Posted by Steven on 24/10/2010, 20:34:55, in reply to "Re: Petersburg"
76.186.51.185
: Whatīs the purpose or effect of the indentions in the
: text?
Beats me. Every time I thought I had it figured out, the next indented passage would blow my theory away.
: I remember I wondered also about the purpose of the
: lines of periods. Sometimes there seems to be no break
: in the narrative. Is the purpose only visual? To break
: up the text?
At times they seem to mean omitted but implied conversation, at other times just a pause in speech. Perhaps they signify (without bothering to describe it) a non-verbal gesture. I recently read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and he does something very similar by having lines of conversation consisting entirely of "..." or "?". No words at all, but a very effective and succinct way of describing perhaps a shrug or a raised eyebrow.
: The Bradbury and McFarlane book Modernism describes
: Petersburg as a cubist novel. I think I can see why.
: Esp. in the first half of the book, scenes are
: presented from different angles. I donīt think I
: realized in my first reading that sometimes a scene
: was a retelling of one from an earlier chapter.
Yes, now that you mention it, this is especially true of the scene at the Tsukatovs' ball and the morning after which are told in their entirety from Apollon's and Nikolai's perspective, as well as briefly from that of other characters.
: My Maguire Malmstead translation has a footnote which
: says, "Here Bely cut 'the organ of a general
: body' in the 1916 text to 'the general body' in the
: 1922 text. This destroys the comparison, so we have
: restored the 1916 reading."
:
: Is that too much liberty in translating? Why would
: Bely have made the change? Could it have been a matter
: of Soviet censorship? There are a couple other
: footnotes like that in my book.
The 1922 edition was published in Berlin, wasn't it, during a period of self-exile? So Soviet censorship wouldn't have been a factor. It's puzzling why he would have messed with a good thing, but I suppose many people's creative abilities grow stale over time.
: Iīve decided to avoid Grove editions of works in
: translation. They also still publish that heavily
: censored version of The Master and Margarita .
It's ironic that Grove Press, which made a name for itself with daring works like Lady Chatterley's Lover and Naked Lunch would be the one to give us the censored version of anything. I suppose it's an economic decision. Readers have to be informed shoppers these days.
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