHugh, Annotations to “Finnegans Wake” (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); 8. William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to “Finnegans Wake” (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969). Each entry is annotated with a brief summary of the work’s content and how it has been used in the making of Belyaev’s translation. Belyaev’s elucidations also include a number of references to Joyce’s Ulysses, which is cited elsewhere in this appendix as the 1993 Russian translation by Victor Hinkiss and Sergey Horouzhyi: Dzheĭms Dzhoĭs, Uliss, trans. Victor Hinkiss and Sergey Horouzhyi (Moskva: Respublika, 1993). Konstantin Belyaev, “Sut’ & forma,” Soi͡uz Pisateleĭ, 2000, http://sp-issues.narod.ru/2/index.htm.
- 117.
Belyaev, “Apologia,” n1. All translations from Russian are mine unless otherwise indicated. The word “obscure” here stands in for Belyaev’s “онепонятить/oneponi͡atit’,” which can literally be read as “to strip of meaning” as well as “to render [something] incomprehensible.” The semantic tension borne by the Russian “oneponi͡atit”’ is significant (and quite Joycean to boot) in that it carries the action of semantic impoverishment and positive stylisation: the translator speaks of a language that is both deprived of meaning and swelling with creative ambiguity.
- 118.
Bazarnik, Bindervoet, and Henkes, “Hier Komt Iedereen,” 7.
- 119.
I would also venture to guess that, at the time when the early translations were being produced (approximately concurrently: Volokhonsky reportedly laboured over Wéĭk Finneganov between 1995 and 2000, and Belyaev dates his efforts at 1996–97 and 2000), the younger author’s command of English may have been somewhat more advanced. In fact, Finnegans Wake appears to be Volokhonsky’s sole attempt at translating English according to Mitin Journal’s bibliography of his works and his Collected Works. “Henri Volokhonsky: Bibliografii͡a tvorchestva,” Online journal, Mitin Journal, accessed December 18, 2014, http://www.mitin.com/people/volohon/.
- 120.
Belyaev, “Substance & Form,” elucidation 215.
- 121.
“Петтифиба—??? Кто таков?”/“Pettifiba—??? Kto takov?.”
- 122.
It is likely that Belyaev has found names/phrases like “Pettyfib’s Powder” difficult to understand and translate because the portmanteau “pettyfib” contains the culturally specific colloquialism “fib,” whose meaning might be obvious to native Anglophone readers (hence McHugh does not elucidate it) but can easily perplex non-native Anglophones like this translator. Clearly, non-native English readers are not the target audience of McHugh’s Annotations as he rarely elucidates Wakese that sufficiently (also a relative notion) approximates English. This touches on the issue of how a readership can and does shape the form, style, presentation, language, and other fundamental characteristics of a text. Inevitably authors, translators, and/or editors establish a target audience that becomes implicit in their strategies of transposition and textual presentation, which then has the capacity to betray some cultural, or perhaps even ideological or political, bias.
- 123.
David Hempton, “Walker, John,” ed. S. J. Connolly, The Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
- 124.
Belyaev, “Substance & Form,” elucidation 81.
- 125.
Adaline Glasheen, Third Census of “Finnegans Wake” (University of California Press, 1977), http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/JoyceColl.GlasheenFinnegans.
- 126.
That said, the Russian equivalent of John, “Yoan,” sounds suggestively similar to Joyce’s Yawn. This observation still does not pertain to Belyaev’s text because, in АЛП, “Johnny” is transcribed to be pronounced as “Johnny” and not “Yonni”; however, this does point to the creative possibilities of the comparative approach to Wake translations.
- 127.
As previously mentioned, very few modern languages use the Cyrillic alphabet, which appears to bear some influence on the translator’s practice. Translators working in variations of the Roman alphabet can afford far more numerous and flexible inter-lingual puns and formulations (i.e. the phoneme sh can be spelled variously as sch, ch [as in the French chéri], š, sc [as in the Italian scienza], and so on), whereas Cyrillic can afford inter-lingual slippages only between a small number of Slavic languages (Russian, Bulgarian, and partly Macedonian).
