Yesterday I heard Children's radio” interview with Nina Demurova and, looking for a recording, found a fragment from Nina Demurova’s book “Pictures and Conversations. Conversations about Lewis Carroll” (Vita Nova, 2008). In a radio interview, Nina Demurova said that she brought a book about Peter Pan from India, where she bought it by accident. She read it and liked the book so much that she translated it. 🙂 I would love to listen to the interview again and share it with everyone, but that's bad luck ... So I compensate, in my opinion, with no less interesting material.

Nina Demurova's conversation with Alexandra Borisenko

I met Alexandra Borisenko at the defense of her dissertation in 2001. The dissertation was devoted to the Soviet school of translation, and included a chapter on Russian translations of Alice and the development of nonsense in Russian culture. I was the opponent. Since then, we often met: we had something to discuss. One of our conversations, recorded on a dictaphone, I included in this book.

This conversation is different from most of the conversations and interviews collected in this book, and at first I thought about omitting my overblown lines from it. However, I get asked the same questions that Sasha asked so often that I finally decided to take the opportunity to answer them in print. In addition, friends and colleagues who were my first readers protested against the cuts.

N. Demurova. When we met, you told me amazing story about how you and your grandmother read "Alice" ... When did your first acquaintance with her happen?

A. Borisenko. I do not remember my first acquaintance with "Alice", and maybe the second and third. I listened to “Alice” countless times as a child - my grandmother read it aloud to me, who did not have the patience to wait for my conscious age. We can say that this book determined the choice of profession for me - it was during the endless readings of Carroll that it became clear that there is special literature- English (where Mary Poppins and Winnie the Pooh were later added), and a special profession - "translator". Because the big blue book with a key on the cover was called "Demur's translation of "Alice"".

It was a Sofia edition that came out in the year of my birth, a kind of military trophy - my grandmother hunted for a new translation of Carroll with great tenacity, but at first she could not "get it" anywhere. And suddenly she saw him on the tray, where the books were played in the lottery and - oh happiness! Just on payday. Grandmother began to buy lottery tickets. She was lucky - she won book after book. Only now "Alice" did not fall out. The money has run out. Then the grandmother offered the lottery player to exchange all the won books for one "Alice". And he agreed. It was incredible luck- to buy in Soviet time such a book was impossible. A friend of mine told me that when he was in the hospital as a child, his relatives brought Alice to him, and an elderly nurse asked her to read it for one night.

N. Demurova. Why do you think adults were so interested in Carroll's fairy tales?

A. Borisenko. I think this book was a very special discovery for the generation that got the war and Stalinism. My grandmother, Evgenia Vasilievna Lvova, was a geologist. A real field geologist, head of a geological team, a scientist, a fierce defender of nature. At the same time, she was very feminine - I remember how she said dreamily: “After the war, I had one skirt, blue, and I managed to get a blue padded jacket. It turned out very elegant…” After the war, an elegant grandmother in a blue padded jacket to match the color of her skirt raised three children alone, with endless travels and completely unfeminine work. The tension was unrelenting: either she was told that the children had blown up on a mine (which, fortunately, turned out to be false), then that younger son called Pavlik Morozov a bastard right in the classroom (which turned out to be true), but, fortunately, nothing happened. It was a very responsible, not at all frivolous life. We, the grandchildren, got her holidays - all her unclaimed carelessness in her youth.

It seems to me that this feeling of "intellectual vacation" that Chesterton wrote about, especially attracted my grandmother to Carroll. And a feeling of amazing freedom - freedom of the mind and logic among external restrictions and chaos. I think no one could appreciate inner freedom as much as this long-suffering generation. And, of course, she was invariably admired by Carroll's brilliant humor, his paradox.

“…Have you ever seen how many are drawn?
- Lots of what? Alice asked.
“Nothing,” answered Sonya. “Just a lot!” (1) - she read with taste, and we both began to laugh - for the twentieth, thirtieth, hundredth time.

Nina Mikhailovna, can I ask you a question? I have long wanted to ask you why your translation of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass was first published in Bulgaria? It would seem that translation from English into Russian is not very clear, why, in fact, in Sofia?

N. Demurova. Oh it's long story! To tell the truth, in these interviews, I try to say as little as possible myself, but this story, perhaps, deserves to be told. If only because around Lewis Carroll there are often some completely incredible stories, at least that's my experience! You know, in Soviet times there was such an institution ... what was it called? .. "International Book", if I'm not mistaken, which, in particular, was engaged in ordering translations and books in the so-called countries of people's democracy. There was an official who studied the lists of new books published in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, etc. (these were mostly classics of national literature), and then ordered translations into Russian of those that seemed to him the most interesting . Translations were made in the country where the book was published, they were also printed there: as a rule, their printing was much better than ours, and, of course, their design was used. And then the entire circulation - with a few exceptions - was brought to us. In Moscow and Leningrad, as well as in a number of other cities, there were bookstores called Druzhba, where these books were sold. Since these books usually differed good design- beautiful paper, color illustrations, dust jackets, etc. - they were usually a special hunt. In general, in those years good book amateurs had to "get it", which took a lot of effort.

One fine day, an official sitting in the "Mezhkniga", looking through the lists of books published in Bulgarian, suddenly saw the title "Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass". Apparently, some kind of bell rang in his head - and he decided: “Ah, you need to order!” And ordered. I sent an order for the translation of Carroll's fairy tale ... from Bulgarian into Russian! Circulation - 100,000 copies! Such were the circulations then ... Director of the publishing house (then it was called "Publishing House of Literature on foreign languages", then it was renamed "Sofia-Press") was embarrassed: "From Bulgarian to Russian?" But there was nothing to be done - he wrote a kind letter saying that he would be happy to publish this wonderful book, but perhaps it would be better to translate it not from Bulgarian, but from of English language. Six months passed - and the official repeated his order for "Alice", and again from Bulgarian to Russian! Then the director, who had the wonderful name Angel ... - Stoyanov, if I'm not mistaken, but I remember Angel for sure, it's impossible to forget such a name, - he began to look for some workarounds. He understood that translating "Alisa" from Bulgarian into Russian is complete nonsense.

A. Borisenko. Especially Alice in Wonderland - with all its puns and jokes!

N. Demurova. It so happened that he was in Moscow at some conference, met with various Moscow publishers and told one of them what a difficult situation he was in. And he said to him: “Listen, I know what you need to do. You need to find a translator here and order a translation for him!” It was clear to both of them that in Bulgaria there was simply no translator who could translate "Alisa" from English into Russian. "I even know who could do it." And called my name.

A. Borisenko. Did you already start translating "Alisa" then? For myself?

N. Demurova. At that time I was giving students a course in English stylistics and, explaining to them all sorts of subtleties, I often cited examples from Carroll, whom I loved very much. In general, I tried to choose examples that would stick in my memory, would be unexpected ... funny ... Students who knew that I was doing translations asked: “How would you translate this?” And so, in preparation for class, I began to write in the margins of my English copy of Wonderland possible translations in order to be ready just in case. I remember that we laughed a lot in these classes. Once the dean, a lady nicknamed “Stalin in a skirt”, who was passing by along the corridor, heard laughter and burst into our classroom: she was sure that the teacher had not come to class (ah, absenteeism !!) and the students were “disgraceful” ... So I gradually translated "Alice". It was very exciting game! Once I told about it to the editor with whom I worked on another book. It was Anatoly Alexandrovich Klyshko - it was he who recommended me to the Sofia publisher Angel. I take this opportunity to convey my deep gratitude to him after all these years ... So, as a result of strange accidents and coincidences, I was commissioned to translate two fairy tales about Alice, which appeared in Sofia in 1967. The poems in them were translated by the wonderful poet Dina Orlovskaya. And the well-known translations of Marshak "Humpty Dumpty", "Papa William", "Sea Quadrille" were also used.

A. Borisenko. But how did it happen that our publishing houses did not translate Alice for so long? After all, it seems that the last translation was made long before that?

N. Demurova. Yes, even before the war, in 1940 or 1939.

A. Borisenko. By that time it was very out of date, so there really was no such "Alice" to read.

N. Demurova. No, they read it. It was a translation of the writer Alexander Olenich-Gnenenko, who by that time was no longer alive. They say that he was very fond of "Alice" ... True, he was not a professional translator, and this, unfortunately, affected when he began to translate such a difficult book. There were many literalisms, dark places and other flaws in his translation. But by that time it was already clear that it was time to make a new translation. Later I was told that at that time in "Detgiz" (as the publishing house "Children's Literature" was then called) there was a real war between venerable translators for the right to translate this book. So, without knowing it, I...

A. Borisenko.…bypassed these translators! But, in the end, "Alisa" was still not translated from Bulgarian!

N. Demurova. By the way, this crazy situation, when everything was turned upside down, continued when I came to Bulgaria to receive a fee (according to the terms of the contract, it was paid there in leva). Of course, I did not protest against the trip to Bulgaria. Our editor, Raya Andreeva, took me to the Central Bank, where the fee was kept. The signature of the director of the bank was required. The director received us very kindly, treated us to coffee, as is customary in Bulgaria, and the coffee there, I must say, is excellent! But I was very surprised that I do not speak Bulgarian. "How?! You don't know Bulgarian? But you translated “Alice”!” - "Yes, but from English." - "From English to Bulgarian?" - "No, in Russian." - “Into Russian?!” In a word, he could not understand in any way how I translated from English into Russian, and I receive Bulgarian leva for my translation in Sofia. The fee, however, still paid.

A. Borisenko. I am always very sorry that something sophian is not reprinted ...

N. Demurova. I'm also sorry it only came out once. In 1978 in Moscow, in the series "Literary Monuments" of the publishing house "Nauka", a second version of my translation was published, so to speak, "academic". The first was addressed to children (and, of course, adults) and was designed for direct perception; there were no comments or explanations (although I wrote the preface - I always try to do this). The second was intended for older children and adults and included biographical, literary and scientific commentary by Martin Gardner, as well as additional material, which according to tradition literary monuments" was placed in applications. In this edition, the translation of poetic parodies and their originals, among which were not only children's authors, but also such poets as Wordsworth, Walter Scott and Moore, was undertaken by Olga Sedakova, then known only to a narrow circle of connoisseurs. Now she enjoys well-deserved recognition both in Russia and abroad. The Russian "Alice" was lucky for the second time - and so was I.

Of course, the free translation of puns and other games remained, but sometimes they also had to take into account the commentary. As you can see, the goals in these two translations were different. And therefore, I think, there is no point in arguing about which of the options is better: they are just different, that's all!

A. Borisenko. There were wonderful finds in the Sofia "Alice". Very sorry Pod-Cat (2). In my opinion, Pod-Cat is the perfect translation. This is a very Carroll joke! The tortoise Quasi in Litpomyatniki, despite the fact that tortoise soup is not very common in our country, does not give this feeling at all. This needs to be explained for a very long time, and Pod-Cat is immediately clear.

N. Demurova. Yes, in those days we all knew well what “under the seal” is.

A. Borisenko. And now everyone understands...

N. Demurova. There was a hat “under the seal”, a clutch “under the seal”, etc.

A. Borisenko. In any case, the logic of the language suggests - under ... a cat. And with the Quasi Turtle, this logic does not work.

