The Other Worlds of Teffi
An excerpt and translation notes from a new collection of short stories. May 2, 2021
This Translation by Robert Chandler
Teffi is difficult to translate. I have said a little in the foreword about her Pushkinian grace and deft use of repetition. She also makes the most of two freedoms the freedom to omit words and an extreme freedom of word order that are available only in a highly inflected language like Russian or Latin. And the precision of her psychological understanding, visual descriptions, and references to details of nineteenth-century Russian life leaves a translator with no room to maneuver.