Merry Moscow
Happy Moscow
by Andrey Platonov
(Harvill Press, 2001)
In preparation for a review I will be doing for the next edition of The Quarterly Conversation, I picked up this copy of Platonov's Happy Moscow from Alibris. I knew I was going to like this book when the first line of the backcover blurb quotes Stalin saying about Moscow in the 1930's that "life has become better, life has become merrier." Ahh, yes ... that line should top a "propaganda-fed-to-gullible-citizens" list that now includes Bush's crazy assertion about Iraq: "Mission Accomplished."
One other surprise was the long list of translators for this 154-page volume: Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, Angela Livingstone, Nadya Bourova, and Eric Naiman. Wow! This must have been a labor of love because by the time you get done divvying up the most -certainly slim royalties for this novel, there might have been enough left for each translator to splurge on a very nice dinner in London. I can't remember ever seeing such a long list of translators for a single work of fiction so I looked to the preface for answers:
"The ideal translator of Platonov would be perfectly bilingual and have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Soviet life. He would be able to detect deeply buried allusions not only to the classics of Russian and Europan literature, but also to speeches by Stalin, to articles by such varied figures as Bertrand Russell and Lunacharsky (the first Bolshevik Commissar for Enlightenment), to copies of Pravda from the thirties and to long-forgotten minor works of Socialist Realism. He would be a gifted and subtle punster. Most important of all, his ear for English speech-patterns would be so perfect that he could maintain the illusion of a speaking voice, or voices, even while the narrator or the individual characters are using extraordinary language or expressing extraordinary thoughts."
Okay ... there is no way this group was paid enough in royalites to compensate for the work they've put into this volume. Additionally, there are another 16 people thanked by the translators for their assistance in this project. I have high confidence that this novel is the definitive translation of Platonov's work. I'll let you know how Stalin's twisted and merry Moscow fares in Platonov's hands.