N. Demurova. Yes, but the logic is different. You forget that even to English readers Gardner had to explain what “mock-turtle soup” is. They have long forgotten what a real tortoise soup is, and even more so a "fake" tortoise soup, which is cooked from veal.

A. Borisenko. And, of course, parodies... It's nice when you immediately recognize the poem being parodied: this will instantly create a comic effect.

N. Demurova. Yes, in the Bulgarian edition the most a big problem was - what to do with parodies, of which Carroll has so many. The difficulty was that the English poems that Carroll parodied were not known to us. The pre-revolutionary translators of Alisa in these cases parodied famous Russian poems.

A. Borisenko. Yes Yes. “The bird of God knows neither care nor labor…”. It's where Carroll's Crocodile is! Or "Tell me, uncle, it's not without reason ...".

N. Demurova. We wanted to avoid, on the one hand, incomprehensibility (if we simply translated Carroll's parodies), and on the other hand, Russification - after all, Carroll could not know Lermontov! I think we have found a very good way out. I say "we" because this decision was made jointly with Dina Orlovskaya. We decided to parody English children's poems, which, thanks to the translations of Chukovsky and Marshak, were widely known.

A. Borisenko. Do I remember correctly that when the publication of Literary Monuments was being prepared, Dina was no longer alive?

N. Demurova. Yes, she, alas, died shortly after the publication of the Sofia edition. She was a wonderful person. Light coloured. And a wonderful poet and translator. I wrote memoirs about her - first in Russian, and then in English. And again, the Carroll paradox: the English version of my article came out eleven years earlier than the Russian one! Russian came out only in 2000 - in a collection with the English title "Folia Anglistica".

A. Borisenko. It seems to me that a similar creative union, like you and Dina, was great luck. Indeed, when translating such a thing, there was a need for a creative dialogue.

N. Demurova. Yes, of course, in a lively dialogue, in a game, in laughter ... Dina was a wonderful improviser, especially in poetry.

A. Borisenko. This is felt when you read, because it very rarely happens that a translation-parody turns out not to be strained, but funny. In general, I was always amazed at how funny your translation is, and poetry and prose really give the impression of the spontaneity of these jokes, parodies and games.

N. Demurova. Dina had amazing finds. Let's say a poem: “Here is the house that the Beetle built. / And this is the singer, / Which is kept in a dark closet / In the house that the Beetle built ... "

A. Borisenko.“And this is the merry empress, / Who often bites the singer…” Wonderful! Nina Mikhailovna, I wonder, but the illustrations of the Bulgarian artist ...

N. Demurova. Peter Chuklev.

A. Borisenko. Did you like them?

N. Demurova. I must admit that at one time they surprised me a little. They seemed gloomy to me, especially for a children's book.

A. Borisenko. But even in Tenniel they are sometimes gloomy, For example, the Duchess ...

N. Demurova. Perhaps the point is that at that time illustrations of this kind were unusual for us.

A. Borisenko. It's hard for me to judge: for me, for a long time, these were the only real illustrations for Alice, because I grew up with them. It still seems to me: it is important that they are strange, not sugary and quite Carroll. After all, illustrations in the style of a chocolate box are completely contraindicated for Carroll. It's good that there are a lot of black and white graphics. Many artists have followed this path.

N. Demurova. I think that Carroll generally favors black and white illustrations. For example, Kalinovsky's first "Alice" was black and white, and Ralph Steadman, a wonderful English artist, also had it.

A. Borisenko. In general, our publishers are very fond of color illustrations. For example, I worked at one time with an editor who said: "Soviet children only need color pictures."

N. Demurova. When it was?

A. Borisenko. Yes, in 1993. She was absolutely sure that our children need only bright, life-affirming pictures. And in translations, they often try to rid the work of sentimentality and sadness. If you remember, for example, “Peter Pan” translated by I. Tokmakova, everything that is connected with sadness or sensitivity is mercilessly removed there.

N. Demurova. By the way, Barry's sensitivity is usually combined with gentle humor.

A. Borisenko. Many translators of Alisa did the same, and even very good translators - Boris Zakhoder, for example. They left a layer of children's joyful, major game, but avoided everything too "adult" and sad. And yet, Carroll has a lot of sadness and there are these amazing lyrical poems with which the fairy tale opens and ends. Did Dina Orlovskaya also translate this?

N. Demurova. Yes, it is her great fortune.

A. Borisenko. You can see what range she had as a translator. Mischievous, funny parodies and absolutely amazing, sad and sentimental poems, and I use the word "sentimental" exclusively in a positive sense. It seems to me that many English authors have suffered greatly in Russian translations and in Russian perception from a negative attitude to sentimentality.

N. Demurova. I'm glad you're talking about this. In Soviet times, there was a conscious attitude to throw out of books sensitivity, a tendency to sympathy, to sadness, to tears. This was called "sentimentalism", compared with Charskaya and others. Dickens, for example, the genius Dickens was invariably reproached for "sentimentality", and if the critics came across the word "sentimentality", then it was invariably used in a negative sense ("false sensitivity", "tearfulness", etc.). It is still described in many dictionaries to this day. But that wasn't always the case. I think it's time to restore empathy, sensitivity in their rights.

A. Borisenko. Yes, Pushkin's "I will shed tears over fiction ...". In essence, sentimentality is also a kind of freedom, freedom from the fear of seeming insufficiently firm and therefore ridiculous ... freedom to pour out feeling. In fact, the opposite of sentimentality is the cult of power...

N. Demurova....and spiritual callousness...

A. Borisenko.... yes, and spiritual callousness, from which the world suffered a lot.

N. Demurova. I think it is also important here that in Carroll's fairy tale the feeling of freedom is connected with the image of the central heroine. After all, you look, she finds herself in a completely incomprehensible, alien, unfamiliar, often hostile world. She behaves with extraordinary dignity, she is not rude (here I have big complaints about modern translators), she is not afraid ...

A. Borisenko. She relies on her own judgment, not at all embarrassed by the fact that most of those around her say something completely different. For this you need to have courage.

N. Demurova. And here's something else. In the traditional fairy tales of that time - both in English, and in German, and in Russian - there were usually a lot of terrible things, and children, heroes or heroines of these fairy tales, were often afraid of something. In this respect, Carroll's tale also differs radically from tradition. And she has no fear. And this is very important.

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1 - We remind the reader that there are more than ten translations of Carroll's fairy tales into Russian, and our interlocutors quote the translation that they remember the most. In some cases, a retelling of the text is given as a citation. - Note. N. Demurova.

2 - Carroll's Mock-Turtle was so freely "translated" in the Sofia edition. Of course, this character is purely Russian. But according to the "idea" - surprisingly similar to the Mock-Turtle created by Carroll. In the academic edition, which used Tenniel's illustrations and the story of this character in the notes, they had to change him to Quasi Turtle. For those who are interested, I refer you to my article "On the Translation of Carroll's Fairy Tales" in Literary Monuments. - Note. N. Demurova.

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BORISENKO Alexandra Leonidovna

Born and raised in the Crimea.

In 1992 she graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University.

In 2001 she defended her dissertation on the Soviet school of literary translation (one of the chapters analyzes Russian translations of "Alice" and the gradual development of Russian culture artistic world nonsense).

Alexandra Borisenko - Associate Professor, Faculty of Philology, Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov, candidate of philological sciences, member of the creative union "Masters of Literary Translation"; reads several special courses at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University: on translation, on the detective genre, on the Victorian era. Since 1999, together with V. Sonkin, he has been conducting a seminar on literary translation. The seminar is currently preparing an anthology of the Victorian detective story for publication.

Alexandra Borisenko is the author of a number of articles on English and American literature published in the journal Foreign Literature: “About Salinger,“ with love and every abomination ”” (2001), “Ian McEwen - Faust and Science Fiction” (2003), “Lewis Carroll: Myths and Metamorphoses (co-authored with N. Demurova; 2003), Not Only Holmes (2007); accompanying articles to the books: "Salinger: Classic and Contemporary" (foreword to the book by J. Salinger "The Catcher in the Rye", 2007), "History of a Fairy Tale" (afterword to the book by P. Travers "All About Mary Poppins", 2007) and etc. A number of articles are devoted to literary translation: “Continuity in translation. Nonsense Poetry: Assimilation of the Literary Form” - the article, in particular, analyzes Russian translations by L. Carroll (“Translator's Almanac”, Russian State University for the Humanities, 2001); “Songs of innocence and songs of experience. On new translations of Winnie the Pooh” (“Foreign Literature”, 2002); “Don’t shout:“ Literalism!
Among A. Borisenko's own translations are fragments of the novel by E. Hoffman "The Art of Loss, or the Experience of Life in a New Language" ("Foreign Literature", 2003); essays by H. Carpenter and G. Green on Beatrix Potter (2006); two stories by P. Travers - "Mary Poppins and the house next door" and "Mary Poppins in Cherry Lane" in the book "All about Mary Poppins" (2007); two books by P. Dunker: "Seven Tales of Sex and Death" (2005) and "James Miranda Barry" (in print), etc. (Some translations were co-authored with V. Sonkin.)

Nina Mikhailovna Demurova, well-known literary critic, researcher of literature of Great Britain and the USA, children's English Literature, translator from English, was born in 1930. After graduating from the Romano-Germanic department of the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, she ended up in India, where she worked as a simultaneous interpreter. One day, walking along the streets of Delhi, she saw the books “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen and “Peter Pan” by J. Barry, which were not known in our country at that time, at the old merchant's. Translations of these books became the beginning of her work in the field of literary translation. She introduced readers to the works of G.K. B.Potter, R.K.Narayan, J.Updike… Each of her works is a classic of Russian translation. For many children, Lewis Carroll's fairy tales about Alice, translated by N. Demurova, are the favorite books of childhood. In one of the interviews, the writer was asked a completely natural question: "Didn't you have the feeling that you wrote books about Alice in Russian?" The answer was brilliant: "I never think so highly of myself: I deeply revere the genius of Carroll." In response to next question, also completely natural, although somewhat tactless, - “Are you not offended that, despite other works, you are perceived precisely as a translator of“ Alice ”? - Nina Mikhailovna also showed herself remarkably, as a modest person, but who knows her own worth: “I take my reputation calmly, and the fact that my name is connected with Carroll seems to me a great success. This translation, which was later published with comments by Martin Gardner and mine in Monuments of Literature, is considered by many to be a cult book. Demurova continues to work with Carroll: she translated his diary, which he kept while traveling in Russia in 1867. The writer and his friend Henry Liddon visited St. Petersburg, Tsarskoye Selo and its environs, Kronstadt, Moscow, New Jerusalem, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, Nizhny Novgorod, leaving the researchers, as Nina Mikhailovna admits, some riddles, which is not surprising for Carroll.