- 128.
Joyce’s text, as quoted here, reflects how it appears in the “Apologia.” Probably by accident, he appears to have omitted a few commas, as the 1939 text reads: “a guilty goldeny bellows, below me blow me, for Ida Ida and a hushaby rocker, Elletrouvetout, for Who-is-silvier — Where-is-he?” (FW 211.34–36). The line breaks are not Belyaev’s but mine, used to show the verbal parallels between translation and original.
- 129.
Because phonology constitutes the focus of my analysis of this passage, my transliteration departs from the LoC Romanization rules and instead prioritises sound over convention.
- 130.
Belyaev, “Substance & Form,” elucidation 227.
- 131.
Indeed, when I attempted to ask Rene this in interview, he evaded the question. He evaded several of my questions, particularly those concerning his own background or the history of his work, in an effort to protect his personal privacy, which I have done my best to respect here.
- 132.
Alexandrova, “Wakeful Translations.”
- 133.
Andrey Rene, “Na pomine Finneganov [На помине Финнеганов], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019,http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/contents.shtml.
- 134.
Andrey Rene, Na pomine Finneganov, 8 vols. (Izdatel’skie reshenii͡a, 2018). The multivolume edition includes copious notes on each chapter at the end of each respective volume. Rene has also issued a single-volume print edition of his translation of Book I, but this does not include annotations: Na pomine Finneganov: Kniga 1, with an introduction by Patrick O’Neill (Izdatel’skie reshenii͡a, 2018).
- 135.
That curious reader may be interested in reviewing Rene’s online list of corrections to the print version: Andrey Rene, “Ispravlenii͡a pervogo izdanii͡a ‘Na pomine Finneganov’ [Исправления первого издания ‘На помине Финнеганов’], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/misprints.shtml. First-draft versions of parts of the translation are available in Russian at: http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/index_14.shtml. Rene has also hidden a finished “first version” (more fleshed out than the “first draft,” but earlier than the perpetually updated digital version on his website), which the reader can access by adding a 0 (zero) at the end of the URL of any section of the current digital draft. For example, the first page of I.1 can be found at samlib.ru/r/rene_a/1110.shtml#003.01; and a “first version” of this can be found at samlib.ru/r/rene_a/1110.shtml#003.010. See Rene’s explanation of how this works (in Russian) at http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/lit.shtml. Rene further explained to me in an e-mail that, as part of his continuous updates of his motif tables, he plans to add a new table “on Wales/Welsh soon—this means several files of earlier chapters will be updated (and have a sign UPD). […] These things do not find a way to a printed version, so earlier chapters may say ‘Swift [72]’ (appears 72 times) and later ones—[75] e.g.—These numbers show the scale and the importance of the motive and such corrections fall within the margin of error usually.” He added that he is thinking about “mak[ing] Chap. 2 more languages-intense as the current Book 2, but this then will be named ‘second edition’ (if I ever do it).” Andrey Rene, “Book Chapter,” July 14, 2019.
- 136.
Andrey Rene, “Deĭstvui͡ushchie litsa ‘Na pomine Finneganov’ [Действующие лица ‘На помине Финнеганов’], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/sigla.shtml.
- 137.
Andrey Rene, “Motivy ‘Na pomine Finneganov’ [Мотивы ‘На помине Финнеганов’], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/_motives.shtml.
- 138.
Andrey Rene, “Klaster motivov: Pis’mo [Кластер мотивов: Письмо], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/_motives.shtml#in-letter.
- 139.
Andrey Rene, “Pis’mo ‘Na pomine Finneganov’ [Письмо ‘На помине Финнеганов’], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/_letter.shtml.
- 140.
See the drop-down menu next to “Motifs,” scrolling down to “Text of the letter” at http://fweet.org/pages/fw_srch.php.
- 141.
Andrey Rene, “O perevode ‘Na pomine Finneganov’: Izhodnye teksty [О переводе ‘На помине Финнеганов’: Исходные тексты], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019,http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/lit.shtml.
