War and Peace

WHAT I READ

The path taken to find the right translation for War and Peace has been a winding one.

I started with the Inner Sanctum edition by the Maudes, based on comparisons between the first chapters of the Maudes, Garnett, Edmonds, and P&V while sitting in the bookstore. Their word choice and phrasing were often the most musical and inventive. However, it started to feel somewhat archaic and the dialogue especially wooden. More evaluation led me to Anthony Brigg's translation, which flowed much better than the Maudes', but then started to feel too flowy, too modern (the article from Tolstoy Therapy listed above favors Briggs, but the same qualities she enjoys are what soured Briggs for me). Next I came across Ann Dunnigan's translation, which maintains excellent fidelity to the text (closely following the other translations) while also being creative, sensitive, and artful. Dunnigan resolved tricky issues that mar other translations by seeming to find the just-right words. Her translation is by far the most sensitive to the characters and narrator, a quality of Tolstoy's writing that drew me in when reading Anna Karenina.

Never before, however, have I been so smitten by the physical beauty of a volume as I seem to be with Pevear & Volokhonsky's translation. Line-by-line there are sometimes places where their rendering is slightly clearer, simpler, or more beautiful than Dunnigan, but mostly their translation reads more stilted, unnatural, vague, and less imaginative. My only pull towards them, but what a schoolgirl-like pull it has been, has been the crush I have on the cover, binding, paper, and typesetting of their edition; I can't seem to help thinking, "But it's so purrrdy... [drool]." I picked up my copy of their book just to look up a sentence every now and then that Dunnigan seemed to have overthought, but for the most part I was pulled into the world and the characters that Dunnigan breathed into new life, while ogling P&V's dressed up mannequins in lavish gowns and jewelry, wondering if Dunnigan might be able to snag new costumes just for a day.

Ann Dunnigan's translation is available from Signet Classics.

Notable mention goes to Amy Mandelker's revised version of the Maude translation. Brief examination left the impression that she improved the worst archaisms and polished their work back to a glow.

(September 2015)