Cucumber published Lewis Carroll's tale "Bruno's Revenge", Charles Dickens' tale "The Magic Bone" and the tale of Margaret Mahy, the last of the winners of the Gold Medal. Andersen, "The Dragon of an Ordinary Family" translated by Demurova. Her attention was drawn to the least known of Dickens' works, The Life of Our Lord. These were retellings of the four Gospels that the writer's children heard before going to bed. Listed in a special notebook, "unpolished", they remained inaccessible to the general public for a long time and saw the light only in 1934. This heartfelt book was published in Russian in 2000, and for its translation N. Demurova was awarded an Honorary Diploma of the International Council for Children's Books.

Olga Korf

I came to children's literature quite unexpectedly. Of course, as a child I read it and loved it very much. I still remember how, in the third grade, I begged my classmate to let me read Little Lord Fauntleroy by Francis Hodgson Burnett: a large luxurious book in red binding with gold and wonderful drawings by the English artist Birch struck my imagination. It was published at the beginning of the 20th century in the well-known children's series "Golden Library" - in those years it was a rarity. A classmate did not agree for a long time, put all sorts of conditions, and, in the end, agreed to give the "Little Lord" only for two days. How did I get this book!! But it had 200 pages, no less!

There were other books that produced on me in those years the strongest impression. One of the favorites was "Two Captains" by V.A. Kaverina (first volume). When the war began, and we left for evacuation, the second volume had not yet come out, and I still did not know what happened to Sanya Grigoriev, and whether he managed to find Captain Tatarinov. It was a difficult time, hungry, only a little bread was given on the cards, and we were not allowed to talk about food at home. I remember how during walks with my sister, if there were no adults with us, we dreamed: “The war is over, we will return home, we will eat scrambled eggs and sausages and read the second volume of “Two Captains!” It seemed to us the limit of happiness! Many years later, I met Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin and told him about it.

Well, then it started adulthood with her adult reading, interests and concerns. During the Khrushchev thaw, when a gap was opened in outside world, I was unexpectedly and miraculously lucky: I went for a short time as an interpreter to India (by that time I had graduated from the university, knew English well and was engaged in literature). I remember one of last days in New Delhi. We were already going home and before leaving we decided to take a walk around the city. In the stone arcades of Connaught Place (this is the name of one of the central squares of New Delhi), where merchants of carpets, ornaments and other things took refuge from the heat, I saw a man laying out many books in bright covers on a scarf spread on stone slabs. What was not there! A book about Peter Pan by James Matthew Barney caught my attention - the cover showed a boy floating in the air, and said that "he did not want to become an adult." I bought a book and after reading it decided to translate it. It was winter in Moscow, which seemed especially cold after India, frosts crackled, we stoked stoves (at that time we still lived in an old house with large tiled stoves, which were called "Dutch"). I sat down at a large desk, at which all members of the family worked in turn, and, looking out the window at the swept snowdrifts, translated. How wonderful it was! When the translation was ready, I took it to the publisher, but it turned out that publishing a book is not so easy. For some reason, the editors didn't like much about it. - Why is it that children have a dog in their nannies? - they said. - And why does the author use the word "gentleman"? I argued with them for a long time, and finally Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky intervened, and the book came out. And I realized that most of all I like to translate children's books and write about them.

I have translated many children's books, but the most famous of them, of course, was Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, a wonderful English writer, which all the British know almost by heart. I wrote a book about him and unexpectedly became a member of the English, and then American, Lewis Carroll Society. I was invited to lecture about him in England, America, Australia and even New Zealand, where many people wanted to know what they thought of this very English writer in Russia and whether his jokes could be translated into Russian. About Carroll, someone once said that he retained the "crystal of childhood", and that is why children love him so much. So it must be. But why do adults love it too? Maybe because they also have fragments of this crystal? Be that as it may, but I know for sure that the books that we loved in childhood remain with us for life. Sometimes you want to re-translate them (this was the case with me when I decided to re-translate Little Lord Fauntleroy because there were many inaccuracies in the old translation), and sometimes you just want to talk about them ...

As a child, I loved to listen and tell stories. When I learned to read, I began to tell everything I read to my friends. My mother worked at kindergarten in Karmanitsky Lane, near Smolenskaya Square. The garden was located in a large wooden house with a spacious yard, where Pushkin used to frequent. His friend Ivan Pushchin lived there, Jeannot, as he was called in Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. It is to him that the lines of the poet “My true friend, my priceless friend ... ”Mom knew and remembered all this, and arranged evenings in kindergarten dedicated to Pushkin and his poetry. I remember how, as a schoolgirl, I told the children the tale of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann about the Nutcracker, trying not to miss a single detail. Especially struck my imagination candy under mysterious name“marzipans” (we didn’t have those then) and a preface that said that Hoffmann lived in a fantasy world where card tables ran through the streets, flapping like wings, folding boards from which chalk fell. All this was mysterious and very exciting.

Over the years, I have not lost my commitment to fairy tales, and I wanted to translate into Russian those that were not yet known to Russian children. The first book I translated was a tale by Scottish writer James Matthew Barry about a boy who lived on his own special island, fought pirates, was friends with mermaids and fairies (although sometimes he was angry that they always got in the way) and never for anything didn't want to grow up. This fairy tale "Peter Pan and Wendy" did not immediately come out with us, but when it came out, it deserved big love both children and adults.

Generally speaking, I noticed that the best children's fairy tales, and the best children's books in general, are loved not only by children, but also by adults. I understood this especially well when I translated into Russian two fairy tales by the wonderful Englishman Lewis Carroll "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Alice Through the Looking-Glass". True, they had been translated before me, but it seemed to me that I had figured out how to solve some of the riddles of these amazing tales, so that they began to be read in a completely different way.

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= Demurova, Nina Mikhailovna =

SHORT BIOGRAPHY:

Demurova, Nina Mikhailovna - Russian translator, critic and literary critic; researcher of the literature of Great Britain and the USA, children's English literature, one of the leading domestic experts on the work of L. Carroll. Doctor of Philology.

She was born on October 3, 1930. In 1953 she graduated from Moscow State University (Romano-Germanic department of the Faculty of Philology) with a degree in English Language and Literature. In the late 1950s she worked as a translator in India. Then she taught at Moscow State University and at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. Lenin. Taught courses in modern English and American Literature, children's literature of Great Britain and the USA. She was the first to introduce the teaching of children's literature as a philological discipline into university courses. In 1986 she defended her doctoral dissertation on "English Children's Literature 1740-1870".

First literary translation N. Demurova became "Peter Pan" D. Barry.

Her translation of Carroll's "Alice" was first published in 1967 in Sofia.

In 1978, "Alice" by Demurova was published in the series "Literary Monuments" (publishing house "Nauka"). Due to the fact that this edition included original illustrations by D. Tenniel and comments by M. Gardner, the translation had to be somewhat changed (for example, the parody "The House That the Beetle Built" was replaced by another - "Baby Crocodile" - close to the original, and Pod-Cat became the Quasi Turtle). Since then, experts have recognized Demurova's translation as the most successful Russian translation of Carroll's fairy tales.

In addition to "Alice", her translations published works by G.K. Chesterton, E.A. Poe, C. Dickens, J. MacDonald, F. H. Burnett, J. M. Barry, B. Potter, A. Garner, R. K. Narayana, J. Updike and others.

Nina Demurova is an honorary member of the Lewis Carroll Society in England and the USA, as well as the English Beatrix Potter Society.
In 2000 she received an Honorary Diploma from the International Council of Children's Books for translating Dickens' book "The Life of Our Lord"

In January 2009, Demurovala presented her book "Pictures and Talk: Conversations on Lewis Carroll", published in the publishing house "Vita-Nova". The book includes conversations between the author and famous artists, writers, translators, composers, directors, mathematicians.

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“Winners are not judged...” K. I. Chukovsky - N. M. Demurova.
"Literary Russia", 1968, September 20:

... I so often happened to see desperately bad translations of "Alice" that I was convinced that it was impossible to translate it into Russian. This book is too English. Almost all situations in it are based on the game English words, in English puns ... If you translate this book literally, you get boring nonsense ...
Fortunately, you have chosen another - the only true - path. You translated Alice creatively: that is, you completely abandoned literalism and reproduced the spirit of this book - the spirit of mischief, capricious and insane.

***
N. Demurova, "Translation Mastery. Seventh Collection" (M.: Soviet writer. 1970):

“Alice” refers to those books that you read and re-read all your life. So I read it too, read it, and thought, and wrote down all the thoughts that came to mind in the margins of the book, and when the margins were not enough, on scraps of paper, and then in a special notebook. I read "Alice" at home and with students, analyzed the subtleties and pitfalls of Carroll's text at literary seminars, found direct and hidden references to "Alice" in various English books, old and modern. After all, "Alice", along with the Bible and Shakespeare, is most often quoted by the British.

Boring book? And I made up my own puns, trying to repeat Lewis Carroll's word game in Russian, and my students and family laughed when I read these pieces to them. And yet, the idea of ​​translating "Alice" did not occur to me - I was too fascinated by the taboo imposed on her by the most experienced translators and by myself.

Then, as sometimes happens, there was a funny incident, an anecdote, a hilarious misunderstanding. In 1965, a Bulgarian translation of Alice was published in Bulgaria. An employee of the “Interbook”, looking through the lists of Bulgarian books, saw the familiar name of “Alisa” and ordered its translation ... from Bulgarian into Russian! The director of the Bulgarian publishing house of literature in foreign languages ​​persuaded Mezhkniga to translate Alisa not from Bulgarian, but from English, but added that in Bulgaria it was impossible to find translators for such work. Then it was decided to publish the book in Sofia, and look for a translator in Russia. So, quite unexpectedly, I was offered to translate “Alice”.

I declined, recommending to the publisher other translators who, I thought, could take on this difficult task. But the publishing house decided to republish the existing translations - "Alice in Wonderland" by A. Olenich-Gnenenko and "Alice Through the Looking Glass" by V. A. Azov - and asked me to edit these translations. I wrote out both translations and put them next to the original.

After reading these translations, I clearly saw that Lewis Carroll appears to Russian readers in them as a strange, stupid and flat author. What an injustice!
In desperation, I agreed to a new translation of both books.

Working on the translation of Carroll, one encounters a myriad of difficulties. There is a play on words, and puns, and a game of concepts, and light, almost imperceptible logical shifts, and traditional English restraint, and concise sayings, in Russian unfolding like a spring, in long periods, and numerous details of life, characters, customs, turns of speech, deeply rooted in the national consciousness. And finally, poetry - not only that in verses, sometimes mischievous, sometimes lyrical, which are so numerous in both fairy tales, but that which permeates everything in Carroll - both poetry and prose - which determines a special structure, timbre, turn of phrase , and then a paragraph, a scene, a chapter, and finally the whole book. I had a good idea of ​​the difficulties I would have to deal with. In addition, I have more than once read chapters from Alice aloud, stopping to give this or that explanation. So I knew well by ear everything that often escapes during the “silent” reading of the text with my eyes - hidden rhymes, hints of puns, vowels, etc. I understood that I had taken on the task, with a strict I, impracticable - after all, it is impossible to accurately convey details and concepts in another language that do not exist in this other language. And yet ... Nevertheless, I thought, it is probably possible, with the greatest approximation (if not with adequacy!) to convey, convey the original, go along a parallel path, if there is no coinciding path, at the cost of any evasions and tricks to recreate even if not the organic unity of the letter and spirit, but at least the spirit of the original.
While working on "Alice", I deliberately avoided old translations...