- 142.
Rene, “Ot perevodchika”; my translation.
- 143.
Andrey Rene, “Printsipy perevoda: Sistema motivov [Принципы перевода: Система мотивов], Digital Version,” Samizdat, March 31, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/lit.shtml.
- 144.
Rene, “Ot perevodchika”; my translation.
- 145.
Juliette Taylor, “Foreign Music: Linguistic Estrangement in ‘Proteus’ and ‘Sirens,’” James Joyce Quarterly 41 (2004): 409, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25478068.
- 146.
Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 12.
- 147.
Rene, “Predislovie: Ot perevodchika,” http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/intro.shtml#intro3; my translation.
- 148.
This new Italian translation was made to complement and complete, rather than replace, the translation Luigi Schenoni started in the 1980s. For a closer look at Terrinoni and Pedone’s approach to Joyce’s multilingual technique, see Franca Ruggieri, “Finnegans Wake Libro Terzo, Capitoli 1 e 2 (Finnegans Wake III, 1–2), by James Joyce (Review),” James Joyce Quarterly 52, no. 3–4 (Spring-Summer 2015): 730–33; For a closer look at Schenoni’s translations, see del Greco Lobner, “Finnegans Wake, Libro Primo V-VII by James Joyce and Luigi Schenoni; ‘Talking of Joyce: Umberto Eco, Liberato Santo-Brienza’ by Umberto Eco and Liberato Santo-Brienza (Review).”
- 149.
Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes, “Finnegans Wake in Dutch, Dutch in Finnegans Wake, and What to Do with It” (Journal article manuscript, courtesy of Robbert-Jan Henkes and Erik Bindervoet, July 2004), 8.
- 150.
Rene, “Ot perevodchika.”
- 151.
Some examples can be found via a FWEET search: type in “strawberry beds” in the search engine at http://fweet.org/pages/fw_srch.php and tick the options for “Ignore case,” “Ignore accent,” “Regular expression,” “Highlight matches,” “Show FW text,” “Get following,” “Search in Fweet elucidations,” “Search in Finnegans Wake text,” and “Also search related shorthands.”
- 152.
Andrey Rene, “Printsipy perevoda: Perevod imёn sobstvennykh [Перевод имён собственных], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/lit.shtml.
- 153.
For Rene’s translations of this and other recurrences of the motif, see Andrey Rene, “Motiv: Strawberry Beds,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/strawberry_beds.shtml.
- 154.
Andrey Rene, “Na pomine Finneganov [На помине Финнеганов], Digital Version,” Samizdat, June 5, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/182.shtml#207.10.
- 155.
Andrey Rene, “I͡azyki PF [Языки ПФ], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/lit.shtml#lang. The title of this section translates to “The languages of FW.” The potentially confusing abbreviation PF is a shorthand for one of the many names by which the Wake is known in Russian, in this case Pominki Finnegana (The wake of Finnegan).
- 156.
Rene, “Motivy.”
- 157.
I am not aware of a strict Anglophone equivalent to this, save for (tangentially) Cockney Rhyming Slang, but the vorovskiĭ dialect (also known as the ugolovnyĭ or “criminal” dialect) is a cryptic Slavonic slang developed and used by diverse outlaw communities across Russian-speaking regions as a language of resistance against law enforcement. Vorovskiĭ is also known as feni, blatnai͡a muzyka (swamp music), or argot (as coined by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables) and it is, indeed, hardly a monolithic entity. Dubyagin et al. describe it as “a means of communication [belonging to] the part of society that positions itself against a country’s socially accepted laws and moral norms. […] a weapon against those who do not know it.” Its origins in Russia have been traced back to the seventeenth century, chiefly through the work of nineteenth-century Russian travel writer and anthropologist P. I. Mel’nikov, but it likely emerged prior to that and is vastly regionally and historically variable. Yu. P. Dubyagin et al., Tolkovyĭ slovar’ ugolovnykh zhargonov (A dictionary of criminal dialects) (Moscow: Inter-OMNIS & ROMOS, 1991), 3–6.
