Stoppard's version cuts through the wordiness to better extract the tone -- an idea of character and spontaneity informs his sense of how people speak. Anna, caught in the throes of memory, breaks through to the language of immediacy: she is less precise, perhaps, but her words, in their repetition, have the feeling of one stumbling without forethought into metaphor..
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Mucking about ...
... Stoppard's Chekhov: New Adaptations. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
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Let me borrow a clip from the article:
ReplyDelete[Stoppard is not, by his own admission, fluent in "Russian matters," and his foray into the Chekhov oeuvre proves more a work of interpretation than of translation. Technically, the plays are advertised as "English versions" adapted "from a literal translation by Helen Rappaport," an actress and Russian translator in her own right. Such unorthodox methodology would probably send the playwright's academic counterparts into something resembling insulin shock, but in the wilds of the theater, it is a common practice, however little acknowledged.]
While I am not concerned about suffering through insulin shock, I have my doubts about Stoppard being able to improve Chekhov through an adaptation. Yes, translations are always risky business, and adaptations are almost always very odd and disappointing creatures. Stoppard's audacity may have overreached on this exercise. However, I will reserve final judgment until I have an opportunity to look at what Stoppard has done with his interpretation and adaptation. In the meantime, though, especially since my dramatic literature class is dealing with The Cherry Orchard in two weeks, I will simply rely upon a very good (and well established) English translation of Chekhov. POSTSCRIPT: If Stoppard can improve upon and thereby eliminate the confusion always caused by the Russian names in Chekov's plays, well, more power to Stoppard!