From the very beginning, I firmly decided to abandon the Russification of "Alice" and at the same time try to prove that "Alice" is not only a deep book, but also funny. I wanted to convey to the Russian reader the spirit of "Alice" - an eccentric and cheerful spirit.
I understood well that “Alice” is not just a book and not only for children. No wonder G. K. Chesterton wrote: “The best of Lewis Carroll is written by scientists for scientists, and not by adults for children.” And more: “He not only taught children to stand on their heads - he taught scientists to stand on their heads. What a head it was if you could stand on it like that!”14 Scientists have paid tribute to this head - Carroll was admired by Norbert Wiener, Edmund T. Whittaker and Bertrand Russell, Clement Durell, Martin Gardner and many, many others wrote about him.
I wanted to preserve and convey in Russian translation these two "addresses" of the book - for adults and children, for reason and spontaneity. The Russian "Alisa", I thought, should be understandable and close to the kids - and at the same time not slip on the surface, preserve the Carroll depth intended for scientists.

Musicians are well aware of what happens when music written for one instrument is arranged, transcribed for another. Here you have to take into account the capabilities of the new instrument, choose other, more sounding registers, raise or lower by a tone, by a third, etc. As a result, the melody sounds a little different, but it's still the same melody.

So it is with translation - the tessitura changes, but the music must remain the same. And what the human voice sings freely and easily, the violin can also reproduce.

***
From an interview with N. Demurova, "Russian Journal", 03/15/2002:

RJ: But still, how to unite authors of interest to you? The works of Barry and especially Carroll are children's literature with philosophical overtones, a line of nonsense and irony...
N.D.: Of course, this is a line of English grotesque, nonsense, humor, often not direct, close to irony, which I always liked.

RJ: In your opinion, is the tradition of English humor and the grotesque represented in Russia today well or not enough?
N.D.: Good enough. There are still gaps, but these are perhaps not the primary authors.

RJ: Probably your most difficult translation is "Alice"?
N.D.: I translated all the works with pleasure. Books about Alice were published in 1967 in Sofia, in the Publishing House of Literature in Foreign Languages, then it became known as Sofia Press.

RJ: Why in Sofia? Workarounds?
N.D.: No, the paradoxes of socialist planning. Some books were published in the republics, others in the people's democracies - they had their own plan, of course, coordinated with Moscow. Sometimes he crashed.
Here I was just lucky: for my stylistics course, I prepared examples of the implementation of metaphors, taking them from Carroll and J. Mikesh. Students, knowing that I was translating, asked: "How would you translate this?" I said: "So it's hard to say right off the bat, you can do this, but you can do that." We had a kind of game - I have a copy of the book, where I wrote possible translations in the margins. Once friends came to me, among them there was one good editor, and I quoted something from Carroll. This editor met a Bulgarian publisher in Moscow who was called to discuss publishing plans, and when he told him that he was going to publish Alisa, my friend said: "I know a translator for you."

RJ: Since 1879, since the publication of the first anonymous translation of "Alice", which was called "Sonya in the Land of the Diva", the book has been translated many times. How do you feel about these works?
N.D.: Yes, funny name. By the way, an American researcher of Russian origin, who knows Russian, translated the name "Sonya in the country of the virgin." I don't think he ever held this book in his hands.
After the first translation, there were wonderful works by A.N. Rozhdestvenskaya, P.S. Solovieva, in their own way a very interesting translation by V.V. Nabokov, but they all proceeded from the principle of Russification, so "province", "Siberian cat" appeared in the texts ... But there were also less successful, literal translations. "Alice in Wonderland" by A.P. Olenich-Gnenenko was published in 1940 and reprinted until the early 1960s, at that time it was the most common translation. Sometimes "Alice" Olenich-Gnenenko looks like nonsense. For example, the Looking-Glass Mosquito asks Alice: "What insects do you have?" - "Well, here, for example, we have a Butterfly" (Butterfly), "she replies. "Just think! - drawled Komar, - and we have Bread-and-Butterfly. "In his translation," Bread Butterfly "appears - all word game is lost.
When I started translating Alice, a friend of mine, a connoisseur of literature, said: "Why did you take it on? What an unpleasant book it is! There is something pathological in it." In those years, pre-revolutionary translations were not published, so I came up with a new method - so that the game and the grotesque of the book were understandable, but at the same time do without Russification.

RJ: Why did your friend find this book unpleasant? Did he mean that a grown man dedicates a fairy tale to a girl?
N.D.: In those years, no one heard of pedophilia. He was referring to previous unsuccessful translations. If absurdity and nonsense is well translated, a second, deep level is felt, there is no discomfort, - I'm not talking about works where the author makes this installation.

RJ: You have touched upon the problem of literal translation. In the essay "The Translator's Task", Walter Benjamin writes, in particular, that literalness in translation is an integral part of free translation, capable of freeing the language from prison and dispelling the spell. How do you feel about literal translation?
N.D.: Complex issue, different people understand by "literal translation" different things. You need to know exactly what is meant. I have a negative attitude towards the literalism of A.P. Olenich-Gnenenko, but I welcome the "literalism" of M.L. Gasparov.

RJ: That is, in your opinion, the understanding of "literalism" depends on the person?
N.D.: From the interpretation of this idea and its implementation.

RJ: Didn't you have the feeling that you wrote books about Alice in Russian?
N.D.: I never think so highly of myself: I deeply revere the genius of Carroll.

RJ: Are you not offended that, despite other works, you are perceived precisely as a translator of "Alice"?
N.D.: I am calm about my reputation, and the fact that my name is connected with Carroll seems to me a great success. This translation, which was later published with comments by Martin Gardner and mine in the Literary Monuments, is considered by many to be a cult book.
I am still studying Carroll, in particular, I translated the diary of his 1867 trip to Russia. Carroll's friend Henry Liddon invited him to go to the celebration of the anniversary of Metropolitan Philaret. They visited St. Petersburg, Tsarskoye Selo and its environs, Kronstadt, Moscow, New Jerusalem, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, and Nizhny Novgorod. There are some mysteries on this trip.

RJ: Which?
N.D.: They were carrying a congratulatory letter to Filaret from Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford, a prominent figure in the Anglican Church, who, in particular, advocated rapprochement with the Eastern Church, but did not deliver it in time. What prevented them from doing this - despite the fact that they had a personal audience with Filaret and were present at the celebration itself?
I would like to publish a Russian diary as a separate book, with a preface, detailed comments, and illustrations. Carroll was a good photographer, but he did not shoot in Russia - the equipment of that time was cumbersome, in large cities he always bought postcards. They spent 2 days in Nizhny Novgorod, toured the fair, and in the evening went to the theater, where Carroll very accurately noted the future great actors, although he did not know Russian. At that time, a remarkable Russian artist and photographer V. Karelin lived in Nizhny Novgorod, who left St. Petersburg due to weak lungs, many of his works have been preserved - genre scenes of street and domestic life. Interestingly, the photographs of Karelin and Carroll have much in common.

RJ: Do you think that knowledge of the author's biography and materials around is important or even necessary for a translator?
N.D.: Yes, thanks to this you understand a lot and can translate better, and the work takes on a second, and sometimes a third plan. It is not at all necessary to display all this in comments later ... Unfortunately, not all translators study what is connected with the work and the author himself.

RJ: OA Sedakova is little interested in what relates to the biography of translated authors. "I am interested in a person in a state of speaking, I need to feel him almost physical nature like "cold" - "hot". It only gives the text itself."
N.D.: O.A.Sedakova - a special case, she has a huge storehouse of knowledge, but she is primarily a wonderful poet, not a translator. And an ordinary translator, even a very talented one, will only benefit if he knows more about the author and his time.

On the left - the first Sofia edition of "Alice" in the lane. N. Demurova, on the right - a new version translation of Demurova for the series "Literary Monuments".

***
N. Demurova, magazine for children "Kukumber", No. 7/2002:

I have translated many books, but the most famous, of course, was Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, a wonderful English writer whom all English people know almost by heart. About Carroll, someone once said that he retained the "crystal of childhood", and that is why children love him so much. But why do adults love him? Maybe because they also have fragments of this crystal?

***
Nina Demurova's conversation with Alexandra Borisenko
(Fragment from the book by Nina Demurova “Pictures and Conversations.
Conversations about Lewis Carroll. (Vita Nova, 2008)):

A. Borisenko. Nina Mikhailovna, can I ask you a question? I have long wanted to ask you why your translation of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass was first published in Bulgaria? It would seem that translation from English into Russian is not very clear, why, in fact, in Sofia?
N. Demurova. Oh, it's a long story! To tell the truth, in these interviews, I try to say as little as possible myself, but this story, perhaps, deserves to be told. If only because some absolutely incredible stories often arise around Lewis Carroll - this, at least, is my experience! You know, in Soviet times there was such an institution ... what was it called? .. "International Book", if I'm not mistaken, which, in particular, was engaged in ordering translations and books in the so-called countries of people's democracy. There was an official who studied the lists of new books published in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, etc. (these were mostly classics of national literature), and then ordered translations into Russian of those that seemed to him the most interesting . Translations were made in the country where the book was published, they were also printed there: as a rule, their printing was much better than ours, and, of course, their design was used. And then the entire circulation - with a few exceptions - was brought to us. In Moscow and Leningrad, as well as in a number of other cities, there were bookstores called Druzhba, where these books were sold. Since these books were usually distinguished by good design - fine paper, color illustrations, dust jackets, etc. - they were usually a special hunt. In general, in those years, amateurs had to “get” a good book, which took a lot of effort.
One fine day, an official sitting in the "Mezhkniga", looking through the lists of books published in Bulgarian, suddenly saw the title "Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass". Apparently, some kind of bell rang in his head - and he decided: “Ah, you need to order!” And ordered. I sent an order for the translation of Carroll's fairy tale... from Bulgarian into Russian! Circulation - 100,000 copies! Such were the circulation then ... The director of the publishing house (then it was called the Publishing House of Literature in Foreign Languages, then it was renamed Sofia-Press) was embarrassed: “From Bulgarian to Russian?” But there was nothing to be done - he wrote a kind letter saying that he would gladly publish this wonderful book, but perhaps it would be better to translate it not from Bulgarian, but from English. Six months passed - and the official repeated his order for "Alice", and again from Bulgarian to Russian! Then the director, who had the wonderful name Angel ... - Stoyanov, if I'm not mistaken, but I remember "Angel" exactly, it's impossible to forget such a name, - he began to look for some workarounds. He understood that translating "Alisa" from Bulgarian into Russian is complete nonsense.

A. Borisenko. Especially Alice in Wonderland - with all its puns and jokes!
N. Demurova. It so happened that he was in Moscow at some conference, met with various Moscow publishers and told one of them what a difficult situation he was in. And he said to him: “Listen, I know what you need to do. You need to find a translator here and order a translation for him!” It was clear to both of them that in Bulgaria there was simply no translator who could translate "Alisa" from English into Russian. "I even know who could do it." And called my name.

