The Promenade at Yalta, 22 June 1970
(Click on image to magnify)
Long-term followers of Calderonia may recall my post five years ago devoted to Harvey Pitcher, in a series called ‘Inestimable Russianists’. I quoted Harvey saying at the time (he was then in his eighty-third year) that he was just putting the finishing touches to a translation of The Lady with the Little Dog.
Some six or seven complete working drafts later, and perhaps as long as ten years since actually starting it, Harvey has signed the translation off. The time interval should not surprise you, as this story is particularly subtle, allusive and difficult to decide how to render. Harvey made his very first translation from Russian literature in 1957 and what he now entitles ‘Lady with a Little Dog’ is surely the pinnacle of his translating career. Calderonia, then, is deeply honoured to be invited to publish it for the first time.
In a throwaway line at a lecture-seminar, the brilliant Chekhov scholar Aleksandr Chudakov once described ‘Lady with a Little Dog’ as ‘the world’s best short story’ — and his audience, who were mainly young women, eagerly agreed. He did not say ‘greatest’ short story. In what sense, then, is it ‘best’? For that Russian audience, and for the people I have known who read it at least once a year in English (one, Derwent May, knew it by heart), it is ‘best’, surely, because of its subject, and the movement and climaxing of that subject. What began as a sordid ‘holiday conquest’ by a male chauvinist who calls women ‘the lower breed’, turns to compassion, even agapē, then an all-encompassing mutual love that, one can say, perfectly merges agapē and eros. Love stories don’t come better than this. In Kierkegaard’s words on the subject, ‘instinct’ becomes ‘spirit’.
Chekhov finished the story in 1899 after moving to Yalta. The first two chapters are set in Yalta and will be posted in Calderonia on 9 December. The third and longest chapter is set in wintry Moscow and the town of S. (widely thought to be Saratov, but it could well stand humorously for seryi, grey) and will be posted on 19 December. The last and shortest chapter, also set in Moscow, will go out on New Year’s Day 2025. Enjoy!
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SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘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
‘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
‘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
‘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.
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Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
George Calderon, 1912
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
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Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
George Calderon c.1901
‘The world’s best short story’: A new translation
The Promenade at Yalta, 22 June 1970
(Click on image to magnify)
Long-term followers of Calderonia may recall my post five years ago devoted to Harvey Pitcher, in a series called ‘Inestimable Russianists’. I quoted Harvey saying at the time (he was then in his eighty-third year) that he was just putting the finishing touches to a translation of The Lady with the Little Dog.
Some six or seven complete working drafts later, and perhaps as long as ten years since actually starting it, Harvey has signed the translation off. The time interval should not surprise you, as this story is particularly subtle, allusive and difficult to decide how to render. Harvey made his very first translation from Russian literature in 1957 and what he now entitles ‘Lady with a Little Dog’ is surely the pinnacle of his translating career. Calderonia, then, is deeply honoured to be invited to publish it for the first time.
In a throwaway line at a lecture-seminar, the brilliant Chekhov scholar Aleksandr Chudakov once described ‘Lady with a Little Dog’ as ‘the world’s best short story’ — and his audience, who were mainly young women, eagerly agreed. He did not say ‘greatest’ short story. In what sense, then, is it ‘best’? For that Russian audience, and for the people I have known who read it at least once a year in English (one, Derwent May, knew it by heart), it is ‘best’, surely, because of its subject, and the movement and climaxing of that subject. What began as a sordid ‘holiday conquest’ by a male chauvinist who calls women ‘the lower breed’, turns to compassion, even agapē, then an all-encompassing mutual love that, one can say, perfectly merges agapē and eros. Love stories don’t come better than this. In Kierkegaard’s words on the subject, ‘instinct’ becomes ‘spirit’.
Chekhov finished the story in 1899 after moving to Yalta. The first two chapters are set in Yalta and will be posted in Calderonia on 9 December. The third and longest chapter is set in wintry Moscow and the town of S. (widely thought to be Saratov, but it could well stand humorously for seryi, grey) and will be posted on 19 December. The last and shortest chapter, also set in Moscow, will go out on New Year’s Day 2025. Enjoy!
ADVERTISEMENT
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘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
‘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
‘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
‘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.
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