DOSTOEVSKY AS BALZAC’S TRANSLATOR THE BEGINNING OF ‘REALISM IN THE HIGHEST SENSE’

Abstract

The article treats the translation of Balzac’s Eugеnie Grandet Dostoevsky did and published in 1844 in the St. Petersburg magazine Repertuar i Panteon. With this first publication, the Russian writer embarked on his literary career. This translation might be to a significant extent considered Dostoevsky’s original work since he largely reinterpreted Balzac’s creative method, his main characters, and his literary anthropology. Dostoevsky strove to emphasize human greatness which stems, among other things, from humans’ existence between the unthinkably far-flung poles of good and evil and from humans’ free choice between them. Balzac’s characters struggle against the evil that dominates society (or submit to that evil), while Dostoevsky’s characters struggle primarily against the evil within. In Dostoevsky’s translation, Balzac’s novel is transformed from Eugеnie Grandet’s tragedy into a story of the salvation of her soul. In contrast with Balzac’s social and psychological realism, Dostoevsky in his translation begins to develop the feel for ‘realism in the highest sense’, his future creative method.