A. Borisenko. Did you already start translating "Alisa" then? For myself?
N. Demurova. At that time I was giving students a course in English stylistics and, explaining to them all sorts of subtleties, I often cited examples from Carroll, whom I loved very much. In general, I tried to choose examples that would stick in my memory, would be unexpected ... funny ... Students who knew that I was doing translations asked: “How would you translate this?” And so, in preparation for class, I began to write in the margins of my English copy of Wonderland possible translations in order to be ready just in case. I remember that we laughed a lot in these classes. Once the dean, a lady nicknamed “Stalin in a skirt”, who was passing by along the corridor, heard laughter and burst into our classroom: she was sure that the teacher had not come to class (ah, absenteeism !!) and the students were “disgraceful” ... So I gradually translated "Alice". It was a very exciting game! Once I told about it to the editor with whom I worked on another book. It was Anatoly Alexandrovich Klyshko - it was he who recommended me to the Sofia publisher Angel. I take this opportunity to convey my deep gratitude to him after all these years ... So, as a result of strange accidents and coincidences, I was commissioned to translate two fairy tales about Alice, which appeared in Sofia in 1967. The poems in them were translated by the wonderful poet Dina Orlovskaya. And the well-known translations of Marshak "Humpty Dumpty", "Papa William", "Sea Quadrille" were also used.

A. Borisenko. But how did it happen that our publishing houses did not translate Alice for so long? After all, it seems that the last translation was made long before that?
N. Demurova. Yes, even before the war, in 1940 or 1939.

A. Borisenko. By that time it was very out of date, so there really was no such "Alice" to read.
N. Demurova. No, they read it. It was a translation of the writer Alexander Olenich-Gnenenko, who by that time was no longer alive. They say he was very fond of "Alice" ... True, he was not a professional translator, and this, unfortunately, affected when he began to translate such a difficult book. There were many literalisms, dark places and other flaws in his translation. But by that time it was already clear that it was time to make a new translation. Later I was told that at that time in "Detgiz" (as the publishing house "Children's Literature" was then called) there was a real war between venerable translators for the right to translate this book. So I didn't know it myself...

A. Borisenko. ...bypassed these translators! But, in the end, "Alisa" was still not translated from Bulgarian!
N. Demurova. By the way, this crazy situation, when everything was turned upside down, continued when I came to Bulgaria to receive a fee (according to the terms of the contract, it was paid there in leva). Of course, I did not protest against the trip to Bulgaria. Our editor, Raya Andreeva, took me to the Central Bank, where the fee was kept. The signature of the director of the bank was required. The director received us very kindly, treated us to coffee, as is customary in Bulgaria, and the coffee there, I must say, is excellent! But I was very surprised that I do not speak Bulgarian. "How?! You don't know Bulgarian? But you translated “Alice”!” - "Yes, but from English." - "From English to Bulgarian?" - "No, in Russian." - “Into Russian?!” In a word, he could not understand in any way how I translated from English into Russian, and I receive Bulgarian leva for my translation in Sofia. The fee, however, still paid.

A. Borisenko. I am always very sorry that something sofiysky is not being republished ...
N. Demurova. I'm also sorry it only came out once. In 1978 in Moscow, in the series "Literary Monuments" of the publishing house "Nauka", a second version of my translation was published, so to speak, "academic". The first was addressed to children (and, of course, adults) and was designed for direct perception; there were no comments or explanations (although I wrote the preface - I always try to do this). The second was intended for older children and adults, and included biographical, literary, and scholarly commentary by Martin Gardner, as well as additional material, which, in the tradition of Literary Monuments, was placed in appendices. In this edition, the translation of poetic parodies and their originals, among which were not only children's authors, but also such poets as Wordsworth, Walter Scott and Moore, was undertaken by Olga Sedakova, then known only to a narrow circle of connoisseurs. Now she enjoys well-deserved recognition both in Russia and abroad. The Russian "Alice" was lucky for the second time - and so was I.
Of course, the free translation of puns and other games remained, but sometimes they also had to take into account the commentary. As you can see, the goals in these two translations were different. And therefore, I think, there is no point in arguing about which of the options is better: they are just different, that's all!

A. Borisenko. And, of course, parodies... It's nice when you immediately recognize the poem being parodied: this will instantly create a comic effect.
N. Demurova. Yes, in the Bulgarian edition the biggest problem was what to do with the parodies, of which Carroll has so many. The difficulty was that the English poems that Carroll parodied were not known to us. The pre-revolutionary translators of Alisa in these cases parodied famous Russian poems.

A. Borisenko. Yes Yes. "The bird of God knows neither care nor labor..." It's where Carroll's Crocodile is! Or "Tell me, uncle, it's not without reason ...".
N. Demurova. We wanted to avoid, on the one hand, incomprehensibility (if we simply translated Carroll's parodies), and on the other hand, Russification - after all, Carroll could not know Lermontov! I think we have found a very good way out. I say "we" because this decision was made jointly with Dina Orlovskaya. We decided to parody English children's poems, which, thanks to the translations of Chukovsky and Marshak, were widely known.

***
From an interview with N. Demurova “I wanted to protect Carroll”,
The New Times, No. 3 (272) of February 4, 2013:
http://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/62727/

Who made the decision to publish Alice? This book, it would seem, does not fit well into the Soviet children's literary canon.

It was a happy accident - "Alisa" did not fall into the hands of "Detgiz", did not pass "through the authorities." In Soviet times, there was such an organization, Mezhkniga, which ordered translations of Czech, Bulgarian and other classics to our brothers from the socialist camp. One day an official from Mezhkniga was looking through the list of books published by Sophia-Press, saw a book by Lewis Carroll and ordered a translation of Alice from Bulgarian. The director of Sofia Press, Angel Stoyanov, wrote a very polite reply that this book should be translated from English. But six months later, the order came again - and again from Bulgarian! Then Angel realized that he would have to look for an interpreter from English on his own. By a happy coincidence, it turned out to be me, and the book was published in Bulgaria.

Indeed, there were old translations, but they were all made according to the principle of Russification - English realities were replaced by Russian ones. The first anonymous translation of "Alice" under the title "Sonya in the Kingdom of the Diva" was published in 1879, while Carroll was still alive. The translator (I think it was a translator - then children's books were mostly translated by women) decided to replace William the Conqueror, unknown to Russian children, whom Alice mentions, with Napoleon, and as a result, the Mouse in this translation talks for a long time about "our victory at Borodino" . The Mad Hatter was replaced by Ilyushka the liar, and the "crazy tea party" ("Crazy Conversation" in this translation) was reduced to a meaningless conversation. Then other translations appeared, but they were also Russified. I think that Russian children laughed while reading them, but still these texts deviated too far from the English original.

And what principles of translation did you follow?

I always strive to keep the style of the writer. Yakhnin, let's say, translated very rudely: he wanted it to be funny, he inserted his own jokes, which were very unlike Carroll: he did not engage in rude laughter, everything is more subtle with him. Zakhoder also had his own intonation - such an October-pioneer enthusiasm. This, in my opinion, is completely unnecessary. I would like to convey the style of the author, his construction of phrases, intonation.
I did not translate poetry myself and worked with Dina Orlovskaya, a wonderful translator (Marshak's niece). She and I came up with the following move: Carroll parodied poems well known in England, and we decided that we would write parodies of English poems well known in our country thanks to the translations of Marshak and Chukovsky. Remember: "This is the house that Jack built"? We had: "This is the house that the bug built" - and so on.

Books about the girl Alice Victorian era Is it an extraordinary phenomenon?

In Carroll's time, children's books were different. Moral reading was very common in children's literature. There were almost no such simply funny books - nothing like Alice. When the book came out, critics were at first confused, someone even suggested that the author was crazy. But they quickly changed their minds, and there were rave reviews.

Don't you think that the educational effect is sometimes easier to achieve by avoiding a boring and moralizing intonation? For example, Carlson influenced me much more than Tolstoy's children's stories.

In Alice, of course, there is an educational moment, although you can’t grasp it directly. I think that this book had a great influence on the English, in particular, on their sense of humor.

Your book about Carroll is now out. Why did you decide to write it?

I did a lot of Carroll - I read his correspondence, diaries, memoirs of friends and colleagues, children with whom he was friendly. As a result, I created an image of a very special writer and person. I wanted to talk about him and protect him. All sorts of indiscriminate accusations, in particular, of pedophilia, are very fashionable in our country now. I wanted to protect Carroll from them, who had nothing to do with these sins. He was a very pure and kind person, and very religious, wrote on theological topics, read sermons - after all, he was a priest.
Now the wave is like this - everyone is accused of pedophilia. Everywhere they want to find some kind of dirt. And no one reads Nabokov's Lolita the way it should be read: the last chapter is important there, in which the hero repents and stigmatizes himself.

"It was necessary to convey a special, sometimes sly and mischievous, sometimes deeply personal, lyrical and philosophical spirit of Carroll's fairy tales, to reproduce the originality of the author's speech - restrained, clear, devoid of "beauties" and "figures", ... but extremely dynamic and expressive. There are no long descriptions, sentiments, "children's speech" in the author's speech of Carroll. At the same time, the translators tried, without violating the national identity of the original, to convey the special imagery of Carroll's fairy tales, the originality of his eccentric nonsense. We understood that, strictly speaking, this task is impossible: it is impossible to accurately convey in another language concepts and realities that do not exist in this other language.And yet I wanted to get as close as possible to the original, to follow a parallel path, if not the same, to convey, if not the organic fusion of letter and spirit, then at least the spirit of the original ".
This is how N. Demurova herself wrote about the tasks of translating "Alice", which faced her and the translator of poems D. Orlovskaya back in 1966. And it is worth saying that their imagination, combined with a responsible approach to the material, was appreciated by both critics and readers. The translation was deservedly recognized as "classic", that is, the most successful and adequate to the original (it was not without reason that it was published in the academic series "Literary Monuments"). The translators managed to find a "golden mean" - to preserve the spirit of a truly English national color and at the same time make the fairy tale as accessible as possible for the Russian-speaking reader. Something was lost, but this is inevitable in Carroll's translation. The translation is recommended for high school students and adults. Those who want to clarify all the "dark places" of the fairy tale should read the Demur translation, accompanied by M. Gardner's comments.

Articles by N. Demurova:

Demurova, Nina Mikhailovna - Russian translator, critic and literary critic; researcher of the literature of Great Britain and the USA, children's English literature, one of the leading domestic experts on the work of L. Carroll. Doctor of Philology.

She translated such works by L. Carroll as,. Her translations of "Alice" are considered "canonical" and are published more often than other translations.

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SHORT BIOGRAPHY:

She was born on October 3, 1930. In 1953 she graduated from Moscow State University (Romano-Germanic department of the Faculty of Philology) with a degree in English Language and Literature. In the late 1950s she worked as a translator in India. Then she taught at Moscow State University and at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. Lenin. She taught courses in modern English and American literature, children's literature in Great Britain and the United States. She was the first to introduce the teaching of children's literature as a philological discipline into university courses. In 1986 she defended her doctoral dissertation on "English Children's Literature 1740-1870".

