ROBERT CHANDLER ON NIKOLAY LESKOV¹S LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK
³Nikolay Leskov is Russia¹s best-kept secret. Possibly, if Anthony Trollope
had been merged with Thomas Hardy, England could have had a comparable
writer (...) in its graphic depiction of lust, murder and punishment Lady
Macbeth of Mtsensk outshines even Dostoevsky.
Donald Rayfield (Literary Review)
Nikolay Leskov is at least as great a writer as Turgenev, although he still
remains largely unknown to English-speaking readers. This is in part
because of the remarkable variety of his novels, stories and journalism;
literary historians tend to prefer writers who are easier to pigeonhole. It
is also because of the complexity of his language. To Leskov, according to
one critic, Œlanguage was not simply a medium of communication, but a
potential art object in its own right, something to be played with, sculpted
into interesting shapes.¹ 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk' is Shakespearean in
both its linguistic vigour and its emotional intensity. The libretto of
Shostakovich's opera is based on this story.
Robert Chandler will talk about Leskov and read from his recently published
translation of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Hesperus) on 15 July, 7.0 pm at the
LRB Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, London WC1. Robert Chandler's co-translations
of Andrey Platonov have twice been shortlisted for the Weidenfeld European
Translation Prize (HAPPY MOSCOW in 2002, and SOUL in 2004); his
co-translation of Platonov's 'The Macedonian Officer' was awarded joint
second prize in the BCLA's 'John Dryden Translation Competition' this year.
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