Should You Learn a Language to Read its Literature?

The greatest literary traditions in the world are, in no particular order (except English which is first):

English
Ancient Greek
Latin
Russian
French
Irish
American
German
Indian
Japanese
Chinese

English is the most expressive language.

With twice as many words as the next largest language, Russian, and most words containing multiple shades of ambiguity and simultaneous meaning, English has the greatest possibility for logopoeia/metaphor/symbolism, one of Ezra Pound’s three conditions for great literature.

Pound, despite being a complete fascist, has some of the most credible theories of literature and his love of world literature led to an astuteness of analysis and appreciation that few could approximate.

The asian languages that use Chinese characters, which includes Japanese, is the most visually expressive language.

Pictographs are often a snapshot of the thing itself – that’s phanopoeia, the throwing or projecting of an image onto the mind’s eye. Though Latin does some extraordinary things with parallelism and linguistic structures, with words, lines, and sentences actually looking like the thing they describe, if that counts.

Ancient Greek is the most musically charged, melopoeic language in the great literary tradition.

Look at the long dactylic hexameters of Homer – pure song that will never find comparable expression in English tongue, despite English’s robbing from a great many languages resulting in it also being quite musically charged at times.

The oral traditions from Nordic and African countries would have benefitted from finding more expansive written expression and could have been able to compete. Irish certainly does compete, and the joys of the musical lilt of Gaelic is reason enough to learn the language.

But should you ever learn a language to simply read literature you love written in that language?

Ask classics scholars, academics, and experts what’s the best way to read Ovid, hoping for a recommended translation, more often results in this labyrinthine advice: “Learn Latin.”

I read my hero of the short story form, Guy de Maupassant, and the grandfather of the modern essay, a keen Pisces like myself, Michel de Montaigne, masters of the poetic form such as Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and pioneers of the sweeping epic explanatory novel like Victor Hugo, and weep.

I weep when I find a translation beautifully rendered into English, such as Roger Colet’s Selected Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant because I can only guess at how supremely lovingly crafted the original French would be.

When we are alone for any length of time we people the void with phantoms.

Colet putting Maupassant into the English mouth.

But even I, a man with less that two years of inattentive schoolboy French worn out decades ago, instinctively feels the power of the original:

Quand nous sommes seuls longtemps, nous peuplons le vide de fantômes.

I weep when I search for a translation of Un Vie and find that the last one was close to a century ago and bears all the hallmarks of the ineffectual translator, a translator who cannot provide literal nor poetic translations of the almost forgotten and practically unread miniature literary gem.

Don’t get me started on Rimbaud.

With the poetic licence taken by translators of the poet, chances are you do not know Rimbaud unless you’ve read him in French.

I know hardly any Russian, except the words that gain you entry to no decent company, but even I know there is surely a difference between the Constance Garnett translations of Chekhov and Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and those from the hands of Pevear and Volokhonsky or Maude.

I prefer the P&V translation of Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment – distinct authorial voices, nuance and dirt and all, makes me confident that they are trying to convey the sense of reading Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky in Russian in English.

But I prefer – shock, horror! – the Constance Garnett translation of Chekhov’s short stories.

I’ve done blind taste tests comparing the two and Garnett always comes out on top, favourable on my palette and in my soul.

Does that mean she approximates Chekhov better?

Or does her personal tone suit the sensibilities of Chekhov to me?

I hope the P&V translations are not actually Chekhov, and I hope some poetic licence was taken.

The only way I can find the answers to these questions out is to either ask a bilingual Russian whose aesthetic sense I trust (no easy feat finding anyone of any nation who shares one’s view of art) or learning the language itself, which means years immersed in the culture and still not getting any deep sense unless one happens to be a linguistic savant without the emotional impairment.

Or we can content ourselves with comparisons.

Here’s a blind taste test for you.

Extracts from my favourite Chekhov story, ‘Volodya’.

I’ll put the Constance Garnett translation beside the P&V translation but won’t tell you which is which until after you’ve read them.

Unbiased, simply decide which one pleasures you the most.

First comparison:

‘The youth could not for one instant get rid of a strange, unpleasant feeling which was absolutely new to him… It seemed to him that he was in love with Anna Fyodorovna, the Shumihins’ cousin, who was staying with them. She was a vivacious, loud-voiced, laughter-loving, healthy, and vigorous lady of thirty, with rosy cheeks, plump shoulders, a plump round chin and a continual smile on her thin lips.’
‘The boy could not rid himself, even for a moment, of a strange unpleasant feeling that was totally new to him… It seemed to him that he was in love with M-me Shumikhin’s cousin and guest, Anna Fyodorovna. She was a lively, loud, and laughter-prone little lady of about thirty, healthy, buxom, rosy, with round shoulders, a round, plump chin, and a constant smile on her thin lips.’

Second comparison:

‘His eyes went dim and tears rose in them; the whole world turned into one big Turkish towel that smelled of the boathouse.’
‘Everything was dark before his eyes, and tears came into them. The whole world was turned into one big, rough towel which smelt of the bath-house.’