The first literary translation of N. Demurova was "Peter Pan" by D. Barry.

Her translation of Carroll's Alice was first published in 1967 in Sofia.

In 1978, "Alice" by Demurova was published in the series "Literary Monuments" (publishing house "Nauka"). Due to the fact that this edition included original illustrations by D. Tenniel and comments by M. Gardner, the translation had to be somewhat changed (for example, the parody "The House That the Beetle Built" was replaced by another - "Baby Crocodile" - close to the original, and Pod-Cat became the Quasi Turtle). Since then, experts have recognized Demurova's translation as the most successful Russian translation of Carroll's fairy tales.

In addition to “Alice”, her translations included works by G.K. K. Narayana, J. Updike and others.

Nina Demurova is an honorary member of the Lewis Carroll Society in England and the USA, as well as the English Beatrix Potter Society.
In 2000 she received an Honorary Diploma from the International Council of Children's Books for translating Dickens' book "The Life of Our Lord"

In January 2009, Demurovala presented her book Pictures and Conversations: Conversations about Lewis Carroll, published by Vita-Nova. The book includes the author's conversations with famous artists, writers, translators, composers, directors, and mathematicians.

***
“Winners are not judged…” K. I. Chukovsky - N. M. Demurova.
"Literary Russia", 1968, September 20:

... I so often happened to see desperately bad translations of "Alice" that I was convinced that it was impossible to translate it into Russian. This book is too English. Almost all the situations in it are based on the game of English words, on English puns ... If you translate this book literally, you get boring nonsense ...
Fortunately, you have chosen another - the only true - path. You translated Alice creatively: that is, you completely abandoned literalism and reproduced the spirit of this book - the spirit of mischief, capricious and insane.

.
***
N. Demurova, “The Mastery of Translation. Collection seventh "
(M.: Soviet writer. 1970):

“Alice” refers to those books that you read and re-read all your life. So I read it too, read it, and thought, and wrote down all the thoughts that came to mind in the margins of the book, and when the margins were not enough, on scraps of paper, and then in a special notebook. I read "Alice" at home and with students, analyzed the subtleties and pitfalls of Carroll's text at literary seminars, found direct and hidden references to "Alice" in all kinds of English books, old and modern. After all, "Alice", along with the Bible and Shakespeare, is most often quoted by the British.

Boring book? And I made up my own puns, trying to repeat Lewis Carroll's word game in Russian, and my students and family laughed when I read these pieces to them. And yet, the idea of ​​translating "Alice" did not occur to me - I was too fascinated by the taboo imposed on her by the most experienced translators and by myself.

Then, as sometimes happens, there was a funny incident, an anecdote, a hilarious misunderstanding. In 1965, a Bulgarian translation of Alice was published in Bulgaria. An employee of the "Interbook", looking through the lists of Bulgarian books, saw the familiar name of "Alisa" and ordered its translation ... from Bulgarian into Russian! The director of the Bulgarian publishing house of literature in foreign languages ​​persuaded Mezhkniga to translate Alisa not from Bulgarian, but from English, but added that in Bulgaria it was impossible to find translators for such work. Then it was decided to publish the book in Sofia, and look for a translator in Russia. So, quite unexpectedly, I was offered to translate “Alice”.

I declined, recommending to the publisher other translators who, I thought, could take on this difficult task. But the publishing house decided to republish the existing translations - "Alice in Wonderland" by A. Olenich-Gnenenko and "Alice Through the Looking Glass" by V. A. Azov - and asked me to edit these translations. I wrote out both translations and put them next to the original.

[…]

After reading these translations, I clearly saw that Lewis Carroll appears to Russian readers in them as a strange, stupid and flat author. What an injustice!
In desperation, I agreed to a new translation of both books.

Working on the translation of Carroll, one encounters a myriad of difficulties. There is a play on words, and puns, and a game of concepts, and light, almost imperceptible logical shifts, and traditional English restraint, and concise sayings, in Russian unfolding like a spring, in long periods, and numerous details of life, characters, customs, turns of speech, deeply rooted in the national consciousness. And finally, poetry - not only that in verses, sometimes mischievous, sometimes lyrical, which are so numerous in both fairy tales, but that which permeates everything in Carroll - both poetry and prose - which determines a special structure, timbre, turn of phrase , and then a paragraph, a scene, a chapter, and finally the whole book. I had a good idea of ​​the difficulties I would have to deal with. In addition, I have more than once read chapters from Alice aloud, stopping to give this or that explanation. So I knew well by ear everything that often escapes during the “silent” reading of the text with my eyes - hidden rhymes, hints of puns, vowels, etc. I understood that I had taken on the task, with a strict I, impracticable - after all, it is impossible to accurately convey details and concepts in another language that do not exist in this other language. And yet... Nevertheless, I thought, it is probably possible to convey, convey the original as closely as possible (albeit not with adequacy!) , but at least the spirit of the original.
While working on "Alice", I deliberately avoided old translations ...

[…]

From the very beginning, I firmly decided to abandon the Russification of "Alice" and at the same time try to prove that "Alice" is not only a deep book, but also funny. I wanted to convey to the Russian reader the spirit of "Alice" - an eccentric and cheerful spirit.
I understood well that “Alice” is not just a book and not only for children. No wonder G. K. Chesterton wrote: “The best of Lewis Carroll is written by scientists for scientists, and not by adults for children.” And more: “He not only taught children to stand on their heads - he taught scientists to stand on their heads. What a head it was if you could stand on it like that!”14 Scientists have paid tribute to this head - Carroll was admired by Norbert Wiener, Edmund T. Whittaker and Bertrand Russell, Clement Durell, Martin Gardner and many, many others wrote about him.
I wanted to preserve and convey in Russian translation these two "addresses" of the book - for adults and children, for reason and spontaneity. The Russian "Alisa", I thought, should be understandable and close to the kids - and at the same time not slip on the surface, preserve the Carroll depth intended for scientists.

[…]

Musicians are well aware of what happens when music written for one instrument is arranged, transcribed for another. Here you have to take into account the capabilities of the new instrument, choose other, more sounding registers, raise or lower by a tone, by a third, etc. As a result, the melody sounds a little different, but it's still the same melody.

So it is with translation - the tessitura changes, but the music must remain the same. And what the human voice sings freely and easily, the violin can also reproduce.

.
***
From an interview with N. Demurova, "Russian Journal", 03/15/2002:

RJ: But still, how to unite authors of interest to you? The works of Barry and especially Carroll are children's literature with philosophical overtones, a line of nonsense and irony...

N.D.: Of course, this is a line of English grotesque, nonsense, humor, often not direct, close to irony, which I always liked.

RJ: In your opinion, is the tradition of English humor and the grotesque represented in Russia today well or not enough?

N.D.: Good enough. There are still gaps, but these are perhaps not the primary authors.

RJ: Probably your most difficult translation is "Alice"?

N.D.: I translated all the works with pleasure. Books about Alice were published in 1967 in Sofia, in the Publishing House of Literature in Foreign Languages, then it became known as Sofia Press.

RJ: Why in Sofia? Workarounds?

N.D.: No, the paradoxes of socialist planning. Some books were published in the republics, others in the countries of people's democracy - they had their own plan, of course, coordinated with Moscow. Sometimes he crashed.
Here I was just lucky: for my stylistics course, I prepared examples of the implementation of metaphors, taking them from Carroll and J. Mikesh. Students, knowing that I was translating, asked: “How would you translate this?” I said: “It’s hard to say right off the bat, you can do this, but you can do that.” We had a kind of game - I have a copy of the book, where I wrote possible translations in the margins. Once friends came to me, among them there was one good editor, and I quoted something from Carroll. This editor met a Bulgarian publisher in Moscow who was called in to discuss publishing plans, and when he told him that he was going to publish Alisa, my friend said: "I know a translator for you."

RJ: Since 1879, since the publication of the first anonymous translation of "Alice", which was called "Sonya in the Land of the Diva", the book has been translated many times. How do you feel about these works?

N.D.: Yes, funny name. By the way, an American researcher of Russian origin, who knows Russian, translated the name "Sonya in the country of the virgin." I don't think he ever held this book in his hands.
After the first translation, there were wonderful works by A.N. Rozhdestvenskaya, P.S. Solovieva, in their own way a very interesting translation by V.V. Nabokov, but they all proceeded from the principle of Russification, so “province”, “Siberian cat” appeared in the texts … But there were also less successful, literal translations. "Alice in Wonderland" by A.P. Olenich-Gnenenko was published in 1940 and reprinted until the early 1960s, at that time it was the most common translation. Sometimes "Alice" Olenich-Gnenenko looks like nonsense. For example, the Looking-Glass Mosquito asks Alice: “What kind of insects do you have?” “Well, here, for example, we have a Butterfly” (Butterfly),” she replies. “Think! - drawled the Gnat, - and we have a Bread-and-Butterfly. In his translation, "Bread Butterfly" appears - the whole word game is lost.
When I started translating Alice, one of my friends, a connoisseur of literature, said: “Why did you take it on? What an unpleasant book this is! There is something pathological about her.” In those years, pre-revolutionary translations were not published, so I came up with a new method - so that the game and the grotesque of the book were understandable, but at the same time do without Russification.

RJ: Why did your friend find this book unpleasant? Did he mean that a grown man dedicates a fairy tale to a girl?

N.D.: In those years, no one heard of pedophilia. He was referring to previous unsuccessful translations. If absurdity and nonsense is well translated, a second, deep level is felt, there is no unpleasant sensation - I'm not talking about works where the author sets this up.

RJ: You have touched upon the problem of literal translation. In his essay "The Task of the Translator", Walter Benjamin writes, in particular, that literalness in translation is an integral part of free translation, which can free the language from its prison and dispel the spell. How do you feel about literal translation?

N.D.: Difficult question, different people mean different things by “literal translation”. You need to know exactly what is meant. I have a negative attitude towards the literalism of A.P. Olenich-Gnenenko, but I welcome the “literalism” of M.L. Gasparov.

RJ: That is, in your opinion, the understanding of "literalism" depends on the person?

N.D.: From the interpretation of this idea and its implementation.

RJ: Didn't you have the feeling that you wrote books about Alice in Russian?

N.D.: I never think so highly of myself: I deeply revere the genius of Carroll.

RJ: Are you not offended that, despite other works, you are perceived precisely as a translator of "Alice"?

N.D.: I am calm about my reputation, and the fact that my name is connected with Carroll seems to me a great success. This translation, which was later published with comments by Martin Gardner and mine in Monuments of Literature, is considered by many to be a cult book.
I am still studying Carroll, in particular, I translated the diary of his 1867 trip to Russia. Carroll's friend Henry Liddon invited him to go to the celebration of the anniversary of Metropolitan Philaret. They visited St. Petersburg, Tsarskoye Selo and its environs, Kronstadt, Moscow, New Jerusalem, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, and Nizhny Novgorod. There are some mysteries on this trip.

RJ: Which?

