Inestimable Russianist 1: Michael Pursglove

(This series is timed to coincide with the 2019 Annual Conference of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies held 12-14 April at Robinson College, Cambridge, where Sam&Sam will be promoting George Calderon: Edwardian Genius.)

When Michael Pursglove reviewed George Calderon: Edwardian Genius at length in the journal of the Great Britain-Russia Society, I was very gratified by the comprehensiveness of his review and the fact that he focussed on some themes that are particularly dear to me. But I was absolutely staggered when he also suggested leads to discovering the identity of two ‘mysterious’ figures in the book who had eluded me for thirty years! These were ‘Mrs Shapter’ (p. 105), who I thought might have taught George Russian, and ‘Professor Rose of Leipzig’ (p. 426), whom Kittie tried to take on to complete George’s book on folklore for OUP. Thanks to Michael Pursglove, I now know who these people were (I will post about them later).

Perhaps I should not have been surprised at all, though, as Pursglove is one of the most experienced and deeply informed Russianists alive in Britain today.

I first met him in 1985, when he was a lecturer at Reading University and I gave a talk there entitled ‘Why Chekhov?’, as a result of which I invited him to give one in Cambridge. This was ‘Andrew Assumption or Andrei Voznesensky’ — the best disquisition on translating Russian poetry into English that I have ever heard. The talk was also notable for its high student turnout and the presence of a fresh-faced future Cambridge Professor of Slavonic Studies who voiced his appreciation of Pursglove’s verse translation of a poem by Voznesensky (‘Assumption’, as the name might be rendered).

Michael Pursglove, whom I don’t think I have met since then, writes that he has ‘some reservations about my university career’. I imagine many of his contemporaries, myself included, have reservations about our own, although it seems to me that his career was highly distinguished, taking in posts in Russian language and literature at the universities of Ulster, Reading, Bath and Exeter. But since retiring in 2002 Pursglove has had a whole new career. This definitely places him in the Calderonian tradition of independent scholar and translator, and perhaps for him even occludes his earlier career.

According to my calculations, he has published over eighty articles and reviews since leaving Academe, ranging in subject from Anna Karenina, poets of Russia’s ‘Golden Age’, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Grigorovich, to a whole series on the deaf community in Russia. He writes that what he enjoys most is translating poetry, but he agrees with the late Robert Conquest that ‘translating rhymed poetry into English rhymed poetry is the most difficult of arts’. His own published translations of Russian poetry include works by Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Lermontov, Vyazemsky, Tyutchev and Larissa Miller.

Click the cover to find this book on Amazon.

However, the most remarkable achievement of Pursglove’s new career, to my mind, is that between 2010 and the present he has translated six major works by Turgenev: Fathers and Children, Smoke, Virgin Soil, A Nest of the Gentry, On the Eve, and The Diary of a Superfluous Man. As Pushkin put it, ‘translators are the post horses of enlightenment’ — and some of the horses certainly need changing. One of the things I most admire about Pursglove is his energy and resourcefulness in getting his work out there: his Turgenev translations have all been brought out by the independent publisher Alma Books, founded by Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini, and when he could not find a publisher for his and A.B. Murphy’s annotated translation of Giliarovskii’s classic Moscow and Muscovites he posted it online, where it has had nearly 3000 hits.

Meanwhile — as if the above were not enough — Pursglove has discovered a rich vein of research in the ‘unknown’ Edwardian translators of the Russian classics, many of whom were women. I 1000% approve. The subject badly needs opening up. Victorian translations were horrendous, and rightly excoriated by George Calderon. Their Edwardian successors, such as Constance Garnett, Aylmer and Louise Maude, and George himself, were real translators, and there are many more of them under the surface who deserve to be discovered. Hopefully Pursglove will be persuaded to do a post for us about them.

I wish the inestimable Michael Pursglove many more years of creative fulfilment, rewarding research, and surprises for us all in his new career.

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS 

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’  Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.‘ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.