Third comparison:

‘Then it seemed to Volodya that the room, Nyuta, the sunrise and himself – all melted together in one sensation of acute, extraordinary, incredible bliss, for which one might give up one’s whole life and face eternal torments… But half a minute passed and all that vanished. Volodya saw only a fat, plain face, distorted by an expression of repulsion, and he himself suddenly felt a loathing for what had happened.’
’Then it seemed to Volodya that the room, Nyuta, the dawn, and his own self – all merged into one sensation of keen, extraordinary, unheard-of happiness, for which one could give one’s whole life and go to eternal torment, but half a minute went by and it all suddenly vanished. Volodya saw only a plump, unattractive face, distorted by an expression of disgust, and he himself suddenly felt a loathing for what had happened.’

Fourth comparison:

‘The sun was rising, the birds were singing loudly; he could hear the gardener walking in the garden and the creaking of his wheelbarrow… and soon afterwards he heard the lowing of the cows and the sounds of the shepherd’s pipe. The sunlight and the sounds told him that somewhere in this world there is a pure, refined, poetical life. But where was it? Volodya had never heard a word of it from his maman or any of the people round about him.’
‘Outside the sun was already rising, the birds sang loudly; the gardener’s footsteps were heard in the garden and the creaking of his wheelbarrow… A little later came the mooing of cows and the sounds of a shepherd’s pipe. The sunlight and the sounds were saying that somewhere in this world there exists a pure, refined, poetic life. But where is it? Neither maman nor all those people around him had ever spoken of it to Volodya.’

Fifth comparison:

‘Volodya again put the muzzle into his mouth, clenched it with his teeth, and pressed something with his finger. A shot rang out… Something struck Volodya in the back of the head with terrible force, and he fell onto the table, face down on the glasses and bottles. Then he saw his late father, in a top hat with a wide black band, dressed in mourning for some lady in Menton, suddenly embrace him with both arms, and they both fell into a very dark, deep abyss. Then everything became confused and disappeared.’
‘Volodya put the muzzle in his mouth again, pressed it with his teeth, and pressed something with his fingers. There was a sound of a shot… Something hit Volodya in the back of his head with a terrible violence, and he fell on the table with his face downwards among the bottles and glasses. Then he saw his father, as in Mentone, in a top-hat with a wide black band on it, wearing mourning for some lady, suddenly seize him by both hands, and they fell headlong into a very deep, dark pit. Then everything was blurred and vanished.’

And here’s the answers:

First comparison: 1 = Garnett; 2 = P&V
Second comparison: 1 = P&V; 2 = Garnett
Third comparison: 1 = Garnett; 2 = P&V
Fourth comparison: 1 = Garnett; 2 = P&V
Fifth comparison: 1 = P&V; 2 = Garnett

Tally up which ones you prefer the most.

If you, like me, came to the conclusion that you like the Constance Garnett translation the best, congratulations! You may now enjoy having “experts” on Russian Literature tell you how wrong you are.

Then begins your search either for a Russian bilingual who understands great literature not only in their tongue, not only in English, but the interplay and politics of translation of feeling, who also has similar translation philosophies and sensibilities as you, or the journey to learn the language begins.

It will take you half a decade of studious Russian studies to read Dostoyevsky in the original.

It will take you much longer, however, to understand Dostoyevsky in the original and comprehend him.

Hell, it will take you longer than that to understand him in English alone. The best way of doing so is to learn everything about nineteenth-century Russia, then go live with peasantry outside St. Petersburg for a couple of years, pitchforking stacks of hay.

I’ve been able to read English to a high/university level for roughly two decades now. I’ve read Shakespeare for that same amount of time. I did a Finals Exam on Shakespeare and his mythological influences at Oxford University. Only now, having lived in the world outside of university for a decade, have I finally begun to understand him. And part of me believes that is an illusion. Can I really understand King Lear yet? Or should I, like Hemingway, read the play every year into my old age?

I can speak Japanese, a language that was battled for, hard won, and came from sweat, toil, tears and a seven-month headache before I seemingly woke up fluent one day (after having already put years in before those pivotal seven months speaking nothing but Japanese in the rural towns of Shikoku).

I can read Basho’s haikus in the original. They can’t be translated. And just because I can read them doesn’t mean I get all the collective cultural baggage that comes from having my psychological development in the country alongside becoming literate.

I know enough to say the poetry is more beautiful in the original, but the journey of appreciating it fully is still a long one that stretches ahead of me.

All I know is this:

The old pond

A frog leaps in.

Sound of the water.

Is quite different from this:

古池や　蛙飛び込む　水の音

If you’re going to learn a language to better engage with its literature, I do applaud you.

But make sure it’s worth it.

Does your language have more than one writer than enthrals you?

For myself, French meets that condition in a way that Japanese never did (and still does not, and likely will not).

There’s Maupassant and Hugo and Balzac and Baudelaire and Rimbaud.

Italian also meets that condition for Dante alone.

Russian certainly meets that condition thanks to Tolstoy and Chekhov and Dostoyevsky.

Nietzsche is the only one I want from German, so despite being half-competent in the language, my desire to continue my studies failed.

Latin, however, despite being a “dead” language, is well and truly alive for me. So much so, like the Greeks (whom Aristotle and Homer alone justifies learning), I cannot begin to list the names that inspire me.

And how do you begin?

If you’re learning purely to converse with dead authors, my advice is to find a passage that struck you in translation, but find it in the original.

Then begin to tear it apart. Taste it. Break down every word. Go on a history hunt for the meaning and shade and colour and nuance of every word and line.

A paragraph could take you a year.

But you’d be pretty damn conversational by the end of that year simply doing that, if you do it correctly.