N.D.: They were carrying a congratulatory letter to Filaret from Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford, a prominent figure in the Anglican Church, who, in particular, advocated rapprochement with the Eastern Church, but did not deliver it in time. What prevented them from doing this - despite the fact that they had a personal audience with Filaret and were present at the celebration itself?
I would like to publish a Russian diary as a separate book, with a preface, detailed comments, and illustrations. Carroll was a good photographer, but he did not shoot in Russia - the equipment of that time was cumbersome, in large cities he always bought postcards. They spent 2 days in Nizhny Novgorod, toured the fair, and in the evening went to the theater, where Carroll very accurately noted the future great actors, although he did not know Russian. At that time, a remarkable Russian artist and photographer V. Karelin lived in Nizhny Novgorod, who left St. Petersburg due to weak lungs, many of his works have been preserved - genre scenes of street and domestic life. Interestingly, the photographs of Karelin and Carroll have much in common.

[…]

RJ: Do you think that knowledge of the author's biography and materials around is important or even necessary for a translator?

N.D.: Yes, thanks to this you understand a lot and can translate better, and the work takes on a second, and sometimes a third plan. It is not at all necessary to display all this in comments later ... Unfortunately, not all translators study what is connected with the work and the author himself.

RJ: OA Sedakova is little interested in what relates to the biography of translated authors. “I am interested in a person in a state of speaking, I need to feel his almost physical nature, like “cold” - “hot”. It only gives the text itself."

N.D.: O. A. Sedakova is a special case, she has a huge storehouse of knowledge, but she is first of all a wonderful poet, not a translator. And an ordinary translator, even a very talented one, will only benefit if he knows more about the author and his time.

On the left - the first Sofia edition of "Alice" in the lane. N. Demurova,
on the right is a new version of Demurova's translation for the Literary Monuments series.

***
Nina Demurova's conversation with Alexandra Borisenko.
Fragment from the book by Nina Demurova
“Pictures and Conversations. Conversations about Lewis Carroll. (Vita Nova, 2008):

A. Borisenko. Nina Mikhailovna, can I ask you a question? I have long wanted to ask you why your translation of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass was first published in Bulgaria? It would seem that translation from English into Russian is not very clear, why, in fact, in Sofia?

N. Demurova. Oh, it's a long story! To tell the truth, in these interviews, I try to say as little as possible myself, but this story, perhaps, deserves to be told. If only because some absolutely incredible stories often arise around Lewis Carroll - this, at least, is my experience! You know, in Soviet times there was such an institution ... what was it called? .. "International Book", if I'm not mistaken, which, in particular, was engaged in ordering translations and books in the so-called countries of people's democracy. There was an official who studied the lists of new books published in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, etc. (these were mostly classics of national literature), and then ordered translations into Russian of those that seemed to him the most interesting . Translations were made in the country where the book was published, they were also printed there: as a rule, their printing was much better than ours, and, of course, their design was used. And then the entire circulation - with a few exceptions - was brought to us. In Moscow and Leningrad, as well as in a number of other cities, there were bookstores called Druzhba, where these books were sold. Since these books were usually distinguished by good design - fine paper, color illustrations, dust jackets, etc. - they were usually a special hunt. In general, in those years, amateurs had to “get” a good book, which took a lot of effort.
One fine day, an official sitting in the "Mezhkniga", looking through the lists of books published in Bulgarian, suddenly saw the title "Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass". Apparently, some kind of bell rang in his head - and he decided: “Ah, you need to order!” And ordered. I sent an order for the translation of Carroll's fairy tale ... from Bulgarian into Russian! Circulation - 100,000 copies! Such were the circulations then ... The director of the publishing house (then it was called the Publishing House of Literature in Foreign Languages, then it was renamed Sofia-Press) was embarrassed: “From Bulgarian to Russian?” But there was nothing to be done - he wrote a kind letter saying that he would gladly publish this wonderful book, but perhaps it would be better to translate it not from Bulgarian, but from English. Six months passed - and the official repeated his order for "Alice", and again from Bulgarian to Russian! Then the director, who had the wonderful name Angel ... - Stoyanov, if I'm not mistaken, but I remember Angel for sure, it's impossible to forget such a name, - he began to look for some workarounds. He understood that translating "Alisa" from Bulgarian into Russian is complete nonsense.

A. Borisenko. Especially Alice in Wonderland - with all its puns and jokes!

N. Demurova. It so happened that he was in Moscow at some conference, met with various Moscow publishers and told one of them what a difficult situation he was in. And he said to him: “Listen, I know what you need to do. You need to find a translator here and order a translation for him!” It was clear to both of them that in Bulgaria there was simply no translator who could translate "Alisa" from English into Russian. "I even know who could do it." And called my name.

A. Borisenko. Did you already start translating "Alisa" then? For myself?

N. Demurova. At that time I was giving students a course in English stylistics and, explaining to them all sorts of subtleties, I often cited examples from Carroll, whom I loved very much. In general, I tried to choose examples that would stick in my memory, would be unexpected ... funny ... Students who knew that I was doing translations asked: “How would you translate this?” And so, in preparation for class, I began to write in the margins of my English copy of Wonderland possible translations in order to be ready just in case. I remember that we laughed a lot in these classes. Once the dean, a lady nicknamed “Stalin in a skirt”, who was passing by along the corridor, heard laughter and burst into our classroom: she was sure that the teacher had not come to class (ah, absenteeism !!) and the students were “disgraceful” ... So I gradually translated "Alice". It was a very exciting game! Once I told about it to the editor with whom I worked on another book. It was Anatoly Alexandrovich Klyshko - it was he who recommended me to the Sofia publisher Angel. I take this opportunity to convey my deep gratitude to him after all these years ... So, as a result of strange accidents and coincidences, I was commissioned to translate two fairy tales about Alice, which appeared in Sofia in 1967. The poems in them were translated by the wonderful poet Dina Orlovskaya. And the well-known translations of Marshak "Humpty Dumpty", "Papa William", "Sea Quadrille" were also used.

A. Borisenko. But how did it happen that our publishing houses did not translate Alice for so long? After all, it seems that the last translation was made long before that?

N. Demurova. Yes, even before the war, in 1940 or 1939.

A. Borisenko. By that time it was very out of date, so there really was no such "Alice" to read.

N. Demurova. No, they read it. It was a translation of the writer Alexander Olenich-Gnenenko, who by that time was no longer alive. They say that he was very fond of "Alice" ... True, he was not a professional translator, and this, unfortunately, affected when he began to translate such a difficult book. There were many literalisms, dark places and other flaws in his translation. But by that time it was already clear that it was time to make a new translation. Later I was told that at that time in "Detgiz" (as the publishing house "Children's Literature" was then called) there was a real war between venerable translators for the right to translate this book. So, without knowing it, I...

A. Borisenko. …bypassed these translators! But, in the end, "Alisa" was still not translated from Bulgarian!

N. Demurova. By the way, this crazy situation, when everything was turned upside down, continued when I came to Bulgaria to receive a fee (according to the terms of the contract, it was paid there in leva). Of course, I did not protest against the trip to Bulgaria. Our editor, Raya Andreeva, took me to the Central Bank, where the fee was kept. The signature of the director of the bank was required. The director received us very kindly, treated us to coffee, as is customary in Bulgaria, and the coffee there, I must say, is excellent! But I was very surprised that I do not speak Bulgarian. "How?! You don't know Bulgarian? But you translated “Alice”!” - "Yes, but from English." - "From English to Bulgarian?" - "No, in Russian." - “Into Russian?!” In a word, he could not understand in any way how I translated from English into Russian, and I receive Bulgarian leva for my translation in Sofia. The fee, however, still paid.

A. Borisenko. I am always very sorry that something sophian is not reprinted ...

N. Demurova. I'm also sorry it only came out once. In 1978 in Moscow, in the series "Literary Monuments" of the publishing house "Nauka", a second version of my translation was published, so to speak, "academic". The first was addressed to children (and, of course, adults) and was designed for direct perception; there were no comments or explanations (although I wrote the preface - I always try to do this). The second was intended for older children and adults, and included biographical, literary, and scholarly commentary by Martin Gardner, as well as additional material, which, in the tradition of Literary Monuments, was placed in appendices. In this edition, the translation of poetic parodies and their originals, among which were not only children's authors, but also such poets as Wordsworth, Walter Scott and Moore, was undertaken by Olga Sedakova, then known only to a narrow circle of connoisseurs. Now she enjoys well-deserved recognition both in Russia and abroad. The Russian "Alice" was lucky for the second time - and so was I.
Of course, the free translation of puns and other games remained, but sometimes they also had to take into account the commentary. As you can see, the goals in these two translations were different. And therefore, I think, there is no point in arguing about which of the options is better: they are just different, that's all!

[…]

A. Borisenko. And, of course, parodies... It's nice when you immediately recognize the poem being parodied: this will instantly create a comic effect.

N. Demurova. Yes, in the Bulgarian edition the biggest problem was what to do with the parodies, of which Carroll has so many. The difficulty was that the English poems that Carroll parodied were not known to us. The pre-revolutionary translators of Alisa in these cases parodied famous Russian poems.

A. Borisenko. Yes Yes. “The bird of God knows neither care nor labor…”. It's where Carroll's Crocodile is! Or “Tell me, uncle, it’s not without reason ...”.

N. Demurova. We wanted to avoid, on the one hand, incomprehensibility (if we simply translated Carroll's parodies), and on the other hand, Russification - after all, Carroll could not know Lermontov! I think we have found a very good way out. I say "we" because this decision was made jointly with Dina Orlovskaya. We decided to parody English children's poems, which, thanks to the translations of Chukovsky and Marshak, were widely known.

***
From an interview with N. Demurova “I wanted to protect Carroll”,
The New Times, No. 3 (272) of February 4, 2013:
http://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/62727/

- ... who made the decision to publish Alice? This book, it would seem, does not fit well into the Soviet children's literary canon.

- It was a happy accident - "Alisa" did not fall into the hands of "Detgiz", did not pass "through the authorities." In Soviet times, there was such an organization, Mezhkniga, which ordered translations of Czech, Bulgarian and other classics to our brothers from the socialist camp. One day an official from Mezhkniga was looking through the list of books published by Sophia-Press, saw a book by Lewis Carroll and ordered a translation of Alice from Bulgarian. The director of Sofia Press, Angel Stoyanov, wrote a very polite reply that this book should be translated from English. But six months later, the order came again - and again from Bulgarian! Then Angel realized that he would have to look for an interpreter from English on his own. By a happy coincidence, it turned out to be me, and the book was published in Bulgaria.

Indeed, there were old translations, but they were all made according to the principle of Russification - English realities were replaced by Russian ones. The first anonymous translation of "Alice" under the title "Sonya in the Kingdom of the Diva" was published in 1879, while Carroll was still alive. The translator (I think it was a translator - then children's books were mostly translated by women) decided to replace William the Conqueror, unknown to Russian children, whom Alice mentions, with Napoleon, and as a result, the Mouse in this translation talks for a long time about "our victory at Borodino" . The Mad Hatter was replaced by Ilyushka the liar, and the "crazy tea party" ("Crazy Conversation" in this translation) was reduced to a meaningless conversation. Then other translations appeared, but they were also Russified. I think that Russian children laughed while reading them, but still these texts deviated too far from the English original.

