Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

‘Such as?’

‘Such as an aviator’

What luck that Platosha’s not on that plane.

Take the statuette of Themis. It’s hard to imagine my childhood without her, she accompanied the most vivid moments. I didn’t yet know what sort of instrument I was preparing when I broke off her scales. But it turned out my childhood prank was part of a drama that unfolded years later on the bank of the Zhdanovka River. I want to say that there are no fundamental or nonfundamental events and everything is important and everything is put to use, whether for good or bad.

An artist drawing life in the minutest details understands that. No, he is not in a position to reflect certain things. When drawing a flowerbed in a southern city, he supposedly cannot convey the aroma of flowers on a July evening. And he cannot convey damp stuffiness after a rain, into which that aroma dissolves so you could drink it. But there is an amazing moment when a picture begins to smell fragrant. Because genuine art is an expression of the inexpressible, without which life is not complete. Striving for fullness of expression is striving for fullness of truth.

There is something that remains outside the bounds of words and paints. You know that it is there but you just cannot approach it: there is a depth there. You stand at the surf and realize you will need to walk differently in order to go further: you cannot rule out walking atop the water. Because, for example, when saying ‘my childhood,’ I am not explaining anything at all to my future daughter. In order to give her any notion of that at all, I will need to describe a thousand various details, otherwise she won’t understand what composed my happiness.

In that case, what awaits description? Well, of course there’s the wallpaper over the bed – I still remember its flowery pattern. My finger slides over it in the evening, in the minute before slumber. The clang of the chamber pot lid is as piercing as that of orchestral cymbals. Among sounds, a bed squeaking – at every move I make – is also memorable. A hand caresses its shiny cold railing, entwines with them, bestowing its warmth upon them. It slips down, groping at the folds of the linens and resting against the knee of my grandmother, who sits by the bed. I examine the chandelier and its spidery shadows. It is bright in the center of the ceiling but there is darkness in the corners. On the cabinet, Themis holds her scales, radiating justice. My grandmother is reading Robinson Crusoe .

One of the joys of translating Eugene Vodolazkin’s work is the opportunity to correspond with him about the novels, both his original versions and my English translations. As with Laurus , Eugene answered questions about The Aviator along the way, read my translation, and offered comments and ideas, all with his usual humor and warmth. Working with him is just plain fun. Of course another joy of translating Eugene’s novels is reading them for the first time, something I did electronically for The Aviator because I simply couldn’t wait for a printed book. I hope other readers will be as surprised as I was when I learned what prompted Innokenty’s initial hospital stay.

Translating bits and pieces of quoted texts from other authors always raises the choice of either translating them myself or borrowing phrases and lines from other translators’ work. I tend to opt for the latter and acknowledge my colleagues’ translations if I find translations that fit the tone of both the original quotation and the novel I’m translating. Alan Shaw’s translation of Alexander Pushkin’s Feast During the Plague has now helped me out with two books, for which I thank him, and Bernard Guilbert Guerney’s translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls line about fast driving felt just right, even after inserting Eugene’s parenthetical addition. Katherine Young, a poet and fellow translator, didn’t mind my borrowing a phrase from her translation of Mikhail Lermontov’s lovely poem ‘Alone, I set out on the road.’ Kate also offered her help with the stanzas of Alexander Blok’s ‘The Aviator’ that pop up in Eugene’s The Aviator . Blok is diabolically difficult to translate and I’m no poet, so it’s thanks to Kate that these English-language stanzas read like poetry. She also helped me with Nikolai Leskov’s verse.

A number of books offered me options as I searched for specialized vocabulary for aspects of Soviet prison camps in general and the camp on the Solovetsky Islands in particular. Two were especially helpful: Danzig Baldaev’s Drawings from the Gulag , translated by Polly Gannon and Ast A. Moore, and published by Fuel in a bilingual edition; and Thomas P. Whitney’s translation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago .

The Aviator is my third translation for Oneworld and I couldn’t be happier to work with Juliet Mabey and her team again. I’m eternally grateful for Juliet’s editorial suggestions, ongoing interest in contemporary Russian literature, and warmth. I always look forward to reading and responding to comments from copy-editor Will Atkins, whose precise and patient queries about my word choices and the sense of the Russian original push me to keep improving my translation until the very last draft. I’m also very grateful to proofreader Helen Szirtes, whose meticulous reading resulted in queries that drove me to make further changes in the text. Between production head Paul Nash and assistant editor Alyson Coombes, every person, every detail, and every deadline stays on track during the translation process.

Finally, huge thanks to my colleague Liza Prudovskaya, who read a draft of The Aviator and checked it against Eugene’s original, making numerous comments, saving me from dumb mistakes, and answering my multitude of questions about vocabulary and tone. Liza’s answers help me tremendously with individual word choices, and global decisions about translating narrators’ and characters’ voices.

Lisa Hayden

‘Stylistically ornate and compulsively readable… delivered with great aplomb and narrative charm.’

‘A remarkable novel… Russia’s answer to The Name of the Rose.’

‘Impressive… Laurus cannot be faulted for its ambition or for its poignant humanity. It is a profound, sometimes challenging, meditation on faith, love and life’s mysteries.’

‘In Laurus, Vodolazkin aims directly at the heart of the Russian religious experience and perhaps even at that maddeningly elusive concept that is cherished to the point of cliché: the Russian soul.’

‘A treasure house of Russian medieval lore and customs… a very clever, self-aware contemporary novel… a quirky, ambitious book.’

‘Vodolazkin explores multifaceted questions of “Russianness” and concludes, like the 19th-century poet Fyodor Tyutchev, that Russia cannot be rationally understood. This is what leads him, with a gradual, but unstoppable momentum, to place faith and the transcendent human spirit at the centre of his powerful worldview.’

‘Love, faith and a quest for atonement are the driving themes of [this] epic, prize-winning Russian novel… With flavours of Umberto Eco and The Canterbury Tales, this affecting, idiosyncratic novel… is an impressive achievement.’

A masterpiece by any standards.’

‘A stroke of brilliant storytelling… a uniquely lavish, multi-layered work that blends an invented hagiography with the rapturous energy of Dostoevsky’s spiritual obsessions.’