Kept by Neighbors
I was recently forced by circumstances to do the long-overdue Herculean work of looking over the books I have been collecting almost all my life. As time went by and I grew older, once-read and well-battered books were being displaced to the top shelves and back stacks to clear the way for new favorites that were in turn doomed to be supplanted by yet others. But now the books seemed to belong not to me but to a different person or, rather, to several different persons: my modest collection bore the seal of dilettantish omnivorousness.
Yet, this is not the point. A considerable part of my books are translations of the Ancient Greek and Roman, medieval, and eighteenth to twentieth century Western classics. And what struck me perhaps for the first time is that my collection predominantly consists of Russian translations, rather than the originals or Ukrainian translations. This was not the result of my choice, for I had acquired everything, Russian more often than not, that I could lay hands on. For translation was always an essential part of Moscow’s imperial linguistic policy: from the times of the Russian Empire on there was a ban, official or unspoken, on translating into the so-called colonial languages. The so-called peoples of the USSR were as a rule allowed access to world culture through only one channel, i.e., the metropolis’s language. Despite all odds (e.g., in spite of the Russian-speaking Institute of Foreign Languages), Ukraine had a good translation school: suffice it to gratefully remember the late Hryhory Kochur. But the Ukrainian translations made in the years of Soviet power is just one discordant note in the Russian symphony of the world culture. As to the originals, they were almost never published in the Soviet Union for many decades, and society was not much interested in foreign languages, waiting for the moment when English would inevitably way to Russian as the sole international language.
Thus we Ukrainians have de facto been left now without the foundation of what is called Western civilization, i.e., without our own translations of the full classic worldwide book heritage. Some neighbors are making a spiteful and supposedly logical conclusion out of this: when we finally introduce our native language, we will fall into provincial ignorance. For our neighbors, Russia and Poland, have been translating ancient and Western literature of different genres into their languages over at least the past two centuries. And, shaking off the communist ideological machine, they immediately set out to fill the blanks, i.e., translate and publish all that once was banned by the czarist or Soviet censorship. A Pole I know said proudly, “We have already translated, absolutely everything!” He was exaggerating, of course, but only a little: all you have to do to see this is to visit Warsaw bookstores.
This is a very important national cause. Translations of the world literary and scientific heritage must become a mandatory component in the state-sponsored program of the affirmation and development of the Ukrainian language. Over ten years of independence, the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences might have drawn up and approved a governmental program of translating everything that has constituted the treasury of Western culture for at least 2500 years. This will take more than one decade, a lot of money, and, moreover, a large corps of excellent Ukrainian-language translators having a flawless command of foreign languages, both dead and living, and who have the necessary literary talent.
However, there is still neither a state-sponsored program, the necessary school of translators, nor — still worse — a complete awareness of the existing problem. This problem does not even trouble some Kiev-Mohyla Academy professors: there is a popular perception among them, quite in the spirit of Gogol’s immortal landlord Manilov: “Isn’t it better to read ancient and Western authors in the original?” Academic and university publishing houses are very glad if they manage to translate and publish a few books in a year. A true exploit in the current conditions, this still cannot solve the problem under discussion.
There is another problem associated with Ukrainian translations. The overwhelming majority of the few things now being published are translations from Russian, not from the original languages, i.e., translations from translations. This not only affects the quality of texts but also testifies to all-out surrender.
Somebody will say, “So what? There are Russian translations in Ukraine after all.” But what then about national self-respect, the future of our culture, the undeniable fact that translations of world literature enrich the vocabulary of any language? There is still another reason why we should take care of translations. Surprising as it is, the Ukrainian language is spreading, albeit slowly and irritatingly, across Ukraine. The natural bilingualism of the older generations of society, now on the way out, will soon disappear altogether. And a person educated in Ukrainian educational institutions will find reading in Russian the same as reading in Polish. Only a few will venture to do a Russian translation of, say, Tacitus, Benvenuto Cellini, or Leon Feuchtwanger.
The whole thing is continues to stand still because it offers absolutely no commercial gain. Meanwhile, we lay claim to membership in Europe, to its common cultural heritage and the same artistic tastes, and often even to having an education in the humanities better than in the West. Could this be just self-deception?