— And what principles of translation did you follow?

— I always strive to maintain the style of the writer. Yakhnin, let's say, translated very rudely: he wanted it to be funny, he inserted his own jokes, which were very unlike Carroll: he did not engage in rude laughter, everything is more subtle with him. Zakhoder also had his own intonation - such an October-pioneer enthusiasm. This, in my opinion, is completely unnecessary. I would like to convey the style of the author, his construction of phrases, intonation.
I did not translate poetry myself and worked with Dina Orlovskaya, a wonderful translator (Marshak's niece). She and I came up with the following move: Carroll parodied poems well known in England, and we decided that we would write parodies of English poems well known in our country thanks to the translations of Marshak and Chukovsky. Remember: "This is the house that Jack built"? We had: "This is the house that the bug built" - and so on.

- Books about the girl Alice for the Victorian era - an extraordinary phenomenon, isn't it?

“In Carroll's time, children's books were different. Moral reading was very common in children's literature. There were almost no such simply funny books - nothing like Alice. When the book came out, critics were at first confused, someone even suggested that the author was crazy. But they quickly changed their minds, and there were rave reviews.

- Don't you think that the educational effect is sometimes easier to achieve by avoiding a boring and moralizing intonation? For example, Carlson influenced me much more than Tolstoy's children's stories.

- In "Alice", of course, there is an educational moment, although you can’t grab it directly. I think that this book had a great influence on the English, in particular, on their sense of humor.

Your book about Carroll is now out. Why did you decide to write it?

- I did a lot of Carroll - I read his correspondence, diaries, memoirs of friends and colleagues, children with whom he was friendly. As a result, I created an image of a very special writer and person. I wanted to talk about him and protect him. All sorts of indiscriminate accusations, in particular, of pedophilia, are very fashionable in our country now. I wanted to protect Carroll from them, who had nothing to do with these sins. He was a very pure and kind person, and very religious, wrote on theological topics, read sermons - after all, he was a priest.
Now the wave is like this - everyone is accused of pedophilia. Everywhere they want to find some kind of dirt. And no one reads Nabokov's Lolita the way it should be read: the last chapter is important there, in which the hero repents and stigmatizes himself.

.
***

“It was necessary to convey a special, sometimes sly and mischievous, sometimes deeply personal, lyrical and philosophical spirit of Carroll's fairy tales, to reproduce the originality of the author's speech - restrained, clear, devoid of "beauties" and "figures", ... but extremely dynamic and expressive. There are no long descriptions, sentiments, "children's speech" in the author's speech of Carroll. At the same time, the translators tried, without violating the national originality of the original, to convey the special imagery of Carroll's fairy tales, the originality of his eccentric nonsense. We understood that, strictly speaking, this task is impossible: it is impossible to accurately convey in another language concepts and realities that do not exist in this other language. And yet I wanted to get as close as possible to the original, to go along a parallel path, if not the same, to convey, if not the organic fusion of the letter and the spirit, then at least the spirit of the original.

This is how N. Demurova herself wrote about the tasks of translating "Alice", which faced her and the translator of poems D. Orlovskaya back in 1966. And it is worth saying that their imagination, combined with a responsible approach to the material, was appreciated by both critics and readers. The translation was deservedly recognized as "classic", read - the most successful and adequate to the original (it was not without reason that it was published in the academic series "Literary Monuments").
The translators managed to find a "golden mean" - to preserve the spirit of a truly English national color and at the same time make the fairy tale as accessible as possible for the Russian-speaking reader. Something was lost, but this is inevitable in Carroll's translation. The translation is recommended for high school students and adults. Those who want to clarify all the "dark places" of the tale should read the Demur translation, accompanied by M. Gardner's comments.

***
Articles by N. Demurova:

N. Demurova "Lewis Carroll and the story of a picnic"
(“Knowledge is Power” No 6/1968)

N. Demurova. "Voice and Violin"
(“Translation Mastery. Seventh Collection”. M: Soviet Writer. 1970)

H.M. Demurova. "Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass"

M., "Nauka", Main edition of physical and mathematical literature, 1991)

H.M. Demurova. "On the translation of Carroll's fairy tales"
(appendix to his translation of "Alice" by L. Carroll,
M., "Nauka", Main edition of physical and mathematical literature, 1991) (interview with Nina Demurova) Interviewed by E. Kalashnikova.

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Nina Mikhailovna Demurova
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literary critic and translator
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Date of Birth:	Biography She has translated works by such authors as Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, John Dunn Macdonald, Lewis Carroll, Frances Eliza Burnett, James Matthew Barry, Beatrice Potter, Jennifer Garner, Narayan Razipuram Krishnaswami, John Hoyer Updike and others. He is an honorary member of the Lewis Carroll Society in England and the USA, as well as the English Beatrix Potter Society. In 2000, she received an Honorary Diploma from the International Children's Book Council for her translation of Dickens' book The Life of Our Lord. Artworks Books Demurova N. M. Lewis Carroll: Essay on life and work / Ed. ed. B. I. Purishev .. - M .: Nauka, 1979. - 200, p. - (Literary criticism and linguistics). - 50,000 copies.(reg.) July afternoon is golden. Articles about the English children's book. - M.: Publishing house of URAO, 2000. The main dates of the life and work of L. Carroll. 2003. On the translation of Carroll's fairy tales. 2003 Pictures and conversations. Conversations about Lewis Carroll. - St. Petersburg: "Vita Nova", 2008. - ISBN 978-5-93898-173-7. English literary tale: Collection: Per. from English. / Comp., ed. intro. Art. N. Demurova. - M .: TERRA-Book Club, 1998. - 480 p. - (Library of English Literature). Lewis Carroll . - M.: Young Guard, 2013. - 412, p., l. ill. - (Life of Remarkable People; Issue 1590 (1390)). - ISBN 978-5-235-03568-3. - 5000 copies. Translations Charles Dickens The life of our Lord Jesus Christ Lewis Carroll Through the mirror and what Alice saw there, or Alice through the looking glass Edgar Allan Poe The man who was hacked to pieces. The tale of the last bugabuskokikapuska launch campaign Don't lay the line on your head Eleanor long chest Von Kempelen and his discovery Gilbert Keith Chesterton The Sins of Count Saradin purple wig The Elusive Prince James Matthew Barry Frances Burnett The Little Princess, or The Story of Sarah Crewe "Reserved Garden" - the story was published in the "World of Girls" series of the publishing house "Amber Tale" along with "The Little Princess" Jen Ormerod "Modi and the Bear" (Polyandria, 2011) Filmography - "Alice in Wonderland " - consultant - "Alice in the Wonderland " - consultant Write a review on the article "Demurova, Nina Mikhailovna" Notes Links in the magazine room press portrait Yandex.news Zhukova L.. The New Times (4.2.2012). - Interview with N. Demurova. Retrieved February 19, 2013. . http://www.seva.ru/oborot/guests/?id=199 USSR This article about the biography of a person from the USSR is a stub. You can help the project by adding to it. An excerpt characterizing Demurova, Nina Mikhailovna And I immediately saw a transparent, brightly glowing, surprisingly powerful entity, on the chest of which an unusual “diamond” energy star was burning. This "star" shone and shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow, now decreasing, then increasing, as if slowly pulsing, and sparkled so brightly, as if it really had been created from the most amazing diamonds. “You see that strange upside-down star on his chest?” This is his key. And if you try to follow him like a thread, then it will lead you straight to Axel, who has the same star - this is the same essence, only in its next incarnation. I looked at her with all my eyes, and apparently noticing this, Stella laughed and cheerfully admitted: - Don't think that it's me myself - it was my grandmother who taught me! .. I was very ashamed to feel like a complete bum, but the desire to know more was a hundred times stronger than any shame, so I hid my pride as deep as possible and carefully asked: – And what about all these amazing “realities” that we are now seeing here? After all, this is someone else's, specific life, and you do not create them in the same way as you create all your worlds? - Oh no! - again, the baby was delighted with the opportunity to explain something to me. - Of course not! It's just the past in which all these people once lived, and I'm just taking you and me there. - And Harold? How does he see all this? Oh, it's easy for him! He's just like me, dead, so he can move wherever he wants. After all, he no longer has a physical body, so his essence knows no obstacles here and can walk wherever it wants ... just like me ... - the little girl finished sadly. I sadly thought that what was for her just a “simple transfer to the past”, for me, apparently, for a long time will be a “mystery behind seven locks” ... But Stella, as if having heard my thoughts, immediately hurried to reassure me : - You'll see, it's very simple! You just have to try. - And these "keys", don't they ever repeat with others? I decided to continue my questions. - No, but sometimes something else happens ... - for some reason, smiling funny, the baby answered. - At the beginning, that’s exactly how I got caught, for which I was very much “beaten” ... Oh, it was so stupid! .. - But as? I asked very interested. Stella replied cheerfully: - Oh, that was very funny! - and after a little thought, she added, - but it’s also dangerous ... I searched all the “floors” for the past incarnation of my grandmother, and instead of her, a completely different entity came along her “thread”, which somehow managed to “copy” my grandmother’s “ flower” (apparently also a “key”!) and, as soon as I managed to be glad that I had finally found it, this unfamiliar entity mercilessly hit me in the chest. Yes, so much so that my soul almost flew away! .. "But how did you get rid of her?" I was surprised. - Well, to be honest, I didn’t get rid of it ... - the girl was embarrassed. - I just called my grandmother ... What do you call "floors"? I still couldn't calm down. – Well, these are different “worlds” where the spirits of the dead live... In the most beautiful and highest, those who were good live... and, probably, the strongest too. - People like you? I asked smiling. – Oh, no, of course! I must have gotten here by mistake. - The girl said sincerely. – Do you know what is the most interesting? From this "floor" we can walk everywhere, but from the others no one can get here ... Is it really interesting? .. Yes, it was very strange and very exciting for my “hungry” brain, and I so wanted to know more! gave something (like, for example, my " star friends”), and therefore, even such a simple childish explanation already made me unusually happy and made me delve even more furiously into my experiments, conclusions and mistakes ... as usual, finding even more incomprehensible things in everything that happens. My problem was that I could do or create “unusual” very easily, but the whole trouble was that I also wanted to understand how I create it all ... Namely, this is what I have not been very successful with yet ... What about the rest of the floors? Do you know how many there are? They are completely different, unlike this one? .. - unable to stop, I impatiently bombarded Stella with questions. – Oh, I promise you, we will definitely go there for a walk! You will see how interesting it is there!.. Only it is dangerous there too, especially in one. There are such monsters walking around! .. And the people are not very pleasant either. “I think I have already seen similar monsters,” I said, not very confidently, remembering something. - Look here... And I tried to show her the first, met in my life, astral beings who attacked the drunken dad of little Vesta. - Oh, so it's the same! Where did you see them? On the ground?!.. - Well, yes, they came when I was helping a good little girl say goodbye to her dad ... - So, they come to the living? .. - my girlfriend was very surprised.