ABSTRACT
First, the uneven quality of the nineteenth-century translations of Turgenev’s fiction has been more often remarked upon than studied. I have therefore chosen to examine the texts of translations from Turgenev in the two decades when a coherent group of his works was translated – the 1850s and the 1890s. Additionally, I have examined the relationship of these translations to the climate of English culture in which they were undertaken. The nature and reception of translations at a time when publishing was still very far from being internationalised may be taken as indicating both one nation’s perception of another and, ipso facto, the cultural and ideological preoccupations of the ‘host’ nation. I consider this to be peculiarly true of the English versions of Turgenev’s works which appeared in the two decades to which this study addresses itself. In the 1850s hostility towards Russia during the Crimean War and the habitual insularity of English culture produced a selective curiosity which, in its distortedness, made possible the publication of translations that were themselves distortions. Forty years later far-reaching changes had occurred which facilitated the efforts of Constance Garnett to attempt a scrupulous translation of the bulk of Turgenev’s work. By the early 1890s an aesthetics of fiction had emerged which favoured the reputation of a discriminating stylist like Turgenev, while English literature had become infinitely more open to foreign influences in general. These, and a range of other factors, I have adduced in chapters 1 and 5 of this book. In doing so, I hope to have performed the dual task of illustrating a general shift in the outlook of English culture by showing the changes in approach to the intrinsic linguistic and literary qualities of one foreign writer in particular.