- 158.
The Russian Cyrillic alphabet has undergone multiple “reformations” over the course of its history, whereby ruling bodies, from Peter the Great in the late seventeenth-early eighteenth century to the emerging communist regime following the 1917 Russian Revolution, have periodically revised the use of Old Cyrillic and Roman symbols in Russian script, with different characters becoming obsolete or redrawn at different points of the language’s history. As there have been several recorded “reformations” of the Russian alphabet since the seventeenth century, there is no fixed point in time that demarcates “pre-reformation” from “post-reformation” script. However, Rene’s usage of “pre-reformation” spelling is sourced from P. Smirnovkiĭ’s Uchebnik russkoĭ grammatiki (Textbook of Russian Grammar) published in 1899. This moment in Russian philological scholarship is also significantly documented in the 1873–1885 consolidation of Yakov Karlovich Grot’s Filologitcheskie razyskanii͡a (Philological research), whose fourth edition, published as part of his collected works in 1899, is now also digitally available through the Russian State Library: Yakov Karlovich Grot, Filologitcheskie Razyskanii͡a, 4th ed. (Saint Petersburg: Tipografii͡a Ministerstva Putei Soobshchenii͡a, 1899), https://dlib.rsl.ru/viewer/01003962614#. See also: P. Smirnovskiĭ, Uchebnik Russkoĭ Grammatiki II: Elementarnyĭ Sintaksis, vol. 2 (Moscow: Tipografii͡a Torgovago Doma, 1899), https://imwerden.de/pdf/smirnovsky_syntaxis_1899.pdf.
- 159.
Andrey Rene, “I͡azyki perevoda [Языки перевода], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/lit.shtml#lang2.
- 160.
For example, the Swahili passage from I.8 (FW 198), which I close-read in Chap.3, does not retain the Swahili references in Rene’s rendition of the chapter, but he does sustain poetic effects such as repetition, alliteration, internal rhyming, rhythmical patterning, and the onomatopoeic renderings of river waters leaping and splashing around. See Rene, NPF 198.01–36 at http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/181.shtml. He also discusses his handling of “how are you today, my darksir?” in his note on the translation, indicating that, instead of Joyce’s original use of languages such as French, Irish, Greek, or Spanish, the translation conveys the motif through “the entire spectrum of usable Cyrillic languages without restriction.” Andrey Rene, “I͡azyki originala [Языки оригинала], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/lit.shtml#lang.
- 161.
From Rene’s annotation to NPF 003, available at http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/111.shtml#003c under “прим. к стр. 003” (notes to p. 003) under “{Падение Финнегана}”/“{Padenie Finnegana}.”
- 162.
See under “{Падение Финнегана}”/“{Padenie Finnegana}” at http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/111.shtml.
- 163.
The transliteration of Rene’s thunderword here follows the Library of Congress’ Romanization tables for both Russian and Bulgarian, given the incorporation of the Bulgarian “гръм”/“grŭm” where the character ъ (Romanized ŭ) is a vowel pronounced similarly to the u in pun. The same character exists in Russian but there functions merely as a silent “hard sign,” so it is not pronounced and therefore does not have an equivalent in the Russian Romanization table. See “Bulgarian Romanization Table” (Library of Congress), accessed June 17, 2019, https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/bulgarian.pdf; “Russian Romanization Table” (Library of Congress), accessed June 17, 2019, https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/russian.pdf.
- 164.
Vincent Deane, “The Prankquean and the Localization of Legend,” Dublin James Joyce Journal, no. 3 (2010): 30–50, https://doi.org/10.1353/djj.2009.0013.
- 165.
This is by FWEET’s count: perkons (Lettish for thunder); kurun (Breton for thunder); barg (Persian for thunder); griauja (Lithuanian for “it thunders”); gök gürliy (Turkish for “thundering sky”); grom gremit (Russian for “thunder thunders”); guntur (Malay for thunder); thruma (Icelandic for thunder, and also a phonological reference to “trauma”); thuna (Romanian for thunder); radi (Swahili for thunder); dundilis (Lithuanian dialect for thunder); bumulloj (Albanian for thunder); ukkonen (Finnish for thunder). See FWEET’s elucidations to the second thunderword at https://bit.ly/2Rm62v7.
- 166.
The transliteration conventions get more complex as the translation goes on, and in this instance I have had to rely on two additional LoC Romanization tables, in addition to the Russian and Bulgarian tables previously referenced: “Serbian Romanization Table” (Library of Congress), accessed June 17, 2019, https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/serbian.pdf; “Ukrainian Romanization Table” (Library of Congress), accessed June 17, 2019, https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/ukrainia.pdf.
- 167.
For example, through the lisping little language of the Prankquean’s recurrent riddle-become-catchphrase “why do I am alook alike a poss of porter pease?” (FW 21.18–19), which subsequently recurs as “two” and “three poss of porter pease” (FW 22.5–6; 22.29–30), alongside various other motifs and phonological signatures associated with wet, watery, tinkling mother and daughter woven all throughout the passage.
- 168.
Russophone readers may access Rene’s annotations to NPF 023 at http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/114.shtml#023-c.
- 169.
HCE, for example, is reimagined as ГЗВ/GZV: Goremyka Zakutila Vertoukhov (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, where “Vertoukhov” means “Earwicker” and is perpetually punned upon throughout Na pomine Finneganov); or Guli͡ai͡ut Zdes’ Vsi͡akie (literally “Stroll Here All,” Rene’s solution to Here Comes Everybody). For a list of Rene’s solutions to the various occurrences of HCE’s initials in the translation so far, see Andrey Rene, “Motiv: HCE, Perevod: GZV [Мотив: HCE, Перевод: ГЗВ],” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/hce.shtml.
- 170.
Andrey Rene, “Printsipy perevoda: Perevod imёn, ne i͡avli͡ayushchikhsi͡a motivami [Перевод имён, не являющихся мотивами], Digital Version,” Samizdat, May 19, 2019, http://samlib.ru/r/rene_a/lit.shtml#example.
- 171.
Joyce, Portrait, 205.
- 172.
Alexandrova, “Wakeful Translations.”
- 173.
Joyce, Zelfportret van de kunstenaar als jonge man; Joyce, Dublinezen.
- 174.
Joyce, Finnegans Wake: Libro Terzo, Capitoli 1 e 2; Joyce, Finnegans Wake: Libro Terzo, Capitoli 3 e 4; Libro Quarto.
- 175.
James Joyce, Finneganów Tren, trans. Krzysztof Bartnicki (Kraków: Korporacja Ha!art, 2012). For some critical commentary on the mechanics and contextual significance of this translation, see: Katarzyna Bazarnik, “A Polish Translation of Finnegans Wake in Progress,” James Joyce Quarterly 47, no. 4 (Summer 2010): 567–77, https://doi.org/10.1353/jjq.2010.0002; Jolanta Wawrzycka, “Epifanie by James Joyce, and Finneganów Tren by James Joyce (Review),” James Joyce Quarterly 54, no. 1–2 (Winter 2017): 167–76.
- 176.
Dai Congrong, who has thus far published her Chinese rendition of Book I, has been quoted repeatedly as saying that “My body suffered from the work, working every night […]. I looked older than I should be”; and indeed, she reflects in her own report on the work that “my task seems to resemble walking slowly through the same mountain range or the same desert over and over. The feeling of excitement decreases as time passes” (585). Jonathan Kaiman, “Finnegans Wake Becomes a Hit Book in China,” The Guardian, February 5, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/05/finnegans-wake-china-james-joyce-hit; Congrong, “A Chinese Translation of Finnegans Wake: The Work in Progress.”
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Hélène Cixous, “The Pleasure Principle or Paradox Lost,” in Volleys of Humanity, ed. Eric Prenowitz, trans. Laurent Milesi (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 77.
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Alexandrova, B. (2020). Multilingualism in Translation: The Russian Wake(s) in Context. In: Joyce, Multilingualism, and the Ethics of Reading. Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36279-9_4
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